Stuff you can do with clouds

[Doug Nelson]

I might have stumbled onto something semi-useful. Make 3 color fill adjustment layers. On the second and third layers' mask run the clouds filter. Doubleclick on each of the 3 in turn and adjust colors to taste. Viola, instant cliche studio backdrop!

[Doug Nelson]

Wind (stagger), accented edges, invert, rotate

[T Paul]

Ooo, I like the wind one!

[Stroker]

The Wind one is good for making Displacement maps.
Like for a 3d topology type thing.

For Doug's given example:
Flip > Vertical
Save as a PSD for use as a D-Map with Displace
New Document with what you want to use for a 'surface'.
Use Transform > Distort or Perspective to make it 'lean back'.
Filter > Distort > Displace using Horizontal 0 and Vertical 25 or so.
And Stretch to Fit.
Try different positive values for Vertical.

That's the gyst of it. The refined version would need some Levels/Curves and some masking action. Alas, I don't write Displace tutorials anymore.

[Doug Nelson]

Extrude, mirrored half

[philbach]

Well I discovered this thread this morning. I guess there are several of us that do this rather than other things. What I have found interesting with clouds is to run the wave filter after the cloud rendering. That has several settings so you can adjust the direction, frequency and amplitude of the fiber you are creating.

In this example I just did clouds on the default settings and then the wave filter. The possibilities are endless but its a great way to waste time and thats what this little excursion to clouds has done for me.

Of course I'm retired so I do have time to do these sort of things. Hey have a good day and get back to work

[philbach]

1.) New File; default colors
2.) Render Clouds + hold down opt/alt key
3.) Difference Clouds
4.) Brightness +75 Contrast +44
5.) Hue/Sat Colorize 325H;24S;1L

[Peter S]

There are some clouds in this somewhere but I think they got lost under everthing else.

I found this odd though.
I made a square selection, then modified it with 'Border'.
Great - but I wanted a double border. Things went funny from then on. I applied the border several more times.


Why does it not just give more borders???

[Dreamypix]

Hard to imagine how simple this really is, but it is!

Step 1: Open New doc-
Step 2: Set your default colors to black and white or hit D on your keyboard.
Step 3: Filters- Render- Clouds
Step 4: Filters-Render- Difference Clouds Do this about 5-10 times or until you get an interesting pattern...
Step 5: Filters-Distort-Polar Coordinates-Polar to Rectangle
Step 6: Image-Rotate Canvas-Flip Canvas Vertical
Now lets add some color!
Step 7: Add a Solid Color layer of Orange- change the mode to Color Burn
Step 8: Make another Solid Color Layer of Red- Change mode to Screen Change the Opacity to 10%

And Viola! A Fiery Background! Enjoy!

Amber

[Dreamypix]

Not sure what you could do with this, but here is another one for the clouds filter.

Step 1: Open new Doc
Step 2: Set your paint colors to the default black and white (Hit D)
Step 3: Filters-Render-Clouds
Step 4: Filters-Render-Difference Clouds
Step 5: Filters-Stylize-Emboss Set Angle to 135, the height to 3, and the amount to 300.

Add some color by using Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation, don't forget to put a check in the colorize box!

Well there you go- even more simple than the fiery background!

Have fun!

Amber

[Doug Nelson]

Cool fire, and that looks like the chiseled stone I see on some government building foundations.

After I posted my faux curtains thread in this subforum I discovered clouds work well for it, as well. But I thought it was a bit redundant, and I seem to be the only one interested in curtains

[byRo]

Originally Posted by Doug Nelson

.....Unfortunately, many of the filters apply directional lighting of some sort, making tiles problematic.

Seems that you've been using Lighting Effects - Omni, just switch to Directional and the tiles come out fine.

Like this one:
1)
Clouds in individual channels;
Pixelate>Facet;
Filter>Other>Custom (Emboss);
Render>Lighting - Directional.

What am I doing here - I should be discussing the intricacies of the FFT. Well this is a lot more fun!

2) Applied original coloured clouds as a 100% displacement map.

Rô

[byRo]

I liked Amber's rocks so much, I decided to nudge it a little further. (Fun - more difference clouds = more ridges )
After doing the rock, put in another layer with new rock-coloured clouds, set blending to Color, opacity ~10%;
Then another layer using White / Full Red clouds, set blending to Saturation, opacity ~20%.

Rô

[Doug Nelson]

I love the colored effects.

The one filter I like except for its lighting is plastic wrap. It gives an excellent wet look, but it has a hotspot in the center that would be rather obvious if tiled.

[byRo]

Oh, dear.. another one.

Coloured-relief map of Renderland.

Duplicate, apply HSB -> RBG filter on the clouds (Red channel only), posterize, blend as color and tweak.

Rô

[Doug Nelson]

Ok, a weird one, with a weird attachment (a tiny, tiny, animated GIF).

I used Byro's clouds on different channels, then added a Hue/Sat layer and simply moved the Hue slider. Even at screen rez this made for a 1mb animation, so I postage-stamped it, but it's not about the animation, it's about the cool effect. No idea of what use this could be, but it's fun on a screensaver level.

