Photoshop: Rectangle Marquee Tool

Next, we're going to focus on the isolation of an object using the rectangle marquee tool. This is a great tool to use when you're playing around with skies. Often you'll find your sky's are over or underexposed or simply boring. With this tool you can insert the sky from your most impressive photos. Let's begin.

Again, if you wish you can use the images in this guide as a tool to help you practice this assignment. To begin take the following image.

This picture of a beach is a great example of a photograph that this technique will work well with because the horizon is flat.

Now open this photograph as well

In the first image use the rectangle marquee tool to highlight the sky of the beach picture. Again click on 'select' then 'feather' and set the option to '2'.

Now copy and paste the sky from the other picture onto the first picture. The results should look as follows

Now, because there are some major differences in lighting in the two different pictures which were placed on top of each other, we're going to make this photograph black and white to make those elements less noticeable. To do this select one of the layers then click on 'image' then 'adjustments' then 'desaturate'. Do the same for the second layer. Now both of your layers are black and white.

Now you also will want to adjust both the brightness and contrast of each of your two layers. Select layer 1 and then click 'image' then 'adjustments' then 'brightness / Contrast'. Adjust each layer to your desired settings. The result should look as follows

Other Photography Articles of interest:
Common Photoshop shortcuts
Photoshop: Making circle selections
Creating an artificial depth of field
Magnetic lasso tool