Fix bad or ugly sky in Photoshop

Oh no, I agreed to shoot an assignment a couple hundred miles away on a tight deadline and the weather turned out differently than the forecast predicted. This has happened to me more than once and I’ve learned how to work around problem conditions in many cases. But, to make it work requires planning ahead before you run into the problem. I had an assignment a couple hundred miles from my home and had to get the photos done within a couple days. William Manning’s “Events from Unfortunate Conditions” had an uprising on this assignment and I had to make something good happen. Thankfully, I have a folder on my computer that I call, “Photoshop Parts”. These files are nothing more than a bunch of full size 16 bit images comprised of sky’s, beautiful lawns and urban landscaping.

Before I discuss how I fix these problems let me first address what you need to collect for your own Photoshop parts. When the conditions or opportunities allow itself, you should be shooting full frame sky’s on those beautiful days when the sky is bluer than blue and when white puffing clouds (cumulus) appear overhead. I suggest you shoot these conditions in the morning, mid afternoon and late afternoon and into early evening. You want to make sure you have the right sky for what ever need you come across. You want your finished product to look plausible. I also try to get onto a golf course at least once every spring to collect photos of beautiful grass for those problem lawns I run into often. I shoot on a fairway in several directions with a wide angle zoom lens and change the height of my camera position at a couple different levels. The reason I shoot in different directions and at different heights is to make sure I have the right condition for the direction of light on my subject. In other words you don’t want your grass to look back lit when your subject is front lit. The finished product needs to look natural.

Replace Overcast with Beautiful Blue

Easy to see the distracting white sky, but a smaller problem detail is the grass with its share of bare spots. Both issues need to be fixed.

The photo on the right shows my problem areas of which I will need to fix. These are easy fixes if you have extra parts in your library and a little skill in Photoshop. Lets fix the sky first. Important: always duplicate your background layer before you do any adjustments or fixes, or for that matter, anything. In most cases I use the pen tool in Photoshop to make my selections. I use the Pen Tool because I personally feel I can be more accurate in my selection. I’m a perfectionist and being nearly perfect in the selection I believe is critical when your working for a paying client. You can also use the Quick Selection Tool, it works fairly well, especially in situations similar to the image at right.

This is one of many sky photos I have in my library just for these purposes.

Once your selection is made you can now bring in your sky. This image must be the same size file as the one you are working on. In other words, if you are working on a 16 bit file the image you are transporting into this file must also be 16 bit. Open your file that contains the sky you want to import. Hold down your shift key and drag the background layer of the sky over into the working file. By holding the shift key, it allows your images to line up perfectly. In this particular case it may not be so important because we will probably move the sky around later anyway, but I believe it is a good habit to develop. Now your sky layer is placed into your working file, it is probably the top layer of the three. You now need to drag the sky layer and place it between your background layer and the duplicate background layer.

Make sure your top layer is selected as your active layer. You should have marching ants indicating your selection. Take your eraser and make sure the opacity is at 100% and select a large eraser. You can change the size of the eraser with the bracket kets on your keyboard. The left bracket key will make your eraser smaller and the right bracket key will enlarge the eraser. Start erasing inside the marching ants, (everything outside the selection is protected so no worry). You should see your new sky appear before you. After you have erased the old sky and have the new sky in place you can deselect the marching ants by going under the Select pull down menu and go to Deselect or you can do this via the keyboard shortcut of command and the D key. Now you can perfect the placement of the sky, providing you have clouds or variations in the sky that you want to place in a particle position. Simply select the Move Tool in the Photoshop tool menu and select the sky layer making it your active layer and move the sky around until you like what you see. Now you should have a beautiful sky in place of the ugly overcast sky.

Before I fix the grass, I typically merge the top two layers but before doing this, if one of the layers need a little contrast adjustment to blend the two together a little more perfectly I will select the layer that I want to adjust. Once you select the layer now pull up the curves by either hitting the command and M keys or go to the Image pull down menu and go to adjustments then to curves (Image – Adjustment – Curve). Make the adjustments as needed. Now you can merge your two layers together. You can do this by selecting the top layer and then go your Layer pull down menu at the top of your screen. At the bottom of your pull down menu you will see Merge Layers. Select this and now your top two layers become one.

Replace the Beat-Up Grass

I always shoot these situations with a wide angle lens. This allows me to move the photo around for a perfect fit.

For the sake of possibly making a dumb move, lets go ahead and duplicate the layer with our new sky. This should now give us three layers, the original background layer and the two layers with the new sky. Open the photo that has what will be our beautiful new lawn on it. As before, we need to bring this image over to our working file. Hold down the shift key and drag the background layer with the new grass over to our working file. Again, drag this new layer beneath the layer that exposes the sky and building we want to keep. In the case of replacing the sky, we created a selection where we wanted to place the new sky, but this time we are not going to make a selection. Why? Because in most cases where there might be a sidewalk or a building there will be grass overlapping those elements. We want to maintain a natural look therefore we are going to leave grass overlapping and gradually erase the old grass as close as possible up to the building or sidewalk with effecting them. Select the eraser tool and set the opacity to about 50 percent and in most cases my flow is almost always set between 60 and 80. This gives me a nice gradual blend. Now start erasing the old grass and let up on your mouse or Wacom pen and start erasing again until you see what you like. It is possible that your perspective of your grass looks a little odd. In other words the grass looks to large for the scene. That is why I shoot my photoshop parts (grass in this case) with a wide angle lens. Select the grass layer from your layers palette and your move tool from the tools menu. Take the move tool and move the grass layer around until the perspective look correct. Once again, if the contrast looks a little off, I keep my grass layer active and then select the curves tool and adjust until the blend matches up with your other layer.

The Finished Photo

One last thing and your finished. From the Layer pull down menu you can now Flatten your image and you have a beautiful finished photo that no one will ever know it was taken on an overcast white sky day. I wish you the very best on your creative journey.

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The finished shot. I purposely left a couple imperfections in the grass to give it a school yard look where you know the kids are going to be walking in the grass. You can see the imperfection where the grass and sidewalk meet.