I like the rim light and the form of the statue - it's quite an iconic silhouette. But the background is undoubtedly a bit too cluttered. I couldn't get any closer or lower to take the photo, as the area was cordoned off and a policewoman standing there! (All to do with the Tall Ships Race a couple of years back). So...what to do?Well, I also have this attractive sky picture. (It's actually dawn over the Sea of Galilee, but could just as easily be sunset over the River Mersey... ?)
In order to blend the two images together I had to lift the silhouette off its background and place it on the 'new' sunset sky. Easier said than done, to make it look realistic! You need a very precise selection around the part of the image you want to move.So, firstly working with the photo of Billy Fury, I needed to make a selection right to the edges of the silhoutted statue. I have found that for me the easiest way of making a selection in this kind of scenario is to use Photoshop's 'Magic Wand' tool to highlight the sky behind the statue. The selection can then be tidied up and made more accurate by clicking on the 'Edit in Quick Mask Mode' icon (bottom of tools palette) to make the selected area coloured, and then using the brush tool (with black as the foreground colour) to paint more into the selection or alternatively (with white as the foreground colour) to subtract from the selection. It's easy to toggle between the modes and to vary the size of the brush to get it neat.
I only have the basic Photoshop CS, and that doesn't have a 'Refine Edge' facility but using Select - Modify - Contract, set to 2 or 3 pixels, you can pull the selection in fractionally. Using 'Create a New Layer' and 'Apply Image' I pasted the cut-out statue onto a transparent layer (which isolates the statue from its original background.) Then using the Move tool I dragged it onto my sunset sky background photo. Resizing and repositioning the image to fit the background is easy enough, by dragging the 'handles' around the statue image.
I then flattened the image, slightly adjusted the whole new image using Adjustments - Levels and cropped it, before adding a stroke border.
The finished picture may not look wholly realistic, but it gives the silhouette more impact, I think. A similar technique can be used to drag a picture onto any nice sky - blue with white fluffy clouds, storm clouds or whatever. But I find this only really works for images that have strong edges. For example, it is difficult to move a picture with trees on the skyline because you can't get a good enough selection on the delicate edges. In my picture above, the rim lighting works quite well, in itself sharply defining the shape of the statue. But with some subjects the precise selection necessary to drag the image onto the new background leaves the composite image looking very much 'pasted on' and unreal.
The method outlined is only one of several ways to achieve much the same outcome in Photoshop. As time goes on and they continue to refine Photoshop, I have no doubt it will all become much easier. As it is, we just have to be thoughtful about what images we can give this kind of treatment to.
So, not a cure-all for every dull sky by any means, but sometimes this can be a trick worth trying. Far better, as always, to try and get good results straight out of your camera! Though we all know that English weather, in particular, can be prone to flat grey or white skies.
