Project 15: Adding a New Sky

I love working with landscapes, and whilst nothing beats actually being out in beautiful locations with my camera, I also get a certain amount of enjoyment from the post-processing elements too. I try to get everything right in camera, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes I get home and load up my shots, only to feel disappointed that the colours onscreen don’t look as vivid as I remembered them, or that I’ve composed a shot badly without realising.

 There are also times that I visit new locations whilst on holiday, and know that I’m unlikely to return to the same spot for the foreseeable future, or perhaps ever. One example is when I visited the RSPB reserve in Cooling, Kent. I originally found the area on Google Earth -  we were due to visit Kent, and I looked around for possible photographic locations in the area. I noticed a sizeable shipwreck, and after some research, I found that it was called the Hans Egede, and was accessible via public footpaths.

To my delight, I also found that there were two other items of interest to me close by – a nineteenth century fort, now abandoned, and the remains of another fort, just off the coast.

There was only one day when we would be able to visit the area, as the walk was quite long and would take several hours. Unfortunately, it turned out to be overcast, with a boring grey sky – far from ideal for photographs. Nevertheless, I wanted to make the most of the opportunity so when we arrived I took plenty of shots of the wreck, the two forts and also of some abandoned vehicles that I found.

 Back home, I loaded them on to the computer and was not surprised to find that they looked dull and uninspiring. The flat light had resulted in low contrast scenes that lacked impact. Every cloud has a silver lining though – they are perfect for the technique described in this project!

Here is an unprocessed shot of Cliffe Fort:

I chose the sky from the following image for the replacement, as it seemed to me to match well with the image in terms of scale and lighting direction:

Here are the steps I took to replace the sky:

1.       I copied and pasted the whole of the fort image on to the seascape, making the fort image Layer 1.

2.       I roughly selected the bland sky with the Magic Wand tool, and removed it from Layer 1. 

3.       I made the seascape background into a movable layer. It was almost the same width as the fort image, therefore I didn’t have much leeway in terms of moving it horizontally. However, I was able to move it up slightly, taking care to keep the sea and land hidden behind the fort. 

4.       I cropped the layers so that they were both the same size.

5.       At 200% magnification, I worked my way along the edges of the fort and landscape to the right with a small soft-edged eraser. I erased any remaining parts of the grey sky, and also removed some vegetation growing on the roof – this was sort of cheating I suppose, but I don’t think it was detrimental to the image, and it made things a lot simpler!

6.       When I was satisfied that the sky removal was complete, I adjusted the levels, colour balance and vibrance of each layer until they matched more closely – I enhanced the reds and yellows of the fort image to warm it up slightly, so that it appeared to be lit by bright sun.

7.       Finally, I flattened the image. 

Here is the original image again, followed by the new version, for comparison:

In my opinion, this has ‘rescued’ a rather dull image, and added impact. As with most of my finished products, the colours may be too bright for some people’s tastes, but personally I feel fairly pleased with the result.

I tried a similar process on a photograph of a gravel extraction plant, which was just around the corner from the fort. This proved to be much more fiddly, particularly as I had to add subtle colour to the reflections in the puddles too, but again, I am quite happy with the result.

Original:

 Edited:

Finally, here are two more images from the same day, which I processed some time ago. The first  has been processed using HDR, the second was too low in contrast for such treatment, and has just had a Levels boost: