Atmospheric Perspective in Photoshoporig10.deviantart.net/3f1f/f/2011/239/b/c/aerial_perspective... · Atmospheric Perspective in Photoshop Recently, ... been trying to follow the

Atmospheric Perspective in Photoshop

Recently, while working on my last artwork, I had a

breakthrough on how to achieve the effect of depth

while colouring in Photoshop. For ages now, I’ve

been trying to follow the advice from an ImagineFX

article that says “blend more of your atmosphere

colour into the background objects”, but they never

explained how to do that digitally (of course with

paint it’s easy).

Then I came across the Edit > Fill command in

Photoshop, which allowed you to control the opac-

ity of the fill. This was REALLY useful. However

before I get to that, I must first explain how to set

up your base colours (or flat colours) for atmos-

pheric perspective.

Here are a few essential tips for setting up a scene for atmospheric (or aerial) perspective:

Warmer colours advance, cooler colours recede

More saturation advances, less saturation recedes

More detail advances, less detail recedes

More contrast advances, less contrast recedes

Thicker lines advance, thinner lines recede (if you’re considering line weights)

This kind of perspective works when air particles get in between your eye and the object you’re looking at.

So when you’re looking at mountains far away on a sunny day, the mountains appear blue-ish because the

atmosphere of the blue sky is coming between your eye and the mountains.

So the best way to start colouring an artwork (finished pencils, inks, line art, etc) is to establish your atmos-

phere colour. When I colour my work, all my base colours are also my shadow colours, so I only have to

add highlights after these colours are properly established. Start by filling your canvas with your sky or at-

mosphere colour. This doesn’t have to be a saturated or desaturated colour. If your scene is bright in light-

ing, make it a bright colour, if it is dark, make it a dark colour (I mean really bright or really dark).

Image © ImagineFX From the tutorial “Becoming a Better Artist”

Once you’ve chosen a colour for your sky/atmosphere, it’s time to lay in the rest of the colours. Don’t be

too picky at this point, because you can easily change them later. Just choose the colours that you want to

include in the image. (Trust me, this actually saves time in the long run).

When you’re done with that, go to the color palette and select your sky/atmosphere colour with the eye-

dropper tool. Set the color palette to HSB sliders (using the little drop-down menu at the corner of the pal-

ette). HSB stands for Hue, Saturation and Brightness. You will need to take note of the B slider value. Type

this number in a new layer using the text tool.

To establish the depth, you'll need to separate your scene out into three planes. Foreground, midground

and background. Grouping objects in your scene like this will also save time (and your sanity). If you want

to, you can colour code the objects on each plane using the lasso tool and filling selections with different

Making a Colour Value Layer To check levels of contrast between colours, you’ll

need to view your work in black and white. The

value of a colour is its brightness (just in case it’s a

little confusing). If the values of two colours are too

similar, there is little contrast between them and the

colours will appear to blend together. You do not

want this happening between an object in the fore-

ground and one in the background.

You do not need to convert your art into black and

white to do this (although some artists start working

in black and white before adding any colour). You

can easily check values by making a new layer,

filling it with white and setting that layer’s mode to

color. Place it above all your layers. Make it visible

when you want black and white, and make it invisi-

ble when you want colour. Easy.

To alter a colour for the scene, click it with the eyedropper tool and look at its brightness (B) and saturation

(S) sliders in the color palette. Use the sliders to adjust the brightness and saturation to make it follow the

tips on the first page. Now use the magic wand tool to select the colour you want to change (with your line

art layer invisible) and press ALT/Option + delete to fill the selection with that colour. If you have work

where the same colour appears at different depths in the scene, it’s best to leave contiguous turned on for

the magic wand tool. If not, then turning contiguous off can speed up this step.

(sorry I don’t have a screenshot for this)

Using Edit > Fill Finally up to the part that inspired this tutorial. This

is where we start blending the atmosphere colour

into all other colours to unify the scene (making

everything look like it exists in the same scene at

the same time).

1. Make a new layer

2. Use the eyedropper tool on your sky/

atmosphere colour and take note of the H, S

and B values

3. Select a colour(s) using the magic wand tool

4. Go to Edit > Fill and this dialogue should

come up

5. Click the drop-down arrow next to “use” and

select color, the color picker will come up.

This is where you type in the HSB values you

noted. Press OK when done

6. Set the mode to normal and change opacity

to whatever % you need (this depends on

how far back in space the colours are, I used

70% for colours in the background, 50% for

colours in the midground and 7% for colours

in the foreground, but I still have to experi-

ment with this

7. Repeat as necessary until all colours are

filled. Photoshop will remember the colour

you used for filling, so you won’t have to set it

every time you do this.

8. When finished and happy, merge this layer

with the layer that has your other colours on it

Just a Few More Tips You should still learn about colour theory.

Starting with a set colour scheme will still be

advantageous to your colouring (eg. for this

picture I used a complimentary blue and or-

ange colour scheme)

No colour should be brighter than your light

source (if it’s in the picture)

Atmospheric perspective is more noticeable

(or stronger) when there is fog or rain. In

these conditions, faraway objects will “fade”

much more quickly

You can use photo filter adjustment layers in

Photoshop to add the appearance of col-

oured light to your images (I know I did a tu-

torial on this before, but this way is easier

and quicker)

To make a colour cooler or warmer, you can

change the sliders in the color palette to RGB

(red, green and blue) and add more blue for

a cooler colour or more red for a warmer col-

our. You can continually change back and

forth between HSB and RGB sliders without

losing your colour choice

And here’s my finished image in case you wanted to see it again.

That concludes this tutorial. I hope it was helpful (I wasn’t supposed to go into actual lighting if you were

wondering about that).