In this tutorial we will be creating a nice lighting effect for the sky after enhancing its colors. You can apply this technique to any photo but I think it works best with the sky!
Final Image preview:
In this tutorial we will use two images below:
and
Step 1: Open the first image, we will enhance the sky's color to make it pretty eye-catching. Go to Select > Color Range to sample the sky's color with Eye Dropper Tool and Add to Sample
Step 2: Use the Marquee Tool to deselect unwanted selected areas (on houses) until you get something like this
Step 3: Duplicate selected areas by pressing Ctrl-J and change the Blending Mode of this layer to Overlay. Now it looks more vivid and softer
Step 4: Let's enhance it a little more with the second image. Use the same method to select a part of the wave and paste it onto the main document
Move it to the top of your document and change its blending mode to Overlay
Step 5: Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and use this setting:
Step 6: Reset your colors by pressing D. Create a new layer and fill it with black, use the Gradient Tool with Reflected Gradient and Difference mode and draw some lines like the image below, notice that these lines shouldn't overlap with each other.
Once again, change its blending mode to Overlay
Step 7: Use the Eraser Tool to delete some unnatural rays of light and you can see the final result below
Conclusion
By using Overlay mode with some "cut out" tricks we can create nice images with a very eye-catching effect. I hope you enjoy this tutorial and use it in your future work!