Sky Replacement

Ok, so i've seen a few techniques on turning grey skies blue, but is there an easy way to do it when you have a lot of branches, little grey spots (see picture below)? I'm not great at this end of photoshop, so any help would be appreciated!

http://i84.photobucket​.com …edding_canvas_p​hoto_1.jpg

I used removed the 'old' sky and replaced it with something a little more 'Summery'

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Since all the colors touching the sky are a totally different color you may have good luck using select/ color range then make your color correction to it.

Depending on the sky, you can luck out and not even have to do any masking or using color range, just by using the blend-if sliders in layer styles.

Kolor-Pikker wrote in post #12051664
Depending on the sky, you can luck out and not even have to do any masking or using color range, just by using the blend-if sliders in layer styles.

I just learned about that a few days ago I agree it may may work for you.

CS5 has made great improvements in making selections, even for fine hairs or leaves that you see in your shot. There are many online tutorials that are easy to find. If you are using a version of photoshop previous to CS5 I would suggest that you should use the method of using channels to do your selections, again lots of online tutorials can be found. These are the way I would do this and that is not to say anything against what others have suggested, just my way of going about it.

Because of the leaves there I'd recommend using a channel based selection method. Like so: http://graphicssoft.ab​out.com …toshop/l/blrbps​_2fwks.htm

Oh you don't need a selection for this. Just put the tree layer on top of the sky layer and set the blend mode to Darken.

All that being said, no one has mentioned the HARDEST AND MOST DIFFICULT TO MASTER step in the whole process. That step is, "Using a sky shot that matches the main shot." You will soon discover the disappointment of dropping just any set of blue sky/puffy clouds into any gray sky and have it look like crap, but you don't quite know why. In order to do this well, the shots should match - or at least be believable - on many different criteria, including but not limited to:

Lighting direction. If the clouds are lit from the right and the main shot is let from the left (or not at all), it will look obviously fake.

Color temperature. If the clouds are from a nice golden sunset and the main shot is from a cold December morning, it will look obviously fake.

Perspective. If the clouds were taken with a 28mm wide angle lens, and the main shot is from a from a 200mm telephoto, (or verse visa) it will look obviously fake.

Tons of other things I don't want to bother typing. If the clouds are one thing, and the main shot is another, it will look obviously fake.

Rad

This is a simple approach. The only accurate selection required would be along the straight edges of the chimney and roof.

Peano is absolutely right about the sky being lighter on the horizon. (Follow his link and read it). That is one of the "tons of other things", but next time someone asks this, I think that it will rise to being mentioned. It really makes or breaks the believability.

Rad