Best way to fix blown out skies in landscape photos without making it look fake?

The trick is shooting with exposure bracketing if you're doing it in-camera, then blending the exposures in post so the sky detail comes from an underexposed frame while the landscape stays properly lit. If you're working with a single shot, a graduated ND filter during shooting beats trying to fix it later, though honestly most people underestimate how much you can recover in software without it looking like a paste-job - just keep the adjustment subtle and match the color temperature of the sky to the surrounding light. Dodging and burning with a soft brush, or using layer masks in your editor, gives way more control than a blanket adjustment that makes everything look hyper-processed.

Shoot in RAW format and keep your initial exposure on the darker side - you recover sky detail way easier than you fix a blown-out highlight that's already gone. Once you're in post, use a luminosity mask or select just the sky area, then bring back the blues and overall exposure without touching the landscape. The key is being selective; if you adjust the whole image at once, the ground looks muddy and unnatural.

Here's something that actually works better than blending multiple exposures for most situations: use a graduated ND filter when you're shooting. Sounds old-school, but it prevents the problem before it happens, and you end up with a single exposure that's already balanced. No complex masking, no halos around trees where blending goes wrong. I've found that even a cheap one saves hours in editing.

If you're stuck with what you've already shot, dodge and burn selectively instead of doing broad adjustments. Paint in the sky area with a low opacity brush, gradually bringing back color and tone. It takes longer but looks infinitely more natural because you're not creating that plastic gradient effect that screams "photoshop." And honestly, sometimes accepting that the sky is gonna be a bit flat is fine - not every landscape needs a dramatic sky, and fighting it makes the whole thing look forced.

Graduated ND filters are your friend if you want to nail it straight in the camera - I learned this the hard way after a sunrise shoot where I kept blowing out the sky no matter what I did with exposure. A dark grad filter lets you darken just the sky portion while keeping your foreground properly lit, and you're working with actual captured data instead of trying to resurrect blown highlights in post. Even if you're not a filter person, this approach combined with underexposing slightly gives you way more natural-looking results than heavy blending or masking, because there's genuinely more tonal information to work with from the start.

If you're already out shooting, try underexposing just enough to hold the sky, then selectively lifting the foreground with a radial or linear mask in post - it's easier than blending multiple exposures and keeps things looking natural if you don't push the recovery too hard. One thing that helps a ton: shoot your sky separately as a mental reference so you remember what it actually looked like, not what your camera decided to do with metering.