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In the first pic I found the sky (you ask what sky?) boring. How to make this a little different. . .

Using the magic wand in PS I selected the sky. I then opened another pic with a sky that I thought would look good in the final. Using the marque tool I selected the sky and did a cmd/c (mac). I then went back to the city pic (which still had the sky selected, and went to the edit menu and hit paste into. This puts the sky on another layer and enabled me to move it to whatever position I wanted it to be.

First pic:



Second with sky:



To give a totally different shot

Nice work Chris. I always seem to mess things up when I am trying to work with layers.

While the technique interests me, I've gotta say that the second picture looks completely fake. The lighting just ain't right. The buildings don't match the sky at all.

Edit: Though you just demonstrated to me the effective use of the magic wand tool, thanks.

I'm using this method from time to time and sometimes I'm getting very good results.

In this particular case I'd try to adjust water color to make it reflecting the sky

pippin88 wrote:While the technique interests me, I've gotta say that the second picture looks completely fake. The lighting just ain't right. The buildings don't match the sky at all.
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Might be worse to inverse selection and shift all colors to the sky color slightly ... Not sure

Thanks for your replies - you will notice that the second pic with the sky added is actually lighter in the buildings than the first. This is interesting in that there was no other PP other than adding the sky.

I agree that it looks fake but what I was attempting, other than showing the paste into method, was a surreal effect and I think that this has been achieved.

There have been times, and I am sure most of us have eperienced this, when the sky is very dark with storm clouds etc but buildings do appear very light. This is often due to perspective - what the lens sees is the darkness of the sky, which can’t be changed, but the buildings are being illuminated by light from behind the camera. Very much like certain types of flash shots.

I use similar tech often, I'm not worried if it looks fake as long as it looks nice/good/unusual/wild/sellable/whatever etc, that's Photoshop!

Max

sirhc55 wrote:...the second pic with the sky added is actually lighter in the buildings than the first. This is interesting in that there was no other PP other than adding the sky...

Wonder if that's because they're now the light/bright part of the image, some sort of optical illusion, or sub-conscious adjustment our eyes or brain makes?

Chris,
I've been wanting to try this on my own work. What is a cmd/c? I believe that with a little colouration of the buildings and the water in foreground you would have no crdibility issues with such a composite image. Any array of skies might have worked - one just has to record them for that special pic. Thinking even a little longer one could have no amout of fun / creativity with this technique. Can I do this on P.C. using PS CS? I should think so?

Cheers,

Matty B

Matty B wrote:Chris,
I've been wanting to try this on my own work. What is a cmd/c? I believe that with a little colouration of the buildings and the water in foreground you would have no crdibility issues with such a composite image. Any array of skies might have worked - one just has to record them for that special pic. Thinking even a little longer one could have no amout of fun / creativity with this technique. Can I do this on P.C. using PS CS? I should think so?

Cheers,

Matty B

Matty - yes I used PSCS but on a mac. CmdC is the same as copy - so whatever the keyboard function is on a PC for copy will be the one

Thanks again Chris,
just this evening I have added hugely to my editing possiblities using PSCS. In fact in three years of digital phtography I have learnt more valuable editing tech. in the 6 weeks I've been a member of D 70 Users than the remainder of my time. Elsewhere others are often very reluctant to assist or even offer techniques openly as D70 people do.

I'm wrapped! I'm very glad i streached my budgets and got a D70.the benefits..........

Ok Chris, touche, time to edit some of your work! Just a couple of min fiddling with colouration and i think this image looks real at a glance?

By god I think you’ve got it Matty - thanks for that it does look good