Curvemeister Forum

I've been waiting for a chance to ask this question.  At this point in my first class Chris / Zog used the number values off a different sky and replicated them in curves.

I've never understood how to do this.  I've attached an action I made from a description by John Beardsworth Advanced Digital Photography but still don't understand how I can do this in curves or translate it to CM.

Any help would be gratefully received!

Attached are the screen shots of my work on masking - I had a similar problem with the masks not working once in PS, but were fine in CM.

thanks Mandy

and the action!

There are a number of different ways you can do this. 
With masking you can create a mask of the sky and add a different sky image into the layers.  The K mask works quite well for this since there is a significant amount of black in the sky when you go to printing.

You can make a mask on a duplicate layer and max out the sky as we are doing with the CM masks.

To me it comes down to what the original image holds.  If there is already structure and pixels in the sky I try to go with the original sky and enhance it.  If the sky is completely blown out I mask and replace if it helps the image.

Basically you do the same thing in CM that you do for the image of the lake and boats.  Then copy the mask using the copy mask button and paste it into a layer mask in PS.  I then paint on the mask to block out everything except the sky.  At that point you could make the sky anything you wanted...including a nice pink or purple. 

When it comes to masking you have to be willing to play a bit to see what works best.  Post an image you want to do some sky work on and let's play around with it.

Greg