Changing the backgrounds on photos

If you have taken a shot includes an exapanse of boring sky then it really is simple to add some interest to the background by replacing the blank sky with an interesting one. For example take a look at the following shot before and after I have changed the sky. I then outline the steps to change the sky.

Step 1: Add a new sky image to the current photo that you are editing. You can find many photos of sky on Google or perhaps as I always say, better to take your own shots and keep them handy.

Step 2: Enlarge the new sky image so that it fits nicely on the photo you are editing and then align it’s horizon with the horizon of the photo. Then select the “Hard Light” option of the blend mode for the sky image by selcting the layer.

The resulting image will be like this: As you can see even though the sky image has blended into the photo beneath, it looks quite ragged and patchy.

Step 3: Next hide the new sky image and select the background layer.

Step 4: Click on the magic wand, set tolerance to 100 and then click on the blank sky.

Then Select > Modify > Expand to expand the magic wand selection. Set it to 5.

 

Then Select > Feather and set it to 5 also.

Step 5: Make the sky layer visible and ensure it is selected by clicking on that layer.

Step 6: Click on “Layered Vector Mask” icon at the bottom of the layers palette. You will now see a mask icon with black areas. The sky image now blends quite well with the background photo.

Step 7: To make it more realistic you can now add a little bit of foreground reflection of the clouds and also brighten up the over all image by boosting color saturation to make it look better.