Changing skies

Australia (and other countries!) can have the most beautiful blue cloudless skies. I love those days! Mind you, sometimes the photos taken on those days would be so much better if there were a few clouds to add interest to that emptiness!
For those occasions when I find a photo that the eye is pulled into the blank emptiness at the top, I have made my own clouds!
Perhaps I am doing this tutorial the wrong way around - I am going to show how to use the cloud without showing how to MAKE the clouds! I will do that next time.
First I have a picture taken in the Northern Territory.

This is a very important landscape to the aboriginal people of this area. The eye is drawn right through the picture into the blue of the sky. A couple of clouds would stop that happening and allow the eyes to linger longer over the landscape - can you see the face on the rock profile? See, you looked right past it!
Make a blank layer to go over the picture.

If I show you this often enough, you may be able to remember! The grey and white squares in the layer that is called "Layer 1" indicate that it has no colour in it at all, it is transparent.
Imagine a piece of clear cellophane laying over the page of a book, that is how this layer is, you can see through it and all below is unchanged by it in any way.
We shall "paint" clouds onto this layer - and you do not need to be an artist to be able to do this. It is really straight forward.
Before getting to this stage I would suggest that you search for and install a set of "Cloud brushes".
The instructions on how to install the brush set in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements are given to you by the brush designers. Not only have I downloaded a couple of different sets of cloud brushes I have also made my own and this is what I will show you how to do in my next tutorial.
The next thing to do for adding clouds to a sky is to click on the brush tool.

After clicking on the tool, click on the brush set at the top - if you haven't changed your brushes recently it will read "Default brushes". From the drop down box, select the set of brushes that contain the clouds. I have three different sets of cloud brushes but I have selected the set I created myself.

Click on the picture with your brush (you are on the layer so you cannot spoil anything).
When I clicked on my photo I discovered that the brush was much too big for my needs so I had to reduce its size. To do that I held down the Ctrl key (Command for Mac users) and dabbed repeatedly on the left square bracket key, next to the letter "P". The brush I had left sitting over the picture and by using both hands on the keyboard I could watch to see the cloud shape reduce in size until it looked as if it was small enough for me to use. When the cloud brush is hovering over the picture there is a rough outline of the shape.
I had left a big imprint on the layer when I first clicked with the brush.
Delete that layer and create a new one. Delete the layer by clicking on the garbage bin at the bottom of the layers palette and then clicking "Yes" when asked if you really want to delete the layer. Click on the Add new layer button again (like in picture number 2) so you have a clean layer for your new cloud size.
Before applying the brush we need to set the colour for the clouds. White and black would work but take a good look at clouds - they are not pure white. They would be really dazzling if that were so.  Click on the foreground colour of the two colour swatches at the bottom of the tool bar and in the colour selection box that appears chose a yellow colour - slide a little further down towards the red so there is a warmth to the yellow. You will need a sample from the light area. Here is where I took my sample.

The background colour swatch can be black or dark grey - it gives the shadows to the cloud.
Now click only once on the sky - after using the outline as a guide to positioning the cloud.

Although the cloud is dabbed at 100 per cent opacity this strength can be reduced in the layers palette to more transparent. It looks quite natural, doesn't it?
Because this cloud is on a layer it can be moved. Change the tool to the Move tool (hit the letter V on your keyboard, if you like short cuts!) and move the cloud across the sky.

Take care that the cloud is not put over the top of trees or buildings. If that happens you will need to erase using either the erase tool or by using a mask and painting out the cloud.
When you are happy with the placement of your cloud go to Layers>Flatten image (on the Menu Bar).
Now, off you go and find a set of cloud brushes and give a little character to those empty blue skies!
AJ                joanren@gmail.com