From the course: Photoshop 2021 New Features

Select > Sky - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2021 New Features

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Select > Sky

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- [presenter] In this chapter, we'll take a look at a couple of new commands that allow you to select and replace skies. And so here we are looking at a photograph from the Dreamstime image library about which you get to learn more and get some great deals at dreamstime.com/deke. Now, these kids are looking awesome, this is a dynamic shot, but the sky is pretty darn flat. And so what I'm going to do is press the Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac to get rid of that URL. Notice that the photographic background is selected here inside the Layers panel, at which point I'll go up to the select menu and choose sky. That's all there is to it and a few moments later, Photoshop will go ahead and select that sky and notice that it's able to differentiate, not only fine details such as the grass, but also this blue jeans. All right, now, I'll go ahead and drop down to this black and white circle at the bottom of the Layers panel and click in order to bring up this popup menu. I could apply any adjustment layers such as vibrance, brightness contrast, what have you. I'm going to go ahead and add a gradient however. So I'll choose the gradient command in order to bring up the Gradient Fill dialog box, I'll click on this down, pointing arrow head, expand this basics folder, and select this item right here, black, white. And then I'll click off this little popup panel to hide it. Now, I want the gradient to go in the other direction, so I'll turn on the reverse checkbox and then I'll go ahead and click there okay. That's a little bit much so I'll change the blend mode from normal to either overlay or soft light. And just to give you sense for what we've done here, this is the original version of the photograph, and this is the new version, thanks to that gradient layer. Now, if you really want to gauge the accuracy of that selection, then notice this layer mask thumbnail here inside the Layers panel. I'll go ahead and Alt click on it, that would be an option click on the Mac in order to see that mask independently of the image. And so bear in mind, any place where we're seeing white is where Photoshop selected this guy, anything that's black, Photoshop did not select. And so notice this blue jeans once again, Photoshop has done a pretty darn good job of distinguishing them from the background sky although there is a little bit of selection seeping in and then notice down here at the bottom of the image that Photoshop is capable of distinguishing a fair number of those individual blades of grass. All right, so let's just go ahead and press Control zero or Command zero in order to zoom out and that is how you select a sky just by going up to the select menu and choosing the sky command here inside Photoshop 2021.

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