It is incredibly easy to replace the sky in a photo using photoshop. Some say it is cheating but there are times when a photograph can be drastically improved by adding a more impressive sky. The following example will show you how to add the new sky in a few easy steps. I have chosen a photograph of the Borobudur temple in Java as I needed photographs of it at sunrise and the brief was without people. Like all such major attractions it is over run by tourists so fulfilling these criteria was impossible. My solution was to photograph Borobudur at first light using a tripod and a long exposure.
This photo was taken with a long 
exposure at 6 am when the sky had just a little light in it. By using such a long exposure the sky is over exposed making for a dreadful photo but it also makes it very easy to isolate the sky area using the "magic wand" tool in photoshop. Click on the area of sky and you will see it highlighted.
Then open an image of a sky that you like. Whenever I see a sky that I like the look of I take one horizontal and one vertical photograph of it for my personal stock usage. Here I want a sunrise so I chose this one.
Then click "Select all" from the Photoshop menu which will highlight all of the new sky. Then click "Edit Copy" from the Photoshop menu. Return to the original image and click "Paste Into" from the photoshop menu and the new sky will drop into the image as shown below.
This doesn't look right as
the interesting part of the new sky is too low down so simply click on the Photoshop move tool to drag the sky higher and we have the result intended as shown in the photo below. When you are happy with the image click on "Layer" and then "Flatten Image" from the Photoshop menu and you can save the new image in any format.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|