Extending the sky?

In article ,
au says…

G’day all,

I have a number of scanned photos of mountainous landscapes with brilliant blue cloudless skies.

At the time I took a number of pics as a panorama; more recently I’ve discovered gems like Panorama Tools/PTGui/Enblend to fit them all together in a seamless photo.

The photos were handheld and whilst sharp aren’t dead level with one another. To produce a good pano without gaps all I need to do is to extend the sky in some of the pics.

As the skies are already just the way I want them I don’t want to drop in a sky from another image – what I need to do is to increase the canvas size and stretch the existing sky.

Trouble is, if I make a selection and then transform it, the horizon is stretched too (there is a white gap between the sky and the horizon).

What I need to do is to ‘anchor’ the horizon and stretch the top only so that the sky is ‘stretched’ to fit the extended canvas — that is, I want to go from this….

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Any suggestions?

I have Photoshop 5.5 and CS, Corel Photo Paint and GIMP.

Once you have assembled the various images into a panorama, your "Canvas" should be the correct size, with white (by default) in the areas that you want to fill with "sky." I’d first look at CS’s Patch Tool, and make a selection of the white area. Drag this Selection, with the Patch Tool active, to an area of the sky, probably just below the white. See if this doesn’t get you close. Another way to do this is to make the same Selection, move the Selection to the area of sky just below, and Crtl-c/Ctrl-v to make a new Layer with the Copy of the sky. I’d Ctrl-t (Free Transform) on this new Layer to increase its size, then do a Layer Mask, painting on the mask with a soft-edged brush, to blend the areas that are larger than the white, until the softness on the edge allows for a good optical blend. You can tweak this Layer with Adjustment Layers, until it matches the surrounding sky areas, though you may have to use gradient masks to better match horizontally and vertically with these adjustments.

Once the sky is about 99% of what you want for the entire panorama, a bit of Blur (probably again with a gradient mask allowing for the blur to diminish toward the horizon), a touch of Noise, and then maybe either Fade Noise, or another Blur to blend the total sky.

Hope that this gets you close. One could also use the Clone tool, to Clone " sky" from other areas (check Use All Layers for ease), then maybe the Blur- Noise-Blur to smooth it all out.

As for Transform(ing) the upper parts of a Layer, you can move the "center" bullseye up higher, before you transform, to affect the upper part of the Layer more, but this is a try-until-you-get-it-right proceedure and may require many, many attempts. Just move the bullseye up, Transform, Ctrl-z, if you don’t like it, and move the bullseye up higher.

Hunt

Select the upper portion of the sky and "Free Transform" it. Then you will be able to drag the upper edge without creating a white gap in the middle (you were probably using "Transform"). You may want to add some canvas and make your panorama a bit higher before you do the "Free Transform" so you can pull it up a bit more than necessary and then "Crop to size afterwards.

—
Charley

"Frank Jones" wrote in message

G’day all,

I have a number of scanned photos of mountainous landscapes with brilliant blue cloudless skies.

At the time I took a number of pics as a panorama; more recently I’ve discovered gems like Panorama Tools/PTGui/Enblend to fit them all together in a seamless photo.

The photos were handheld and whilst sharp aren’t dead level with one another. To produce a good pano without gaps all I need to do is to extend the sky in some of the pics.

As the skies are already just the way I want them I don’t want to drop in a sky from another image – what I need to do is to increase the canvas size and stretch the existing sky.

Trouble is, if I make a selection and then transform it, the horizon is stretched too (there is a white gap between the sky and the horizon).

What I need to do is to ‘anchor’ the horizon and stretch the top only so that the sky is ‘stretched’ to fit the extended canvas — that is, I want to go from this….

[best seen in fixed pitch font]

+——+
| |
| |
\ /
\ /\/
\/

to this.

+——+
| |
| |
| |
| |
\ /
\ /\/
\/

Any suggestions?

I have Photoshop 5.5 and CS, Corel Photo Paint and GIMP.