Tutorial · Affinity Photo
How to replace a sky in Affinity Photo with a real sky
7 min read · by the Skybrari Editorial team
Affinity Photo doesn't have a one-click AI sky button — but its Select Sky command (Select menu) plus layer masks gives you total control, and arguably a more convincing result. Here's the manual workflow with a real Skybrari sky.
What you'll need
- Affinity Photo v2 (Select Sky lives in the Select menu).
- A Skybrari panoramic sky JPG matching your scene's light.
The workflow
- Place the sky. With your photo open, choose File → Place and drop the Skybrari JPG in as a new layer above your image. Scale it to cover the frame.
- Select the original sky. Click your photo layer, then Select → Select Sky. Affinity builds a selection of the existing sky.
- Mask the sky layer. With the new sky layer active, add a mask. Invert if needed so the new sky shows only where the old sky was.
- Refine the edge. Use Select → Refine, or paint the mask with a soft brush, to clean the horizon around trees and rooflines.
- Match the light. Add a Curves or HSL adjustment clipped to your foreground so its colour temperature matches the new sky. Export when it reads as one photograph.
Pro tip
Set the new sky layer's blend mode to Normal first to position it, then experiment with a touch of Multiply or a lowered opacity where the old and new skies overlap at the horizon for a softer transition.Why the manual route wins here
One-click tools guess the horizon. Doing it by hand in Affinity means the mask follows your exact skyline, and pairing it with a real golden-hour or cotton-candy sky — with genuine light and cloud detail — produces a composite that holds up at full resolution.
Get the skies
Every Skybrari sky is a real, in-camera panoramic photograph — never AI, never scraped. Browse 1001 skies in the shop (from $3, commercial license included).