Using Photoshop to Change the Mood of a Photo

We can do a lot of powerful things with Photoshop – in this tutorial we will change the mood and feel of a photo so it appears to be early morning rather than the middle of the day.

Step 1

Download this photo from Sxc.hu and bring it into Photoshop. Now the cow and field is pretty bright so we want to reduce the brightness and saturation a bit. Above the Cow Layer add a new Hue / Saturation Adjustment Layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue / Saturation. Reduce the Saturation to – 24 and the Lightness to -16.

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Step 2

The Photo is still a little bright so we add an additional Hue / Saturation Adjustment Layer above the last one. This time click the Colourize button in the bottom right, next change Hue to 198, Saturation to 25, and leave Lightness at 0. Click okay and change the Blending Mode in the Layer Palette to Multiple, set the opacity to 48%.

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Step 3

Next we are going to change the sky a bit – grab the Magic Wand Tool and set tolerance to 32 and un-check Contiguous. Click on the blue sky so it is all selected but the clouds are not.

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Step 4

With the Selection still in place we add a Linear Gradient – Layer > New Fill Layer > Gradient >

Then click the gradient at the top of the window – it may look different to the one here.

Next Click the Colour to Transparent gradient type; we need to change the foreground colour by clicking the Lower Left hand arrow followed by the colour picker, which is just below the arrow. (As in the picture below) and change the colour to #F3C8C8

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This will make a gradient only in the bits we selected earlier; automatically masking out the bits we don’t want

Step 5

Drag the Gradient Layer below the two Hue / Saturation adjustment Layers, the sky and the clouds will look a little bit to rough and don’t blend that well

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So we want to blur the Gradients mask, we do this by Selecting the mask and going to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and setting the amount to around 10 pixels.

This should give us an effect like this

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Step 6

Make a new Layer Called Mist and reset to the default Colours by Pressing D on the Keyboard. Next Grab the Rectangle Marquee Tool and draw out a small square. Then Fill this with Clouds. Filter > Render > Clouds.

And pull the anchors to fill the bottom part of the window.

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Step 7

Drag the Layer below the Hue / Saturation Layer and set the blending mode to screen. Next we want to add a Layer Mask to this Layer – Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All >. Select the Gradient tool from the tool box, set the gradient type to black and white and drag a gradient out from the top of the grass to the clouds.

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Step 8

Make a new Layer at the top of the stack called Stars, choose a 1 pixel hard edge brush and set the foreground colour to white. No spot some stars over the sky.