Practical Photography - UK (2020-01)

theedit

96 PracticalPhotograPhy

Make a bespoke brush in Photoshop

CC and use it to add colour and

depth. Kingsley Singleton shows how.

Add atmospheric

effects with your

own cloud brush

P

hotogr aPhy isn’t

just about capturing

what’s in front of the

camera at the time of shooting –

there’s another world to enjoy

after the capture. and since adobe

Photoshop is a program for digital

artists as well as photographers,

it has plenty of tools that let you

do more than just develop images

in a realistic way.

one of the most creative

options is the Brush tool. on the

surface it looks like a simple pen

for drawing on the image, but it

has applications far beyond that.

one of them is the ability to make

your very own custom brushes.

Different brush shapes can be

made from regular shapes and also

from parts of an image, which

means the options are limitless.

here we’ll use an image of

a cloud, and turn it into a custom

brush before using it to add mist to

a scene, creating depth and drama.

the same brush can also be used

to add other effects, such as colour,

and here we’ll make it look like

a low sun is catching the mist at

dawn or dusk.

Get started with brushes

We’ll be building up the mist effect

using separate layers so it’s subtle,

and we’ll be using layer Masks to

target the areas affected by the

brush so that it works with the

scene. as you work, remember to

save your image periodically as

a Photoshop (PsD) file, so that it

retains the layers you’ll create,

and then you can return to the

individual parts of the edit to

make further changes more easily.

you’ll find more tips and a full

run-through of this technique on

the accompanying video lesson.

Above and right The original image is a good starting point, but we can give it
a different look with a brush made from the cloud picture. The final image uses
a mixture of mist and colour effects, built up using layers and Blending Modes.

before

clouds

after

what

you need

nPhotoshopCC

nAnimagethatincludes a

well-definedcloud,and

a sh otthatneedsan

atmosphericedit