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Recently purchased the Atmosphere skies from James Ritson.  I have used the refine tool many time in the past successfully.  I'm currently attempting to place of of James' skies in an image but it just is doing a terrible job.  Does there have to be a clearly defined edge for the tool to work?  The image is a night image from Prague of the Charles Bridge.  However, of course the sky is basically black and the foreground is extremely dark as well.  I am just not able to obtain a good delineation on the edges so I can place a new sky in.  Any help would be appreciated. 

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Hi @Snowcap1,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble!

Could you please provide a sample of the image/document that you're trying to remove the background from? If you'd like a private upload link for this, please don't hesitate to ask :)

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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Dan I sent the original image.  I previously did use the curve tool to lighten the image and cropped some.  So if it helps using the curve tool I was able to lighten the image thinking I could show more contrast between sky and bridge to allow me to use the selection too.  Didn't work.

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Thanks for the image provided!

19 hours ago, Snowcap1 said:

I previously did use the curve tool to lighten the image and cropped some.  So if it helps using the curve tool I was able to lighten the image thinking I could show more contrast between sky and bridge to allow me to use the selection too.

I believe this may be the best route to take, but we will need to create the selection in one document, then save and load this selection to be used for the final image.

In order to create the selection, please load the RAW file into Photo and then develop it over-exposed, I used the following settings - 

image.png

This should allow the Selection Brush tool to more easily define the edge of the buildings to the sky.

Then using the Selection Brush tool, ensuring to tick both Snap to Edges and Soft Edges on the Context Toolbar. It took using a rather small brush and some patience, but I was eventually able to create a relatively clean Sky selection. This can then be refined further as required.

Note I chose to leave some of the background objects out of the selection, as they were either out of focus or did not have as obvious edges and therefore would not look correct once selected and 'cut'.

With this selection active, I first saved the file to the .afphoto format (File > Save), then I used Select > Save Selection > To File..., where I saved the selection in an easily accessible folder ( I used my downloads folder).

I then opened the RAW image once again as a new file in Affinity and this time developed it to a more conventional exposure level, ensuring this is how you want the final image to look.

With the RAW file developed, navigate to Select > Load Selection From File... and then choose the selection file we most recently saved. This should load the selection over your image and allows you to delete the dark sky from the dark image without having to 'find' the edges again.

You can then place any image behind the 'background' layer, to fill the area we've just deleted with a new sky.

I hope this helps!

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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19 minutes ago, Dan C said:

In order to create the selection, please load the RAW file into Photo and then develop it over-exposed, I used the following settings - 

Did this but I then found it was easier to then select the buildings and everything else that was not the sky and then invert the selection afterwards

Even so, still got bored after half an hour, so didn't finish it, as it's still a tedious selection process with that particular image

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.

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