Photoshop Update - Sky Replacement

[Graham Clark]

Think it comes down to whether your intent is to create an artistic image or to record the scene as faithfully as possible. Neither approach is wrong.

Personally I prefer a more reportage/documentary style.

 

[gordon_g]

For me personally it not something I would use daily... probably even every month(s). Like others have said I'd like to get great shots straight from the camera... BUT. with that being said... I'm not entering any photo contests (if I did, I surly would not use a tool like this) and if I think a photo would look better with some clouds in the sky and I wanted to print said photo for MYSELF... guess what, its getting a better sky. As someone that lives in a place that has more gray days in a year compared to sunny / Cloudy days it a tool. not unlike all the other tools we have to edit stuff. For me personally if I was posting an image here for display and I did use the "sky" feature I would just make note of it in the photo.
With that being said I'm also not judging anyone else, based on if they are doing it or not... it's a personal choice and for me it should stay there unless you're trying to deceive. Again just my opinion.

 

[Wapiti]

OK, full disclosure, I am one of those who has stated many times that I do not add stuff to my photos, replace skies, etc.. However, sometimes I wished that I had that skillset because a plain sky, while sometimes very effective, can also be very boring. I read on another forum this morning about the new PS update and the sky replacement tool so I decided to give it a try. It is super easy, I even figured it out in about a minute, it is very intuitive. See sample below.

From this:
View attachment 8084

To this:
View attachment 8086

I have ZERO problems with replacing skies. Do it routinely. IMO, it greatly improved your image.

 

[dcSaint]

Gotta say, I'm not a fan of sky replacement or other major image element replacement in nature/wildlife photos. Sure I understand it's done all the time in advertising work but I hope that Adobe making this easier doesn't make it a go-to for nature photographers wishing they'd been there on a different day or had achieved a different shooting angle for background control purposes.

The more we manipulate the basic image elements the more it devalues the work of nature photographers who actually put in the field time and return again and again trying to capture the right weather or lighting conditions. No doubt there's a lot of room for 'digital art' but the more folks latch onto easy image manipulation and try to pass it off as a scene they actually witnessed the less the viewing public will value the time, effort and commitment put in by photographers actually trying to capture compelling scenes in the field.

I'm not suggesting anyone in this thread has proposed this as a way to pass off photos that didn't quite work but I sure hope that's not what others do with this technology.

Just my 2 cents but I sure hope this isn't the future of nature photography.

I appreciate all the effort photographers put into getting just the right scene, but there are times when the scene is not what you want and you may not get back there again. So I am thankful for all the post processing tools available.

Remember, we mostly use a camera because we can't paint well enough.

 

[gaknott]

I have ZERO problems with replacing skies. Do it routinely. IMO, it greatly improved your image.

Thank you, Wapiti!

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

I just updated and for grins I tried the sky replacement on a tough image with a lot of small branches and leaves in the sky. It worked quite well. That said, I'll never use it since I'm not a sky replacement kinda' guy. What I likely will use, though, is the new sky select so that I can make changes to just the sky without driving myself crazy trying to manually select the sky.

This is exactly what I'm using it for, masking out my own sky (same image) to process in a way that isn't foreground friendly.

I also use Topaz Labs Mask AI, but it crapped out on me on a very large pano (too large for Topaz, according to them), so I used the Adobe Select, Sky and it worked like a charm first time.

However, I do believe I'm going to start shooting my own skies for replacement too.

Chris

 

[andré]

After replacing skies, we'll be able to replace maybe the foreground, and if we are still not happy, we'll replace the subject ?
André

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

There's a valid position to the extreme side of photojournalism, and the other polar end is a place where fine-art photographers hang out.

Then there's all that space between those two points. Don't judge too harshly.

Raised on analog, I'm extremely happy with all of the possibilities given me in this digital realm.

Chris

PS: there are composite artists out there that do nothing more than create images from someone else's photography. I very much doubt that those modern "retouch artists" are hanging out in this kind of forum. What I'm saying is that you can pretty much assume that everyone here is taking their own photography, for the most part.

 

[gordon_g]

There's a valid position to the extreme side of photojournalism, and the other polar end is a place where fine-art photographers hang out.

Then there's all that space between those two points. Don't judge too harshly.

Raised on analog, I'm extremely happy with all of the possibilities given me in this digital realm.

