Graduated opacity mask?

MikeK

What the heck am I talking about? Let me see if I can explain. I am trying to do something in CS3 and need some help.

I have a landscape photo where I want to beef up the sky and clouds a little. On other photos I have successfully done this by selecting the sky into another layer and tweaking its curves a bit to boost color and contrast. On the present picture this didn't give me the results I wanted. So I selected the sky and copied it into a second layer. I put this layer on top and set the opacity, etc. to it would 'stack'. The effect was very good. One problem though. The whole sky is slightly darker and higher contrast, and where it meets the horizon is now not quite right.

I would like to have the top layer of just sky work as it is from the top of the picture most of the way down to the horizon, but then gradually fade out as it hits the horizon. This would leave the sky at the horizon as it was in the original picture, but then gradually darken (with the new sky layer) as you move up.

Are you following me? One solution might be to take a brush and carefully feather the bottom edge of the upper 'sky' layer. But I was wondering if there is a way to apply a graduated mask (or some such thing) to the sky-only layer to make it fade in more smoothly.

Thanks if anyone knows how to do this.

Ric Grupe

Take a look at Gradient Blur...a free plugin...check out "multiply" in the drop down box.:D

Richard

MikeK wrote:

What the heck am I talking about? Let me see if I can explain. I am trying to do something in CS3 and need some help.

I have a landscape photo where I want to beef up the sky and clouds a little. On other photos I have successfully done this by selecting the sky into another layer and tweaking its curves a bit to boost color and contrast. On the present picture this didn't give me the results I wanted. So I selected the sky and copied it into a second layer. I put this layer on top and set the opacity, etc. to it would 'stack'. The effect was very good. One problem though. The whole sky is slightly darker and higher contrast, and where it meets the horizon is now not quite right.

I would like to have the top layer of just sky work as it is from the top of the picture most of the way down to the horizon, but then gradually fade out as it hits the horizon. This would leave the sky at the horizon as it was in the original picture, but then gradually darken (with the new sky layer) as you move up.

Are you following me? One solution might be to take a brush and carefully feather the bottom edge of the upper 'sky' layer. But I was wondering if there is a way to apply a graduated mask (or some such thing) to the sky-only layer to make it fade in more smoothly.

Add a mask to the top layer and do a gradient fill on the mask from white to black, top to bottom. Start the gradient at the point you want to begin the transition and end it where you want the top layer blocked completely.

MikeK

Thank you, that sounds perfect, I will give it a shot.

MikeK

Outstanding. Just what I was thinking of, I just didn't know what tools to use. Worked perfectly.

Thanks!