Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

That is jaw-dropping beautiful, Mike!

.

Curmudgeon Loc: SE Arizona

I know one of the reasons to post here for the excellent critiques that are provided. Lacking the artist's eye I often have a problem seeing what is pointed out in the comments. Keni, I simply like it, even with all the flaws and that's all that matters to me.

Did you use a sky replacement tool or did you do it in PS?

kenievans Loc: Dallas

Mike I think you did a beautiful job on it and I appreciate the tutorial. The way I do a sky replacement does produce a reflection in the water but I removed most of it. I didn't like the way mine looked but I do like yours. Here is another version of that shot with a different sky, one that was not taken with my cellphone. I think it loses some of the drama the other sky had but the light direction is better. Thank you for your help.

(Download)

kenievans Loc: Dallas

Thank you sir. I liked it too or I wouldn't have posted it but like you I still need to develop a better eye for these kinds of issues.

I use PS for the sky replacement and there is very little masking involved. I take the sky photo and add it as a layer, duplicate the layer then flip the duplicate vertically. I then use free transform to move the flipped version below the original sky layer so I have a mirror image. Final step is to merge the two sky layers and set it to blend mode Multiply. I hold down the shift key and select both sky layers then right click on one of the layers and select Merge Layers. I can then move and resize the merged sky layer to where it looks best. Its a lot easier than it sounds.