Adding a New Sky

• Open main image and the chosen sky image.

• Ensure that both images have the same pixels per inch dimensions. Note if the image is intended for print the Pixels per Inch         should be between 240 and 300.

• Go to the Move Tool and drag the Sky image onto the main image and roughly position the sky relative to where you want it to appear on the main image. If need be reduce the transparency of the sky in the layer palette to get the right location, ensuring that you put the opacity back up to 100% when you are happy.

   

• Close the original sky image. If you don’t, it means that you have two images open in Photoshop, which takes up your resources and slows the system down. This is a good practice to adopt in any workflow.

   

• Go back to your main image and press D of the keyboard to make sure that you have a black foreground and white background and then select quick mask at the bottom of the Toolbox. (It looks like rectangle with a circle in it)

   

• Select Gradient Tool. Make sure you have a linear gradient (it’s the one on the extreme left) and that the gradient is set to foreground to transparent. Click at the top of the sky and drag down to where you want to stop (if you hold down the Shift Key while you do this you will get a perfect straight line). When you have done this switch back from Quick Mask to Standard Mode and you will see that you have made a gradient selection, denoted by the “marching ants”. Press delete, which removes all but that left by the Gradient Mask.

   

• Press control + D to deselect and remove “marching ants”.

   

• Click on the sky layer and reposition to make sure you are happy. Get the Crop tool and crop the image to your choice, if required or if the sky layer is bigger than the main image layer. This again saves system resources.

   

• Click on the layer styles blending options (the symbol that looks like an fx at the left base of the layers pallet) at the bottom of the Layers palette and select the top option, called “Blending Options”.

   

• Now for the good bit!!! In the blending mode drop down at the top, select Darken and then go to the Underlying Layer (it’s at the bottom) and gradually move the little pyramid triangle to the right and watch the “magic appear”. Move to a position that you feel is right and make sure you are not getting any fringing in your image. The slider can be split, by holding the Alt key and dragging one of the two little triangles making up the pyramid, to fine tune your blend. You should also try some of the other blending mode options in the drop down menu at the top. Sometimes Multiply or one of the other options might look better. Click OK.

   

• Fade opacity to suit (you may have to go back to the underlying layer and re adjust) at this point you may have to adjust the sky in say Curves to match the background.

   

• Add a new layer (the one next to the Rubbish Bin) in the layers drop down list, hold down the Alt key and select Merge Visible if you want the option of going back and re-adjust your work………or, if you are sure you are happy just click Flatten Image.

   

• Job Done