Chris

PS: there are composite artists out there that do nothing more than create images from someone else's photography. I very much doubt that those modern "retouch artists" are hanging out in this kind of forum. What I'm saying is that you can pretty much assume that everyone here is taking their own photography, for the most part.

Well said

 

[Calson]

Does anyone think for a minute that painters recreated exactly the scene as they saw it with their paintings? A famous French painter made canvas after canvas of sky scenes so he could use them with his landcape painting, which was actually quite common with 18th and 19th century landscape artists. I have book on photography wittern by Henry Peach Robinson and published in 1893 where the author writes about how the novie landscape photographers had not yet learned how to take two negatives, one of an interesting sky and a second of a landscape and combine the two to create an interesting print.

Ansel Adams did not sell contact prints made from his negatives but did extensive dodging and burning in his darkroom. Cartier-Bresson the noted artist who also dabbled in photography would find a location or scene and then wait for people to enter the scene and be in the perfect position for his imagined picture and then take the "candid" shot. And his prints would have not been viewed by anyone had he not had an exceptionally good man in a darkroom fixing Cartier-Bresson's each and every image.

The minute I chose a focal length or a shutter speed or an aperture I am interjecting myself into a picture. In post I will crop and adjust contrast and white balance and sharpen areas and this too is manipulation of the picture. Frantz Lanting creates great images using artificial light but few object. I liked W. Eugene Sanders comment that he always used available light, which meant in his words using "any damn light that was available".

 

[Palouse]

Does anyone think for a minute that painters recreated exactly the scene as they saw it with their paintings? A famous French painter made canvas after canvas of sky scenes so he could use them with his landcape painting, which was actually quite common with 18th and 19th century landscape artists. I have book on photography wittern by Henry Peach Robinson and published in 1893 where the author writes about how the novie landscape photographers had not yet learned how to take two negatives, one of an interesting sky and a second of a landscape and combine the two to create an interesting print.

Ansel Adams did not sell contact prints made from his negatives but did extensive dodging and burning in his darkroom. Cartier-Bresson the noted artist who also dabbled in photography would find a location or scene and then wait for people to enter the scene and be in the perfect position for his imagined picture and then take the "candid" shot. And his prints would have not been viewed by anyone had he not had an exceptionally good man in a darkroom fixing Cartier-Bresson's each and every image.

The minute I chose a focal length or a shutter speed or an aperture I am interjecting myself into a picture. In post I will crop and adjust contrast and white balance and sharpen areas and this too is manipulation of the picture. Frantz Lanting creates great images using artificial light but few object. I liked W. Eugene Sanders comment that he always used available light, which meant in his words using "any damn light that was available".

The comparison to painting is irrelevant and misleading.
Manipulating what is there (on film, on the memory card) by expertly using exposure, optics, and processing is fine. But adding what isn't there in the first place seems to me to be wrong, especially if the sky added in is from a software package and not your own capture. We so often complain vehemently about the processing tricks that advertisers use, that political manipulators use, and so own. Just because they do so, should not give us license to do so, and then call our work either photography or original.

 

[Neil H.]

Photography encompasses Straight (Ansell Adams), Pictorial (Alfed Steiglitz), Realistic, Naturalistic, Atmospheric, Photo-journalistic, Creative Filters etc etc. Not all would work well for wildlife photography. If we have a photography vision, do we have the equipment and skills to capture it? That would include image capture and processing. We may not realise it but we are all digital artists. Press a button on a radio -Hey! -I'm a musician! Press a button on a camera - Hey! - I'm a photographer! NOT!!!

A photographic vision is yours alone. How you achieve it is entirely up to you. When I started bird photography I saw many "unadulterated" brilliant images. What I did not realise was that raptors in flight were often taken over a period of 4 days at a falconry where the birds are flown twice a day. Then there are boats lined up with photographers when Bald Eagles are fed fish. However the one that really got me was mice being put out on snow to attract Snowy Owls. Then there is playing bird-calls, photographic feeding stations etc etc. No ethics at image capture but then religious purity when it come to processing???

If you are a landscape photographer with a 16-35mm zoom lens, and in future when you are out at sunrise / sunset and choose not to photograph sensational skies with the sun on the left, right, and middle at both 16 and 35mm that is up to you. The fact you are in a lousy location should not stop you. One day you will be in brilliant location but your vision will be shattered by a lousy sky. Go back to Patagonia 20 times to get that perfect sky? NAH! Of course not.

