Preparing the sky for cloud replacement

Now that we've finished winterizing the mountains and the chalet, I want…to replace the sky.…The sky in the plate doesn't silhouette the mountains very well, and I want a…larger sky, so I can move it during my After Effects animation.…I have some beautiful skies in my library that I shot while I was on vacation in…the Virgin Islands, and I'm going to use a couple of them here.…Both of these skies were shot in the Camera Raw format.…Camera Raw is an amazingly flexible format that keeps all of the data the…camera records at the moment a picture is taken.…

I recommend to anyone interested in matte painting that they invest in a camera…capable of taking pictures in that format.…This sky is lit from the correct direction for my scene, and I'm going to make a…couple of adjustments before I open it.…First I am going to raise the highlight and darken the exposure a slight amount.…I'm going to raise the contrast a couple of points and go ahead and open it.…First, I want to get rid of the clouds that I already have on the plate.…