Image Processing Reference
In-Depth Information
3.6 Touchup Work 5—Freshening Up a
“Dull Sky”
3.6.1 Steps Involved and Description of Work
The exercise discussed in this section involves the following steps:
• Working with selections or masks
• Working with layers
• Working with the FG/BG dialog (foreground and background color) and
the Change Foreground Color window
• Working with the
Gradient tool
and the
Gradient Editor
In the image
dullsky.png
, we will replace the existing blue-gray sky with
a color fill or color gradient on a new layer. To this end, you will use the
Fuzzy
Select tool
(Magic Wand) to select and delete the existing sky. The layer with
the color fill underneath it will then appear through the transparent area of
the next higher layer, the one with the landscape.
3.6.2 Step 1: Selecting an Area by Color,
Deleting It, and Replacing It by Color Fill
Follow these steps to begin:
• Open the image
dullsky.png
in the
SampleImages
folder on the DVD.
• Save it in your exercise folder as
bluesky.xcf
. The XCF file format is required
to save the layers in the image.
• Run a tonality correction (
Colors > Levels
) and freshen up the image's
colors by using the options from the
Colors > Hue-Saturation
or
Color
Balance
menu item.
• Access the
Layers, Channels, and Paths
dialog for the image from the
Windows > Dockable Dialogs
menu. Click the
Create a New Layer
button to
create a new layer. Save it as
Sky
.
• Duplicate the
Background
layer (the one with the landscape) by right-
clicking on the layer in the
Layers
dialog and selecting
Duplicate Layer
.
Save it as
Landscape
. Make the
Background
layer invisible. Add an alpha
channel to the duplicated layer, as the transparency feature is not
available in duplicated backgrounds (see the context menu).
• Use the
Fuzzy Select tool
and click on the color of the sky to select it.
Another method would be to apply the
Select by Color tool
. Be sure to
set the landscape layer to active in the
Layers
dialog. By clicking in the
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