California trees & Texas sky

This is one of my Yosemite pictures from the Wawona area. The small stream is the south fork of the Merced River. It had all but dried up last October. The skies were not very clear because of forest fires almost everywhere. Of course, it didn't help matters that I was shooting in the general direction of the sun. With the hazy white semi blown out sky, I considered tossing this one except that I liked the stream. I got a sky shot yesterday and blended the two together. I am afraid that I may not be very objective in looking at it, so give me the brutal truth. I would also like feedback on the colors -- I shared this image with another person and he said that it is extremely blue on his monitor (more than just the sky). I sort of like blue ... if I didn't, I might have bought a Nikon.

Great idea Bill, but...

- Loss of resolution around the tree tops upper left, the tops of the shorties in the middle and around the leaves in the top center. (Cutting holes in trees is tough, tough PS work IMO...)

- The reflection in the water shows a bright "high" sky and not the blue you substituted.

- Probably due to compression but while you've maintained great detail in the rocks in the foreground, your blue sky is showing many different patches and textures that probably should be more homogenous in a blue sky.

Again, great idea but it doesn't quite work seamlessly.

Post up the original with the grey sky Bill. Let's see what you are dealing with.

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #6011274
Great idea Bill, but...

- Loss of resolution around the tree tops upper left, the tops of the shorties in the middle and around the leaves in the top center. (Cutting holes in trees is tough, tough PS work IMO...)

- The reflection in the water shows a bright "high" sky and not the blue you substituted.

- Probably due to compression but while you've maintained great detail in the rocks in the foreground, your blue sky is showing many different patches and textures that probably should be more homogenous in a blue sky.

Again, great idea but it doesn't quite work seamlessly.

Thanks, I started repairing burned out leaves, then finally got tired of it. Actually, putting in the blue sky was the easy part after making the old sky transparent. I think that I know what happened to the sky colors. I converted the new sky from 16 bpc to 8 bpc to match the image -- probably should have done it the other way around. Before being converted, the sky was full of thin wispy mares tails indicating a warm front approaching.The 8 bit color just couldn't handle all of those subtle shades of blue.

LeuceDeuce wrote in post #6011301
Post up the original with the grey sky Bill. Let's see what you are dealing with.

Here is a link to a full sized JPG image. I used DPP to creae the imagebecause it produces the closest results compared to an out of the camera JPG image while the ACR default is more like the neutral style. I didn't want to twiddle with the image since that would have added my own personal editing bias.

http://www.pbase.com/b​ill_boehme/image/10095​2720/original.jpg

Bill, the sky does look "funky", how long has it been since you heard that word?

Looked at the original and the sky is gone and your plan was the only viable option that I know of.

When you shot the replacement sky, did you try to match the elevation? Makes a difference.

I would like to see what Chris can do with it.

chauncey wrote in post #6012577
..... When you shot the replacement sky, did you try to match the elevation? Makes a difference....

I shot the replacement sky from my back yard which is probably a mile lower elevation, but we did have a "bluebird" sky which is unusual in the summer here. I think that I am guilty of enhancing the blue a bit too much -- it messed up the cloud colors.