masterdine

Does anyone know if there is a tutorial anywhere to create realistic looking clouds?

Rick

beedyb220 - I am not aware of one that is totaly realistic. My suggestion would be to use Terragen to generate your clouds and then import the clouds into Photoshop. That way you would have totaly realistic clouds. 8))

Go here to obtain Terragen - it's free

http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/download.shtml

[righton]

MsOz

You can also do a web search for Photoshop Cloud tutorials. There are a bunch of them out there, although Rick's right, in that none of them look truly realistic...Terragen, Atmosphere, and Bryce are somewhat better, but they too, still look "artificial" to a point.
It will depend on what you do with the clouds as to how successful an illusion you will create...
Good luck!

Rick

Here is a quick and dirty shot of clouds rendered in Terragen. Render time about 3.5 minutes at 1000 x 800 pixels.

Just to give you an idea

Hatch

http://share.studio.adobe.com/axQuic...33&submit1.y=8

Try the cloud brushes or the action. You will have to become a registered member but everything is free.

If this doesn't work I would suggest masking in a few clouds... I have a few free photos that might be of some use.

Take care, Hatch [righton]
http://www.psxtras.com/html/photos.html

Welles

Another possibility which is expensive but cool is Aurora 2 by Digital Elements. Unfortunately is costs as much as Vue d'Esprit, a better than Bryce 3D scene creation/landscape program. Use the Terragen or Hatch's suggestions for free, realistically. However Aurora is a plugin for PS which comes as close as possible to turning PS into a 3D environment. It renders out skies/atmospheres/space/stars/sun/moon/water/underwater very well. Here are couple of examples.

They were each done by having a white background layer one layer with a rasterized bird shape which was given a style to make it a bit more realistic, two blank layers, and then Aurora was run with a couple of presets which I tweaked slightly.

MsOz

Those plug-ins and environment apps do an okay job, I guess, but they still always look like some white smudges. They don't have any real depth. But they'll do in a pinch, especially if they don't have to appear too real.

If you're willing to put some time in by hand, there is a great Photoshop Cloud painting tutorial here

Welles

Funny, the cloud painting tutorial just looked like another stylized type of cloud to me...good though. (For those who remember the reference.)

MsOz

Remember the old poem "I think that I shall never see..."? Clouds, being made up of various densities of water vapor is one of those elusive renderings that has been attempted for centuries, and very seldom well accomplished. It's somewhat easier than painting air, but not much...

I think that is why I subconsiously do not include large expanses of sky in my works, because I can't accurately portray it beyond big swashes of blue gradients, and some white and grayish smears in layers to try to represent "fluffyness"...

Now THERE'S a challenge in the making, eh? [saywhat]

Welles

I've used clouds and sky often. I also spend a great deal of time outdoors studying them. In a sense no one ever captures clouds, not even clouds themselves! They vary every hour of every day. You can see almost any variety of cloud that had ever been attempted to replicate at sometime, somewhere. Many folks, imagining clouds, think of the dramatic cumulonimbus and yet they occur seldom and even then, only regularly, in select locations.

There are no typical clouds, as they vary with each locale. I happen to live in the redwoods overlooking the Pacific Ocean on the central California coast. Our clouds tend to be low and personal, if you will, as we are often in them either from fog or storms blowing onto land after traversing the Pacific. Overlooking the fog banks, when you are standing at 1500 ft. and right at the lapping edge of the fog, looks very like the first cloud image I posted. Some days, the ends of storms look very like the second.

I don't mind using stylized images at all because it depends on the desired result of the art. I strive to create a feeling on top of which I'll add an idea. People seldom apply critical evaluation to elements designed to create a feel. That leaves aside the fact that exact replication of physical reality is impossible. Even photography is stylized.

Part of creating images is the recognition that seldom does the observer spend more than seconds observing the results. I once riveted the attention of a person for 10 minutes, directed toward a sculpture which had taken me two years to create. I thought it was amazing as the average attention span was between five and thirty seconds, if they paid attention at all. I watched thousands of people interact with the piece as an anonymous observer. It was enlightening. Remnant lessons from that endeavor is that criticism is vastly over-rated and usually a defensive posture. Additionally, there is no accounting for taste and no premiere taste.

Cheers!