Unmesh Dinda 0:05 Hi there, this is Unmesh from PiXimperfect.
And I know what you're thinking.
I'm not at home, I'm at a hotel room.
I'm traveling.
But anyway, nothing stops us from creating tutorials.
So whenever we are doing sky replacements, especially when it's extreme, let's say you
have a bright background and the tree on it, and you want to replace the sky with a dark
sky or, let's say, a sunset sky, it's very difficult because the trees begin to show
these fringes and they just don't match with the new background.
So today, I'm going to show you how to fix that.
So here we have a tree on a very bright background, and there are lots of ways to remove the background.
But in this case, we're going to choose the Color Range.
Now, before we do anything, it's always advisable to bring the new background first.
So let's go to our Finder or Explorer, drag it and drop it over the canvas.
Now, we need to adjust it, right?
So first of all, let's make it bigger.
Now have a look at the original image.
The light is coming from the right hand side.
So, why don't we flip it?
Let's flip it.
So right click on this one and choose Flip Horizontal.
Right.
Now, we don't want to see the buildings or even the Sun in this case.
We just want the clouds.
So I'm going to make it really, really big and put it something like that.
Now that we have the background adjusted, the sky adjusted, we can put the sky behind
the background.
So for that, since this is locked, we need to first unlock it.
So click on the lock to unlock that.
And now let's drag the sky and bring it under the tree.
You can actually name this Tree.
Now, let's go to Select and then Color Range to be able to select the sky and mask it out.
Now, first of all, decrease the Fuzziness to a very low number, 10 or 9 is fine.
Now select the first Eyedropper right here and now click on the sky around it.
Now, what you can do, select the + Eyedropper and just draw to mask all of the sky around
the tree.
So, I'm drawing all around it.
Now have a look at this area right here.
If you have chosen Selection, black other areas which are not selected and white are
the areas which are selected.
So in this case, as you can see, the sky is selected.
But we want to see this real time, right?
So, we know that the sky is going to be darker.
So great way to look at it is by using Black Matte.
But still, anything that is selected is showing in color and anything which is not selected
is showing in black.
Where are we missing the point?
Well, all you need to do is to check Invert.
So once you click on Invert, it totally makes an opposite selection of that.
Now we have to just increase the Fuzziness.
Zoom in and just increase the Fuzziness to the point where all of these fringes are gone.
But, there will still be some of them remaining.
Don't go too far that the areas of the leaves go away.
Just be careful.
And we can go little more far.
Let's zoom out.
Let's see what it is.
Yeah, it's a pretty nice selection.
So, let's decrease the Fuzziness just a little bit.
And once you're satisfied, hit OK.
Now we have the selection of the tree.
So, simply click on the Mask button with the selection still active.
Now we have it.
But still, something just doesn't look right.
Have a look.
What doesn't look right?
Well, look at it closely and then decide.
If you look closely, you would realize that the tree is brighter than the sky, which is
not possible because sky is the source of light, right?
And there cannot be anything brighter than the source of light, right?
So, we need to make it darker.
And what is the Blend Mode that makes it darker?
Multiply.
So change the Blend Mode from Normal to Multiply.
Now, this is working.
But once we change the Blend Mode to Multiply, the details of the sky show through the tree.
So, we just want the color of the sky in those regions.
So, how do we get the colors and do away with the details?
Blur it.
So with the sky selected, press Ctrl or Command + J, right, and in this copy, we'll blur everything
to remove the details.
Let's go to Filter - Blur and then Gaussian Blur.
Let's zoom out and increase the blur to a crazy number so that we don't see any details,
just the color.
For me, I think 482 is fine.
Hit OK.
But we don't want all of the details to go away, we just wanted the details to go away
from the tree area.
So let's mask it out.
But we don't have to mask it out again because we already have a mask here.
So hold the Option key or the Alt key, click and drag the Mask and drop it right over here.
And now have a look.
It's so much better, right?
So, it's matching.
The details of the sky doesn't come through.
It's looking great.
We just have to make a few more adjustments using the Curves Adjustment layer.
So first of all, the tree is going to be a little more darker than this.
So, let's create a Curves Adjustment layer on the top.
So with the top most layer selected, click on the Adjustment layer icon and then choose
Curves.
Now, whatever we do here affects everything.
We don't want that.
