Better Than the Sky Replacement Tool - Photoshop 2021

so by now i'm sure you've seen all the videos on the new sky replacement tool that is in the adobe photoshop 2021 which is actually pretty incredible tool i think but they snuck something in here in this version that i think is even better than the sky replacement tool let's jump in and we'll check it out okay so recently with the update of photoshop 2021 they added the sky replacement tool and i am going to say that the sky replacement tool in photoshop is pretty awesome and i'm gonna run through this just really quickly because you've probably seen many videos on it already and then i'm gonna show you the feature that i think is is just as incredible if not better than this new sky replacement tool and when i show you this new thing i also have some actions for you but don't skip ahead just to download the actions okay i need to explain exactly what's happening and then once i'm done and after you watch this video please feel free to download the actions that i've created for you that will automate this process so let's go ahead with our sky replacement we need to be on a background layer or like what we see here a pixel layer that is not that's not an adjustment layer okay we don't want to be on adjustment layer so we're on our pixel layer we go to edit we go to sky replacement with the click of a button this sky replacement tool is actually pretty incredible with the mask that it makes to create a sky replacement this used to be a rather difficult thing especially with an image like this where i would get into this area right here on this church it's kind of difficult to mask even on your own so for photoshop to make a really good assessment a really good judgment for this image even though it looks like an easy one that's pretty good another crazy area that could be difficult is right here behind these trees which actually looks really really good it's a very powerful mask selection tool so what you'll see here is this shift edge just shifts the edge of the mask so if we shift it this way it's going to bring the mask down more if we shift it this way it's going to bring the mask up more so that we get a more natural blend with that shift edge fade edge is going to be where it fades that edge toward the foreground elements that you have in the image so these are things that i would experiment with every image that i pull in because it's going to help with the blending of the masking that's happening in the image this right here under sky adjustments under sky adjustments you're going to see brightness this is going to be the brightness of the sky uh this is darkness or darkening the sky we can brighten that up to make it look a little bit more realistic and this is a temperature adjustment to make it cooler or warmer okay so it looks actually much better when it's a little bit warmer especially because the the foreground of the image is rather warm as well the scale is how big the clouds are going to look as you place them on the image and you can also click and drag around so you get the exact placement of where you want those clouds to be in your sky replacement which that looks pretty good i'm actually pretty satisfied with that and happy with that so if you press flip it's going to reverse it or invert it so that the right side is now on the left side left side on the right side okay let's go into the foreground adjustments lighting mode multiply will make it a darker lighting mode as it goes on to your foreground imagery screen will make it brighter so it just depends on what's going to look better for your image typically if you're doing night skies and such multiply will probably look better for a bright daytime photo like this screen is looking pretty good but what's controlling that is the lighting adjustment that you see right here it's either going to be very bright now if we change this to multiply it's going to be very dark if we bring it down here it's going to be much lighter we change it back to screen it's going to be even lighter so this is going to basically control the power of that lighting mode that you see right here then we have the color adjustment and that's just how much color is going to come through on your foreground imagery in that mask so that it creates a more natural blend with an image like this you're probably not going to be able to see much okay and then if we go right here to output we want this to be new layers and not just a duplicate layer i want this to be new layers because i wanted to output all the layers that come from this sky replacement so when i press okay it's going to have the breakdown here of all the things that happen this is the brightness and contrast of the sky this is the color temperature of the sky notice how they're using a color balance tool for that that's going to come in handy later and then this is the actual sky if we press alt or option this is the mask that it created notice that there's a nice little blend there this is the foreground lighting that happened as well and this is the foreground coloring that happened okay so this while i think it's a great tool can help in certain circumstances like this image or like the time that i went to cape disappointment and when i showed up it was a literal disappointment looks much better after putting a sky replacement on there still it was in the middle of the day when i got there and you know weather wasn't really going to be great that night either but when i was putting this tutorial together i started to think to myself blake how many times have you actually replaced a sky for one of your portfolio images and i can think of one maybe two skies that i've replaced in my portfolio images that have actually made it into my portfolio so with the rare likelihood of me actually replacing this guy i find this tool very powerful very clever but i just don't see how much i'm going to be using it in my own workflow and that's when adobe sneaks this thing in and i'm like you got me you got me all right so i'm gonna go to this image right here now i did say that i'm going to give you some actions again the things that you see me doing on this image with this tool that i'm going to show you i'm going to give you some actions for but please wait till the end of the video because i got to explain this to you real quick before we continue this is kind of like the commercial break if you like this please press the subscribe button below and hit the little bell to get notified i do video tutorials like this all the time where i take photoshop something very convoluted and very difficult and make it very easy to learn and give you an actionable workflow that you can use right now today so if you're the type of person that likes that kind of content press the subscribe button below and you'll get notified when the next video comes out so when adobe put this sky replacement in here they also put something under select and in that selection what did they do they put sky which is awesome they basically put that selection that you would get in the sky replacement but made it a selection in the select area so just like we saw select subject in the last iteration of photoshop we now have select sky which might not seem that great to you now you're like blake what's the point we have that over in the sky replacement and we get a sky with it well with an image like this where i've got a sky that i actually like i can easily separate the foreground element from the sky just by pressing sky all right now it's going to make that selection that it would have made in the replace sky section okay and even right now