[mfgriggs]

nice thread

[digga]

Hi all, just stumbled accross this site the other day, as i was doing a bit of research into image retouching. Nice to find a good forum like this.

Anyway when i saw the clouds>solarize>plastic wrap texture i instantly saw magma / lava and wanted to add some colour to it and this is what i came up with.

basically as you can see in my layers set up i just made the background a bright red, had the original still in black and white but changed the layer mode to linear. duplicated this layer, hue/saturation>colorise to a bright yellow, change mode to linear dodge, duplicate layer and change to overlay and this was the result.

[T Paul]

Very cool or should I say hot!

It reminds me of burnt cheese, like when you are toasting a grilled cheese sandwich.

[MinnGal]

The nice thing about this challenge is there there is nowhere to go wrong.. Just try some stuff and see what ya get. I thought the texture I got here was really something.

Rendered clouds
Distort - ripple
Plastic wrap
Angled stroke

then I messed around in the channel mixer until I got a color I liked.

[Doug Nelson]

Looks like rotary sanded brass

[raniday]

A lot of interesting ideas here.
I took the piece I had posted in the Scanner Art thread, added clouds and craquelure over it and played with blending modes.

[Doug Nelson]

I made an action for the smoke thread and had the idea to run it on clouds.

Tip: I cheated and held Alt while running Render Clouds, it creates a much more dramatic version.

[Doug Nelson]

I do this now to relax, like some people play minesweeper

This actually wouldn't work at the higher rez specified in the first post.

Clouds
Water Color
Duplicate layer
Find Edges on duplicate
Set duplicate to Multiply
Add Hue/Sat layer to colorize

[Kraellin]

you folks would love filter forge. i do this stuff all day in FF. the 'components' are plug n play... plug your perlin noise into noise distortion then run it through a refraction component, etc, etc, etc. great fun. and you can get quite elaborate.

one of the great things about what you all are doing is what i call 'textures as art'. normally, i used to think of textures as background or fill or overlays to something else. but, in fact, textures all by themselves can be art. and, i think this is what is so appealing about all this.

i dont want to get too far away from doug's original theme here of what you can do with clouds and photoshop, but i'm going to post a 'filter' example i did in filter forge here of 'texture as art'. this was made entirely with filter forge using the same sorts of components as you have and use in photoshop and similar programs.

the various parts of this are all fairly common filters/components. the waterfall is perlin noise, stretched. the water is the same but rotated and color added. the background is worley noise with color added from a 5 color gradient. and the beach is perlin noise scaled down to speck size and colored.

one isnt likely to do too many portraits this way, but for landscapes, this can be quite useful and fun

[Doug Nelson]

Clouds
Difference Clouds while holding Alt key X 24-36 times (I lost track, I just kept hitting ctrl-F until I liked what I saw)
Duped layer and applied Emboss
Blended using Pin Light
Made tileable using Offset and Patch tool

A shame to resize it for posting, it was beautiful to zoom in on the wispy midtones

[Doug Nelson]

Started with clouds
Ran Difference Clouds about 50-60 times, zoomed in very tight and browsing around using the hand tool to find an interesting section. If I didn't find an interesting section I ran DC again.
Copied interesting new section to new document
Resampled back to 8"x10", 300ppi
Used freeware Mehdi Kaleidoscope filter
Used Find Edges, adjusted with levels
Duped layer, ran Emboss
Added very slight bit of Gaussian Blur
Used levels to adjust
Applied Exclusion blend mode
Flattened
Drew in Radial Gradient, difference mode, from center to edge

It's much more interesting at 300ppi and full size, you can zoom in on each little "tube". In fact, I named it "A Series of Tubes"

[namphoto]

wow maybe i missed it, but no ones brought up lightning?
create a duo tone gradient the diagonol one, the more contrast the better, not TOO much though.
then create clouds, use levels to find a strong white line in the center, invert the image and screen blend it to whatever its going on.

[darc]

Here's how to break a drought in 10 minutes using clouds, often used in this country.
Unfortunately you may find it only works to this recipe using CS2 or later.
Ok, make a new document - 500 x 500 pixels
press D
create a new layer
Apply -- filter >render >clouds
filter >blur >Gaussian blur set 6
filter >blur >motion blur. angle 90 distance 80
image >image size. set width = 300 pixel. (untick constrain proportions)
filter >artistic >plastic wrap. Hi light strength =15, detail =10, smoothness =10
filter >sketch >chrome. detail =0, smoothness =8
edit >fade chrome. opacity =100%. mode =hard light
image >image size >height =800 pixels. leave constrained proportions unchecked
edit >transform >warp. Now move anchors to resemble running water
Add a gradient colour and a tap, then go fill the swimming pool for the kids.

[Blacknight]

Render clouds.
Gaussian blur (somewhere around 100, more or less)
Find edges
Auto levels (adjust left slider to right for darker)

Works with images too. Some neat effects with blend modes over original.