Replacing skies - any tips?

[DorsetDude]

Hi

Ive been sent some snapshots of New York. Got some skyscraper ones and the sky is just dull grey behind them. I though Id google some sunset skies and layer mask them in behind the buildings.
Managed that reasonably ok but the sky now just looks so false its obvious, and the hue/colour of the buildings looks wrong.

What sort of things can I do to make the whole effect look more realistic?

Some sort of colour wash over the buildings to match the sunset sky? if so how?

Fade out the sunset sky towards the new horizon? Again how?

Really appreciate any tips on how to do it.

Using Elements for editing.

Thanks.

 

[swanseamale47]

Part of the trick is to get the lighting in the right direction, if the sky is lit from a different direction it'll tend to look wrong, same if the colours or contrast are different, manybe post the 2 pics so we can see what you have?

 

[DorsetDude]

Thanks wayne, here are the 2 photos and an example of my poor effort!

I know the photos arent brilliant but Im interested in the technique more than anything of making it look realistic after replacing the sky. This ones a sgood as any to practice on I thought.

 

[Kerioak]

Wayne is correct with this one.

Look at your original sunset - because the light is behind the trees and church everything you are looking at is dark. If you had turned around and looked behind you you would have probably seen that everything had a pink/gold hue and was lit by the setting sun.

For your cityscape picture it was overcast and flattish lighting but looks as if the light was coming from behind the photographer's right side so you need to get a skyscape with a similar angle and reflect it on the water and buildings, or do a lot of shadow creation on the buildings and colour the water to reflect the sky

 

[4wd]

You'll often improve things quite a bit by applying a neutral or pale blue gradient over what's there already, and fading it till it looks a bit more natural.
In the NY scene there is 'some' sky detail to tinker with slightly.

 

[DorsetDude]

Keri and 4wd,
I agree with both your comments, my question is *how* do I do this?

i.e how do I apply a pale blue gradient?
or how do I colour the water to match?

Its how to do it in Elements that I dont know and am trying to learn. Can you assist?

Thanks

 

[garryknight]

You might want to consider the fact that the sky is 'warm' while the buildings are 'cool'. You could try adding a warming filter to the buildings. I would start with Filter > Adjustments > Photo Filter > Warming Filter 85.

 

[specialman]

OP - there's a lot of detail hidden in that sky in the original image, you just need to have a play. Someone has done a tutorial about beefing up skies, might be worth a go before you go for a replacement.

Is it in raw? If so, then there's nothing stopping you from really working that sky; even in JPEG you'll have a bit of leeway to play.

Personally, I'd edit the original file twice, the first to get the buildings as you have them now, and a second edit (saved as a different file name obviously) with the sky much more contrasty and with some grit and detail in there. Then just layer the two files and using a mask, brush through until you uncover the parts of the shot below that you ant to see. Layer masks are dead easy in reality and very good for this kind of image adjustment.

Another thing, if you do go down the route you have with that bright sky against the dull building, with a mono conversion it'll look more believable.

 

[Marcus Geezer]

Take the sky shot, copy the layer, apply an average blur which makes it one uniform average colour then ensuring it is the top most layer adjust the opacity to about 10% or so and what it can do is add this average tone of the lovely warm sky to the foreground.

 

[swanseamale47]

Heres what I'd do.
I selected the sky ( all done roughly here for time) and used the selection for the layer mask to allow the sky layer to show, then on the building layer I used the ajust/colour balance to "warm" up the building to match the sky a bit.
Next I copied the top half of the flatened image and free transformed it upside down to add some reflection in the water, addded a bit of blur and lowered the opacity on that to make it less obvious an blend in better.

Not perfect by any means and done quickly but it gives you an idea of what you could do.

 

[DorsetDude]

Thanks for all the input.

Ive been to try Wayne's method and fallen at the first hurdle, is there a adjust->colour balance in Elements?
Cant see anything under the enhance-adjust color menu?

Thanks