replace a sky in pano please

[bill43210]

this isnot a goodpano, to mention one aspect the sky was poor, but i went back to try again but the rape crop was harvested so no luck there. I like the composition of yellow and green and wanted to salvage something (till a new crop in 3-4 years) but Ineed some help with the sky replacement. I had a few goes but because of the width it does not look right. I've tried a graded sky but that looks out-of-place. Can someone help?

[Reanimator]

hi bill
was gonna have a go with a technique i use with layers masks and blend modes but when u look at the big
version the joints are to prominent, any editing would make them even more so.

to replace a big wide sky needs a big wide sky so there is another problem

i spend more time doing my panos getting sky correct than anything else, espeicaly these days as
im much better at editing that i was a few years ago.

even with exposure locked u still get difference in sky from pic to pic, i find right side allways tends to be darker

Gary

[Reanimator]

this is sort of problems u can have, exposure wasnt locked though





and with a major editing headache end up with this



as im sure u will understand i couldnt go back and re shoot it

[Scotious]

Totally worth doing, you guys. It's a beautiful pano. (maybe you could straighten the horizon a wee bit...)

Oops-- I was looking at Reanimators example. Bill-- your is really nice, too!

--Scott

[bill43210]

thanks Gary for the tips and your example blend works, yes the land does suffer from different contrast and light as well as the sky and i should give up on it but i keep getting drawn back to it and have tried to balance it out better. I think i was just to ambitious with this and did not have enough experience to blend them , to many photos to soon. thanks for commenting

[Alan T]

Bill,

I often fiddle with the sky on panos, but mostly it's to fill in pieces missing at the edges. Because I've done a quick 'autostitch', the edges of the individual stitched shots are curved, but I don't want to crop the main image to fit the missing sky.

The technique I have found to work quite well is 'cloning' one part of the sky to a completely different place. Often I've been worried that's it's obvious because the sky looks rather cloned, with repetitive patterns. When I go back to the original sky shots, however, I find that I haven't cheated; the weather system had in fact cloned the clouds into repetitive patterns all by itself. Whenever I've been cheating in this fashion, within a few days I spot 'cloned' clouds right over my head.

So what I'd do if I were you is steal some sky from completely diferent images, and clone away like mad. When you're worried, just look at some real sky, and spot the meteorological cloning!

I think your amazing rape field is well worth the effort. (But only as a long-term project; I want to see lots more of your exciting 'challenge' images at present!). I'd post some examples, but finding good ones would be a long term project too!

Good luck! Alan T

[jachol]

Hi Bill, I'd recommend that you do your cloning at lowered opacity with a large soft brush, experiment with brush size in different situations ... with clouds or anything that lacks a lot of detail sample often and randomly IMO this produces a more realistic effect. I also find it helps to sample all layers this allows you to do the actual cloning onto a blank layer where it's easier to correct any hiccups. Hope this helps ... Jack

[bill43210]

Alan, jachol thanks for your comments and tips, I am determined to get this right on my bigger file 29 megs ( about a 8 photo stitch) i seem to remember. But it will be a project for the next few weeks and I can try your suggestions. (Its the width that makes for the problem of a new sky) heres an attemp that i worked on though not finishedthanks again

[jachol]

HI Bill, I can see the width is the big problem, I've just been experimenting ... I tried stretching a sky pic perspectively, but don't think it would stand to be stretched for a pano width. I did create a sky on a new canvas sized as your original, thenby selecting the blue and the whitish clouds from your original as foreground and background colours the in filter/ Render/clouds you can produce a new sky you can enhance by duplicating and changing the blending mode until you achieve one that suits. then select the sky in the original with the magic wand tool and delete you can the drag this onto your sky layer. I've done a quick sample, it's not brilliant could be worked on, and I guess I'm assuming you're using PS.

[bill43210]

thanks jachol for giving it a go and yes i do like your results. This can be worked on a bit more to give some cloud contrast and it might look better than OK, it will also ease the blending problem of the land stitch. I have ps7 and pspon my pc so i will give it some more work and see what i can get to. I hope to go to Wales this week if the rain eases a bit so I'll give it a go when i get back. Thanks again for your assistance, much appreciated.