How to improve a dull photo.

It happens that a photo with an interesting subject does not have the spark you were searching for. This can sometimes be improved by changing the sky. You wil need some basic knowledge of Photoshop and of course a working version of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

An example:

Although the subject is nice enough, the dull sky is spoiling the picture. But because it has a fairly even colour, it can be selected easily with the tool "color select" You can then reverse the selection , whereby you do not have the sky, but the geese and the dike selected. You copy this selection to the clipboard.
What you need now is a more interesting sky. Whenever I go out with my camera, and I see an intersting sky, I take photos, which I save in a file that I named "textures" . So now I go to this file and choose an appropriate sky:



With this new sky open in Photoshop, I give the commend "paste" and the geese with the dike will appear on top of the sky as a new layer.  We now move the geese around on the new sky, once you are happy with the position, you merge the 2 layers to one layer, use the crop tool to cut out any excess sky, and this is your result:

 

A much improved picture, much more interesting to look at.  Easy, is n't it?