Faux Fog Effect

[Doug Nelson]

It's a beautifully foggy day here in southern Illinois. It adds mystery and drama to scenes I've seen hundreds of times before.

This got me thinking, how would you approach adding fog to an otherwise clear, sharp, and bright photo?

I took a couple of reference shots out a window, then looked for an unreasonably bright and colorful perspective shot over on sxc.

The original (by Nicolas Raymond) can be seen here.

Attached is my QD version, just a hue/sat layer (-100 sat, 75% opacity) and a white fill layer set to screen with a gradient layer mask, then duped once.

Try the same image, or find another you prefer. Then show us what you got and how you did it.

[0lBaldy]

Re: Faux Fog Effect

Kept it simple

[lkroll]

Re: Faux Fog Effect

Definitely a desat blend (like you did) with cloud brush (and blurred with high radius) as my crutch. Copycated you a little on the whiteout sky too (except I added a break).

[amica999]

Re: Faux Fog Effect

Here is my try: apply a H/S-adjustment layer, set Sat -100, Lightness + 100, Apply a gradient on the layers' mask: default colors, linear, FG to BG. Paint with soft black brush on the mask on elements in short distance. Create a new layer below the H/S. Select rectangular marquee tool and make a good feathered selection on the middle distance, apply Render-Clouds on this selection, deselect. Double click to apply blending options. ALT-Click the black slider and move to the right, until liking. Go to Edit-Transform-Perspective, narrow the selection on top to get a sort of triangle, commit, again Edit-Transform-Scale and set Width to 1000%. Play with blending modes and opacities on each of the layers.

[Inkjet]

Re: Faux Fog Effect

We don't get much fog here so I had to imagine.

I split the picture into 3 different distance Layers. The further away the stronger the desaturation. I also applied a strong denoise filter to the furthest away as well as blur to this and the other Layers.

The trees were on the edge of the middle distance Layer so I painted over them in Quickmask to select them too and so increase the distance effect.

I added a middle distance "fogbank" to add to the effect and cover the worst of the cars etc.

I ran out of time to fix the midday shadows just quickly reduced them.

[MiningArt]

Re: Faux Fog Effect

I used the before image posted by 0lBaldy, some degration.
Applied a light-gray gradient aligned with the bottom left to the base of the trees. Then the same gradient from the top right over the whole image. Merged a fractal generated dark gray-gray-white image over the whole scene in penlight mode.

[tomato1236]

Re: Faux Fog Effect

Thanks guys, this was a really good exercise. I usually use the gradient screen technique, but after looking at real fog on google images, I came up with something more realistic.

[ratpat13]

Re: Faux Fog Effect

The shadows in the original definitely aren't helping along with the contrast.

[tomato1236]

Re: Faux Fog Effect

Yeah, you definitely woudn't have all kinds of drop-shadows if it were really foggy. I was too lazy to go through the trouble of losing the shadows and balancing the lighting.