Sky Replacement, and My Results from My First Attempts.

I set a goal early this year that I wanted to at least try to learn a new technique with Photoshop or Lightroom every month.  I think it’s way more beneficial than doing a personal photo assignment/challenge which will more than likely end up with you either giving up because you just get bored or you end up shooting pictures of spoons and forks because your brain is fried from ideas.  Not to mention I personally feel like inspiration is not a skill that I need work on, but programs like Photoshop is definitely not my strongest part and at the risk of sounding like an idiot, there have been times in the past where I have refused someone’s idea simply because I didn’t know how to do it but didn’t want to admit it.

So after spending just a hour or so on youtube and blogs, I decided I would give sky replacement a shot.  As far as tips go it seems like this one in particular is kept a little closer to the chest of people and they always want you to buy their ebook or online class to learn the full thing but I felt like I could get it with a grab bag of basics. So I did just that

The first one I did I started with an already cool kind of picture and a really cool sky shot I took and selected out the parts of the landscape and just scaled them onto the sky.  Then I mushed them together and tried to make it look as real as possible.

 Above the boringish landscape

 Above is the final image after sky replaced.  Mind you this is my first attempt ever at this…

As for the second attempt I took two really meh pictures and it took a little more work to get the perspective and scale right as well as I had to use a layer mask and multiply it so it would darken it up a bit and give it some detail because admittedly they were flat and boring.

Above the two images I used for my second attempt.  Notice the building is just flat and lacking punch and is also leaning.

 And that is what I finished with, again is it the best? No not hardly but I feel like I added a new tool to the tool box and I am really really happy with it so that is all that really matters to me.