Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

Recommended Posts

I'm really struggling to change the colour of the sky in this photo. I've watched tutorials taken advice but I still don't understand. 

Can i have step by step click this click that. I've tried everything and can't get it. 

I've even looked for 121 tutorials. 

My main problem is not changing the main sky but the bits between the leaves. Could someone who's feeling very kind give me instructions that a child could follow. 

How do i get the wee bits between the leaves the new colour I've chosen for the sky. 

Laura 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The key to doing anything to just the sky is in making a good selection. You must end up with the sky selected, and everything else NOT selected. Here's a few ways to select just the sky:

1) Use the Flood Select tool. In the context toolbar (at the top, just under the larger toolbar with the persona icons), Mode = New, Source = Current  Layer, UN-check Contiguous. Click on the sky and drag the cursor left and/or right. I got a pretty good selection when Tolerance was set to about 5-6%. This does end up selecting some areas on the rocks, though, and you can remove these using Quick Select (type "Q" and paint black over the selected areas on the rocks.)

2) Use the Selection Brush tool. In the context toolbar, make sure that Snap to Edges and Soft Edges are checked. Use the tool to brush over sky, overlapping the green of the trees slightly. Once you have the selection roughed in, click the Refine... button. Without changing any of the settings, brush over the areas that are green, overlapping the blue sky areas by just a little. Do this in small steps. Every time you brush and release the mouse button, AP will adjust that small area. Because the refinement is mostly based on contrast, you should be able to get a good selection of the sky and omit all (or most) of the green of the trees.

3) Use Channels. If you examine the individual red, green, and blue channels (in the Channels panel, click once on Composite Red, Composite Green, and Composite Blue) you'll find that the channel with the most contrast between the sky and the trees is the Blue channel. (This makes sense, since the opposite of blue is yellow, and vegetation is actually less green and more yellow.) Turn all the RGB channels back on by clicking the little round arrow icon at the top right of the Channels panel. Right click on the Background Blue line (your photo layer must be selected, and I'm assuming the layer's name is still "Background".) Choose Create Greyscale Layer. Once you have a greyscale representation of the Blue channel, you can use Levels to darken the dark areas, lighten the white areas, and so forth. The goal is to create a layer that is all black and white, with the white parts representing the sky. Now, with the black and white layer selected in the Layers panel, choose "Rasterize to Mask" from the Layers menu. Make a copy of the background layer, and use this new mask to isolate the sky. You can do whatever you want to that layer, without affecting other areas of the photo (remember to make adjustments child layers of the masked duplicate, so that they are attached only to the sky.)

Of these choices, the first two are the easiest, and probably will get you the best results.

Now that you have the selection, you can choose your adjustment of choice (Recolor might be a good one. HSL and Lens Filter are two others that are pretty straightforward. Other adjustments will work, but are  a little more complex.)

Affinity Photo 2, Affinity Publisher 2, Affinity Designer 2 (latest retail versions) - desktop & iPad
Culling - FastRawViewer; Raw Developer - Capture One Pro; Asset Management - Photo Supreme
Mac Studio with M2 Max (2023}; 64 GB RAM; macOS 13 (Ventura); Mac Studio Display - iPad Air 4th Gen; iPadOS 17

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let us know how you do! By the way, once you have the sky selected, you might want to do more than just change the color. Try (i) inverting the selection; and (ii) clicking the New Mask button in the Layers panel. Put a second photo with a better sky underneath the original photo, and the better sky will replace the orinal, rather bland one.

Affinity Photo 2, Affinity Publisher 2, Affinity Designer 2 (latest retail versions) - desktop & iPad
Culling - FastRawViewer; Raw Developer - Capture One Pro; Asset Management - Photo Supreme
Mac Studio with M2 Max (2023}; 64 GB RAM; macOS 13 (Ventura); Mac Studio Display - iPad Air 4th Gen; iPadOS 17

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  1. Click on Select from the top menu and choose Select Sampled Colour...
  2. Click anywhere on the sky and move the slider to about 70-75% and click OK (Don’t worry about it selecting the rocks you can erase those area’s in the next steps)
  3. Create a Pixel layer and fill it with a colour something like red to make it obvious would be good. (this is just to create a good selection not colour the sky, although you could use it to colour the sky.)
  4. Select the erase tool and a basic brush and erase the colour applied over the rocks and anywhere else you don’t want the colour applied. Now you have a good selection template that you can use.
  5. So you can cmd + click on the pixel layer icon to activate the selection
  6. Move to the image layer and erase the sky
  7. At this point using Filters > Colours > Multiply by Alpha, will help with blending the trees over the sky.
  8. Now add whatever sky you want behind the image layer

Example.

