Now you want to add some shadows to your clouds. Set a dark blue color (enter a 304971 value) to the “foreground” color.

From the dialog window that will appear select “Gradient”. But you have to be careful which gradient to chose: you will see a gradient whose color changes from blue to transparent. Move the gradient by holding down the mouse button and position it so it will stretcdiagonally on your image, with the right bottom side of the cloud a bit dark. Click “OK” in the “Gradient fill window”.

Click Ctrl+G to clip this layer with Layer 4, which is underneath. This is how your Layers palette should be looking at this point:

Look in the Layers palette: you will notice a black layer linked to the gradient one. Click it to activate it. With this layer activated, click the D key to set the foreground color to clack and the background color to white

Select the “Brush Tool” from the Tool bar and choose a round bush (set its “Master Diameter” of 35 pixels, its “Hardness” of 0% and an Opacity level 05 20%). You can now start painting with black in order to mask the areas which you need to brighten. Try different settings for the “opacity” level or the size of the brush until you are satisfied with the result.

You may think that the transition between the shadows underneath the cloud and its bright areas isn’t very smooth. If that is the situation in your picture, you can use the “Blur tool” to correct this. Select the “Gaussian blur” option from the Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur menu. You may need to mask the gradient traces in the most bright areas of the cloud.

The next step is to correct the tone of the cloud.Create a new fill or adjustment layer (you will find this option at the bottom of the layers palette). Chose “Solid Color” and choose a dark gray/bluish color (enter a value of 5C687D) in order to make your cloud look more realistic. Clip this layer to the Layer 4 which is underneath by pressing the Ctrl+G key combination.