I took the original photo of the Alcazar (in Segovia, Spain) in 1993, with medium format film (the slide is 6 x 7 cm or 2 1/4 x 2 3/4 inches). I never really liked it because the colors were too bland and the sky was boring. I was looking for a strong image to help promote my Spain and Portugal photo tour in April 2012, and I decided to replace the sky to see what I could come up with. Here's the final result:
(c) Jim Zuckerman
The problem was the tree on the right. It’s impossible to cut around that in Photoshop, although Topaz just came out with ReMask V3.0 that looks very good in this regard.I just bought it but haven’t tried it yet, so I used a layer mask in Photoshop. I placed the new sky over the whole image and erased away the unwanted portions of the sky. I then used the gradient tool to blend the mask with the underlying photo. I thought the results came out quite well. In 1993, this would have been impossible.
Original image (c) Jim Zuckerman
Editor's Notes: Photographer/author Jim Zuckerman teaches many excellent online photography courses at BetterPhoto.com, including these online Photoshop workshops: Creative Techniques in Photoshop , Advanced Creative Techniques in Photoshop and Photoshop: Thinking Outside the Box.
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