Create Clouds in Photoshop

[larsjames]

Did you ever have a pretty good image and the clouds were blown out? I stumbled on a quick procedure to create realistic clouds while fixing a photo recently. There is the assumption of at least a fundamental knowledge of Photoshop in this demo.

Below is an image with almost non-existent clouds.




Select and delete the sky area; I used the Quick Selection tool and made a few minor adjustments. The checkerboard pattern indicates the deleted (transparent) area.




Create a new layer below the photo layer. Select a light blue foreground color, and white for the background color (see partial toolbar in image below). Then navigate to the Filter menu > Render > Clouds. This new layer will now be filled with a fairly lame cloud pattern using the foreground and background colors.




Here's the magic. With the cloud layer active, navigate to the Edit menu > Transform > Scale. A bounding box is shown. Select the bottom middle box and push it toward the top of the image. Below I show just the cloud layer, but you can do this with the photo layer visible as you will need to stop reducing the vertical size of the cloud pixels before the lowest point in the mountains.




Use Levels or Curves to darken the midtones. Use Hue & Saturation and toggle the Hue slider to get a deeper blue. Or use any number of hue-adjusting functions to edit color and tone.

[Mike Savage]

Thanks James. That is an improvement.

Mike

[kstolting]

Good tip. When I 'm out shooting, I'm always on the lookout for cool skies. Keep a folder full of them and use when needed to replace a good picture with a bad sky.

[Mightec]

Hello James
Could not have come at a better time, just having the same problem, tried your method and it works fine, thanks.

[JulieRoggowPhotography]

That's a helpful tip. Can you make rain too? They're having a draught in Eastern Africa.

[larsjames]

That's a helpful tip. Can you make rain too? They're having a draught in Eastern Africa.

If I could make rain I wouldn't be in Billings, Montana looking for work!

Glad to see this tip works for people. I have a stock pile of cloud photos that I use occasionally, but it's nice to know that I can conjure up some clouds as needed.

[Sylvia]

It looks like a neat trick. I'll have to try it!! Thanks for sharing
Sylvia

[Socrates]

That technique should also work with PSE.

[larsjames]

That technique should also work with PSE.

Thanks, Socrates, about the PSE info. Could you let me know for sure?

[Anne-Sophie]

Thanks very much, James. I usually work with clouds brushes but your technique is really nice !