One day in the bush I saw a piece of tree bark. It reminded me of a stag calling in the rut. I found an image on the web. Digital photography rocks!

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

 

[Thern]

Photography encompasses Straight (Ansell Adams), Pictorial (Alfed Steiglitz), Realistic, Naturalistic, Atmospheric, Photo-journalistic, Creative Filters etc etc. Not all would work well for wildlife photography. If we have a photography vision, do we have the equipment and skills to capture it? That would include image capture and processing. We may not realise it but we are all digital artists. Press a button on a radio -Hey! -I'm a musician! Press a button on a camera - Hey! - I'm a photographer! NOT!!!

A photographic vision is yours alone. How you achieve it is entirely up to you. When I started bird photography I saw many "unadulterated" brilliant images. What I did not realise was that raptors in flight were often taken over a period of 4 days at a falconry where the birds are flown twice a day. Then there are boats lined up with photographers when Bald Eagles are fed fish. However the one that really got me was mice being put out on snow to attract Snowy Owls. Then there is playing bird-calls, photographic feeding stations etc etc. No ethics at image capture but then religious purity when it come to processing???

If you are a landscape photographer with a 16-35mm zoom lens, and in future when you are out at sunrise / sunset and choose not to photograph sensational skies with the sun on the left, right, and middle at both 16 and 35mm that is up to you. The fact you are in a lousy location should not stop you. One day you will be in brilliant location but your vision will be shattered by a lousy sky. Go back to Patagonia 20 times to get that perfect sky? NAH! Of course not.

One day in the bush I saw a piece of tree bark. It reminded me of a stag calling in the rut. I found an image on the web. Digital photography rocks!

View attachment 8384

View attachment 8385

Good example for the existence and enormous succes of Adobe PS (and other photo-editing software)
It’s clearly processed/created with a base of photographs and the result of ones artistic vision and creativity.
Lovely and I sure do like this more than the 10000+ picture of that tacksharp carefully brushed ....... flying through the picture in a cleaned noisefree background and surrounding, cropped to the rule of thirds aso.
(Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to offend anybody and I ABSOLUTELY respect and appreciate the efforts involved)

 

[Neil H.]

Good example for the existence and enormous succes of Adobe PS (and other photo-editing software)
It’s clearly processed/created with a base of photographs and the result of ones artistic vision and creativity.
Lovely and I sure do like this more than the 10000+ picture of that tacksharp carefully brushed ....... flying through the picture in a cleaned noisefree background and surrounding, cropped to the rule of thirds aso.
(Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to offend anybody and I ABSOLUTELY respect and appreciate the efforts involved)

Thanks Roger! I started my photography "career" in retirement by photographing birds (NUTS!!) After many years I recently branched out to try landscape, seascape and nightscape. A few weeks ago I got my first full arch of the Milkyway with 4x5 (20) images. All have different challenges and immense rewards. At a recent exhibition by the famous British artist David Hockney, I was struck by his many examples of digital painting on an iPad. What he did with layers was no different to what we do with layers in Photoshop. This led me to experiment with creative filters. Each time I have branched out I have learned new techniques that improve my photography. If I can say I have made an image that really pleases me - that is enough. However I have found that I am becoming a tougher task-master and sometimes take a long time to raise the bar just an inch. Many times I have gone backwards before I have moved forward. But what a fascinating journey! I'm hooked!

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

It might be good to consider that, while Steve is largely a wildlife photographer, that's not all he does, nor is it all we do. In fact, some of us don't even list wildlife in the top 3 genres of photography in our portfolio (raises hand). So some of these digital manipulation techniques are not so distasteful to some of us, for some of our work.

As in all things, there is a wide spectrum of differences.

I could be wrong, but I feel that Ansel Adams likely would have availed himself of some of these techniques, probably not those that involve compositing of other people's images into his own, but this isn't a binary issue divided by a thin line.

Chris

 

[gaknott]

It might be good to consider that, while Steve is largely a wildlife photographer, that's not all he does, nor is it all we do. In fact, some of us don't even list wildlife in the top 3 genres of photography in our portfolio (raises hand). So some of these digital manipulation techniques are not so distasteful to some of us, for some of our work.

