Radiant holes

[Eigil Skovgaard]

Hi,

I have this sky, light and blue, but only visible through the foliage of trees in the background, i.e. hundreds of glaring (white) spots with sky-blue fringes. This is after the tress have been managed and look good.

How do I "turn off" the distracting white spots (in Photoshop)?

I have tried to offset a copy-layer of the trees behind the "holes", but I can't find the right combination of blend mode - or sliders in fx.

I imagine a solution that remove the whites and blues and blends in the solid folio in a convincing way - as if the trees went on for ever and let no sky pass through.

Who knows the most wonderful solution to this problem?

[Repairman]

Re: Radiant holes

If you have the latest versions of PS you can make a quick mask of the white gaps (e.g. magic wand) and then use the Properties function to both soften and expand (or contract) the mask edge. You can use an offset layer of the foliage to show through the gaps. I'd leave a few gaps though for a natural look.

[Eigil Skovgaard]

Re: Radiant holes

Hi Repairman,
This actually worked. I tiled the same background, so only caracteristic foliage would show through (flying trunks attract the eye).
I had to follow up on the mask to remove leaves growing directly out of the trunks - also I had to mask off the trunks and branches where they were unintentionally covered by the primary selection and edge refinement. Trying to detect which shadows are artificial and which are natural in the deep of the forest reveals a lot of stuff that would have been deemed artificial - if you didn't know better. A never ending process to refine this mask. Love it.
My mistake was to mask the background and give it minus Clarity in Camera Raw. I think this attemt to separate the background made the spots of light more prominent.
Thank you for the recipe.
Eigil