Cloudy Sky

This tutorial will show you one way of generating reasnonably realistic looking clouds in Adobe Photoshop. There are probably better cloud tutorials out there, but this method is reasonably quick and easy to master.

1. Create a new document, with a white background and create a new layer. I’m using a small 400×200 image for this example, but the larger you work, the better your clouds are going to look. Remember, you can always scale down later.

2. Now select the two primary colors that are going to make up your sky and set those as your foreground and background colors. I’m using #B6D2E6 and #668FAD.

3. Now to fo Filter - Render - Clouds

4. After you’ve done this, go to Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur and enter an ammount around 15.

clouds

5. Now we’re ready to start painting on our clouds. Create a new layer and set the foreground color to white and draw the lightest edge of your clouds with a small, hard brush, about 5-8px in size.

clouds

6. Using the eyedropper tool (hit alt when in the paintbrush tool), select darker colors from the sky layer beneath and keep creating darker lines behind the white one you just did. You may also need to bring in some darker colors from your palette.

clouds

5. Once you’ve built up 4 or 5 lines of color, switch to the smudge tool and select a soft edged brush of about 15px and gradually start blending the colors together, being sure to keep the hard edge along the far side. Keep your brush strokes small and circular. This part is easier to do if you have a tablet, but you can do it just as well with a mouse and a steady hand.

6. Switch to a larger brush and continue blending the cloud into the background sky layer.

clouds

7. Create several more layers and repeat the process, to build up a nice, fluffy cloud with a lot of depth.

clouds

8. Now we’ll go back and finish up our sky. Create a new layer under the original cloud layer (not the sky layer) and, using a large, soft, low-opacity brush, airbrush some softer, lighter colors on to it, particularly around the edge of the cloud.

clouds

9. Finally, create a layer above the clouds and softly airbrush over the cloudes themselves with a large, soft white brush (around 30px or so). This shouldn’t be a solid fill, it should be thin and whispy. Once you’ve done this,s et the layer mode to Linier Dodge and adjust the opacity (anywhere from 20-60%) to give the clouds a nice, soft glow and get rid of some of the harsh contrast (unless you like that look).

clouds

There you have it. This was just a quick exmaple. As you can see, it could probably use some more work, because the key ingredient to pulling off techniques like this is to take your time and be patient. You may have to dedicate several hours to painting your clouds, and they don’t always turn out right the first time through, but you’ll be rewarded for your efforts in the end.

Added Saturday, May 13th, 2006 at 8:57 pm under Drawing & Painting.