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Tutorials: Creating Dramatic Clouds
Here you will find two easy ways to transform ordinary skies into the pearly gates of heaven. Your colors will be enriched and hidden details will give way to dynamic new dimensions.
Method One:
- Open the image you wish to enhance in Photoshop.
- Duplicate your layer (keyboard shortcut COMMAND + J on a MAC, CTRL + J on a PC).
- While on the new layer you have just created, select Filter>Other>High Pass from the menu at the top of the window. In the dialogue box that appears, bump the slider down to the far right hand side of the bar (for this example I bumped the radius up to 79.2 pixels). Click OK.
- You will notice your image has acquired a dark hazy “overcast” appearance. Don’t worry! While you are still on the layer that you have applied the High Pass to, select the Soft Light option from the Layers Palette’s Blending Mode drop down menu (see below).
- Your image will now acquire new dramatic sensibilities! I recommend playing with the Opacity of the layer to suit the level of intensity you are seeking.
Method Two (a bit more intensity):
- Follow steps 1 and 2 from the above method.
- While on the new layer you have just created, select Image>Adjustments>Curves from the menu at the top of the window. In the dialogue box that appears, select the black eye dropper icon in the bottom right hand side of the dialogue box (see below).
- With the black eye dropper selected, click around in a mid-tone area of the image. This tool is supposed to be used to find the true blacks of the image, and will substitute the color of the area you have clicked with black. You will notice the surrounding areas darken proportionately. What we are trying to do here is pull out information that is in the lightest area of the clouds. Click OK when you have satisfactorily extracted the structure from lighter areas of the clouds.
- While you are still on the layer that you have applied the Curves to, select the Overlay option from the Layers Palette’s Blending Mode drop down menu (just as we did in Step 4 in Method One). This will leave the originally blue areas of the sky relatively unaffected, while having a much greater impact in the white and light gray areas of the clouds. Again, I recommend playing with the Opacity of the layer to suit the level of intensity you are seeking.
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