"Hiya, you [got] any good tips for replacing a burnt out sky?"
Paul sent me the original three files that he had and it was a bit like goldilocks, one had brilliant foreground light, one had a little bit of detail and colour in the sky and the third was dark in the foreground and burnt out in the sky.
There wasn't a lot to work with in the sky; the foreground was shot really well but I think even if the sky was captured correctly there wouldn't have been a lot of detail. Of course, the first thing Paul himself admitted was that it wasn't the best time of day for that particular shot and photoshop can fix things but getting right first time is always preferable. But hey, I've screwed up more important shots than this and managed to put it right so who am I to comment!
To put it right I decided I would composite two of the three images. I opened the one image which had some sky detail and boosted the contrast to really push the blue/white of the clouds and sky. This turned the foreground jet-black but that was inevitable.
My next step was to copy and paste the great foreground picture on to the newly blue sky. This was easy thankfully as Paul had taken the shot with bracketing turned on which meant that I didn't need to twist or turn the images to get them to match.
A small, fantasy prize of five gold stars for those of you who can guess my next step.
I then erased the black foreground from the image with the good sky detail; to make it easier I did this with the good foreground layer 'turned off' to make it easier to see where I was going.
The trees on the right hand side were an absolute bugger! With some careful erasing I managed to get it right. I spent half an hour removing the foreground copy of the sky and then another half an hour checking and erasing the sky right up to the edge so that when I merged the two I didn't have any harsh edges.
Before flattening the two layers I brightened the foreground image a little. Once flattened I checked that it was right and then set to work on the final part of Paul's request:
"The overall aim of the image is to produce a decent black and white shot to complement the window image."
This was much easier than the first exercise as I just desaturated the image entirely and
tweaked the black and white with Curves and Levels. I needed only a little Dodge and Burn to bring out what was showing in the clouds which gave a final image as shown below.
"Hi Sean,
That looks good. Care to share the technique?
Paul."
If you have a question on technique and would like it answered you can do so, here, in the comments section, on twitter or by emailing me at info@whatseansaw.com
