Dropping a different Sky into an image

[Pete JF]

I have to drop a sky into an image in Photoshop. What is the best way to do this.

There must be some tricks for this. Never had the need to do it and now I do.

The foreground elements are fairly simple..some buildings, a light pole..there is one tree and that is worrying me a bit.

Thanks

[francois]

I have to drop a sky into an image in Photoshop. What is the best way to do this.

There must be some tricks for this. Never had the need to do it and now I do.

The foreground elements are fairly simple..some buildings, a light pole..there is one tree and that is worrying me a bit.

Thanks
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Pete,
Start with your original photo and add your sky in a new layer. Then you'll need to build a layer mask associated with your sky (layer). I won't go into the details but you can read Michael's tutorial on [a href=\"http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital-blending.shtml]Digital Blending[/url]. What you need to read is in the "The Painted mask" paragraph.
You may also want to download the free chapter from Katrin Eisman Masking & Compositing book (here). In this free chapter, there's an example of sky replacement.

Does this help?

[ARD]

Pete,
Start with your original photo and add your sky in a new layer. Then you'll need to build a layer mask associated with your sky (layer). I won't go into the details but you can read Michael's tutorial on Digital Blending. What you need to read is in the "The Painted mask" paragraph.
You may also want to download the free chapter from Katrin Eisman Masking & Compositing book (here). In this free chapter, there's an example of sky replacement.

Does this help?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=107255\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Thanks for the links, very helpful

[francois]

Thanks for the links, very helpful
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=107257\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

You're welcome.
 

[nemophoto]

There's an excellent masking tool/plug-in from Vertus called Fluid Mask. I did an ad shoot that required some intricate masking with models and blowing hair. It did a great, realistic job. It's not super simple -- but then, no masking tool really is -- nor is it cheap, but if you want a good finished image, take a look.

Vertus Tech Fluid Mask

Nemo

[Pete JF]

Thanks everyone,

I really HATE doing stuff like this. I've gotten some decent results so far..looks great small, not so great when big. Seems there are lots of ways to skin this beast. I think have about twenty links bookmarked and just as many tutorials. I can see that it will work for the pic when im done.

It's the sad case of a street image, a cool moment, that happens to have the sky peeking through a part of the image that everything points to...a plain blue patch. All I want are some, not to obtrusive or overly dramatic, clouds to break up the blue a bit. Shot some decent skies the other day so I'll just have to mess with it a bit until i get a feel for the proper feathering.

I've alwyas had difficulty coming up with feathering schemes based on ppi. Any of you have any formulas for setting the feathering of a brush or selection tool (based on ppi) that get you in the ball park for this issue?

Thanks again.

Nemo, that looks great but im determined to get this working in PS. If i did a lot of this i would probably be tempted.

[pminicucci]

Pete: If you have blue sky in the original and only want to "impose" better clouds, don't overlook using the "blend-if" sliders on the clouds layer as a way of only selecting the clouds. You might need to use a layer mask for a little clean-up but if the tonal values are separated enough, blend-if works a treat.

I used that techniques for the low clouds here.