The Canon Magazine 61
REPLACE SKIES IN PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS
Shoot your very own
skies and add them
to your sky library
folder so you have
even more choice
when making
your editQUICK TIP!
01 OPEN YOUR PICTURES
Go into Photoshop Elements and head to Open, then
find the landscape with a dull sky that you want to
replace and open it. Next, you want to go to File>Open
and load up one of the skies in your sky library folder,
on your disc or download (see bottom left of page 60).
03 RESIZE THE SKY
Hit Ctrl/Cmd+T to put the sky layer into Free
Transform mode, then hold shift and drag the corner
handles of the bounding box outwards to enlarge the
sky so it fills the whole shot and drag it into place. Hit
Enter when you’re done to actually set it down.
05 MASK OFF THE FOREGROUND
Staying in the Layers panel click on the Add Layer
Mask icon and then grab a soft-edged Brush Tool.
Set it black by hitting D followed by X and resize
your cursor with the [ and ] keys. Then paint over
the foreground and lighthouse to mask it off.
02 COPY AND PASTE THE SKY IN
With the sky open in Elements, hit Ctrl/Cmd+A to
select it, then Ctrl/Cmd+C to copy it and Ctrl/Cmd+W
to close it down. Now back in the landscape shot hit
Ctrl/Cmd+V to paste it in. The sky picture will now
most likely need to be resized...04 GET THE PERFECT BLEND
Now it’s time to blend the new sky into the old one, so
go over to the Layers panel (Window>Layers) and
change the Blending Mode from Normal to Overlay.
Modes such as Soft Light, Hard Light and Screen
work well too. Adjust the Layer Opacity to fine-tune it.06 TWEAK THE BRIGHTNESS TO FINISH
All that’s left is to adjust the brightness of the sky, so
click on the sky layer image thumbnail in the Layers
panel and hit Ctrl+L to bring up the Levels panel. Now
drag the middle Midtones slider left or right until the
sky blends in perfectly with the rest of the landscape.STEP BY STEP REPLACE DULL SKIES
Give bland landscapes a new lease of life with our dramatic free skies