HELp needed, again, please!! PP and pixelation

There is no place like home,
There is no place like home,
There is no place like, oh, wait, --- like POTN for help!!!!!!!

I am under a crunch.

I have a photo.
It is dirty.
I cleaned the photo.
I am happy!!!

However, the sky is horrible.

I decided to merge layers with another photo.

Once the merge is complete, the pixelation is absolutely horrid!!!!!!! Please help!!!!!


1. Untouched photo, shot in RAW, opened in RAW, saved to jpeg, for processing, and saving.

So don't squish the clouds. At low resolution I can't see any problem.

Try Changing the white balance in the RAW file to remove the yellow tint cause it does not match with the sky you are trying to paste in.

The sky looks too fake with the squishing and the size of the sun and clouds. Maybe if you could get a higher resolution sky and do a transform but SHIFT and drag the corner to keep the proportions.

Try using the Pen Tool to make an accurate selection too as the right hand side of the train doesn't look that smooth.

Some quick editing for some examples. Not saying these are any better but try different types of sky. My selection is a bit off so ignore that just did this to give you some ideas

This is a low-res sky, I didn't change the resolution, just an idea to match the colour of the scene. See if you can find a better resolution one and smaller clouds cause this looks fake.

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Thanks for the info, but what I am looking for, is WHY there is such pixelation when enlarged?? I know I wasn't clear on my original post, This train will be for a calendar, and will not be small.

Please download the cleaned up version, then download the final attempt. You will see the difference that I am referring to.

The sky can be changed, I need to find somethng else, and yes, the color warming is much better!! I REALLY do like the second one!!! Thanks!!!

I will go back to the drawing board, but only have today to get something done. i really do NOT want to put the triain in with NO background sky!!! to me, it looks yucky!!!!!!!

Sorry, I didn't make it clear either, did I

If you look at my post, I had bolded the words low-res and higher res. Because a low resolution image is being used, there aren't that many pixels to define it in the first place. So when you blow it up to a larger size, the image program is guessing what type to create, colour wise, and the grouping of similar ones is pixellating them.

By using a higher resolution image, preferably one at the same resolution as your train pic, you can blow that up with a lot less pixelation.

If you have actually used images of the same resolution then the distortion is too much and is causing the pixellation.

Any picture will start to pixellate once you start blowing it up too big.

rammy wrote in post #4176307
Sorry, I didn't make it clear either, did I

If you look at my post, I had bolded the words low-res and higher res. Because a low resolution image is being used, there aren't that many pixels to define it in the first place. So when you blow it up to a larger size, the image program is guessing what type to create, colour wise, and the grouping of similar ones is pixellating them.

By using a higher resolution image, preferably one at the same resolution as your train pic, you can blow that up with a lot less pixelation.

If you have actually used images of the same resolution then the distortion is too much and is causing the pixellation.

Any picture will start to pixellate once you start blowing it up too big.

What the heck, ALL of my sky photos (in my photo library, taken at different times, etc. ) are at 72 dpi!!!! Why is this???!!! Arggggg!!!

I cant even take a good photo today, as it is very dreary, windy, (no clouds) rainy and overcast.
Does ANYONE have a decent sky that is compatible with 240 dpi of the train??

Also, would it be better to not layer the 2 photos onto a new page, and just merge onto either the tain, or the sky? Is there a way to merge a high res train with a low res sky, and NOT lose the high res train????

If you can't find a high-res sky of your own, perhaps it's worth your while visiting a stock website and buy one...

I found something that worked.
Here is the end result. needs a bit more tweaking, but it'll work. but te important thing is, it didnt ruin the resolution. Thanks for the advice.