ADDING A RAINBOW TO A PHOTOGRAPH This assignment will cover how to add a simple rainbow (or if you want to go crazy, a double rainbow) to any photograph. This will give us some great work with gradients, changing blending modes, some filter work, and even some mask work. 1. Open Photoshop 2. Use the Internet to locate an appropriate image to use for this assignment [the photo you choose to use is important: don t try to use an indoor photo (don t laugh, others have tried it) and don t choose a bright, sunny, cloudless sky (how many rainbows have you seen in a bright, sunny, cloudless sky?); outdoor images where there are some clouds work best; try to choose an image with some sort of object on the left such as trees or buildings so that you can add depth to the image by making the rainbow appear to be behind the object] and open the image you want to add a rainbow to, here is the photo I will be using for these instructions 3. Save the image to your personal folder as rainbow.psd 4. Add a new layer by clicking the Create a new layer button on the bottom of the Layers palette Photoshop should place the new layer on top of your Background layer and name it Layer 1 5. Double-click the name Layer 1 and rename the layer to Rainbow Now here comes the secret part: Photoshop actually comes with a pre-made rainbow that we can use. It is one of the gradients that ships with Photoshop, but there is a tiny problem in that it is not available as one of our default gradients. This is just a minor setback as we can quickly add it in ourselves 6. Be sure the Rainbow layer is the currently selected layer
7. Click the Gradient Tool note that if you can not see the Gradient Tool and instead see the Paint Bucket Tool that you simply have to right-click the Paint Bucket Tool and select the Gradient Tool 8. Click the Click to edit the gradient area which will open the Gradient Editor 9. Click the Gradient options arrow pointed at with the red arrow below
this will open the Gradient options menu 10. Click the Special Effects option highlighted in the graphic above to open the following question 11. Since we do not want to remove the gradients currently in Photoshop, click the Append button, which will add the Special Effects gradients to the current gradients you should see five new gradients added to the list 12. The last gradient in the list is the one we want, so click the Russell s Rainbow gradient 13. Click OK 14. We need to choose a gradient shape that gives us a curved rainbow, so click the Radial Gradient button in the options bar Before adding in your rainbow, determine where you want it to end in your image. I would like my rainbow to reach the ground behind the small group of trees on the left of my image and have it arc over my barn. 15. Press the Shift key and hold it down then click on the right side of your image and drag to the left (the Shift key makes sure the line you draw is straight) to a point just past where you want the rainbow to end (the extreme left edge of the rainbow will be located where you stop dragging, so the
rainbow itself will actually sit slightly to the right of this point) then release the mouse and Shift key you should now have something similar to this
16. Change the blending mode of the Rainbow layer by clicking the Set the blending mode for the layer drop down arrow this is located on the Layers palette and is pointed at with the red arrow below 17. In the list that appears, select Screen 18. You should now have a much more believable rainbow Looking good so far, but still not a realistic looking rainbow. We need to give it a slight blur so the rainbow appears to be far off and that there is air and dust and water droplets and other stuff between us and the rainbow. We will use one of Photoshop s filters to accomplish this
19. Click Filter then point at Blur then click Gaussian Blur this will open the Gaussian Blur window If your Gaussian Blur window is like mine then you likely can not see the rainbow in the window this is not a problem. Simply move the Gaussian Blur window to one side so you can see the rainbow on your original image and use it to help you determine when you have the correct level of blur. 20. Drag the slider at the bottom of the Gaussian Blur window to the right and keep an eye on your image; drag until you get a rainbow you like exactly how far to drag depends on your image, for my
image a Gaussian Blur of around 20 will work good 21. Click OK Now let s deal with the fact that our rainbow likely extends into our ground. We will fix this by using a Mask layer (which is a layer that sits above another layer that changes the appearance of the bottom layer in some way), which will also allow us to force the top of our rainbow to be brighter than the bottom, just like in the real world. 22. Click the Add a layer mask icon at the bottom of the layer palette which will add a layer mask thumbnail to your Rainbow layer
the layer mask should currently be selected we can tell it is selected because it has a thin white highlight box around it 23. Press the D key on the keyboard to set the foreground color to white and the background color to black 24. Press the X key on the keyboard to swap the foreground and background colors 25. Click the Gradient Tool 26. Click the Click to edit the gradient area (same thing you clicked on in direction 8) 27. Click the Foreground to Background gradient 28. Click OK 29. Click the Linear Gradient icon in the Gradient options bar 30. Click near the ground in your photo where you want your rainbow to bottom out and press and hold the Shift key as you drag to the top of your photo
then release the mouse button Photoshop inserts a black-to-white gradient from the bottom of the image to the top that covers up the bottom of the rainbow so that it appears to touch the ground but leaves the top of the rainbow bright All of the work we have done to our rainbow has made the colors in it pretty dull, so let s make a quick change that will increase our rainbow s intensity 31. Right-click the Rainbow layer and click Duplicate Layer 32. In the Duplicate Later window that appears simply click OK While this does increase our rainbow s intensity, it has likely made it so intense that it appears to glow. Let s fix this
33. Use the Opacity option at the top of the Layers palette to lower the opacity of the Rainbow copy layer until you get something that you like how low you take it will depend on the lighting and color depth of your image; I will set mine to 40, so my image now looks like this So far so good looks like a fairly real rainbow that never existed. If you have additional time, you can create a double rainbow by duplicating the first rainbow and moving the duplicate to the left of the original. Since the second rainbow in a double rainbow is never as intense as the original, press Ctrl+F to reapply the Gaussian Blur filter (you may need to do this a second time depending on how bright your original rainbow was). Finally, you can also decrease the opacity of your second rainbow if necessary to further get it to the correct setting. We are almost done, but we still have one small problem our rainbow actually sits over our trees (it may be difficult to see this on some of your images at this point, but remember that you placed the rainbow over your original image, so the rainbow is on top). Let s begin to fix this problem my placing our two rainbow layers in a layer group 34. Click the Rainbow layer to select it 35. Press and hold the Shift key on the keyboard then click the Rainbow copy layer this will select both layers
36. Click and drag the layers down to the Create a new group icon at the bottom of the Layers palette Photoshop should insert a folder in the Layers palette 37. Click on the small arrow between the eye and the folder icon to see the contents of the folder note that both Rainbow layers are in fact there (if you did it correctly that is ) 38. Click the arrow again to collapse the group Remember how we added a layer mask to cause the rainbow to be dark at the bottom and brighter at the top? Well, we can add a mask layer to a group just like we can to a layer and have that group alter how the layers below it appear 39. With the layer group selected, click the Add layer mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette (the same icon pointed at in direction 22) note that the layer group now includes the layer mask thumbnail in the same way it appeared on a regular layer be sure the layer mask is actually selected before you move on remember how to tell if it is selected or not? 40. Press the B key on the keyboard to select the Brush Tool 41. Make sure the foreground color is black 42. Choose a small, soft brush such as Soft Round 9 pixels 43. With black as your foreground color, paint over any part of the image you want your rainbow to be behind (this could be trees, vehicles, buildings, people anything) remember that because we are painting on our layer mask that any part of the rainbow we paint over will simply be hidden from view so that the original image can show through Now zoom out and take a look at your entire picture. You may notice that the sky to the right of your rainbow is significantly brighter and bluer now than when you started
If you are happy with this, then you are finished (way to go!), but if you prefer the day to remain kind of dark and gloomy but with a nice rainbow in the sky, then read on 44. Paint over any part of the sky you want to remain its original color That s it you re done! SAVE YOUR WORK! Here is my original image
And here is what it looks like with my custom rainbow I know awesome.