Like many, I have some very nice images of eagles, cranes, etc with featureless skies.
Yes, blue skies (no clouds) is better than gray skies but nice sky with clouds makes a huge difference.
The original image had an ALL blue sky, no clouds, featureless. The crane had nice light on him from the sunrise but a featureless blue sky BG.
In the image posted, the light on the bird is "real" but I simply replaced the sky from a sky file acquired from Layer Cake Elements. Please PM me if you want more info on the sky files. I also take my own sky images to use in replacements.
Interesting concept, however, there just doesn't seem to be enoough detail on the sandy to do it justice, that one wing appears solid black to me. And with his beak blending in with the dark cloud in the back, it looks like he is beakless. For what it's worth, it does look pretty natural. However, if it works for you, that's all that counts!
Thanks Jo.... it may be your monitor, not sure , as I dont see what you are describing at all. Plenty of detail in the beak and the wings. The wing is not close to being black on my end.
It may have a sky replacement (fake as you call it) but I have sold "a few" to justify the effort. Otherwise, the original image has no appeal to a buyer with featureless skies. The point is you can salvage images like this and make them salable vs having it languish on your hard drive or delete it.
It would work for me if the lighting on the bird matched the lighting on the clouds. The sun coming up from the lower left would not cast a shadow of the bird's neck on the underbelly of the bird. Nor would there be sunlight on the left side of the bird's head.
Try flipping the background upside-down and then paste the bird into the background.
I think it works fairly nicely, Mark, with one minor nit. I have to confess that when I first read your explanation and looked at the image, my first thought was exactly what tony (Imagemaster) mentioned- that the lighting on the crane didn't quite match it's new background. Just to increase the believability, why not take it that small percentage further and do some careful adjustments on the bird?
