Bill Peake
December 2021 - Niagra Falls American Side
Original
About the Image(s)
Here is an image I took of the Niagra Falls on the American side on a trip there in August 2010. This view was one of my better ones from that day, since it also included the Horseshoe Falls. However, there was not a cloud in the sky and the image was taken in early afternoon. I decided to try doing a full sky replacement with something a little more interesting. In this case the sky is from an image I took much later, in November 2019 in Antelope Valley in California.
The image was taken with a Canon Powershot S5 IS at 6mm. The aperture was f/8 and the shutter speed was 1/640. The ISO was set to 200.
The sky was taken on a Nikon D7200 with a Tamron 18-400mm lens set to 50mm, the aperture set to f/7.1 and the shutter speed set to 1/100. The ISO was set to 400.
Post processing was done if Photoshop CC 2021. The image was divided into 3 zones, sky, ground and global.
The sky was added as a straight sky replacement in Photoshop using the Edit/Sky Replacement option. I had added this sky from a prior project so no additional changes to it were necessary. The sky was transformed horizontally so the lighting on the clouds more closely matched the lighting on the ground.
For the ground, a Camera Raw filter was added in which a light dehaze was done and the highlights, shadows, contrast and exposure were adjusted. Saturation and vibrance was increased slightly in this layer as well. Finally sharpening selectively to bring out detail in the foreground falls and foliage.
I then duplicated the replacement sky image and did a vertical flip on and applied a Gaussian blur to it of 400. This applies the lighting in the sky to the ground layer.
A brightness/contrast layer was added so the ground more closely matched the sky’s brightness level.
I then added a global brightness/contrast adjustment layer to brighten the entire image, since it was a little dark. A global saturation layer to slightly bump up saturation was also included.
The image was then cropped to exclude negative space
I am attaching the original image for reference.
This round’s discussion is now closed!
8 comments posted
With the recent improvements to Lightroom and Photoshop it has become so easy to do sky replacements. While to the casual viewer the scene looks right I do not feel that, in this image the colors work. You sky has two sources of color (light) that may impact the image. There is a white area toward the left and an orange area on the right. I feel that the orange area contains the color that SHOULD impact the entire image. However, your misty water has taken on a magenta hue both on the distant falls and in the foreground mist. I feel this should carry more of a warming tone to reflect the tones in the sky. Posted: 12/06/2021 08:50:25
Just for future reference. If there were entered i9n competition the judges would look at what they can see in the image---they would have no knowledge of what is cropped out. Thus they would expect to see the colors match what they can see. You would thus have to adjust the image to meet these expectations. If the image is just for your personal viewing---then ofcourse you can make it look any way that feels right to you. AFTER ALL, YOU ARE THE CREATOR and are therefore correct. Posted: 12/17/2021 11:35:00