Cloudy Sky Photoshop Tutorial

Separating the sky

Begin by opening any image with a clear blue sky into Photoshop. This image I opened has a nice architecture but overall, it is a boring photo. In this Photoshop tutorial, we'll dramatically make this photo more interesting by adding some clouds and polarizing the sky.

First, create a new group called Sky. Go to Layer > New > Group.

Now select back the Background layer and use the Magic Wand tool to make a selection of the sky.

Select back the Sky layer group and go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal Selection. You should now have a layer mask with the selection as the layer mask.

Adding the clouds

Now we'll add some clouds. To add the clouds, our primary tool will be the clouds brush. This saves a lot of time compared to finding cloud images on the internet and creating your own brushes. Click on the image below to find the download link for the 7x Cloud Brushes.

Load the brush you just downloaded into Photoshop (Make sure you extracted the zip file first). Select the Brush tool then right mouse click to display the brush settings. Click on the flyout menu icon (tiny circle with triangle inside) located on the top right and select Load Brushes. Browse for the brush and click OK.

Now add a new layer called Cloud and put it inside the Sky layer group.

Make sure you still have the Brush tool selected. Right mouse click to go into the brush settings and scroll all the way down the list of brushes to find the Clouds brushes. Select one that you like and set the Master Diameter to the width of your image. For example, my photo is 800x600 so I will enter in 800px as the Master Diameter.

Make sure you have the Clouds layer selected. Click where you want to place the cloud. If you don't like the appearance of the cloud, you can press Ctrl+Z to undo and select another brush.

This is what my image looks like after adding clouds. It looks a lot more interesting but still looks like a regular dull snapshot.

Polarizing the sky

Go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Gradient and copy the settings below:

Move the layer above the Cloud layer and change the blending mode to Overlay and reduce the opacity so that it looks natural. If you leave it at 100%, the effect will be really strong but at the same time, it will look fake.

Finished Results

Here's what the photo looks like after adding the clouds. Now the image looks a lot more dynamic. This effect is great for anyone into stock photos and want to make their photos look more interesting. Now you don't have to wait till the day after a rain to capture beautiful cloudy skies.