Screen_Shot_2020-06-13_at_20_57_14.thumb.png.6f65bea58a2a61de924ae3887596cd2b.png

 

 

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

Link to comment
Share on other sites

thanks so much for all your help i was impressed with the extra you went to help me. gonna try today. if youre ever in ireland touch base and ill be your guide. going to have a go today. one last thing do i take your sky im probably asking that wrong but your skys lovely . how do io get your sky or is there somewhere i can gets skys. or do i take a sky off another photo.

lol  yes im that thick lol 

laura

Link to comment
Share on other sites

54 minutes ago, lauraburns said:

thanks so much for all your help i was impressed with the extra you went to help me. gonna try today. if youre ever in ireland touch base and ill be your guide. going to have a go today. one last thing do i take your sky im probably asking that wrong but your skys lovely . how do io get your sky or is there somewhere i can gets skys. or do i take a sky off another photo.

lol  yes im that thick lol 

laura

You're welcome, The sky is from the stock panel, this is the link to the sky on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/-YnsA8-tseg but you can access skies from the Stock panel, just type in: sky1515388438_ScreenShot2020-06-14at07_31_52.png.22c73940df66b7fd1214e0bf5ef448d6.png
 

Cool tip: With the background layer selected, click on this icon 271691279_ScreenShot2020-06-14at07_38_18.png.fa6691b75da687e70da20d090b7ec4d7.png  to insert a sky behind the background layer. See image below.

433443592_ScreenShot2020-06-14at07_40_33.png.53cac38ed4fca56d505c5362cd7a9f78.png

 

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey that’s not far off Laura, the more you do the better you get but it’s pretty cool eh!

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can also extend the sky if you want it to feature more in your image

 

cliff5.jpg

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A lot of over-engineering going on above this post. 😀

Simply define and refine a selection and remove it. Then anything can be inserted.

1.thumb.jpg.e4fd7222bed6896d16dd60b4829ba198.jpg

3.thumb.jpg.0be4bdf4222e73f2f863e3a8a083103b.jpg

Selection.afphoto

2.jpg

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, lauraburns said:

Great job x

Laura check out the Photo file. The trick is to make and refine a perfect selection and cut it out. Then anything can be inserted as a layer underneath - not anything will look natural though.

Select -> refine edges.

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, lauraburns said:

I will try. Brilliant job hope I can get as good x

Thank you. Best of luck - ambitions, time and stubbornness is the key. And... refine edges. It honestly did the most of the job. I just chose the right path. Knowing it is of course important.

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

50 minutes ago, carl123 said:

You can also extend the sky if you want it to feature more in your image

 

cliff5.jpg

 

2 minutes ago, Jowday said:

Thank you. Best of luck - ambitions, time and stubbornness is the key. And... refine edges. It honestly did the most of the job. I just chose the right path. Knowing it is of course important.

I'm only starting to learn. There's not many people in Northern Ireland using affinity yet most ps but I think it's fab. Thanks guys for all your help. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

YouTube is a great place to find tutorials - sometimes you can also use tutorials for Photoshop - at least to get an idea about how to process an image.

Replace sky

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, lauraburns said:

how do i extend the sky. so much to learn.

Document / Resize Canvas 

Resize.png.fd633473bec7e6a5f93613ea506bf568.png

 

Click on the padlock so that you can change the aspect ratio.

Change the height of the document to whatever you want

Change the anchor point so that the extra pixels are added to the top of the image. 

Click on Resize.

1049887122_Snap2020-06-14at12_34_15.png.4259ae6ccc92ba90b4a89bd4fbb15762.png

You've now got extra space to fill with additional images or cloning.

Snap_2020-06-14_at_12_38_29.png.72624c532c8408f609e4c3b13a07c60f.png

 

AP, AD & APub user, running Win10

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.