Alison Johnston

You looked at how to fix a blown out sky in another tutorial and discovered that it was quite simple. Creating a sky is also an extremely easy process, and who knows, maybe you’ll actually use it some day :)

Create a new file and fill it with white. Create a new layer above that and using a Linear gradient with the f/ground and b/ground colours set to two different shades of blue (or whatever colours you want to use) draw the lighter colour at the bottom and the darker one at the top. Create a new blank layer above that and fill it with black. Go to Filter>Render>Clouds and you can keep repeating the command until you get something you like, mine is the default. Change the blend mode of the layer to Screen and then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and do a 1 pixel blur on this particular image. You might end up with something similar to the image below.

This part is optional, if you think the clouds are going to be OK the way they are then ignore this. Ctrl + T to bring up the Transform tool, then hold down the Shift + Alt keys and drag one of the corner handles out, release those keys and grab the bottom middle handle and drag it upwards till you get it where you want. Hit the enter key to accept the transformation. See image below.

Because that looks silly, and basically is the end of the tutorial for creating a sky, lets put some grassed area at the bottom. Create a new blank layer at the top of the stack and change the f/ground and b/ground colours to two different shades of green. Fill the new layer with either of the colours, then go to Filter>Render>Fibres I chose a variance of 16 and strength of 4. Hit Ok to accept it. Ctrl + T to bring up the Transform Tool and right click and choose rotate 90 cw. Hold down the Alt key and drag out one of the side middle handles till you get what you want. Drag the middle top slider down till it snaps into place. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and choose a Radius of 1.5 You might end up with something like the image below.

You can go in and use the Transform tool on the grass and sky layers to stretch them out, or do whatever you want. Add a layer mask to the clouds layer, and with a black to transparent linear gradient, working at the horizon line, hold down the shift key and draw from just below the horizon line into the clouds. Add a layer mask to the grassy area and draw from above the horizon line to below it – work these two masks till you get what you want.

You can add some grass or whatever you want to finish it off. Fiddle with the colours a bit as well. Anyway, this was supposed to be a tutorial about creating a simple sky, and we finished that ages ago LOL Have Fun!