Photoshop ...

I have just assembled a nice panorama of 10 images - when I took them I even remembered to take extras for the two mountain peaks but forgot the sky in between them!

I need to fill in some sky - clear blue and no clouds. I am using Photoshop Elements but cannot get a seamless transition and what ever I try leaves an obvious seam.

Any suggestions/ideas/methods?

Layers are your friend

Here are some (old) tutorials I wrote on layers:
* http://www.photon.me.uk/PS/ps_layers_tutorial_1.htm
* http://www.photon.me.uk/PS/pslayerstutorial.htm

Also, Googling for sky replacements:
* http://www.essential-photoshop-elements.com/replace-the-sky.html
* http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pselements/ss/replacedullsky.htm

(But those Googled results I would personally use Layers to remove the dud sky rather than erasing!! Using a layer and mask allows you to tweak any nasty transitions.)

BTW, which version of Elements?

Matt

Thanks, I did try using layers to build a new sky but still cannot get it sorted. I will have a read through when my connection is better!

The sky I have - in the places it is, is perfect, I just need to extend it!

I have just had a thought - put the existing into a layer and stretch it. will it work I wonder

Cloning? ( with varying opacity )

Sorry, is Elements actually building the panorama properly or is the missing sky a problem?

If not, as Smeggy suggests cloning from elsewhere should be able to fill it it

It is Elements 9

Panorama is built in Autostitch ... it is the missing sky I have the problem with

Have tried Cloning but cannot get the transitions right - there is always a straight line or a wide patch that stands out. I spent 4 hours trying various ways when my connection was down - without much success.

The image here (to show the problem) is just 6 of them four across with the two mountain tops. It is the black at the top I want to replace with sky - I have tried deleting the black, replacing with light blue and working from there and other ways. The full version is twice the size and I have already reduced this from a 12MB JPG.

Yes, that really is what the sky was like - clear blue with not a cloud in sight.

What is needed is a two dimensional gradient tool!

DO you have another sky you could use behind the mountains instead of the existing blue one? If so I think you could make a new canvas cut and paste mountains and foreground into it and replace the sky with a better(complete) one.
Since you are also missing quite a bit of foreground as well I am not sure it is really worthwhile. Might be better to chalk this one down to experience.

Should be able to get close by changing the opacity and flow of the cloning to blend it together, and use a blend tool ??

OK, I can't replicate with this lo-res file, but I think there is enough sky on the horizontal planes to allow you to clone.

Just pick a piece of empty sky and clone across exactly horizontally, it will certainly take a little while, play about with brush sizes, remember to use a soft brush & CTRL-Z to quick delete any mistakes will be handy


Apart from that, yeah you might just wanna let this one go...

It looks like you have enough pieces to make one full narrow rectangle from the top of the sky (above the right hand peak) down to the lowest part (in the middle of the two). If the clone fill etc fails, I'd consider replacing all the sky with a new one made from this rectangle.

This would make it standard right the way across, instead of having bands of different gradient from the panorama stitching.

Actually I just tried this and there are variations right across the sky. Banding I guess you'd call it. Did you have a polarising filter on when you took these?

Plan B.
Why not recreate a sky using a gradient fill with colours picked directly from your photo. You have no clouds in the sky so this could look quite natural.

eg:






Photoshop Gradient Link

Thanks all.

Richandfleur seems to have cracked it. I might add a left to centre to right gradient of very light blue underneath just to vary the tone of the sky slightly

The sample may not be the best of the image but it illustrated the problem and was one to work on. With all ten together it is a little more interesting - when I can get the stitching order I want. One large hill on each side funnelling down a valley to a lake

I also have a couple more with the same problem but started with that as it was probably the easiest.

I have learnt that I need to take some of the sky with just a small amount of landscape to fill the gaps and possibly use the camera in portrait mode to allow for some extra cropping.


Without sorting out the sky this is the basic image - well reduced in size ...

Yes, you'll end up with more shots to merge, but more fat to play with too.

Looking good!

I might have almost mastered the method.

I now need access to my wife's PC - mine runs out of memory when doing the high resolution stitching.

How does this look? Not the composition but the revised Sky?




There is one area where the stitching has resulted in some blurring which I need to resolve.

Looks good! As was mentioned it would be a lot more majestic with some foreground, but heyho.