UKC

I have a mountain picture which I could have framed slightly better - it could do with a little more sky at the top, to balance out the mountain a little. Effectively adding a small horizontal line of sky the same colour as the bit just below it, and blending it seamlessly, so you can't notice it has been added.

What software could I use to do this? I have Lightroom, but I'm guessing I'd need Photoshop to do that sort of thing?

Thanks,

Chris

In reply to Chris Sansum:

Adding a strip of even blue sky is surprisingly hard to do convincingly. The eye is very sensitive to small variations in tone and hue and the sky is never all the same. I'd be tempted to try to 'stretch' it slightly upwards using a distortion tool. That might work better. Another technique worth trying is... If you want to add say 100px of sky at the top, copy the top 100px from the current sky, flip the copy vertically and then abut the copy to the original. That way you can guarantee a good join at least. I've never tried it so buyer beware!

In reply to Chris Sansum:

I'd use a gradient in photoshop. Save the original file as a new file. Increase the canvas size vertically, create a new layer to put your new sky on, select the correct gradient tool (foreground to background). Pick the sky colour just below the top of your current image as the foreground, then within the tool option, select the background colour as something slightly darker. ( or whatever seems appropriate) Click on the original sky just below the top of what was the original upper band and draw the gradient up to the top of your new canvas.

It may take a few attempts to get it looking convincing but with a bit of trial and error it should be fairly straight forward to do. Good luck.

In reply to Chris Sansum:

Usually pretty easy in Photoshop using autofill - expand your canvas size, select the area, feather the edge and let it go,


Chris

In reply to Chris Sansum:

I'd go for Fraser's gradient tool option, but Marek's stretching will probably work too. You'll need to mask off the area of sky first though, but without too much feather so you don't catch the non-homogenous detail (I.e. Land). Use the marquee tool to mask it off, copy and paste it as a new layer, then stretch the layer using edit>transform. Pretty straightforward if you have Photoshop. Have a play around to see what works best.

In reply to Chris Sansum:

If you've got a lot of pixels to play with, why not copy your original image and reduce the size of one of your copies, cut the mountains out of the small one, the sky out of the big one, and paste them together.

In reply to Chris Sansum:

Send it to me and i'll do it for you.

In reply to Chris Sansum:

Content aware fill in Photoshop will do this in seconds - it's what it was designed for.
Demo here: youtube.com/watch?v=NH0aEp1oDOI&