Replacing the Sky

Quick reference

• 00:04 So, starting off with this video I'm going to show you three different methods
• 00:07 that you can use on your images to replace the sky.
• 00:10 So here I have an image of a sunflower, which I grabbed from Shutterstock.com.
• 00:15 And over here in this document, I have another image from Shutterstock
• 00:18 of a nice background, which we're going to use as a replacement of the
• 00:22 sky in this image. To start off, I'll grab this image here:
• 00:25 simply drag right on top of this document.
• 00:26 And if I need to, I can resize it: Command or
• 00:29 Control T.
• 00:30 I'll zoom out just a little bit, and simply resize it down so it fits my
• 00:35 document, so I'm not losing too much of the background.
• 00:38 Press Return or Enter to accept and if you want to fit the image to your workspace,
• 00:42 press Command or Control 0. So now that this image is in place, we want to move it
• 00:46 behind the original image.
• 00:48 In the Layers panel, I'll double click on this layer and name it
• 00:52 Sun Flower,
• 00:52 and I'll press OK to make it an editable layer.
• 00:56 When that's done, I can go ahead and grab the background layer
• 00:59 and simply drag it right behind that original layer. So at this point, you
• 01:03 should
• 01:03 only see the original layer, which will be your foreground subjects.
• 01:06 Now, for method #1, we're going to be using Blend If, which, if you’ve watched my
• 01:10 videos in the past, you know I love working with Blend If,
• 01:13 because there's so much you can do with it, in so many different situations.
• 01:17 And you can access Blend If by simply double-clicking on the layer in question,
• 01:21 which will bring up your layer styles dialogue box, and right at the bottom
• 01:24 you'll see your Blend If sliders.
• 01:26 Now as explained in past videos, there are two sliders.
• 01:29 There's one for this layer, which is the layer that you're currently on,
• 01:32 and one for the underlying layer. Now, as we do want to blend out the sky of the
• 01:36 layer we are currently on,
• 01:38 we'll be focusing on this layer. But by default, the tonal range is set to gray,
• 01:43 which we don't want, we want to blend up the grays the image.
• 01:46 We actually want to be focusing on the blues. So click on gray,
• 01:50 you have the option of working with red, green or blue.
• 01:53 In this case, because you want to blend up the sky, we're going to select blue.
• 01:57 And you'll notice that the sliders changed to reflect the color that we
• 02:00 just selected.
• 02:01 Now on each end of the slider you have a handle. On the left you have your shadows,
• 02:06 and the right you have your highlights. Each handle is made up of two sides,
• 02:10 which can be split to create more gradual transitions. You'll notice if I grab
• 02:14 the highlights slider and drag it to the left,
• 02:16 the blues in the layer start to disappear, but it's a very harsh result.
• 02:20 You probably want a more gradual, softer result.
• 02:23 So, I'll put the slider back to the right and this time, with my
• 02:26 ALT or Option key held down, Option on the Mac, ALT on Windows,
• 02:30 I'm going to grab the left side of this slider and drag it to the left.
• 02:34 And this time, the result is a lot more gradual than it was before,
• 02:38 and I can keep going until the blues in this image are almost gone.
• 02:41 Now, once the slider is split up, you may want to go back and grab that
• 02:45 right half and drag it little bit to the left. That will get rid of some of the
• 02:49 blues in your image.
• 02:50 And you continue tweaking these sliders until you have a nice result.
• 02:54 And if you turn off preview, and turn it back on, you can see that the original sky is
• 02:59 almost completely replaced.
• 03:00 Now, there is a tiny little bit of an outline around the sunflower,
• 03:04 which is hard to see, but if you zoom in you definitely can see it,
• 03:07 Continuing to tweak the blend if sliders will probably get rid of that
• 03:11 outline,
• 03:12 but in some cases, your result will not be 100% perfect.
• 03:15 The Blend If sliders, when they work, they work fantastically,
• 03:18 but they don't give you as much control as our next method, so I can go ahead
• 03:22 and press cancel.
• 03:23 This next method will allow us to select the specific colors that we want
• 03:27 to remove from this layer,
• 03:28 and that's going to be done using color range. So up at the top,
• 03:32 under the Select menu, you can choose the Color Range option.
• 03:35 I'll move this window over to the right, and there's a few ways the color range
• 03:39 can work. Depending on your image, you can choose a specific color from this
• 03:42 drop-down,
• 03:43 but you'll notice if I select blues or I select cyan,
• 03:47 the result isn't nearly what you're looking for. Basically, in this window at
• 03:51 the bottom, the preview window,
• 03:52 you're looking for pure white and pure black. White is going to be your
• 03:55 selection and black is going to be left alone.
• 03:58 So in this case, looking at the sky in the background in the preview window,
• 04:02 it's a little bit grey, which means our selections can be somewhat transparent.
• 04:06 That's definitely not what we want. So instead, under the Select drop-down we're
• 04:10 going to choose ‘Sampled Colors’,
• 04:11 which will allow us to select specific colors that we want included in the
• 04:15 selection.
• 04:16 So, I'll start by clicking on the blue of the sky, just like this,
• 04:19 and you'll notice that Photoshop is taking those blues and turning them into a
• 04:23 selection - or what will be a selection.
• 04:25 As you can see in the preview window, all the solid white is going be in nice
