This rework of an earlier photo is a bit more dramatic than usual as I wanted to play around with the new Sky Replacement feature in Photoshop to create a totally new feel for an old image. The original photograph was one of the very first photos I took while at sea, and if you’re a regular visitor to this site or you’ve read more than one cruise travelogue posts on here before or your eyes have understood what the title of this post says then you’ll know that this was on our Diamond Princess cruise in Asia in 2008. We’d boarded late in the evening and I don’t really have any recollection of when we actually left the port in China but this photograph was snapped from the promenade deck the following day.
Here’s the original photo of the sea off the coast of China from the promenade deck of Diamond Princess.
And here’s the rework of that image.
First step, of course, was to make the Sky Replacement and select the sky you can see. I took some of the ambient colours from the new sky and applied them to the rest of the image then layered over a reasonably transparent red filter to bring the colours from the mostly blue image and new pink/purple-toned elements closer together still and to ensure the highlights on the waves reflected the new sky hues. The underside of the upper part of the promenade deck needed to be darkened to simulate a more accurate evening feel reflecting the sea as opposed to the daylight brightness. Finally, I selected the balcony area as a separate layer as it was still very blue and white, then rendered a red spotlight over it coming from the top left.