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Create a mist effect in Elements with blend modes and masks

August 10, 2013 by Rod Lawton

08 Adjust the opacity

Elements mist effect

Full black is a little strong for this effect, so I’m going to reduce the black solid color layer’s opacity to 50%.

09 Add another gradient mask

Elements mist effect

Finally, I’ve added a gradient to this layer’s mask too, but in the opposite direction – again, I’ve circled the start and end points on the screenshot. This blends in the darkening effect right at the top of screen so it looks as if there is heavy cloud overhead.

Incidentally, if you find your gradients have gone in the wrong direction, high ctrl/command-Z to undo the gradient and drag it out again in the opposite direction.

10 The finished picture

Elements mist effect

I think this has worked pretty well. Normally, if you’ve got some perpendicular object right in the foreground, like these gates, it can work even better if you mask them out on the ‘mist’ layer, so that they don’t get ‘mistier’ higher up. It’s not always easy to get this exactly right, though, and in this instance I tried both approaches and decided this simpler one worked best.

See also

More Photoshop Elements tutorials

Related

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Filed Under: Tutorials

Life after Photoshop is owned and run by photographer and journalist Rod Lawton. Rod has been a photography journalist for nearly 40 years, starting out in film (obviously) but then migrating to digital. He has worked as a freelance journalist, technique editor and channel editor, and is now Group Reviews Editor on Digital Camera World. Life after Photoshop is a personal project started in 2013.

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