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 syndee holt 2005

  

VACATION'S OVER AND NOW YOU'VE GOT A BAZILLION DIGITAL PHOTOS TO REVIEW!

You've got a GREAT shot, but the sky is just a blah white haze.  Probably because you (or your camera) metered for the DETAIL of the image, not the big sky.  That's a good thing!  But don't despair, if you have another image with a wonderful sky, we can "borrow" that sky.  I always try to purposely take some photos of interesting sky when I travel in case I need them for the other photos I've taken on the trip.  Italian skies go on Italian pictures, Costa Rican skies go on the Costa Rica trip.  I don't mix my sky and my trip - THAT would be cheating!!

 

1.  Open your photo that needs the sky and use your Magic Wand to select the sky area.  Hold down your Shift key to add to the selection.

2.  In Photoshop Elements select Layer>New>Layer Via Copy to put this selected sky on it's own layer. In regular Photoshop just hold down your Ctrl (Mac Cmd) key and press "J" to put this selection on it's own layer.

3.  Now lets find our sky photo. Make sure that it is the same resolution as your original photo!  (Told you I collected sky photos!)  Use your marquee tool, which is the top left corner of your toolbox to drag and select a portion of the sky.

4.  Use your move tool, which is next to the marquee tool (right above the Magic Wand) to drag this sky from one image to the other.

 

 

 

 

Now this looks pretty ugly right now, but don't panic!

You can use the guides on the sides of the sky area to drag it larger to fit the image. 

 

Then the magic happens.

 

HOld down the Ctrl (Mac- Cmd) key and press the "G" key.   Voila!!

This merges the two top layers - the layer with the sky you dragged over and the layer with the original sky that you selected and put on it's own layer!  Yep, it's that easy.. You can even move the sky portion around to get just the right place.

I know it's freaky..

One more thing, you will probably want to select Layer>Flatten Layers before saving to make a slightly smaller file size.

 

Next up - using level to correct your exposure (notice how my buildings look better in the right side photo?)