We want to limit it just to the tree.
And how do we do that?
Simple.
Click on this button, it creates a Clipping Mask.
Now, have a look at the arrow right there, it means that it is limiting just to the layer
which is beneath it or the Tree layer.
Now whatever you do will be limited to the tree.
Now, we want to reduce the highlights.
So in Curves, the right side represents the highlights, left side represents the shadow.
So take down the right-most point and stop it where you like it.
So, in my opinion, this seems to be a pretty nice position.
It looks realistic.
I'm going to stop it right there.
If you want to increase the contrast, you can also create a point on the left hand side
and make the dark even darker like that.
But, I think I want to make a little, you know, brighter overall just to add some details
in the shadows.
That's okay.
Now, on top of that, you can add as many Curves as you want.
So I'm going to add one more Curves, and clip that to by clicking on this button right there,
and let's make it even darker like that.
I like it.
Now if you're into adding some dimension to the tree, let's say you want to create some
light on the edge of the tree, we can do that by creating an independent Curves Adjustment
layer because no matter how much brightness you add with clipped curves, so let's say,
we create one more Curves and you clip it and I make it totally bright, it won't become
brighter than the background or background off the tree which we blurred out, it just
won't because the Multiply blend mode is selected.
Right?
So to avoid that, we need to create an independent Curves Adjustment layer.
So let's delete the third one.
This was just for demonstration.
So click on the Adjustment layer icon and then choose Curves.
You need not create a Clipping Mask right there.
Now, let's take the right slider, have a look at this slider right there, to the left to
make everything brighter.
But we just want to make the tree area brighter.
So we need to just use the Mask there.
So hold the Alt or Option, click on the Mask and drag it and drop it over Curves 3 Mask.
Do you want to replace the Layer Mask?
Of course I do.
So let's click on Yes.
Now whatever you do insde of that will be limited to just that area.
Now, I want to add some yellow to it.
So let's go to the Blue Channel.
So click on the drop down right there and choose Blue and decrease the blues in the
highlights Why?
Because R, G and B is the opposite of C, M, Y.
Decreasing the blues in the highlights will show up the yellows.
Alright, so let's decrease it.
I think this looks pretty nice to me.
Let's go back to the RGB.
Let's make it even brighter, like that.
This is okay.
Now we just want a little bit of it.
Right.
So first of all, let's just just limit it to the highlights.
And we can do that by using Blend If.
So, click on the right hand side of the layer.
This opens up what?
Layer Style dialog box.
Now, inside of that, take the slider of the underlying layer from left to right.
This takes it away from the dark areas of the underlying layer or the layers which are
underneath it.
So let's take it to the right.
You see this.
This is what we wanted, but this is very harsh.
So hold the Alt or Option, click on the slider and break it apart like that.
See the kind of dimension we are adding right here.
That's what I was after.
Now, once you have done that, it looks nice to me.
Just hit OK and then put the Curves Adjustment layer inside a group.
And why do you think we want to do that?
Well, to add a Mask to it.
Did you know that if you create a group with the Curves selected, press Ctrl or Command
+ G, now we have that just one layer inside of the group and what is the advantage of
having a group?
Well, you can have a mask for just the group.
So, click on the Mask button, we're going to create a negative mask, hold the Alt or
Option, click on the Mask button.
Now, let's take a brush, white as the foreground color and just paint on the edge to add some
light, just a touch.
This is just tiny Dodging & Burning.
You can add some to the leaves as well.
Probably something like that, and maybe here a little bit.
Just here and there and have a look.
Now, Opacity was low.
You can increase the Opacity if you wish to.
And add more.
I think that was too much.
Yeah, now that looks fantastic, you see.
Wow.
It's kind of too much.
Let's make the brush a little bigger, softer.
We're just adding these little tiny highlights to make it look realistic.
You can also add some here just to add some dimension, some there.
You see, now this is looking way more realistic as you can see.
So that's how to replace skies, especially when you have a dark sky that you want to
add and the original picture with the tree has a bright sky.
So all you have to remember is using the Blend Mode -Multiply because Multiply is a Blend
Mode which darkens and the concept behind it is this - Sky will be the source of light.
There's going to be nothing brighter than the source of light.
And when you change the Blend Mode to Multiply, we don't want the details of the new sky to
show through.
So we just blur out that specific area.
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai