B&W & Composites

[frg]

http://www.francis.smugmug.com/photos/177195249-L.jpg
Wife took this with her sony p200 in Morocco , the sky was a uniform bland grey. anyway thought I'd try to some clouds in ...... my question is how do you minimize that pasted on look......

[pyrtek]

my question is how do you minimize that pasted on look......

That depends on how you made the composite. I assume, though, that a mask was
involved at some point. Try running one of the following filters on the mask:

o maximize (with a radius of 1 - 2 pixels)
o minimize (same as above)


You'll see which of those you need when you try them. After that, run a Gaussian
blur on the mask with a small radius.

Another issue is the sky itself. You replaced a very bland sky with quite a dramatic
one. It looks out of place, because it's too dramatic. Tone it down a bit and it
will fit in better.

It's difficult to give any more specific help without knowing exactly what you did.

[Richard]

The main problem I see here is that it looks as if the clouds are covering the sun in the sky, yet the light on the building does not look as if it is coming from behind. It's a subtle thing, but enough to set off the cognitive alarms. As Bernard suggested, a different sky might be the solution.

Regards,

[pathfinder]

:agree :agree

[rdlugosz]

Yep - the biggest issue here is the inconsistent direction of light.

One suggestion I've heard is to maintain your own "Sky Library" (which would be a great use of Lightroom's Collection features...). Just add any pictures you've got that contain mostly sky & then you'll have a variety to choose from the next time. I'd recommend adding other tags that describe the type of sky (clear, cloudy, dramatic, etc.) as well as the direction of light (back lit, front lit, left, right, sunset, etc.).

good luck.

[claudermilk]

I'm certainly no expert here, but a couple of quick ideas. Feather the mask a coupe of pixels (same idea as the Gaussian Blur--it eliminates the hard edge). Second idea is try rotating the sky 180-deg, puts that break in the clouds in a better poisition; I have no idea if that will work, but it's worth a shot.

[frg]

Thanks for all the advice . now that you mention it I see what you mean by direction of the light....... I'll see if I can find some "clouds with more consistent lighing and try out the techniques you mentioned!