Wednesday, August 17, 2016

CoffeeShop "Dramatic Beach Sky" Free Overlay!


Today I have a new artistic beach sky overlay to share with you. These are so fun to add to your images and they can really make a beautiful addition. I have several more tutorials and beach overlay free downloads, you can find them here.

One of the things that make my beach sky overlays special is I add a blurred mirror image on the bottom. This way when you add the sky to your own beach image you will see some of the gorgeous light reflected on the water and sand.

If you want to check out a gorgeous beach action, you can download "Beach Dreams Water & Sky".



In this tutorial I used this original image from Rachel Taylor Photography.



Drag the sky overlay on top of your image and place the middle line on the horizon.  Then free-transform (Ctrl-T) the overlay to fit. 

I put the sky overlay in Multiply blending mode at 80%. 



Then I clicked to select the sky overlay layer and used my quick selection tool to select the couple. I Gaussian blurred the selection to remove the sky texture but not the color from the couple. 

Then I selected the water and sand and used the Gaussian blur filter to blur the sky reflection until it looked subtle.




Their skin was lobster red, so I added a Hue/Saturation layer on top and reduced the Red's saturation and increased its lightness. Then I filled the layer mask with black and painted this layer just on the couple. Then I dialed down the opacity to taste.

The key to this step is reducing the skin redness without making them look unnatural. Your skin will look reddish when you are looking at a gorgeous sunset.  ;-)



I hope you enjoyed this new tutorial! 

You can download the CoffeeShop "Dramatic Beach Sky" overlay. You can also download it here.

Do you want to download my favorite CoffeeShop PSE/Photoshop Actions and Lightroom Presets or Design Elements in one convenient zipped file AND help support this blog? Just click here for my action pack or here for a download of some of my most popular design elements, storyboards, and textures.

For complete info on installing all of my actions, click here.



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6 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. After I crop the sky and play around removing the noise and adding contrast in Photoshop. Then I run a few Topaz filters on a copy of it and adjust the opacity to taste. I like to have a somewhat painterly effect.

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  2. Now that is dramatic--and the effect is beautiful. I read the tutorial through and while I normally seem to understand them, this time I had a problem. First what percentage of Gaussian blur did you use on the couple? It was hard knowing how much was enough. Where I really ran into problems was when I tried to add the hue/sat layer. When I started playing around with the lightness, the only thing that it would change was the beach area that I had just blurred. Am I missing a step? I'm using PSE 12.

    If you can help that would be great. Thanks Rita.

    Lisa D.

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    1. I just watch the couple as I blur until I don't see the texture anymore on them. It is usually a pretty low setting. I blur the background more.

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    2. Lisa, this weekend I will write a tutorial with details how I selectively blur the texture. Thank you for the suggestion! <3

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Rita