Adding Sky Objects

Quickie Tutorial for Beth

This tutorial is assuming you have basic knowledge of layers and the selection tools. Not completely advanced, but hopefully you know at the very least, the basics, of both. The Sims 2 does come with clouds/etc in the sky, but usually, they don't show up all that well in pictures, so you may feel the need to add your own. First of all, you'll need some brushes. I suggest doing a google search for cloud or star brushes, or hitting up Obsidian Brushes.

Here is my base image. It has plenty of sky to be filled! That endless vast of blue is nice, but not exactly "realistic"... so let's add some clouds in there.

First, we need to load our brushes. You've probably saved them somewhere on your desktop, at least, that's what I do. You don't have to put them into Adobe's brush folder. I keep all of mine on my desktop. Let's find our brush icon on the vertical toolbar. It's the 8th one down if you're running the default settings. Click on it.

Now let's go up to the top of the interface and select the arrow next to the brush size. It's kind of small, but it's directly beside the number and shape of the currently selected brush. Once you press it, it expands into a larger window, allowing you to customize your brushes and options. This is where you can find your custom brushes, make new brushes, select different sizes, and even change the size/opacity of your brush.

Now we're going to click on the arrow surrounded by a circle to the right of this small window. It expands into a textual menu. We want to Load Brushes... so click on that.

As I mentioned before, you can store your brushes anywhere. I have mine on my desktop in a folder named "brushes". My program automatically goes there anytime I need to load brushes. Right now, I only have the two necessary for this tutorial. I'm going to select the first and then click Load. That closes the dialogue box and brings us back to our main screen.

Now let's ignore the brushes for a second. In order to properly add the clouds, we need to make sure they won't "clip" into the trees. Remember perspective when you're adding things to the sky. Clouds do not overlap trees and neither do stars or anything else you usually put in the sky. Trees are the foreground, the sky is the background. So we want our clouds behind the trees. The easiest way to do this is to find the Magic Wands Tool on our vertical toolbar.

Just select the blue areas and make sure you're using an unedited/unblurred layer! Depending on your selection tool settings, it may or may not get everything you want. If it doesn't, don't panic. You can always add to the preset selection by Shift-Clicking. This adds whatever you click to the selection. You can remove selected areas with CTRL-Click. Once you've selected the area you want, it's time to add a layer for our clouds.

Move over to your layer box and make a new layer. Put your new layer on top of any other layer you have and make sure that this layer is selected when you're adding your clouds/stars/etc... this way they are isolated from our main image and should we need to remove, fade, or change them, we won't undo any of our other work in the process.

Now, back to our brushes. Select the Brush Tool on the vertical tool bar again. Click the little arrow next to the brush type and size. Scroll down to the bottom of the default brushes and you should see the ones you loaded. Click on one, that's how you select your brush. You can click on any of the brushes. You usually will need to size down the brushes, because they're usually pretty big. For me, using Obsidian Dawn's brushes, I experiment with smaller sizes in the 300-500 range.

Now add your clouds to the sky. Try not to make it look too ridiculous. This is a subtle addition, people shouldn't look at your image and go, "oh, wow, that's... a lot of clouds". Your environment should never draw attention away from what's going on or your characters. Think about real life and images with people in them, how the subtle notes in the background add to the images instead of detract from it. Experiment, try different brushes until you find something that works. Is it a really sunny day with wispy clouds or is it cloudy? Maybe you're adding vapor trails. Whatever the case, experiment!

Just a tiny bit of clouds can eliminate unnecessary empty space. Now my picture has some wispy clouds. You can mess with the opacity of the layer or even blur the clouds if you need to. Again, this is the wonder of using a separate layer for your sky objects! The same works for stars or anything else.

You may have to do something different with night time shots, especially if you have something delicate like a bridge or something with complicated parts peeking through. The Magic Wand tool might not work. So, you'll have to try a more sophisticated method of selecting. Below is an example of my nightsky image.

I only want the blue, not the trees or anything else selected, so I'm going to go up to Select and choose Color Range... This will open up a new little window on the screen, showing a completely black image.

Your cursor will turn into an eye dropper. You need to click on the blue of your night sky. You'll see the all black image change to reflect your selection, you should see the entirety of your sky in white (though the stars will be excluded if any are in your shot). Click OK.

Now you've got your area selected. Do the same thing you did with your day time images. Make a new layer, put it on top of everything else, and add your clouds, stars, whatever to the sky. They will clip properly and the trees or whatever is in the foreground should obscure them! Just make sure you change your color back to white, as the "select color range" changes it to whatever color you chose!

This is my finished image.

Please don't reproduce or copy this tutorial without asking first! And please, please, don't claim it as your own work. I'm very nice! Just email me if you want to post this somewhere or reference it. I really don't mind, I just appreciate a heads up. Thanks! -Mao