• 04:29 sharp selections, but you're also noticing that down here, the bottom left to the
• 04:33 preview window,
• 04:34 those areas and those colors were not selected because they weren't exactly
• 04:37 like the color that we sampled initially.
• 04:40 So in that case, color range allows you to add to your selection.
• 04:44 And you can do that by either selecting this icon over here to the right,
• 04:47 or you can simply hold on your Shift key and click on the other colors that you want
• 04:51 selected.
• 04:52 You'll notice that Photoshop has updated the preview to reflect that change.
• 04:56 And I can continue going around this image and selecting colors that were not
• 05:00 selected initially.
• 05:02 So now if you take a look at the preview window, you’re given a solid white sky,
• 05:05 and the rest of it is, for the most part, black. But like you can see in the middle
• 05:09 of the sunflower and a little bit in the field,
• 05:12 some of that area has also been selected, so I'll go ahead and press OK,
• 05:15 which will create an initial selection. And what we can do now is actually subtract
• 05:19 from the selection
• 05:20 to get rid of the areas in the middle of the sunflower that were also included.
• 05:24 So from the left hand side, in my Tools bar, I'll grab the regular Lasso tool,
• 05:29 and with my ALT or Option held down to subtract from the selection,
• 05:32 I'm simply going to drag out a lasso around the middle of the sunflower,
• 05:36 and that will subtract any bits that were initially included in the selection made
• 05:40 by color range.
• 05:41 And I can do the same thing at the bottom, in the field. Again, hold in ALT
• 05:44 or Option
• 05:45 and simply drag right around, just like this.
• 05:48 I'll select the whole entire sunflower field, go up here and around,
• 05:52 and all the areas that were once selected are no longer selected.
• 05:55 And at this point, our layer is now ready to be masked out.
• 05:59 Currently, we have our sky selected, which is the area that we want to hide.
• 06:03 So, going over here to our Layers panel, right at the bottom we have our add
• 06:06 layer mask icon.
• 06:07 You know, if we were to simply hit this without holding down any key,s
• 06:10 it would get rid the sunflowers and keep the sky, which is exactly what we don't
• 06:15 want to do. To undo, press Command or Control Z,
• 06:17 and this time, before you hit that layer mask icon hold down your ALT or Option,
• 06:21 key
• 06:22 and then click on the layer mask icon. It will now hide the sky
• 06:26 and keep everything else in the foreground. Now this time, if you look
• 06:29 very closely, we still have a little bit of an outline around the sunflower,
• 06:33 but because we're using a layer mask, we have more flexibility.
• 06:37 Over in the Properties panel, we have the mask edge feature.
• 06:41 If we open it up and turn the view to layers,
• 06:45 what we can do is take the shift edge slider inside and drag it to the left a
• 06:48 little bit,
• 06:49 which will get rid of the outline completely, leaving us with a much more
• 06:53 attractive result.
• 06:54 So that's method number 2: using color range and masking
• 06:58 to get rid the sky in the background. Now for number 3, I'm going to hop over
• 07:02 to this image here, which I shot at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre here in Colorado.
• 07:06 And just like I did before, I'll grab this image background and drag
• 07:09 it onto this document and press Command or Control T to transform it.
• 07:13 I'll make it a little bit smaller, just like that,
• 07:16 and hit Return or Enter to accept the changes. There we go.
• 07:20 Click Command or Control 0 to zoom back in and, as you learned earlier, double click on the
• 07:24 layer in the Layers panel
• 07:25 to turn it into an editable layer, and drag that image right behind the original,
• 07:29 just like that.
• 07:30 Method number three uses the selection method, which can be found in your Tools
• 07:33 bar.
• 07:34 For this example, I am using the quick selection tool. This tool works
• 07:38 very similar to a brush tool.
• 07:39 We can enlarge it using your right square bracket, or make a smaller
• 07:43 with the left square bracket key.
• 07:44 And all you have to do is brush over top of the area that you want to turn into a
• 07:48 selection.
• 07:48 But you first want to make sure you're on the right layer. Right now, I have the
• 07:51 background layer selected.
• 07:53 I want to select my original layer and then just brush
• 07:56 over top of the sky, just like this, and Photoshop is taking a note
• 08:00 of the colors you're brushing on top of, and also looking for any key lines and
• 08:04 shapes that might be visible in the image.
• 08:06 This creates a nice, accurate selection. So I simply brush over top of the sky.
• 08:10 I was able to very quickly turn it into a selection, and what's nice about this
• 08:14 method
• 08:14 is that the sky, unlike the previous methods, doesn't have to be
• 08:18 perfectly blue. We have a mixture of blues and whites and yellows
• 08:21 in the sky, and by simply brushing on top of it, Photoshop was able to make that
• 08:26 selection.
• 08:26 And now the selection has been made, just like in our last method, you hold down
• 08:30 ALT or Option and click on the ‘add layer mask’ button. Photoshop is going to mask the sky,
• 08:35 leaving your foreground subjects and the new sky in the background.
• 08:38 Now of course, the colors are completely off in this composition.
• 08:41 But the focus of this video was only to mask the sky in your original image,
• 08:45 leaving you with your new sky in the background.

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