How to use a very useful filter

I have recently downloaded a free filter from http://yaelmaritz.com/extras.php that I thought might be handy when I have photographs with horribly blown out white skies. Today I have had a chance to play with that filter and since the picture I chose was far too complex for my usual methods of replacing skies I thought I might share the steps I took. You may find them useful when you come to try this yourself. (I work with Photoshop Elements 9)
Here is the picture I worked with. As you can see, the sky is filled with white clouds which were very bright. The camera had been set to brighten the bird and so made the background even more dazzling. This meant that the photo has stayed in my collection and as never been shown to anyone.

With all those twigs and leaves you can understand how difficult it may be to replace the background so lets see what my new "Kill white" filter will do.
First of all I created a duplicate layer (Ctrl + J).
Since there is white in the bird and in the twigs that are in focus I needed to make sure the filter did not remove any white from them. So I selected them. To do this I chose the Quick Selection Tool and made sure that the tool was set to add to the selection.

Now I stroked along the bird and the thin branches and the leaves making sure that I was including all the elements that I did not want to have any white removed. The soft focus and minor twiggy bits I did not save. Then I clicked on the "subtract from the selection button (to the right of the one the red arrow is pointing to) and removed from selecting the bits of sky between the bird and the twig that had been included. I had to zoom in tight to see what I was doing. Because the selection had taken time to refine I didn't want to lose it so I clicked on Select (Menu bar) and then on "Save Selection" and gave a name as requested by the drop down box. "bird"
After doing that I realised that I needed to have a blue sky to replace the white that I was going to remove. It was just as well the selection had been saved because now I have to "deselect" !
After clicking on the "eye" on the left of the layer to make it invisible, I clicked on the background layer in the Layers Palette and then added a blank layer by clicking on the "create a new layer" button (hover over the buttons and text will appear).
With a light shade of sky blue and a very light shade of the same colour I then used the gradient tool to create the sky - drag from about a third of the way down from the top right down to the bottom of the picture area with the darker colour to be at the top. If it is lighter at the top than the bottom just Ctrl +Z to undo what you have done and change the background and foreground colours by clicking on the tiny two way arrow, then drag down the image again.
Click on the empty box to replace the "eye" (the visibility) for the layer. The bird picture now hides the sky layer. Now to use that new filter! First of all I needed to put my selection around the bird and branches so I clicked on "Select" then on "Load Selection" and said "OK" to the bird selection. I I now applied the filter it would affect inside that selection - that was not what I wanted! Click on Select and then on "Inverse" to change the selection to the sky area.

 

This is what happened next.

How amazing is that? But there is a problem. There are a few little bits that were missed. The red arrows point to two of them. Time for another little technique.
Now I needed to create a mask and paint away those white bits.

When a mask is put onto a layer the background and foreground colours in the tools palette change to black and white. The black needs to be the forground colour. Use the little two way arrows to change it if white is the foreground colour. I had to zoom in very tight to see what I was doing and with a small soft edged brush painted away those white bits.

The results are worth it.

The picture needs to be flattened before it can be saved as a .jpg.

You can flatten in a few ways, right click in the layers palette and click Flatten Image or click on the symbol indicated in the image above and then click on Flatten Image OR go to the menu bar and click on Layer then on Flatten Image.
If I put the before and after images side by side you can see the difference.

Do you think you could improve one of your images the same way? I suggest you download the Killwhite filter, follow the instructions that come with it to install it in your program and see if you can follow my steps. If you have photos of skies (I have many!) one could be resized and used in place of the gradient layer.
If you have problems, drop me a line joanren@gmail.com
Have fun!
AJ