Making Clouds :: Type 1 ~ Tutorial

There is about 50 different ways to make a cloud. Each cloud is different, and most often always unique. This is a tutorial teaching you how to make 1 of the many types of Clouds.

Results may Vary.

Tools We'll be Using

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Making the Cloud Shape - Layer: Base Despite all the steps needing to make a cloud, this is actually a pretty easy tutorial. I started off with a 500x500 canvas for this tutorial. Pick a background color and paint the background. Pick the color white, and using a Soft Round Brush, I made the simple shape of my cloud.

Detailing the Shape - Layer: Details This is where the Pen Tool comes in. Select the brush tool and pick a hard round 1 or 2 pixel brush. I lowered the Opacity on my first layer so I can see the details easier. Basically here you're just kind of guessing how the shape would be, this isnt a very huge important thing, so you can experiment all you like. Then slightly Gaussian Blur this layer.

Blur the Cloud - Layer: Base Go back to the layer Base, and Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur it.

Motion Blur - Layer: Details Select your Details layer, and goto Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. The options for your Motion Blur are totally up to you. The angle should be dependant on which way your wind is blowing, the strength of it shouldnt be too far out, but just out enough to make it noticable.

More Details - Layer: Highlights This is where you make the clouds really shine (this is probably my favorite part of the whole tutorial). Take a Hard Round Brush of a smallish size, and kind of edge out some of the parts of the cloud you'd like to make stand out. You then take your blur tool (using a Soft Round Brush), smudge those parts into the rest of the cloud.

Grey Color - Layer: none Select a slightly darker color than white (grey).

Grey Details - Layer: Shades Just like the highlights layer, you'll be making the clouds pop-out just a bit. Put your grey around the areas you'd think would be shaded. Note: Dont concern yourself too much here, it's almost impossible to predict the lighting between clouds. Its something artists have been struggling with for years to perfect.

Smearing the Grey - Layer: Shades Once again, smudge the colors into the cloud.

Lowering the Opacity - Layer: Shade Lower the Opacity on the layer so the color is slightly visable, but not too dark so its very noticable.

Remove the excess Blur - Layer: Merge This is where things get a bit tricky. Unselect the Background layer so its not visable, then select the Base layer. Then goto Layer > Merge Visable The merged layer should still be called Base. Put your color background layer back into view.

Add a lil more Blur - Layer: Base Take your eraser, and select a Soft Round Brush. Pick whatever sizes necessary to remove some of the excess blur. Note: Make sure you get all of the blur around the cloud (you'll see I forgot to in a few of the future screenies, although I did fix it before the end of the tutorial) Duplicate your Base layer and name the duplicate Blur. Filter > Blur > Motion Blur the Blur layer, and lower the opacity a bit.

Smearing the Shape - Layer: Base & Blur You're nearly done. You can do 2 things here just incase you mess up. You can duplicate your Base layer and remove the original from view so you have a backup. Or you can work directly on the original Base layer. Take your Blur Tool (or smudge tool in this case) and kind of smear the edges of your cloud so they look slighty more wind blown and random.

Finishing - Layer: none Thats all. This tutorial was more of a show and tell, the rest is totally experimental. You can change things around, remove things, etc, to get different types and shapes of clouds.

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Cloud Tutorial © Suntiger.