Help/advice with editing this photo

WryTheBteam · Jan 6, 2013

Hey ppl first of all it took a while to figure out where to post this, hope its in the right place

I was down at a beach at night aiming for some long exposures, i got some good frames in then decided id have a go at walking into a pool and half submerging my tripod.

Hindsight is a *****, after i took the shot i realised my tripod was sinking into the sand while the shutter was open haha.

What id like to know is how to adjust the photo to get rid of the dark shadow above the rocks, the shadow on the bottom edges of the rocks looks pretty cool and airy in my eyes so id like to retain that..

I have Lightroom 3 and CS4, but my PS skills are lacking since i have not needed to use it for so long having lightroom

Buckster · Jan 7, 2013

If it were me, I'd mask out the rocks from the sky and then drop in a new sky that's similar. It's a good clean high-contrast edge, so it'd be an easy mask.

WryTheBteam · Jan 7, 2013

Ok cool thanks for that, i do have a similar sky and will do some research on how to mask/drop in tomorrow

Forkie · Jan 7, 2013

In Photoshop:

1. With your photo as the background layer, right-click the layer and click "layer from background".
2. Duplicate that layer so you have two layers exactly the same.
3. Hide the uppermost layer (click the little eye)
4. On the bottom layer select all of it with a selection marquee (select all)
5. Under "Edit", select Transform > Scale
6. Grab the bottom middle anchor and drag it down until the "ghost mountains" fall below the horizon and hit enter.
7. Unhide your hidden top layer
8. Mask out the sky on that layer (or simply erase it with the eraser if you like)
9. The bottom stretched-out sky should now be visible and the ghost mountains are not, because they are hidden below the horizon and covered by the part of the top layer that hasn't been masked out.
10. Good luck!

EDIT: Looks like I didn't stretch it far enough in my example and messed up the masking (there's a little step in the sea!) but you get the idea!