Color Range - Selection

Next we will learn about the selection technique using 'Color Range' . Let's change the sky of this picture.

go to Select > Color Range. choose eyedropper with plus sign (+) which mean adding selection. Click in the sky area , on the map you'll see black and white, where the white side is the sky we have been selected. Slide the Fuziness to the right or left untill the color in the map becoming black and white solid, minimize grey area and then click OK.

Next, we'll inverse the selection by Shift + Ctrl + i or you may go to select > inverse, Press Ctrl + J to duplicate with selected area. if its correct then you'll have a new duplicated layer with sky erased, youl see the squares which indicates the transparent area.

On the top most layer, point the cursor to thumbnail and press Ctrl, wait until the tiny square show up then left - click it (Ctrl + click), we use it to load the selection the layer. We're going to change the existing sky with a new one, so we have to inverse the selection by pressing Shift + Ctrl + i.

Open the file we're going to use as a new sky. Press Ctrl + A, Ctrl + C then go back to the first picture, with top most layer still selected, go to edit > paste into. if its correct there will be created a new masked layer. set the position by hit Ctrl + T, click OK when you're done.

Last, take a look at the trees, we'll see the white 'halo', how to reduce them? click the mask of the top most layer then go to filter>blur>gaussian blur, set the value to 2 px. then go to Filter > Other > Maximum and set the value to 2 px.