How do I get this sky replacement right?

[jw432]

Can someone tell me how to do a good sky replacement of this photo?  Included are the original and my failed attempt.  As you can see there is a lot of purple in the leaves (upper left) in the original.  I tried to defringe but that did not solve it.  There must be some way to get rid of that purple, make the sky selection/replacement easier.  Don't worry that they are not the same size, I am looking for good technique not an interesting photo.

 

Thanks in advance.

Orig.afphoto

badReplace.afphoto

[IanSG]

I didn't get a good replacement, but I found that using the Uplift - Epic Skies macro and reducing the sky opacity to around 55% was a good starting point and then playing with the saturation and contrast.  After that, set the blend mode to multiply in the Layers panel and apply a bit of sharpening to the building / leaves with an unsharp mask filter.

[HVDB Photography]

18 hours ago, jw432 said:

There must be some way to get rid of that purple, make the sky selection/replacement easier

 

Select the affected part (sky)

Filters > Colours > Defringe

 

 

[jw432]

9 hours ago, IanSG said:

I didn't get a good replacement, but I found that using the Uplift - Epic Skies macro and reducing the sky opacity to around 55% was a good starting point and then playing with the saturation and contrast.  After that, set the blend mode to multiply in the Layers panel and apply a bit of sharpening to the building / leaves with an unsharp mask filter.

Thanks all!  Defringe by itself did not do it, but these steps got the image along a lot further, It's still not as good as I would like but upon closer inspection I now see that the real problem is in the source image, where the leaves are both grayish/purple and disconnected in the most troublesome area and remain gray and disconnected even after doing a pretty good job of eliminating the purple.  I appreciate all of the advice and thank you for taking a look at this challenging photo - the video tutorials make it look so easy compared to what I faced in this picture.  Fortunately I am learning, not trying to get a perfect image.

[IanSG]

7 hours ago, jw432 said:

the video tutorials make it look so easy compared to what I faced in this picture.  Fortunately I am learning, not trying to get a perfect image.

The tutorials almost always make it look easy!  I find a lot of the time the imperfections are much less obvious to everyone else. 

[toltec]

You can use the colour replacement brush

 

to turn the purple into green. Works much better over a large area than de-fringe.

 

Set the brush to green (or Alt + Click on a leaf) and paint over.

 

I set both the brush opacity and tolerance values to 50%

 

 

 

[jw432]

1 hour ago, toltec said:

You can use the colour replacement brush

 

to turn the purple into green. Works much better over a large area than de-fringe.

 

Set the brush to green (or Alt + Click on a leaf) and paint over.

 

I set both the brush opacity and tolerance values to 50%

 

 

 

Worked Great toltec, thanks!