As in all things, there is a wide spectrum of differences.

I could be wrong, but I feel that Ansel Adams likely would have availed himself of some of these techniques, probably not those that involve compositing of other people's images into his own, but this isn't a binary issue divided by a thin line.

Chris

Well said, Chris!

 

[frank perito]

I too tried the tools and really liked it. A Couple of things to note. I took one of my pictures and tried to replace the sky with one of my own pictures. I selected a sky with a large bird. The problem was the focal length on the picture that I tried to replace the sky was shot at 180mm where as the sky was shot at 600mm. Needless to say the bird look like a monster and completely out of place. Another note, be careful about where you place the sun. Make sure that it works with your shadows. They have a check box to allow you to flip the sky so that you can match the light in the sky with your picture.

One other thing check out under the filter pull down menu the neural filter. This is real interesting. Select Beta Filters and then see what it can do to your subject. You can colorize a B&W image, do photo restoration of old pictures, remove dust and scratches, noise reduction, face cleanup and a lot more. The software that does this is in the cloud so when you execute a function it goes out to the cloud and performs what it needs to do and then returns the picture with the changes to you.

 

[gaknott]

I too tried the tools and really liked it. A Couple of things to note. I took one of my pictures and tried to replace the sky with one of my own pictures. I selected a sky with a large bird. The problem was the focal length on the picture that I tried to replace the sky was shot at 180mm where as the sky was shot at 600mm. Needless to say the bird look like a monster and completely out of place. Another note, be careful about where you place the sun. Make sure that it works with your shadows. They have a check box to allow you to flip the sky so that you can match the light in the sky with your picture.

One other thing check out under the filter pull down menu the neural filter. This is real interesting. Select Beta Filters and then see what it can do to your subject. You can colorize a B&W image, do photo restoration of old pictures, remove dust and scratches, noise reduction, face cleanup and a lot more. The software that does this is in the cloud so when you execute a function it goes out to the cloud and performs what it needs to do and then returns the picture with the changes to you.

Thank you, Frank!

 

[Neil H.]

I too tried the tools and really liked it. A Couple of things to note. I took one of my pictures and tried to replace the sky with one of my own pictures. I selected a sky with a large bird. The problem was the focal length on the picture that I tried to replace the sky was shot at 180mm where as the sky was shot at 600mm. Needless to say the bird look like a monster and completely out of place. Another note, be careful about where you place the sun. Make sure that it works with your shadows. They have a check box to allow you to flip the sky so that you can match the light in the sky with your picture.

One other thing check out under the filter pull down menu the neural filter. This is real interesting. Select Beta Filters and then see what it can do to your subject. You can colorize a B&W image, do photo restoration of old pictures, remove dust and scratches, noise reduction, face cleanup and a lot more. The software that does this is in the cloud so when you execute a function it goes out to the cloud and performs what it needs to do and then returns the picture with the changes to you.

In my comments and reply earlier I did not mention that in the new PS sky replacement PS gives you all the layers. This is terrific as you can experiment with opacity, blend modes and blend if. If the sky looks too sharp take that layer into Filters and use a gaussian blur to give the background the bokeh you would expect with your long lens.

For totally bland blue skies you can also use cloud brushes (rather than total sky replacement). The Brown Falcon image below was recently favourably critiqued. The reviewer suggested that a touch of cloud would improve the image. I think he was right.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

 

[gaknott]

In my comments and reply earlier I did not mention that in the new PS sky replacement PS gives you all the layers. This is terrific as you can experiment with opacity, blend modes and blend if. If the sky looks too sharp take that layer into Filters and use a gaussian blur to give the background the bokeh you would expect with your long lens.

For totally bland blue skies you can also use cloud brushes (rather than total sky replacement). The Brown Falcon image below was recently favourably critiqued. The reviewer suggested that a touch of cloud would improve the image. I think he was right.

View attachment 8456

View attachment 8458

Good edit!

 

[Neil H.]

Good edit!

Thanks Greg! What surprised me was just that touch of white toned down the bird. The colours are exactly the same in both images. A bit of colour theory in action.

 

[Andy Work]

After replacing skies, we'll be able to replace maybe the foreground, and if we are still not happy, we'll replace the subject ?
André

The folks over at Photolar Lumishop heard you.

