Adding colour to clouds

[raphaels28255986]

Hi guys,

I'd like, in a particular image, to add some red and orange to the clouds which appear as white right now. There is no underlying warm color at this point.

How do I do that in LRC?

Thanks a lot.

[dj_paige]

Create a filter to select the clouds, then change the color balance of the clouds, or change the color of the clouds.

I'm not sure I have seen red or orange clouds, that seems quite unrealistic to me. I have seen red or orange sky, however.

[D Fosse]

I would have to agree.

Always exhaust global adjustments before resorting to masks and local adjustments. "Always" is a dangerous word, I realize that, but changing the quality of light in one part of the image and not in others, will never look credible.

OTOH, realism may not be what you're after here. In that case this is super easy in Photoshop and the result will almost certainly look better.

[raphaels28255986]

You're entirely right about Photoshop - which I don't use 😞 because I never wanted my files to get bigger nor did I want ever to spend that much time learning it. I am a minimal type of guy, especially with technology.  I do however appreciate your response. Thanks a lot.

[raphaels28255986]

dj... uh .. how do I change the color of clouds? They're white.

[GoldingD]

For a technique, see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6ju0I-eWSk&t=4s

In your case, perhaps, when creating the mask, do so as to select more of the clouds as opposed to the blue (in AI sky mask, intersect with color range, mouse clicking on clouds)

[dj_paige]

It's pure marketing to describe this as a secret adjustment ... there's nothing secret about it. In fact the author doesn't even choose the most obvious method. He chooses to create a filter of the entire sky, instead of creating a filter of just the clouds. So I guess I'll give this video a thumbs down for not picking the most obvious method, although I admit it does work.

[Conrad_C]

You do want  your first step to be creating a mask for the clouds. In my example below I created an AI Sky mask only because the entire sky is cloudy, but if you have a blue sky with some clouds then you might be better off with a Sky mask intersected with a Luminance mask for lighter tones, or a manual Brush mask.

A mask has many options for changing color. You can see that I used a combination of White Balance, the Color picker, and Saturation, but you can use whatever works. Note that most of these color adjustments will not seem to have much effect when the tones in the subject (in this case, clouds) are mostly near-white. Because of that, the color adjustments were not very visible until I lowered the Highlights and Whites values. You can try other combinations of Tone options that darken the clouds enough for a color edit to be more visible.

However, if your clouds are blown out (solid white), then there are no gray levels for a color edit to grab onto and there might not be much you can do except going to Photoshop and painting in some fake clouds or adding clouds from another image.

You can also see that my example looks fake, because the clouds now have color, but the rest of the scene has not yet been edited to reflect that color. Also, my cloud color is not totally believeable (one that you might actually see in nature).

[raphaels28255986]

Thank you Conrad for a patient and detailed presentation. Gave me an insight into what's possible with adding color to clouds. I will try it along with dj's suggestion.