How To Replace Your Sky in Photoshop AI in Minutes

Pye Jirsa

photoshop ai

Whether it be the weather or timing, the sky might not have turned out as exciting in your shot as you imagined. Photoshop AI provides an easy fix.  Photoshop uses Adobe Sensei AI to let you quickly & easily replace any sky in your images. In this video, I’ll show you how to swap your sky in minutes.  

Video: How To Replace Your Sky in Photoshop AI in Minutes

If you’re an SLR Lounge Premium member, go ahead and download the exercise file. Otherwise, you can load up your own image and follow along the edit.

Edited in Lightroom with Visual Flow > Mood Presets

After applying your basic look in Lightroom, hop into Photoshop.

Photoshop AI Sky Replacement Tool

photoshop ai sky replacement

First, select the sky that best fits the scene. If it’s a sunset scene, be sure to pick a sunset sky.

Next, match the lighting direction. The light in this shot is coming from the left. Use the “Flip” box to flip the sky to match. You can also move the sky around to find the best position.

Now, adjust the brightness and temperature to feel more fitting in the scene.

Once we hit “Done,” the sky replacement gets put into its own folder in the layers. Here, pull back the overall opacity of the new sky until it looks natural and realistic. A sky that’s too vivid will feel Photoshopped.

Lastly, create a shallow gradient mask where the sky meets the surface. This will help clean up the horizon and blend the overall effect with the rest of the image.

Before & After

photoshop ai final

Something I was impressed about Photoshop sky replacement is how quickly the scene was “re-lit” after choosing and/or adjusting the skies position in relation to your image. Sensei AI will automatically adjust the colors and lighting of your image to match the visible sky, making your scene more realistic and believable.

You can also scale the sky images (larger/smaller) and manually make adjustments to the brightness and color temperature if you choose.

Adobe Sneak Peek Sky Replacement Sky Adjustments

The best part is everything you do is saved as separate layers, given you the utmost control afterwards to make adjustments should you need too!

Adobe Sky Replacement Layers

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this article/video! Adobe has been adding incredible Photoshop AI tools to make the editing process more efficient. For an entire course on Lightroom editing, visit SLR Lounge Premium. You can also visit Visual Flow for intuitive Lightroom presets and retouching tools to maximize your workflow and editing needs.

Don’t miss our next episode of Mastering Your Craft on Adorama’s YouTube channel next week! If you want to catch up on all the episodes, make sure you check out our playlist!

Pye Jirsa

Pye Jirsa is the co-founder of SLR Lounge and Lin & Jirsa Photography, one of Southern California's most recognized wedding photography studios. He is the creator of SLR Lounge's full educational library and has trained over 20,000 photographers since 2008 across lighting, posing, editing, and business strategy. He is also the co-creator of Visual Flow Presets and has spoken at WPPI, PPA, CreativeLive, Fstoppers, and Adorama.

More articles by Pye Jirsa →

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