Ramelli S. - Sky Replacement Workflow: Create Dramatic Skies in your Photos

Contents

Acknowledgments

Every photographers journey to success is a different one. Yours will not be the same as mine just as mine was not the same as many photographers that I look up to and who inspire me. But one thing all our journeys have in common is that there are always people who help us, who inspire us and who never let us give up. Rather, they insist we do better and stick to it. I am grateful to the many friends, associates, editors and fellow photographers who have helped me become the photographer I am today.

First and foremost I want to thank you, the reader and the many, many, aspiring photographers who watch my lessons on the internet and use my courses. It is my greatest hope that I can help you achieve your goals as a photographer and I thank you so much for your support and your interaction which not only makes me a better photographer, but a better teacher. Thank you to my many friends and supporters, without whom, none of this would be possible.

I must especially thank my friends and staff who work tirelessly to help me in my mission to teach photographers the skills for success everywhere. Kelvin, Christian, Bowie, Jim and Amelie, I am extremely grateful for your hard work and friendship. I also want to thank Dare for helping me write and edit this book, merci mon ami!

To my editors and publishers at Yellow Korner, I thank you for all that you do in seeing to it that my photographs are reproduced at the highest quality and reach the broadest possible audience. Your assistance, partnership and friendship are always a blessing in my life.

To Trey Ratcliff for his constant inspiration and incredible photographic techniques.

To my mentor Scott Kelby, I thank you for your guidance, kindness and sharing so freely the techniques which have helped me to become the photographer I am today.

And to my wife and children who always have been and will always be the inspiration of my life. I love you and thank you for being there every step of the way with me. Through the rough times you stood by my side and urged me to pursue my dream despite all odds, and through the good times you never let me become complacent and pushed me to do better. I love you now and always.

Serge Ramelli

Paris, March 2016

Where to find your files

Have you ever bought a book that had files that came with it and the only place you could find where it said the files were was at the back in some obscure section of the appendix and you were like Why do zey do zat!!!!!! Well maybe not with a French accent, but still!

Ive included dozens of RAW photo files for you to work with while learning the sky replacement techniques I teach in this course as you go through this book. Each Chapter is a Lesson which focuses on retouching specific photos, so please do take the time to download the files and follow along with the lesson in Photoshop on your computer.

Very simply, use your PhotoSerge account (and if you dont have one it takes 30 seconds to sign up), and then you can download them from:

http://www.photoserge.com/ebooks

You can download them by project or as an entire package that covers the whole course.

There you go! Big, bold, easy to find, voila!!!

How to read this book

Bonjour Madams and Monsieurs and welcome to this new course on how to do Sky Replacement with Lightroom and Photoshop. I've had many requests to supplement my video based training that you can find on my website with an e-book format for easy download and step by step follow along. So for those who requested it: here you are! I hope this meets your needs and for anyone who would like video based follow alongs, these can be found on my website.

If you've gotten any of my other training, you'll know that everything I teach is lesson based. I don't recommend reading the book from cover to cover, but rather follow along with the files I've provided to do each of the actions described in these lessons. They will not only help you learn the individual actions required to transform your photos, but by actually doing the steps you can avoid some of the frustration and boredom that comes from just reading about technical subjects.

Also, while you can follow along step by step with what we are doing, if you don't have a basic familiarity with Lightroom, Photoshop or Adobe Camera Raw, I highly suggest checking out some of my free tutorials on basic retouching with Photoshop or get a hold of the Photoshop for Photographers book or video course on www.photoserge.com. It will help you understand some of the underlying theory and tools behind what we are doing. Also, I use a Mac in my work, but the differences between Mac and PC in terms of workflow are minimal. You'll probably just have to press Ctrl instead of Cmd for some of the keyboard shortcuts I use.

Ok? Turn the page and let's dive straight into it!

Lesson 1 - The Gargoyle Over Paris

Hello and welcome to the first lesson on Sky Replacement! Now why should you know the different techniques for sky replacement? Simply put: when you go to take photos and you have a bad sky day you have to choose between coming back on another day (or making another trip at a later time) or doing the efficient thing and putting in a great sky.

Replacing skies is something which is actually not that easy. I mean, the technique is pretty easy, but finding the right sky for the right photo and the right way of implementing it actually took me quite some months of practice to be honest, and I'm going to try to, in this short book, teach you the methods that have worked best for me.

The trickiest thing is obviously to get a seamless blend between the photo and the sky you are putting in so that it looks realistic and not totally Photoshop'ed in. I like when somebody cannot tell if the sky has been changed or not. Usually, switching out a sky with no clouds to one with a dramatic sky is going to take a photo from very boring to very dramatic.

Let's start off with this example of something I shot on the roof of Notre Dame. Notre Dame is a church in Paris, and it's 284 stairs to get up to the roof, which for some Olympic athletes is no big deal, but I certainly count the steps! This is a very famous view because you've got the Eiffel Tower in the shot and you get the Seine river.

Now I wanted to get the statue there as a foreground element, but the sky was boring. And after you've spent your entire day going to take a photo, that's disappointing. You know what I mean: you take the photo and it's not good, it's not going to be a photo. Obviously having a great sky in the first place is the best option because I don't like so much to do sky replacement, but sometimes I like to play around with it because sometimes I can get really some nice effects with replacing the sky, and I want show that to you.

Go ahead and open up the photo in Adobe Lightroom.

1. Open up the Shadows

I'm going to repeat a lot of the same steps for every lesson in this book because I believe that repetitiveness will help teach people the basic actions that should be done on every photo. If you've read a lot of my blogs or watched videos or other courses, you know how my basic workflow rolls.

In the Basic Panel go ahead and open up the Shadows to +100 but don't pull the highlights down like I might normally do. Instead push the Highlights to +10.