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Photoshop: Adding Clouds

Lesson 25 from: How to Capture and Edit Landscapes in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop

Jared Platt

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Lesson Info

25. Photoshop: Adding Clouds

National park postcards almost always have stunning skies, but what if the conditions aren’t quite right? Adding clouds to create that stand out photo is actually a simple process; Jared shows you how to do so a believable way.

Lesson Info

Photoshop: Adding Clouds

Now, before I deal with the sky I have to find the appropriate clouds. So I'm gonna look at this photograph and I realize that if I were to put real dark storm clouds, this would look dumb. We need to look for light, wispy clouds. Fortunately for you, I already found those. So I'm gonna go back into Lightroom and I'm gonna go to this shot here. It's just a bunch of light, wispy clouds. So I'm choosing this image based on the mountain itself. I can see that it's harsh sunlight, the same kind of sunlight that I'm seeing on this other photograph. Also, you can see that the direction of the light is exactly the same, coming from the right, going to the left. You can see that from the shadows on the mountain. So that's the way I'm gonna choose the sky. I'm just gonna right-click this image and edit it in Photoshop. And once I have this image in Photoshop, I'm just gonna simply collect Command + A to select all and then Command + C to copy that image. Then I'm gonna go to my image here and h...

it Command + V to paste it as a new layer. Now, notice it's a smaller image, but that's okay. We can still transform it, so I'm gonna hit Command + T to transform and I'm just gonna make that the right size for my photograph. The other thing that I'm gonna do is if I grab the opacity down here, of the layer, and turn it down a little bit, then I can see both layers at the same time. I'm gonna hit the Shift key and that allows me to change the actual size of the photograph, so I'm stretching or squashing it. So I'm just squashing the photograph until I have a bunch of clouds up in the sky, exactly where I want them. And that looks great. I'm gonna hit the Enter key, and now I'm gonna take the opacity back up and I'm gonna turn that layer off, because what I need to do now is I need to select the sky.

Ratings and Reviews

James Kitt
 

I wish more people would present this way! Each step from beginning to end demonstrated in short, concise and useful actions. Every tool and technique is something that I either use, (now better) or will start using because I now understand how to use it efficiently. I highly recommend this course!

Fauzan Pojam
 

Finally, a video tutorial that taught me what I've known on basic level and truly explore how to use it properly and what everything means. I've been waiting for something like this for awhile now. Greatly improves my technique now so thank you for this!

Angie Purcell
 

Great class wi with tons of helpful hints for both Lightroom and Photoshop.

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