Photoshop Sky Replacement | Milky Way Photography

A new Sky Replacement tool was included in the 2021 update for Adobe Photoshop. In this video, I'll show how well it works and compare the final results to the traditional method of using Luminosity Masks.
To learn more about astrophotography, check out my tutorials:
www.peterzelin...

[@Seafox0011]

Its interesting that there's no substitute for putting the time in and doing it the 'old fashioned way'. With most of these 'tools' they will only get you maybe up to 85% to where you want to be but you still need to do the work to get a good final result - often times working back against what these so-called 'labour saving' tools have done to your image. Maybe some of the AI tools will get us further in the near future - and save on the tedium of creating detailed masks like those leafy tree-lines etc. Great video - saved me some time of playing around with this particular tool. Some times you just have to do the hard yards!

[@mrbozoman1]

Luminar 4 is so good for sky replacement .. it works so well ..

[@JohnSmith-qc6bq]

I have tried to use (learn), the Easy Panel for the last year and have finally given up. I sure didn't find it 'easy'. Thank you for your information

[@ChrisMosner]

Thank you, Peter! For what it's worth, I'd love to see more on using luminosity masks to accomplish sky replacement. At the end of the day, I can't live with shortcuts that don't produce quality results. It doesn't matter what the average viewer sees if _ I _ know there are shortcomings in my image. Does your patreon cover sky replacement with luminosity masks?

[@DickInMesaAZ]

Another great video. I think PS's sky replacement tool is a good first step. Luminar's is much better but they've been doing it for a year or two.

[@LeicaCat]

There's a RUclips video where they compared Photoshop's sky replacement with two versions of Luminar and Photoshop came out on top.

[@JohnSmith-qc6bq]

I also find that photoshop''s version is superior to Luminar, certainly in regards to milky way photos

[@fireislandmavic5939]

great video

[@LeicaCat]

Noooo. Of course using the Dodge and Burn tool on the generated mask is actually causing it to look worse. You're creating a hard edge by obliterating the grayscale pixels and forcing the mask edge to pure black or white. Even a one pixel feather would create a more realistic result. Unless you're doing vector graphics, hard transition boundaries will always look fake because, in real life, edges would never fall perfectly on a single pixel boundary. Luminosity masks may be more accurate, but it's not fair to claim the sky replacement tool doesn't do a good job if you're not using it correctly.

[@urosfink1471]

So true about that!

[@akkarparkiamopas3401]

I did try this feature a few days ago with my astro photo. IMO it had done a pretty good job .... wayyy better than the AI luminar sky luminar. However, this feature is not 100% perfect. Fortunately, After we click "OK" , This feature will give us the layer masks and we can tweak what it does not look right from there. That is when the magic begins !

[@voederbietels]

nice but what about complex threes in the forground? i see always this easy forogrounds not the complex ones.

[@easy56wedge]

Yup. Luminosity masks are the way to go...

[@tomllewellyn3496]

Hey, my friend Mobeus!