Anna Shaw

CHANGING SKIES IN COMPLEX LANDSCAPES: A Photoshop Tutorial

I have written this tutorial in Photoshop CS4, but it will work in earlier versions too.

How many times have you been out with your camera, found a beautiful landscape, but the sky was uniform, dull or flat? It has happened to me more times than I can remember!

As with everything in Photoshop, there are so many different ways to remove skies from a landscape. It is very simple to do this in Landscapes which have straight edges into the sky, like cutting around buildings etc. But it is much harder to cut out skies when there is a lot of foliage around. The normal lasso tools, the quick select tools and the ‘magic’ tools do not work too well.

But there is an easy way. The length of time it will take will depend on how many colours are in your existing sky. This tutorial will show the steps needed to go from this image…

to this…

Lets get going!

You can download the lovely start image from Dangerous Stock
You can download the great sky from Hatestock
Do remember to use the download button so that you get the hi res versions and to click on the ‘Add To Favourites’ button. This is courtesy for being able to use the image. Also, if you publish your work do please remember to credit the artists who have given their stock.

Step 1: *

With the start image open, *double click on the background layer so that it then becomes Layer 0. Re-label this layer as ‘Background’ by double clicking in the box that says Layer0. This sounds silly, but now we have changed the start image into a layer, it will enable us to move the layer around later.

Click onto the New Layer Icon. This will place a transparent layer above Layer 0 .
It is now labeled as Layer 1. You can leave this as it is.
Slide your background layer above Layer 1.
This is what it will look like…

Step 2

The next step is to select the area containing all the blue sky that you want to replace. You can use a variety of tools to do this, but the easiest one for this image is the Polygon Lasso tool.
All you are doing with this selection is making sure that you do not cut any pixels out of the image that you do not want to loose. This is particularly important where you have pixels in the foreground, which are the same colour as the sky. In this image there is lots of blue in the barn, which we do not want to cut.

So, click onto your Background layer and start to make your selection. I have highlighted my selection in red, so that you can easily see it, but yours will look like a dotted line. You can see that I have gone just below the trees where sky shows through.

You now need to SAVE this selection. Go to the menu bar and to Select/Save selection and save it as ‘1’.

Step 3

Now you have saved your selection, go to the menu bar and choose Select/Colour Range.
A dialogue box will pop up.

Select ‘Sampled Colours’
Tick ‘Localised Color Clusters
Fuzziness = 104 (You can increase or decrease this depending on the colours in your image, but for this image 104 works well.
Select the Image button.

You will see your image behind the dialogue box.
Now, with the little eyedropper tool, click onto an area of blue in the sky.
You will see a selection created of that particular colour. Go to the menu bar and select Edit/Cut.

Now just repeat this process as many times as you need to, to get rid of all the shades of blue in the sky.
DO REMEMBER TO LOAD YOUR SELECTION EACH TIME.
To do this, go to *Select/Load Selection and scroll down until you come to ‘1’
Then once again, Select/Colour Range…. Edit Cut.

I took about 6 cuts to end up with an image like this

Step 4

Whilst you have a transparent layer under your background image, it is sometimes hard to see if you have cut out all the unwanted pixels. So to do a ‘safety check’ you will need to fill Layer 1 with a white fill.

To do this go to the Paint Bucket tool, and with white as your foreground colour, click on that layer and it will fill with white.
If you have any hazy blue areas showing, just go to your History Palate and dump the white fill into the dustbin. Then go back to your select colour range and cut out some more.

Step 4

Now you need to choose a new sky.

I have found a beauty, which you can download. Just click on the image.

Again, if you download it please do remember to favourite it out of courtesy.

You can choose any sky you like, but it should have the horizon roughly where the horizon is in your original image.

The most important thing to remember is that when you choose your sky, you will need to ensure that the strongest light source in the sky fits with the brightest part of your start image.

In the sky I have chosen, the strongest light source comes from the top left hand side of the sky. This fits with the brightest part of the start image – the highlights on the roof of the barn, so immediately the image is credible. If this sky were flipped horizontally, so that the light source was on the opposite side, it would not work at all.

Step 5

You can skip this step if you wish

Because the sky is so dramatic, and because the start image is lovely, I want to extend the canvas in order to balance out the different elements in the image.

So to do this, simply highlight your bottom layer – Layer 1.
Go to the menu Bar and select Image/Canvas Size.
In the dialogue box, scroll down the width and height settings and change this to Percent.
In the Height box, alter the percent to 140.
Click OK.

This will have transformed the size of your image.

Go back to your background layer, and with the move tool, slide the image to the bottom of the canvas.

Step 6

Open up your sky image, and go to Select/Select All
Then to
Edit/Copy
Go to your barn image now and select Layer 1 – the bottom transparent layer.
Go to Edit/Paste

You will see that the sky you have imported is larger than the original image, so you will need to make it smaller.
On the sky layer, go to Edit/Free Transform and from corner of the image, shrink it to fit.

Step 6

You will see now that there are a few annoying bluish leaves hanging around on the start image. So select the start image layer and create a layer mask. (see image below)

With your foreground colour set as black, choose a soft round brush and on the layer mask, just paint them out. Do this until you are happy with the end result. If you paint out something by mistake, just set your foreground colour to white to paint it back in.

Step 7

Just to unify the two parts of this image, select the background layer and on the menu bar, select Image/Adjustments/Colour Balance. Slide the Yellow/Blue slider towards blue. You can see what I have done here.

Also, I felt the need to slightly darken the start image to fit better with the sky, so go to
Image/Adjustments/Levels and slide the middle slider slightly towards the right. You can see what I have done here.

Step 8

This is the really clever bit, and it something I do whenever I merge any images together. You can use this technique in many photomontages to achieve a unified colour scheme.

Create a new layer above the start image.
Select the Paint Bucket tool.
Click onto the foreground colour and when the dialogue box comes up type in 336633in the hash box. Like this…

Then, with the paint bucket tool, pour this into the new layer.
Select Color Blending Mode and reduce the opacity to 20% (see below)

Step 9

Repeat this process. Create a new layer and fill with color 333366
Set blending mode to color and reduce opacity to 20%

Step 10

Repeat this process on a new layer and fill with cc9966
Set blending mode to Overlay and reduce opacity to 21%
Your screen should look like this…

This will have unified all the colors in the image.

One final step…
Go to Select/Select All ... then…..
Edit/Copy Merged... then…...
File/New (no need to change any sizes here) .... then…..
Edit/Paste

That will give you your final image. You can then save this as a .jpg file.
Your original .psd File with all its layers is the preserved, so that if you wish to go back and change any bits at a later stage – you can do so.

I hope that you have enjoyed this tutorial. If you have, please let me know. Also – if you have found any bits too difficult, or which do not work please let me know too.

I would love to see your final images too. If you want to show me, or ask any advice, but do not want to load your image for other to see, just upload it as normal, but tick the box ‘Hide From Public View’. You can then send it to me by Bmail, using the normal codes – !! either side of the url when you copy image location.
xx
Anna