Forget Sky Replacement: This Crazy New Foreground Replacement Software Will Take Your Photography to the Next Level

 

[DallasP]

Okay, a lot of purism here LOL
Digital photography has everything to do with photo-editing.
How ‘far’ one’s willing to go in PP is completely depended on ones intentions.
Personally I’m between the ideas and opinions of @DRwyoming and @Viathelens.
(And I’m sure a lot of others inhere are there too)
What’s the difference between those well-accepted adjustments we do everyday? Enhancing sharpness, denoising, cloning, dimming highlights pushing shadows, black tones, white tones, WB, removing colorcasts, adjusting contrast, saturation, blurring or replacing backgrounds, cropping for composition aso aso are okay? but replacing a sky isn’t?
Some of those pros have staff to edit their photos, but every single one does edit his/her work.
Like I said I do agree with the ideas of Dave from an idealistic pov, but reality is more like Viathelens describes and given the progression of AI in cameras and software it will grow with time.
Troublesome? It’s like doping, administer it to everybody and the effect will be non-existent or at least accepted.
We say ‘our effort’? Yup but the vast majority of our viewers don’t even reckognise a good (technical) pic and they couldn’t care less.
Take a look at FB, take a look at ,pardon my French, the crap photography posted on there and the zillion likes it gets if the subject appeals to people (in a WAYYY less degree how perfectly exposed, composed and brilliant the pic is)
Photography is changing from analogue ,and the darkroom with its restricted possibillities to mod a picture, into an Art where the or A (set) of picture(s) are used together with software to create.
Wether you like it or not it’s the future (and that future is allready here)

Very good discussion! It returns us to the picture itself, trying to make it good/better. In the picture discussed, neither version, while good, is quite perfect. The symmetrical birds perched either side of the cable support make a sweet, somewhat comical image. But the intensity of the blue sky is a bit wrong, and I would look to dialing that back a bit. The cloudy version just looks false in the ways discussed above. The tension between realism and pictorialism remains, however, even as the medium becomes totally plastic (in the artistic sense). Photography still remains distinct from painting, drafting, drawing -- or does it? If it does, then this push/pull between "realism" and "shopping" will always be with us.

 

[gaknott]

Very good discussion! It returns us to the picture itself, trying to make it good/better. In the picture discussed, neither version, while good, is quite perfect. The symmetrical birds perched either side of the cable support make a sweet, somewhat comical image. But the intensity of the blue sky is a bit wrong, and I would look to dialing that back a bit. The cloudy version just looks false in the ways discussed above. The tension between realism and pictorialism remains, however, even as the medium becomes totally plastic (in the artistic sense). Photography still remains distinct from painting, drafting, drawing -- or does it? If it does, then this push/pull between "realism" and "shopping" will always be with us.

Thanks for your reply and thoughts, DallasP. Yes, the photo I used for demonstration is lacking in many ways; not meant to necessarily be an award winning photo, just a quick exercise to demonstrate the new PhotoShop tool and generate this conversation.

 

[Thern]

Very good discussion! It returns us to the picture itself, trying to make it good/better.

Like I see it the example was solely meant to trigger this discussion.
Anyway not necessairily making a pic good or better, one can also use a (set of) picture(s) to create something completely different.
Wether the viewer likes it or not doesn’t matter, that’s a common thing the way art may/will be perceived by different people.

A nice example... (I like it)

Anhinga and it's reflection - Highly Processed

This is an Anhinga swimming along and the photo was just so-so. I ran it through Photoshop ELEMENTS to get the outline / I then duplicated it and flipped it horizontally to get the finished image. A copy is on my living room wall.

bcgforums.com

If one uses ‘enhancements’ to better a picture in a realistic way there’s little leeway, the minute things start to look unnatural or unrealistic the photog ‘failed’ in PP.
(That’s according to the conservative viewer aka the registrational photographer, show the same pic to non-photographers and they prolly like it.)
If one uses ‘enhancements’ however to create visual art while using a picture as a bases the sky is the limit! (Well clearly not even that LOL)

Photography still remains distinct from painting, drafting, drawing -- or does it? If it does, then this push/pull between "realism" and "shopping" will always be with us.

Yup, rethorical question, however I’m sure with time and changing visions this ‘push/pull’ will fade away eventually.

Nonetheless, for me it’s a simple adage.
Live and let live.

/edit
My assumption happens to be right I see regarding the example LOL