Overthehill1

Had been intimidated for a long time by the idea of shooting RAW, but started doing so recently when I bought a new camera. After posting these a few days ago I started wondering about replacing the blah background with something better. At this point, my PP skills are still developing, (sorry for that pun), so I may not be attempting it immediately. Are there programs where you import a selected background, or is it easier to photograph my own background and merge them? Also, since these were taken on an overcast day, what kind of sky would look the most natural?
Thanks.

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Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

Your latter question is most important. The second photo is your best bet to play around with that. The sky in it is an easy selection and with it being selected choose Hue/saturation and choose a hue with the slider (and you can use the lightness or darkness slider too) and let us know.

tommystrat Loc: Bigfork, Montana

Both Photoshop 2021 and Luminar 4 offer very good sky replacement features. Both come with stock sky photos, or you can use your own images and import them. Luminar has a free trial so maybe download that program and give the sky replacement a try and see what develops!

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

Nothing about RAW is intimidating. If fact, the RAW editors make color adjustments easier to do. Many (including me) will often use a raw editor on jpg files because of the ease of use of the tools, and all in one place. This is definitely true with Affinity Photo, which is what I now use almost exclusively.

Replacing "bla" backgrounds is usually pretty easy. Most editors that do layers make it simple with "bla" backgrounds, such as your photo's above. The last picture w/o the branches could have the sky replaced with anything you want in seconds. Complicated backgrounds, such as backgrounds with similar colors to the foreground, or with hair blowing in the wind (or both) and so on make selections more difficult, so start with simple stuff like your eagles here.

As far as where you get your backgrounds, particularly sky's, generally use you own, that's why you take pics, right? I always keyword any of my pictures with a nice or interesting sky as a Background, Sky. This way I can quickly find an appropriate sky of my own for most anything I'm doing. Occasionally I might have something in mind I don't have of my own, for example, lightning or the Milky Way. In those cases I go out and find an appropriate picture. Plenty of sites have free backgrounds you can use. I use Affinity Photo and it has a built in link to UnSplash, that is serves just this purpose. Still, it's way more fun to use your own pics for this stuff.

I highly recommend Affinity Photo, it's a full blown editor suitable for most any task and it costs a whopping one time payment of $24 right now. Don't let the low cost full you, it does it all, and does it well, and you get free upgrades when they come out.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

At the bottom of all your messages you state:

"Do not post pictures or edit in any of the threads I create unless you are specifically invited to."

Since Overthehill guy didn't request anyone edit his pic, I wonder why you did?
Also, It's not clear to me if permission is even needed on this group? I recall reading it was not required unless specifically stated not to do so.

My assumption then is it is OK to do so without permission, as you just did, but not OK if the OP specifically states not to, as you do in all your posts.

Could you clear this up for me?

Rongnongno Loc: FL

You are correct.

I deleted everything but your post.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

My assumption was it is OK in this group to edit pics unless specifically requested not to edit.

You say I'm correct then did the opposite, so I'm still a bit confused, although since you deleted your post
I guess we were both wrong, and it's not OK?

I vaguely recall reading one of the moderators of this group said it was OK, but I could have been dreaming, not to mention my memory sucks.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

There is nothing ambiguous or left to interpretation in the section policies.

If you had complained about another user and not been the op I would have ignored it.

Since I am a moderator I am held at a higher standard.

If you try to make something out of it, good luck.

- Threads are created for a purpose by a single individual. The OP controls the content, not the section moderator (unless the thread does not fit the section). This means if an OP complains to one of the active section moderator the complaint will be reviewed. The moderator's reaction will be dictated by the section policies.

Overthehill1

Not sure where that came from. No problem if any hoggers want to play around with this. I will probably try something simple for now, if I understand Fotoartist correctly, by just changing hue and saturation. Thanks.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

I posted a sample edit w/o asking you first.

Overthehill1

Post away, you must have deleted it before I saw it. Wouldn't mind seeing what can be done with it.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

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Overthehill1

Very nice. Someday I hope to be able to do stuff like that.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

You already can. There is nothing difficult in the images you presented.

Sample sky replacement that includes moving space for the flying eagle.
Note I corrected some image aberration.
Two layers:
► Sky from a landscape
► Eagle (as smart object to be able to resize)
 → Simple mask (easy to make due to the absence of feature in the eagle sky image)
 → Blend mode is 'Normal'
 → Blend if

Small issue:
When viewed 1:1 pixel Fringing around the bird.
When viewed print size (48 inches / 300DPI) fringe is invisible.

Jim-Pops Loc: Granbury, Texas

I wanted to work on your first image. You mentioned it was an overcast day so I used one of my skies I shot that show an overcast day breaking up.
1) I started by opening your photo in Photoshop's camera raw, opened the shadows and increased whites showing the eagle's beauty.
2)Next step was using Photoshop's sky Replacement. When it does its thing you will have a sky mask.
3) Next got one of my skies, I thought to be appropriate for this picture, and placed it just above my eagle.
4) I dragged the sky mask that photoshop previously made and used it with my own sky picture.
5) Now deleted the photoshop sky group as I no longer needed it.
6) I highlighted my mask held Alt/Option key and clicked. You will now just see the mask in B&W. I wanted my white areas cleaner so I got my white brush and choose at the top changed the Mode: to Color Dodge set opacity to around 45% and painted over the whole image. Hit Alt/Option key and clicked to get back to normal setting on the mask.
7) I saw a lot of color fringing in Purple, blue, and yellow. I selected the eagle layer and opened in Camera raw. Selected Defringe and used the eye dropper tool to select the purple fringing color when I did the purple fringing disappeared instantly. Not sure if I could have done the next two steps at the same time but I reopened camera raw filter Selected Defringe and used the eye dropper tool to select the blue fringing color. Did it one more time for the yellow fringing area
8) Last step I saw that some of the limbs were fading out, week. I made a new blank layer. Highlighted and clicked my mask went Select>Inverse moved to my newest blank layer and painted a dark brown over the limbs that needed improvement.

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