Lucy,

An other good way to replace the sky in photoshop is to do the following:
As you sky is very white, it will be easy to identify it.

1 Add a layer with your sky on it.
2 Double click the background layer and convert it to a normal layer
3 Move the original picture in front of the new sky.
4 Double click the original picture layer
5 In the advanced blending section. Select Blend If Grey. On the slider named This layer, dragged the triangle on the right to the left. You should see your sky pierce through. Slide until the sky is replaced. This means that you want the underlying layer to show through wherever the top layer is whiter that the position of the slider.
6 To soften the merging, press alt and click on the right side of the triangle and drag it to the right. This means that photoshop will add a feather to the blending.
7 If the sky has replaced other areas of the picture that you do not want to be affected, add a layer mask and paint in Black.

I hope this helps. This technique has removed hours of sky replacement time.

Regards
Fabrice



Lucy wrote:
> Had posted a photo of this bridge and received a couple of comments
> saying...too bad the sky isn't blue. So, since I'm learning from
> Gregory Georges book " Fast Digital Photo Techniques", I went to
> the book and found that chapter.
>
> A couple of weeks ago, I had taken some sky and cloud photos and
> saved them in a file for just such an event.
>
> So, I opened them both and replaced the sky! It took me forever to
> work on using the Magic Eraser to remove the little bits between
> the branches, but I think it was worth it..... what do you think?
>
> Could I have done better?
>
> (I've never tried masking....yet)
>
> before: http://www.pbase.com/image/6113984/medium.jpg
>
> I didn't try to clone away the dark foreground leaves on the left
> because last time I tried that I had a blurry area. Any tips would
> be appreciated on getting rid of them, too. Thanks!
>
> And after: http://www.pbase.com/image/6113846/medium.jpg
> --
> Lucy
> Olympus C3020Z
> pbase supporter http://www.pbase.com/lucy