Replacing artificial background with sky

Hi everyone,

This image is from Pendon Museum:
Attachment 132616

You can see that the model in the foreground is beautiful but the background is the room's ceiling. I want to replace that ceiling with an overcast sky image to match the lighting of the model.

The problem is how to do that as automatically as possible without hand-painting all the fiddly edges where "sky" meets model - especially behind the trees!

I've been playing with the colour selection feature in the Photo tool but without much success.

Do you have any tips or suggestions about the least painful way to do it?

@PhilM, surely you can also fiddle with the Mask Painter and Erase Tools with the Erase background button?
Fiddling out the rest is part of the fun.


Acorn

Hi Acorn,

Thanks. Yes, I should have had more faith in the background erase function! I was avoiding it because I didn't think it would handle the holes in the trees very well.

After background erase I had to repaint the ridge line and magic-erase an artefact at the end of the street. The trees are a bit fuzzy around the edges but I think it looks OK:

Attachment 132617

Looks convincing.

PhilM, you can then use the Clone/Stamp to sharpen up some of the outer leaves.
The aerial upright needs a but more of a sharp edge but all good otherwise.

You can almost see Gaddesden Place in the distance.

I assume you visited Pendon Museum - https://pendonmuseum.com/3d-photograph-collection.

Acorn

Very nice scene and the new sky looks pretty good but there's still a bit of ceiling to be seen at the right (and a bit at the left) side of the left chimney. There's also some left between the tree on the right and the roof.

Is that an aerial on top of the middle chimney? It looks a bit off, especially with the puff of cloud at the top.

Improvements as suggested, thanks (but I left the cloud alone):
Attachment 132619

Yes, Acorn, I visited Pendon on Saturday for the first time. It's a wonderful, inspirational place if you're a GWR railway modeller.

I took some focus stacks using my SmartPhone and merged them using (ahem) Affinity Photo to give greater depth of field. Camelot / Designer Pro sadly doesn't have that ability yet.

I have a few more stacks to process.

that is looking good :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PhilM

Improvements as suggested, thanks (but I left the cloud alone):
Attachment 132619

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Looks crispier now.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PhilM

Improvements as suggested, thanks (but I left the cloud alone):
Attachment 132619

Yes, Acorn, I visited Pendon on Saturday for the first time. It's a wonderful, inspirational place if you're a GWR railway modeller.

I took some focus stacks using my SmartPhone and merged them using (ahem) Affinity Photo to give greater depth of field. Camelot / Designer Pro sadly doesn't have that ability yet.

I have a few more stacks to process.

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That really looks good @philm. A great job and representation of what Pro + can do. I wish I had a little more time to really delve into the photo components of Xara. One of these days I’ll retire a few clients and work on photos.
-Bill

Nice to see you are finally learning the program.

Of course I'm joking, you have the ULTIMATE KNOWLEDGE !!!!

Marc