Let’s talk about Sky Replacement. In some circles, artificially removing the sky in photos and replacing it with a more appealing sky is viewed in a very negative light. Others, specifically landscape photographers, seem to view sky replacement as a necessary evil as you don’t always get the sky you were hoping for, and not everyone has the time to go back to an exotic location for a re-shoot. So, who is right? Is sky replacement evil, or is it just another tool in a photographer’s toolbox?
So, what exactly IS sky replacement? Sky replacement is exactly what it sounds like, using a photo editing tool such as Enlight Quickshot ( iOS) or Luminar 4 ( Mac/Windows) to replace the sky in a photograph with another more interesting (or more “dramatic”) sky. In the past, this was done using Photoshop by masking the sky and then manually loading up a replacement sky into the mask. Sounds simple but in reality, it was anything but mostly due to how much extra editing you had to do in order to make the sky look right. Everything from colors to which direction the shadows were going, all had to be carefully managed in order for the replacement sky to not stand out as a post-capture edit. To help make the final photo look right it was common for a photographer to re-visit the same location on a day when the sky looked better just to ensure that the replacement sky was a good fit. The bottom line is that up…
