How To Perform Flawless Sky Replacement In Less Than 60 Seconds?

Clicking the perfect picture seems like an impossible task because every click captures some imperfections that need fixing later. Sky replacement is one of those tasks that photographers perform quite frequently to enhance the look and feel of the shots.

Sometimes, they must change the sky from the images completely, after failing to capture the clouds and the blue color properly. This happens when you shoot in the direction of the sun from a camera having no great dynamic range. When you don’t have a modern camera, you are left with choices like changing the angle and waiting for a later time in the day to shoot the desired pictures.

However, if you don’t want to waste your time by waiting unnecessarily to get the right shots, you can opt for sky replacement services of reputed vendors or trust your photo editing skills. Today, we will tell you how to perform flawless sky replacement within 60 seconds while using Adobe After Effects. Let’s get started:

1.     Create a new composition

Select your video file along with the sky photo for an import, and then put both the files into your timeline. Make sure you set the sky file right below the video file before doing this.

2.     Use Luma Key Effect

Now, use the Luma Key effect on your video file and select Key Out Brighter as the key type. After this, start increasing the threshold until the sky image appears perfectly in the video file. Please note that there is no fixed number for setting the threshold because every clip is different. Once this is done, if you notice a thin white line ruining the overall look, you need to use the Refine Soft Matte.

3.     Use refine soft matte

To fix the white thin line, you have to use a Refine Soft Matte on your video file. To do a proper fixing, you should play with the settings like contrast, decontamination amount, shift edge, and more. Time consumption for this depends on your footage. In case you think there’s more room for improvement, you can modify the Edge Feather setting of the Luma Key effect as well.

4.     Final adjustments

Make the final changes to brightness, saturation, and more to ensure that the sky is appearing naturally in your video file. Once done, export your video file.These 4 steps will help you perform sky replacement within 60 seconds. However, if you feel like adjusting the right settings for every footage is going to take plenty of time, you can consider outsourcing photo editing services.

Keep one thing in mind that you are likely to end up keying out the objects that are part of the sky like telephone lines while doing the sky replacement. It may make an impression on you that this is not correct and needs some fixing, but don’t worry, there are no further changes required. When you start adjusting the brightness for the sake of making the sky bright and beautiful, small objects are likely to disappear, which makes your image look cleaner and eye-pleasing.

Additional tips:

• Always track the movement of a moving shot before applying it to the cloud layer.
• If you download a sky image from the internet, add a Gaussian Blur to remove the crispness to make it look natural.
• While filming a video, if you feel that you’ll have to make changes ultimately, it is better to click multiple images of a well-exposed sky for later use.

Wrapping up:

Photography can be done by anybody, but not everyone can master this art because a professional photographer can point out so many imperfections that a common person can’t even think of.

With the help of this blog, we have told you how to do seamless sky replacement within 60 seconds. All the steps are super easy and will help you achieve the desired results. But it would be great if you go for the sky replacement services of reputed vendors because they have a team of experts that will do the sky replacement for a multitude of images more quickly.

When you decide to outsource photo editing services to a renowned third-party company, you are likely to get many additional services like sky color addition, background changing, sky color changing, removal of unwanted objects, sky perspective correction, color cast removal services, sky image enhancement, sky image stitching services, and more.

Well, choosing a sky replacement service of esteemed providers or doing the editing on your own depends on your needs and preferences. But it is highly advisable to take the importance of sky replacement seriously because it can do wonders for you in many ways. For example, you can make your property images awesome while selling or leasing. Similarly, if you are a car dealer, you can make the images of your cars picture-perfect to boost their sales and do better promotions.