A Simple Blend If Trick to Create Colorful Dramatic Skies in Photoshop

today we can learn how to extract amazing details from the sky bring out the clouds and move the colors the way that you like just by using blend if it looks super beautiful and it's super easy and I guarantee once you learn it you will enjoy doing it so without any further ado let's get started [Music] so here we on Photoshop and if you wanna download any photos used in the video make sure go ahead and check the links in the description so first off simple create a new layer by clicking on this new layer icon simple right now take the brush sample the color of the sky not the clouds okay just click here foreground color and sample any of this color so this is the blue color and select B V stands for brightness edges u s is saturation and B is brightness and you want to take the brightness down just like this maybe this is fine and hit OK and maybe increase the saturation of the same shade so select s ok decrease the brightness select s and increase the saturation just a little bit click OK and start painting make sure the flow is somewhere around 30 20 ish so I'll go 25 and start painting just like this make the brush a little softer and by the way you can hold the alt or option right mouse button drag it to the right to make it bigger drag it to the left to make it smaller drag it up to make it soft drag it down to make it hard make it soft and make it a little large and start painting just like this ok and once you have painted a considerable area then you can change the colors a little bit it's taking time because this is a huge image now you can change the colors just double click on it change the color just a little bit maybe increase the saturation and change the hue just a tiny bit just like this and hit OK and paint in some other area here just like this now done you can also change the color again and paint in this area what I would do personally is that I will decrease the saturation a little bit more and maybe change the hue a little bit and brightness brighten it up a little bit just like this and paint at this area you can go crazy with this okay you can become as much creative with this as you want and you can just keep on painting now once you do that once you have done your painting now it's the time to do the magic and make this guy really really good so only need to do open up the layer styles to do that right click on it and go to blending options or you can just double click on the right hand side of the layer that's easy now once you open blender if take the slider of the underlying layer from right to left okay and now it's very harsh so only need to do hold the alter option click on it and just divide the sliders Wow have a look at it just play with the sliders that looks amazing isn't it now once you're satisfied click OK now let's understand what's happening here because understanding the concepts that's the most important thing it's for a moment let's just turn this layer off and let's create a new layer and fill it with a gradient so I'm selected the gradient tool already and I've chosen black to white okay let's fill this with the gradient simple right now let's open up the layer style style a brush to do that you already know double click on the right hand side of the layer this opens up the layer Styles dialog box now here you will see there is a box called blend if this is a complete sections now this has two slider sets this layer and the underlying layer let's see what happens when we play with this layer if you take this ladder from left to right what's happening is the dark areas of the current layer which is this layer is becoming invisible as you begin to take the slider from left to right now it's targeting the darkest pixels if we take it to the right its targeting the next darkest pixel in line right the next darkest pixel in line the next the next the next you as you move forward it's targeting the less darker pixels along with the darkest pixels okay simple if you take this slider from the right it will make invisible the brighter pixels of this layer which is the current layer okay now it's just making invisible the brightest pixels little less brightest pixels along with it little less brighter pixels little less brighter and you get the idea now what does the underlying layer do it also makes parts of the current lab invisible but based on the brightness level of the underlying there right so if we take this to the right it's making invisible the dark areas not of this lab but of the underlying layer or the layers which are beneath it okay so let's have a look so under this layer we have this layer right this less turned off so it doesn't matter so under this layer we have this one and in this these are the dark areas the trees are the dark areas so if we take this lighter to the right it will make the dark areas of the underlying layer which means the layer which is under it invisible right similarly if we use this one it will make the bright areas of the underlying layer or the layer which is under it okay all the layers which is under it the combination of all the layers which is under it invisible what's happening in this case if we go to the blend if options have a look let's reset that we have painted with a dark color now this is the most interesting thing clouds are bright right brighter than the sky so you want to delete the bright pixels of the clouds from this layer so if we delete at the bright pixels of the clouds which is in the underlying layer from this layer what will happen is the clouds will become visible right and the sky will retain this dark color simple right so if we take the slider of the underlying layer from right to left what will happen is since the clouds are bright brighter than the sky those pixels will be eat it or in other words hidden in this currently so if you do that see the clouds are becoming more and more visible and since this is very hard you can make it soft by holding the altar option and clicking on it what this does is that it separates the slider and makes the transition between area that is visible and the area that is not visible smooth okay so you can play with the sliders and there you go I hope that made sense do you click OK if you satisfied and here's the thing you can take the brush and you can