Skies “R” Us – pretty-up your pictures with blue skies & clouds

Living in Oregon means one thing you can always count on – plenty of rain.  Of course, you can’t have rain without clouds – so, many times, even if it’s not raining, you’re going to have overcast skies.  However, if you’re like most people, you’d like to see pictures with some blue sky and pretty clouds in them.  Now, let me state for the record – we do have beautiful blue skies with puffy white clouds in Oregon – just not as often as we’d like, especially outside of Summer.

However, all is not lost!  There’s actually a couple of easy ways to go about fixing your sky.  The first way, is to use Photoshop’s Filter>Render>Clouds function.  Here’s what you do:

• First add a blank layer above your background layer. 
• Make sure that your color picker is set to a shade of sky blue on the top and white on the bottom. 
• Take your lasso tool and [with the blank layer activated] draw areas in the sky where you would like to see some blue sky and clouds.
• Then go to Select>Feather>and set a very soft edge – around 70.
• Next, go to Filter>Render>Clouds>and click OK 
• It will probably look too bright – so,while the cloud layer is active, lower the opacity of the layer until you like what you see.
• If you want to you can also take your brush tool and add a little more sky or clouds and/or blur the cloud layer a little

Overall this gives a pretty good sky feeling.  Give it a try and see what you think.

There’s also another way that takes a little more work to blend in – but I guarantee you that if you didn’t think the first approach looked good enough, you’ll love this one.  Over the years I’ve taken some odd pictures.  My wife will attest to the fact that I will often just point my camera up and take a picture of the sky.  I then mutter something like “nice clouds” and then she never sees the picture again – she thinks.  I actually keep a folder of “sky/cloud” images that I use to add to other pictures.  Here’s how I go about it:

• After I’ve opened up the background image [the one that I'm going to add the sky to] I open up one of my sky images.
• I then click and drag the sky image over the background image and lower its opacity so I can see the background image under it.
• The next thing is to blend in the top image over the background image. 
• You can use a soft-edged eraser on the edges to blend your sky in with what’s underneath.
• Another way is to add a Layer Mask to the sky layer.  You then set your colors to default [black & white] and using a soft brush, paint the sky in or out.  This way is actually easier – since by creating a layer mask, you can correct mistakes by going back and forth.
• I also usually try to overlap the sky layer over a hard edge like a roofline or building – then take my Polygonal Lasso Tool and make a hard edge, then hit Erase to delete the sky.  This makes for a nice clean, realistic edge and the sky looks as if it’s really behind the building.

So, there you have two ways to add blue sky and clouds to your images.  Give each a try and see what works best for you.  Best – Bill

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