A new layer breaths new life into the old dog

The top photo is one that I took in 2005, the other day at a baseball game I shot a sky and some clouds with my Canon G-9. As you can see in the original photo (above) the sky was either blown out in the highlights as well as the fact it was a pretty hazy washed out looking sky.

The car shot was up in Mt Vernon during the spring tulip bloom. That evening was one of my first outings with my NEW Canon 20D SLR. In 2009 these photos are still some of my favorite images.

1. Problem, washed out sky.
2. Solution, replace with new sky.

I opened both images and import the new sky into its own new layer with the car photo. An easy way to do this is choose duplicate layer and then tell it to place it in the opened car photo. I placed the new sky layer on top, and transformed the selection to fit the sky area. I made a sky selection on the original car photo, then inverted the selection, next held down the alt key while clicking on the new layer mask. I made a few adjustments to the mask and the flattened the image when satisfied. Did another curves and color adjustment, sharpened by choosing the filter menu, "other" High Pass, the choose overlay for blend mode. Next Ctrl+Alt +C to add a 1" white matte to background and presto new photo. The old dog breaths new life. As you can see I like lots of color and saturation. That's just me, I like them to pop and be fun.