Sky replacement, sun burst and much more with no AI
Making a great picture is a hard process, a lot of times due to “some” limitation, we can’t get that look our eyes see or supposed to be seen by others. I like to shoot into the sun, but i rarely use HDR. I’m always exposing for the ground and as you can expect the sky is almost always blown out, and if it’s not, many times there is nothing in that sky - it’s boring flat. So what can we do to improve our photos?
WARNING!
This tutorial contains excessive oldskool techniques which can harm Your worldview!
Originally written by Mike Pellinni on 14 apr 2015 for MyPhotoCentral.com
But in short... what we'll be doing here in 34 simple steps
Almost every step i do i convert to Smart Objects to have the ability to add filters, change parameters and resize objects without losing details. (non destructive editing fanatic). It is a good practice to name your layers, but i don’t 8P sorry for that, i think visually it’s well readable. I don’t give any image size because it is a Smart Object (Holy grail of PhotoShop) and can be resized any time, but it’s easier to use if it’s square, and is equal to the longer side of your final image. For me myself i found a perfect document size of 3663x3663 pixels, You can use bigger, but remember it’ll make your CPU sweat.
I divide whole process into three parts:
Prepare Sun burst and toning, once and forever.
Change sky and apply step 1.
Or as an alternative skip all until the P.P.P.S.
