Replacing Blown Skys- the easy way

[Goofup]

First thing I’d like to thank Foozen for letting me use his picture. I noticed that he mentioned a couple of times about the blown sky problem he was having in the his original thread:
http://www.photocamel.com/forum/landscape-travel/28339-highforce.html
Here’s a easy way to replace those dreaded blown-out skies without all that tedious, time-consuming masking, selecting, etc. of tree lines, wispy hair, fur, etc. I did this with PSPXI, but it works the exact same way with PS or any other program that has Layer Blending. (Sorry, Elements users).

Disclaimer:
* This will not work with every picture, but it will work with quite a few. I’ll also admit that this is not the best way to replace a blown sky, but considering the time involved it sure beats some of the alternatives! Some assembly required. While little expertise is needed, it’s still a hands-on process so I can't promise perfect results the first time. As they say, "practice make perfect".

First, here's what we're starting with. Here’s Foozen’s posted version (yea, I messed with it a tad), and here’s a sky picture we’re gonna use.



Step 1- Open your original picture and a picture of a sky you want to use as the replacement. (You do have some nice sky pictures you keep just for this sorta thing, right?) Note: these should be pretty close to the same pixel size.
Step 2- Select All and Copy the sky picture, then Paste it as a New Layer onto your original picture. Here I’ve used the Move tool to move the sky up and over a bit.


Step 3- Change the Opacity of the sky layer to about 50% so you can see what you‘re doing. Roughly erase from the sky layer the parts that are not the blown out sky in the original. (Look close and you'll see all I did was erase the sky over main clumps of trees and falls). When you’re done, change the Opacity back to 100%


Step 4- Double click the sky layer to bring up the Layer Properties dialog box. Click on the Blend Ranges tab. We’re adjusting the Underlying Layer- I’ve circled it in red. Take the top arrow and move it all the way over to the right. Take the bottom slider and move it about 50-75% to the right. (Hint: if there’s a touch of gray in the sky, move the top slider a bit to the left.) Essentially we're telling the program "Ignore the blown sky, make it disappear and show sky instead".
At this point if you look at the After preview picture there’s some horrible halos, even after adjusting the sliders as best you can. Don’t worry, we’re gonna fix that in the next step! For now, click OK.


Step 5- To fix the halos just adjust the Opacity of the sky layer. In this case I used 48%. This will lighten the sky from your original, but you can change the Mode of the sky layer to Multiply, and also mess with the brightness, contrast, saturation, etc., if you want. Here’s the finished version:


Hints:
* Please try to pick a sky that looks realistic with the picture. I’ll admit I should’ve used a better sky, but just happen to pick this one for this tutorial.
* Anything that is white will be replaced with sky unless you erase the sky underneath. Usually all you need to do is roughly erase the sky below the horizon and any major subjects. However, things like white shirts, teeth, etc, will turn to sky unless you erase the sky underneath.
* If you use a jpeg, work on a uncompressed version. Jpeg artifacts around the edges of light/dark objects will cause all sorts of problems.
* Taking this one step further, now you know how to replace any white background with another background and save yourself boatloads of masking and selecting time.

[Worm324]

Nice work Goofup That technique works for a # of applications, but I never is used it in this manor. I'll have to give it a try

Thanks for sharing

Jay

[Jimmyz]

Great and different way to do this plus how cool you would take the time to help others.
JimmyZ

[Lionello]

Nice tutorial Goofup, thanks.

[Fusion]

Excellent tut, will defo use sometime... Ian

[jennifer l.]

Great explanation--thanks for posting!

[Goofup]

Thanks guys, just a trick I picked up god-knows-when a while back and thought I'd pass on cause we all just love those blown out skys, don't we?

[kelox]

great tip, i will have to try it out soon

[Mike_e]

Nice, thanks!!

[Jandybean]

That's great, thanks a bunch I have LOTS of pics I can practice on

[Crotographer]

Question? I like the technique, but, there is to me a difference in light values between the original capture and the supplanted sky. Is there a step that you can add to equalize the brightness/contrast and make the two of them more consistent with each other?

[Goofup]

Yes and no. See Step 5. On one hand you're reducing the opacity to get rid of the halos (and thus lightening the sky from the original). In fact, depending on the picture, the slight overlap of the sky on some lighter parts (ie, say of a sand dune) may leave a slightly darker area (on the dune) where the sky is left. That may need to be "fine tuned". This works best when you have a white sky with dark edges (ie, trees, mountains, etc..

As for getting the replaced sky the same as contrast/brightness as the original, you can adjust the sky layer to a point as mentioned as a final step. It is, of course, a quick and dirty handy way to replace blown skys, but it's not perfect.

[jfrancho]

Link added to editing sticky

[Athena]

On suggestion to fix the "shortage of sky photos" and the "quality of light" issue is to take a picture of the actual sky when you take the blown sky photo. Exposure will be different for each, angle of light and pixel size should be same. Now if I could just remember to take this advice myself I'd have lots better photos myself! lol