COMMON PHOTO PROBLEMS SOLVED
O
n the previous pages we demonstrated how to
enhance a sky by gradually darkening the tones
and saturating the colours towards the top of the
frame. That technique works well if there are lots
of colours and tones to work with, but if the sky of your
photograph is simply a mass of overcast clouds then it will
be too bland and featureless to enhance using a gradated
adjustment layer. If an object such as a tall tree overlaps the
sky in the top of the frame then the gradient layer will
darken this also, which would spoil the image.
A cloudy sky can add mood and drama to a photo if it
has enough variety and texture. However, when shooting
landscapes, you may end up with blown-out skies that lack
detail. If you shoot in the raw format then you may be able
to claw back missing highlight detail, but with JPEGs you’ll
be stuck with an over-exposed cloudy sky. Fortunately, you
can use Photoshop Elements’ selection and masking tools to
replace a bland or over-exposed sky with something more
textured and colourful.
Our starting image has bits of sky trapped among its busy
branches. This means we have the challenge of selecting and
removing lots of fiddly sky sections. We’ll show you how to
set up the Magic Wand tool to hunt out all sky pixels in a
few clicks. When removing sky from a finely textured area
such as these tree branches, you risk leaving fringes of the
original sky clinging to the edge of twigs. We’ll show you
how to modify the initial selection to remove these ugly
fringes and then perform a complete sky transplant.
Replace dull skies ........................................................................
Select and remove a boring
sky and replace it with
something more exciting!