paint after the fact suppose you want to change the color and suppose you want to paint a little extra so you would just click on it select the color that you like and maybe decrease the brightness increase the saturation and maybe change that you just a little bit and you want to paint in some extra areas you can do that you can do that after the fact it is fun have a look you can paint in this area this is too much and you can play with it as much as you like so suppose you wanted to paint this area with gray or dark gray so you would again go there and select dark grey color and paint back in this area just like that it's simple right you can paint in just like an artist which brings us to our next example where we will be solely focusing on colors and blend modes it will be fun so in this example simply create a new layer and this time we will create two layers one for the brighter areas one for the dark areas so we want to brighten this areas with yellows and oranges right so take the brush make it a little smaller let's say it's sample this color okay and increase the saturation let's come to s increase the saturation and maybe I'll go increase the brightness a little bit no brightness is fine I guess saturation is the brightest so there we go hit OK once you satisfied flow 25 just start painting don't worry about how it looks we can take care of that we can add masks later that looks nice okay now let's paint a little orange there here in there so we would go change the hue just a little bit make it a little orange ish and paint in a little there that looks great maybe here don't the reflection it has to be the same okay fine now I will go back to yellows and we'll go to the little bright yellow and paint in little areas like that remember we are just building the bright areas of the layer or the areas that we want to brighten but the dark areas will have separate lip let's open up the left science dialogue box to do that you already know the steps double-click on the right hand side of the layer and this opens up the layer style dialog box now this time we want to delete the dark areas of the underlying layer okay so the underlying layer has some dark pixels like the mountains and the dark stuff you want to take that away from this layer so we'll do just the opposite take this slider from the left to right hold the altar option click on it and make it smooth now that looks nice but the colors look kind of solid how about trying blend modes with it what was the blend mode which brightens up stuff screen right so let's try screen it kind of doesn't look right let's try overlay that's wonderful you can also try a soft light hard light a hard light is too much overlay was good now let's create a new layer for the dark areas so why new layer well for the dark areas and blend if remember from the first example we moved the opposite slider not this one ok so that's fine a different layer now let's take the brush and let's sample this color make it a little darker select B brightness take it down and maybe increase the saturation just a tad bit and you can experiment with different colors if you want and I'm just gonna paint and here a little bit paint in here and make it soft and paint in a little here and there I might change the saturation a little and maybe hue a little and paint in a little extra areas just like this and once you're satisfied you know what to do right just double-click on the right-hand side of there and this time opposite we want to delete the bright areas right so we take this slider from right to left hold the alt or option click on it that looks wonderful half oh look click okay have a look at the before and after so this is the before this is the after now you can go ahead and erase this stuff real time you can take the eraser decrease the flow off the eraser maybe 20 ish and you can just start erasing this area if you like now it's not soft let's make it a little soft and make the eraser I guess 5 the flow and you can erase these clouds if you want from here and there it can also paint in extra so you can select this take the brush you can paint in extra here if you want now once you have done this you're always welcome to add some extra effects to add some more spice to the image now by the way you can also decrease the opacity if you like if you think it's too much you can decrease the opacity so for this I can choose 80 let's add some effects right let's add a curse click on the adjustment layer icon and choose curves now you can do anything you want let's get it a little bright and give it a little curve and maybe give it a matte effect just like this and by the way if you want to know more about stylizing using curves check this video out right here ok now you can also add some color lookup to it so just like this let's add a color lookup and let's choose say sunset late sunset and change the blend mode to overlay does that look right no soft light that looks right and decrease the opacity of it maybe that looks wonderful how about turning off the curves does that look right no maybe just minimize the effect by decreasing the opacity just like this so have a look at the before and after so this is the before this is the after totally different effects so that's how to use blender to make your skies more dramatic and to make skies even more dramatic you can also combine blend modes and blend if and all of the effects to it my job is to let you know what you can do after that it's your creativity so just as a recap what does blend if do fill blend F just control the visibility of the current layer it makes parts of the layer invisible or visible based on the brightness levels of this or the underlying layer that made sense to you and if it did make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe bring the vessels at you my friend don't miss a thing I'll see you guys on next until then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music]

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 524,377

Keywords: blend if photoshop, photoshop tricks, photoshop tips and tricks, dramatic sky photoshop, colorful sky photoshop, sunset photoshop, details in sky photoshop, dramatic landscapes, clouds photoshop, cloud overlays, photoshop tutorial, piximperfect

Id: cv7YP5L-2Zs

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 11 2017