The Three Muses of Theatre

[Manfred M]

This piece of sculpture sits above the entrance of the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, in Vilnius, Lithuanina.

The shot had two flaws that I had not fixed until I acquired Luminar Skylum 4 and its sky replacement software and Topaz Sharpen AI that does a wonderful job of cleaning up small errors in camera motion or focus. I suppose I could have replaced the sky with more traditional means, but just never got around to it because of the slight softness in the image.

[Manfred M]

As a point of interest, this is the SOOC image. The sky is totally uninteresting without any texture at all to bring out.

[mugge]

You must have had an idea that the original image was worth taken. Strangely enough I would have done the same but without knowing why. Is that instinct or something else?
Cheers Ole

[Manfred M]

You must have had an idea that the original image was worth taken. Strangely enough I would have done the same but without knowing why. Is that instinct or something else?
Cheers Ole

In general, I only take images that I feel have potential; it is definitely not instinct, but a deliberate choice. The reason I did not do anything with this image until now is that it was slightly softer than I would like (just a few pixels off). If you look at any of the images I have posted here over the past few years, all are printable to at least A2 size.

I find that often the clouds with boring skies have enough texture that i can bring something out of them. With this image, when I looked at it, there was nothing to work with. A sky substitution was the obvious approach, but I often just sit on those for some time. I have to be in the mood to work on one of those.

I generally only work on images that I can print as a large format. The Topaz AI Sharpen fixed that and now it is printable.

[Stagecoach]

That's certainly a great choice of sky for the image Manfred and interesting that you used Topaz AI with it.

Last night I downloaded a trial version of Topaz AI having heard others praising it. I found it extremely slow and with the three images I tested downsized them to 1800px wide to speed things up. Whilst the results on two were reasonable I was not convinced enough.

Tonight I put through another image, missed focus and possibly a bit of motion blur on a childs face in a race, the result was outstanding. I'll now consider purchasing it.

[pschlute]

I like it. I have not really done any sky replacement work. Think that will be a project this year.

[Manfred M]

That's certainly a great choice of sky for the image Manfred and interesting that you used Topaz AI with it.

Last night I downloaded a trial version of Topaz AI having heard others praising it. I found it extremely slow and with the three images I tested downsized them to 1800px wide to speed things up. Whilst the results on two were reasonable I was not convinced enough.

Tonight I put through another image, missed focus and possibly a bit of motion blur on a childs face in a race, the result was outstanding. I'll now consider purchasing it.

I went through very much the same steps you did. The online reviews of a lot of software plugins are wonderful, but when one downloads the software to test, there is often little to no correlation between what the reviews state and the results I achieve. The Topaz Sharpen AI is definitely an exception here and my results are along the lines of yours. I downloaded the evaluation version and came to understand its limits and capabilities quite quickly.

Yes, it is very slow with large resolution files, but I can always let the software chug along and do something else. That being said, it is generally much faster than getting out to do a retake, if that is even possible.

[Manfred M]

I like it. I have not really done any sky replacement work. Think that will be a project this year.

The trick here is to acquire a decent library of high quality sky shots (raw data) that covers all eventualities; daytime, golden hour, blue hour and different cloud cover in each none, scattered clouds and overcast. They need to be taken from an appropriate perspective (i.e. similar direction as in the where the substitution takes place) at appropriate focal lengths. Building the collection takes time.

The rest is basic selections and masking and fitting the new sky in.

Skylum Luminar is a bit of a "cheat" as the software does the heavy lifting and has a small collection of applicable clouds. It does allow the user to apply his or her own skies as well.