you're probably thinking like why are you showing me this there's nothing great about this well here's the deal oftentimes i separate my foreground and my background elements right well with a selection made like this if you ever want the inverse of a selection you press command shift and i or control shift and i what that does is now instead of selecting the sky it's selecting the foreground things starting to click here so what we can do is we can very easily separate our sky and our foreground and put it on any adjustment layer with these actions i'm going to give you with the click of a button so i'm going to show you how this works again i'm going to press ctrl d select sky okay so now the sky is going to be selected here and what i'm going to do is i'm going to put a curves adjustment layer on here because if i have a selection and i make an adjustment layer it's automatically going to place the mask on the adjustment layer okay but let's say i want to also do one for the foreground so what i'm going to do here is i'm going to press command or control j and duplicate this now for for ease i'm going to call this down here foreground okay because it's easier for me to have the foreground on the bottom and the sky on the top and that's how my brain thinks okay so if i want the foreground after i've got this mask on the foreground this is actually the selection for the sky so if i press alt or option and click on it this is the mask for this guy because that's what's in white if i press command control i though boom look at that i now have a selection for the foreground because i inverted that sky selection and now i have two masks one for the sky and one for the foreground that i can edit independently so let's say i want the sky to get a little bit more deep and a little bit more rich and clip those shadows a little bit more and brighten that get some more tonal contrast in there with a little bit more brightness and color for that sky to give it some more life but then in the foreground i wouldn't want those same adjustments because if i did those same adjustments in the foreground we'd be looking at something like this and that just wouldn't look right so that's why i have them separated because now i can say well maybe i want my foreground to get a little bit darker but i want those mid-tones to also pop a little bit more and now if i press alt or option on that background you can see that after separating out the sky and the foreground having them on their own individual masks i have now have a non-destructive edit for the sky and the foreground and this might not blow your mind just yet so i'm going to go and delete these what i'm going to do is i'm going to pop into the actions that i made you can see here select sky by blake rudis i've got a couple different things here for you right here this is a select and mask refinement so after you make your sky selection if it's not quite perfect you can go into select and mask and refine it if you would need to but i've got selections here so this is just the literal selection for the sky or the literal selection for the foreground if you press play on it it's just going to select your foreground using that technique i showed you with ctrl shift i but here's where things get pretty cool i showed you what what that would do with curves but what happens if we do it with something like color balance because oftentimes the color balance in our image can be different for the background that when it needs to be for the foreground and we can change the white balance of those two things independently so down here i also have a color section for a sky selection for selective color foreground for selective color sky for color balance foreground for color balance that's if you want individual ones but under combos if i press play on this what this is gonna do is it's automatically going to separate my sky and my foreground for me automatically and do it and give it to me on two different adjustment layers that are both color balance adjustment layers and why that's great is because now all i have to do i'm in the sky color balance right here i can look at this guy and say okay sky i want you to be a little bit more blue i want you have a little bit more magenta in there and i'll get you on a little bit more fire there by giving you some red and this is the mid-tone areas then i can go down to the highlights and say okay let's get you a little bit more on the warm side and a little bit more on the magenta side and i think it looks good with a little bit of cyan in there now the shadows of that sky let's make them a little bit richer in the blues let's make them a little bit richer in the cyan and then a little bit richer in the magenta okay so that's changing and altering the color of that sky to make that sky just a beautiful sunset sky now the foreground the foreground is different if i did those exact same adjustments for the foreground it would look very magenta right this guy has a lot of magenta in it anyway and i wanted to bring that out so that's what i did and oftentimes your white balance is going to lie to you anyway because it can only take one white balance for the whole scene and not individual white balances for the sky and for the foreground right so this is where you get complete control over that so now i can increase the yellows and the mid-tones maybe give them a little bit more magenta in those mid-tones and then a little bit more red in those mintones to bring out the colors of the the formations in the badlands national park which if you've ever seen them during this hour they glow this beautiful uh burgundy reddish color mixed in with this gorgeous beige tan color so i'm going to change this over to shadows and let's see do i want to add a little bit of let's add more yellow to those shadows we might even add a little bit more green to those shadows just a slight bit and then let's see what happens with a little bit of red to those shadows as well and then we can go into the highlights and individually modify those and make that a little bit more yellow and then also a little bit more on the magenta side i'm just looking at what my eye likes and that's what my eye likes so here's the before and the after on that very simple right it's just two color balance layers that have completely changed and altered the mood and feeling of this image just by pressing play on an action and modifying some sliders so now this power is in your hands please feel free to download these actions and just experiment that's what i did i spent the bulk of the day just experimenting with how i could separate the sky and my foreground with a click of a button it's that easy now so i think that the new sky replacement tool is innovative it's clever it's awesome but i think what's more powerful are these selections that we can do for the sky and inversely for the foreground please download these actions and experiment that's what i've been doing for the bulk of the day and i think you're gonna have fun doing the same thing as well

Channel: f64 Academy

Views: 30,117

Keywords: Blake Rudis, f64 academy, f.64, How To, Tutorial, Photoshop, Adobe, Sky Replacement Photoshop 2021, How to Replace a Sky, Sky Selection, PS 2021, How to make a selection for foreground, Make a selection for Sky, How to replace a sky in Photoshop, replace sky, replace skies, how to replace a sky in Photoshop, Photoshop Update, New feature in Photoshop, Photoshop new feature, photoshop sky replacement, photoshop 2021, luminar 4 ai sky replacement, ai sky replacement

Id: _S5nX4zftSc

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 28 2020