Adding fluffly clouds to a lifeless sky

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By John Sweeney - 16th of January 2007

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Have you ever wondered how photographers always seem to get it right and takes lots of pictures with fluffy clouds,well, the plain and simply truth is they don't, (Shock, Horror) or not many of them do anyway. They add the clouds later in Photoshop. How ? follow the instructions.

Look through your holiday pictures and find the one's from those sun soaked places with a clear blue sky.

Now, if you added full on lovely fluffy clouds to those images they would look odd, so let's apply a little subtlety here. (When we get to the point of adding the clouds)

Let's prepare the groundwork first:

Let's find a suitable picture on the Internet which we can use. Go to www.google.com, click on the word Images just above the search box, then, when a new box opens type in fluffy clouds. Now you should be presented with lots of fluffy clouds pictures, but, be careful, some will show a size of 300 or 400 or even maybe as big as 600 pictures, these pictures really are not big enough.

Look just under the Google logo and you will see it says images showing, now there is a drop down menu allowing you to select small medium or large images….. Select Large images, this will ensure that the images you get are big enough for the job in hand.. Click on your chosen images and will go to another page, you will see a smaller picture of the image you have selected then, to the right of it you will See full size image, click on that. Your image will open up a bigger version, now save this image to your own computer by right clicking your mouse on it and save it to a suitable place on your own computer.

Now, open up the image you want to add clouds to and your new acquired clouds image and place them side by side on your desktop.

Next, on your original picture select the clone stamp tool (S on your keyboard) on the toolbar and on the contextual bar above, (Just below the word Window and Help) set the opacity to about 20 to 25 %.

Now, move the tool to the cloud image, click and hold down the left Alt key on your keyboard and click the left mouse button on a suitable cloud. Release both buttons and move the cursor to your first picture, in the sky area, depress the left mouse button and gently move the cursor around, cloud should now appear on your original image. Experiment with it until you are satisfied you have achieved the best result, then you can close the original image, with a new name in order to preserve the original image.

It won't take long to master this, keep experimenting with it and good luck.