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Last Updated:
Jan 20th, 2007 - 12:55:03 |
Removing Skies using the Background Eraser
This technique is particularly useful and makes removing skies, even where their are fine details encroaching into the sky, easy. It allows you to protect the areas you do not wish to erase, eliminating fiddly painting work.
Sky Removal for Simple Landscapes
Open the image and duplicate to protect the original. Image > Duplicate
The first task is to create a history point – this will allow you to paint back the original image in any areas that may be accidentally erased.
Double click the photo layer (background) to turn it in to an editable layer.
In the History Palette, click the box next to Make Layer, to set the history point.
Select the Background Eraser tool from the tools palette.
From the Tool Options Bar, choose Sample: Once, choose Limits: Discontigous begin with a Tolerance of about 60% however this may need adjustment, so experiment to find the best setting for your image. Ensure Protect Foreground is Color is checked. Choose a hard brush size that suits.
Zoom in to around 75% or more. Hold Alt (Option) and click on a part of the image you wish to protect. Choosing a darker part of the area you wish to protect seems to get better results. (While the target cursor is shown here it will show as an eyedropper)
Then simply begin erasing the area of sky. Click on an area of the sky that is not affected by other details. This samples the color you wish to erase, then hold down the left mouse button and drag to erase. In this case the cloud meets the tree line so click and hold on the cloud (adjust your brush size as needed to sample only the cloud with no tree line included) and drag the mouse, over the skyline. You can drag the eraser over the tree line and where sky shows through the gaps, with no obvious effect. Ensure your tolerance is set high enough to not leave any fringing around the treeline.
Drag along the entire length of the skyline, without releasing the mouse button.
Since the clouds are varying shades of grey and white, you will likely need to resample again. Each time you release the mouse button and then click to begin again you are resampling the color you are erasing. Click on an area that has not been erased to sample that color and again erase the length of the skyline. Repeat as often as necessary until there is a band of transparency between the sky and tree lines.
Now switch to the normal eraser on the tools palette with opacity set at 100%, and erase the rest of the sky.
If the tips of the trees have become softened by the erasing, use the burn tool to darken and bring back the detail.
If when erasing sky showing through gaps in the trees for example you erased part of the trees, use the history brush to paint back in the detail. Select the History Brush from the tools palette or use keyboard shortcut Y and the original image detail will be painted back in from the history state selection chosen earlier.
When satisfied with the erased area, import the new sky and use Edit> Free Transform to position, behind the photo.
Zoom in and use the eraser to remove any areas of the previous sky that may have been missed previously.
© Copyright 2003-2005 by Scrapbook-Bytes; & original creator/s of tutorials/articles
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