Compositing skies

[buso23]

I have a picture of a cyclist against blue sky and at the time of the shoot I positioned him so that later I can add some clouds and sunshine in Photoshop, but right now I'm having troubles in generating a realistic composite image. I tried different techniques and none worked to provide realistic atmosphere.
The Auto-Blend Layers which worked on some other images provided the most awful results.

Anyway, how would you do this ? Any suggestions or advice ?
I have the full resolution images hosted here: http://www.ljsphotographyonline.com/...13572726_vLyw8 if anyone would like to try and play with them.

Thanks in advance, Ljupco

P.S. Password for the full resolution images is: retouching

[Tony W]

hi buso23, not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for. But have you tried blend if?

For the attached images I added cloud layers adjusted size to fill existing sky. Select blending options and adjusted the RGB dark and light points to blend as required. Will require a little work to clone or erase some areas etc.
Hope this of help

Tony

[buso23]

Hi Tony,
That's exactly what I was looking for. I haven't tried the blend if settings and I'm going to try this out right now. Thanks

[buso23]

Hey Tony,
Can you tell me which sliders did you move ? The ones that start with Gray as default or you changed the RGB channels tick boxes that are located in the upper part of the dialog box ? Also is the clouds layer in normal blending mode or ? I've fiddled with different settings and my results are nowhere as good as yours.

[CJ Swartz]

While waiting for Tony to be available, try putting the cloud layer over the bike layer, choose Blend If - Blue in the lower dialogue box, then move sliders on row for "underlying layer" from the left to the right - then click on Alt to separate the "arrow" of the slider and move the left half back to the left a bit to smooth the transition. You may need to mask a bit to remove some of the blue out of the cyclist. We'll see what Tony says

[Tony W]

Apologies for waiting - had to get some sleep then today did some brick laying - wish that in the real world we could have some controls like PS

Hopefully the images will convey settings I used easier than writing them here!

Couple of notes:
1st image you will see that I have erased some of the clouds - I was playing and suspect this might not be neccessary.

You will also notice that there is a curves layer with a layer mask. I just wanted to play with contrast the mask again may be superflous..... but you may require something similar to bring the spokes back as in original.

EDIT: Your questions - Layer set to Normal mode and as you can see I made adjustment to Grey, R, G and B

Hope this of help
Tony

[buso23]

Many thanks Tony, I'm out of the door now, but will try these settings tomorrow. Thanks again. Lj