bringing similar colors together into one

[jimh12345]

Here's an image I'm working on: a composite of several shots of a bird in flight.  They've all been processed identically but of course as I followed the bird and took shots, the sky varied slightly.   Each photo is on a separate layer.   Now I need to get a uniform sky behind all the birds.

Yes, I could outline each one with the Selection Brush tool, refine the selection and cut out the bird, but that could be tedious; feathers are tough.  

Obviously I'd like to select by a color range - get all those blues at once -  but If I remember right, AP doesn't have an easy, direct way to do that.  Does it?   Or can anyone suggest another clever way to select all these similar blues and either delete those pixels, or force them to a common color?

[v_kyr]

I could imagine various different procedures here. - But the fastest is probably to use the Flood Fill Tool at a tolerance of ~20% and fill the whole with the main blue background color.

 

[jimh12345]

Yes, tweaking the tolerance on flood fill is a good idea, I'll try it.

Still wish there was a direct way to select by color range.

[v_kyr]

37 minutes ago, jimh12345 said:

Yes, tweaking the tolerance on flood fill is a good idea, I'll try it.

When you do so, check that nothing from the birds wings etc. which contains some similar blue color is overwritten. Therefor (to prevent this) make a quick add+ brush selection of all the affected bird parts and invert the selection afterwards. So any maybe critical bird parts are excluded from the selection and only the image backgrounds are selected, then apply the blue flood fill on the selected background. Also try out which flood fill tolerance value setup works best for you here.

Quote

Still wish there was a direct way to select by color range.

See also related for selections:

Selections

• Creating pixel selections
  • Overview
  • By painting
  • By flooding
  • By drawing
  • By range
  • By layer content/luminosity
  • From channels
  • From a sampled colour

[NotMyFault]

7 hours ago, jimh12345 said:

Yes, tweaking the tolerance on flood fill is a good idea, I'll try it.

Still wish there was a direct way to select by color range.

There are multiple possibilities:

1. select sampled color + tolerance
2. hue range mask (and convert to selection), allows to define range and width of edges (transition selected / not selected)
3. flood selection tool + tolerance
4. for compositions like this, you may use stacking (without ghost removal), and suitable stack mode

[NotMyFault]

6 hours ago, v_kyr said:

When you do so, check that nothing from the birds wings etc. which contains some similar blue color is overwritten.

For a composition like this, the visual difference may be irrelevant. Otherwise correct.

[jimh12345]

v_kyr, I didn't realize "select by sampled color" had a tolerance slider that can be used to refine the selection.  I tried this and at first, thought it would be enough on its own. I select a layer for one of the birds, "select by sampled color",  adjust the tolerance and get a nice tight selection around the bird. 

But the selection doesn't work like it should. First off, I apparently can't Refine it.  So I just  hit Delete and at first it looks like the blue on that layer is gone, but I find it's not completely removed, as if all those "selected" pixels weren't really selected, or some sort of transparency is in effect.   Attached screen capture shows what I'm left with after the Delete.  This is useless.

I tried using the Eraser to wipe out everything in the selection.  And what I found out is that the dashed border showing the "selection" is really only approximate, because I lost some of the bird that way.  Some pixels inside that border aren't really "selected" and some outside of the border are.  So, I had to be careful with the Eraser.  But even with the Eraser set at 100% I found that multiple passes were necessary to completely remove the pixels.

IMHO "Select Sampled Color" is just a mess.  AP needs a proper tool for selecting by color range.

[jimh12345]

I'm not big on sky replacement - I think it's a vice.   But in this case, I have a totally empty sky, and a totally synthetic image composition, so I'd like to try putting in a few clouds.   And it seems like AP just has nothing in its tool box to facilitate sky replacement in complex situations.   While I don't want AP to start adding bogus "AI" features, the difficulty of selecting a blue sky really surprises me.  Surely, I'm missing something here.

[NotMyFault]

3 hours ago, jimh12345 said:

I'm not big on sky replacement - I think it's a vice.   But in this case, I have a totally empty sky, and a totally synthetic image composition, so I'd like to try putting in a few clouds.   And it seems like AP just has nothing in its tool box to facilitate sky replacement in complex situations.   While I don't want AP to start adding bogus "AI" features, the difficulty of selecting a blue sky really surprises me.  Surely, I'm missing something here.

Your criticism is unfounded. There are official tutorial videos for sky replacements, sky image resources (bonus content or shop) for those who don’t have a sky image at hands or search in stock images, and the process is quite simple if you follow one of the tutorials.

i personally made a few compositions of birds or moon and planes with sky. Just learn the workflows, it is no 1-click function.

[NotMyFault]

It took me 2 minutes to make a good selection and sky replacement.

1. Have a pixel layer
2. use flood selection tool, lower tolerance
3. use add mode to get all sky
4. if needed, switch to selection brush and refine tool (I didn’t)
5. add mask
6. invert mask
7. add sky image from stock
8. adjust layer sequence

 

Edited June 18, 2023 by NotMyFault
Video removed due to später restrictions

[v_kyr]

3 hours ago, jimh12345 said:

And it seems like AP just has nothing in its tool box to facilitate sky replacement in complex situations.

They once (former APh v1.6 or 1.7 times) had free bundled the "Uplift Epic skies pack" (sky images + APh macro + usage tutorial etc.) with APh. - Nowadays you would use the Stock Panel to search and add some sky/cloud backgrounds etc.

 

[jimh12345]

24 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Your criticism is unfounded. There are official tutorial videos for sky replacements, sky image resources (bonus content or shop) for those who don’t have a sky image at hands or search in stock images, and the process is quite simple if you follow one of the tutorials.

i personally made a few compositions of birds or moon and planes with sky. Just learn the workflows, it is no 1-click function.

I'll check that out.

[jimh12345]

1 hour ago, NotMyFault said:

It took me 2 minutes to make a good selection and sky replacement.

1. Have a pixel layer
2. use flood selection tool, lower tolerance
3. use add mode to get all sky
4. if needed, switch to selection brush and refine tool (I didn’t)
5. add mask
6. invert mask
7. add sky image from stock
8. adjust layer sequence

RPReplay_Final1685560392.mov RPReplay_Final1685560392.mov

Not getting this.   Flood fill doesn't create a selection, and just replacing a solid blue sky with a different solid color isn't really "sky replacement".   How do you get from flood fill, to a mask for the sky?

[v_kyr]

8 minutes ago, jimh12345 said:

Not getting this.   Flood fill doesn't create a selection, ...

See again what NotMyFault wrote under point 2., aka Flood selection tool and not Flood fill tool.

[jimh12345]

Aha - so there' a "Flood Selection" tool. That could be the answer.