Blending Photos Together to Create Something Cool

I have written in the past about shooting and collecting topics such as sky’s, lawns, trees, etc… I use many of these extra parts for my architectural projects when things don’t work out as I hope, but here is another example of why collecting such material is helpful. I recently visited the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. Needless to say, Mt. Whitney is an obvious choice of subjects when visiting this mountain range. I have never photographed in the area, so as many photographers might do, I planned a visit to this incredible landmark. Unfortunately, the time of year and weather conditions weren’t exactly the best. At the time I was shooting the mountain, I knew it wasn’t going to be anything breathtaking but never-the-less, it was worth having in my files.

Upon my arrival back home and going through the editing process, I came across that Mt. Whitney photograph. After adding some contrast and running it through Nik Viveza I still wasn’t thrilled with the photo but decided to see if I might have a better sky in my files and improve the photo, even if only slightly. After going through my handy dandy “Photoshop Parts” folder, I found some possibilities. A whole series of cloud pictures I had collected over time was there waiting to be used. To my delight, I was on my way to creating an image that was far better than the original. The two photos below illustrate the starting image and the finished photo. The following is my step by step process and one that might work for you the future.

The first photo is the original of Mt. Whitney. The second is Mt. Whitney breaking through the clouds after some creative moves in Adobe Photoshop with final touches done with Topaz Simplify.

Step by Step: Creating Cloud Cover

• Duplicate the background layer. After the background layer has been duplicated then this layer will become your working layer.

• The second step is to bring in your sky or clouds. Simply open the sky you want to bring into the the mountain scene. Hold down the shift key and drag the sky layer from the layers palette onto the window showing your mountain layer.

The reason for holding down the shift key when dragging a layer is to line up your layers perfectly. In this demonstration a perfect alignment may not be important but rather a good habit to form.

• After you drag your sky layer onto the working image you will need to place this layer in-between your original background layer and the background copy. Once the layer order is in place, select your magic wand from the tools palette. Click the sky with the magic wand and you should see your selection indicated by a blinking line (better known in Photoshop circles as marching ants).

• You should have a photo that looks much like the photo above. Now, select the eraser from your tool palette and set the opacity at 100%. You can now start erasing away within the marching ants and you should see your new sky appear. The marching ants will protect anything and everything outside of its borders from being erased.

• Once you have the new sky in place you can hold down the command and D keys to deselect your marching ants or go under Select and scroll down to Deselect.

• Now for the fun part. Select your eraser tool once again and set the opacity anywhere from 15% to 20%. Very carefully, start erasing in small increments from the mid-section of the mountain. What you are looking for is a very light transition between the clouds and the mountains. You want the mountains to faintly appear from heavy cloud cover. Once this is done you can now change your opacity to about 80% and start making bolder moves with your eraser. Start from the bottom and move upwards and hopefully find a nice blend from your earlier use of the eraser tool.

You may decide to start over with the eraser process after getting the feel for these important step. You can do this in two ways. One, step back via your history palette, or two, you can simply move back one step by holding down your command and Z keys on your keyboard to undo the previous step. Once you get your blend looking natural you can now change the opacity to 100% and again start erasing to finish up the foreground clouds.

NOTE: Once I got the clouds blended with my mountain, I decided the background created a problem. After giving it some thought, I felt the clouds behind the mountain didn’t look like distant clouds but rather very much apart of the foreground cluster in which they truly were. I looked through my files and found a pattern of clouds as viewed from a distance and decided to place them behind the mountain.

• Drag the second cloud pattern into the working file. Again, make sure you hold down the shift key when you make this transition. Once this layer is transfered over then place it between the background copy and your previous cloud layer.

Make sure the cloud layer you just placed is active and erase the bottom portion on the clouds with the opacity set at 100%. Now activate the background copy and gradually blend the two cloud layers together by erasing the right and left edges of the mountain with the opacity set at around 40%. Erase until it looks natural.

NOTE: Your photo should be looking pretty good at this point. You could call this finished but I decided I wanted to soften the clouds and the edges of the mountains just slightly. This works best if you have some of the popular Photoshop Plug-ins, and in this case Topaz Labs software and the program called Adjust 4.

• Flatten your photo. Go to the Layers pull down menu and scroll to the bottom and select Flatten Image. Again duplicate the background layer just for insurance incase we screw up or simply don’t like the look of our next step. Go to Filters and go to Topaz Labs and select Adjust and then to the Smooth and Flat action. Move the sliders to your liking and then hit the OK button.

• Flatten your photo once again and you have a finished photo.

"Mt. Whitney Rising from the Clouds"

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