Photoshop 2021 Sky Replacement Tool - Use Sky Replacement to Fix a Burnt Out Sky
One of the tools recently added to Photoshop was a new AI-based sky replacement feature. Similar to the headline feature in Luminar, it allows you to replace a sky without complex masking. While sky replacement has gotten something of a bad name recently, it can actually be useful for quickly fixing an otherwise problematic image. In this case, I use it to replace an overexposed sky with a similar one and salvage a photo with a minimal amount of work.
There are lots of useful features in Photoshop’s sky replacement tool. It allows you to edit the mask within the tool, and it also has a nice visual sky browser. One of the other key features is the fact that it will export back to photoshop as layers, allowing you to further tweak the image. One thing to note, if you’re familiar with the sky replacement feature in Luminar, is that the default skies in Luminar are quite low res and often appear pixelated. The ones in Photoshop don’t have that issue if you’re woking on an image of 24mp or less. It may be an issue for larger images and you may need to use your own sky. The quality is noticeably better though.
Below is the final photo when finished. While it’s not the best composition in the world (I would have liked it to be wider, but it was the widest lens I had at the time) it is a useable photo, whereas previously the burnt out clouds in the sky would have been too much of an issue. The original image was shot using. Canon 5D Mark 1 back in 2006, so dynamic range on that camera was limited. I had recovered the highlights as much as possible too, so replacing the sky was the easiest option.
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