In article <VlzVe.1731$>, frankg
wrote:
Tom
I dont follow – how do you do this ? Do you make a "solid" selection by painting over the "branches & telephone lines" in quick mask or ? And then copying that selection into a duplicate background layer ? Frank
…..or do you simply mean to copy the new sky image and paste it onto the
original as a layer above the bkgrnd and change the new layer mode to Darken
at about 40% ?
……. but doesnt it lay the new sky over everything including the branches
and whatever and so you’d have to remove it from unwanted areas (non sky)
with a layer mask?
Make a rectangular selection that contains all of the sky and adjacent background features but avoids bright foreground objects like white walls, light sources, etc. (anything as bright as the sky). You may need to paint such features out of the selection in Quick Mask mode if they fall inside your rectangle. Back in marching ants mode, notice that you have a selection of sky and some nearby darker objects.
With the selection still active, make a new blank layer. Fill it with a blue gradient. You may want to sample the actual sky and use darker values of those colors. Skies are paler near the horizon, so go from light blue to darker blue. Your gradient fills the selection you’ve made, covering trees, phone wires, buildings…
Change the blend mode of the gradient layer to Darken. Those darker elements reappear. Look at the horizon at 100%. There will likely be a rather artificial boundary between sky and trees. Lower the opacity of the layer to about 40% and that artificial look will go away.
The technique is faster to do than to describe.
Tom Nelson
Tom Nelson Photography