Paint Shop Pro v7 » Dark, stormy pictures
It's sometimes nice to be able to make a nice landscape picture dark and stormy instead of sunny and bright. I'll use this picture:
You can use any picture, even one with a sun on.
First, I'll make it darker. I duplicate the layer (right click on the layer in the layer palette. If you can't see the layer palette, click L on you key board), and then I add a new raster layer (click on the little white thing up in the corner of the layer palette. I've marked it with a red circle) which I place at the bottom by dragging it down with the mouse arrow.
You will now have three layers.
I color the bottom layer with a dark purplish color. I set the layer above to Luminance and the top layer to Hard light. The layers should look like this in the layer palette:
I add a Gaussian blur to the middle layer, the one set to Luminance.
I used "radius: 2,00.
Now I'll add some clouds so the sky looks dark and stormy. I've found a picture with a cloudy background:
I cut the sky out and paste it on to my picture as a new layer. I use the eraser brush on the bottom edge so it looks a bit more natural.
As you can see it looks very light and grey. So I'll change the color and darkness. Go to Colors in the top menu and choose Adjust then Hue/Saturation/Lightness.
Use settings like this for example:
Now I'll change the color on the sky a bit, so I go to Colors in the top menu again, Adjust, then Color balance.
I make the sky a bit more blue so it fits the rest.
As a nice touch I add a picture tube called lightening 
, you can find it in the tool option box (if you can't see the tool option box, click the letter O on your key board). Add a new layer and put a lightening on.
The result looks like this:
I have faded the end of the light a bit and reduced the opacity on the layer I added the lightening on a bit.
You can add a moon instead of clouds and lightening, or stars.
With this one I've colored the sky with (add a new layer) a dark, dark greyish purple, then lowered the opacity on the colored layer. Then I've added a picture of a moon on as a new layer, set the layer to Luminance and reduced the opacity a bit. I have of course cropped off the background on the moon picture.
With this one I've added a picture with stars on behind a layer with solid greyish purple color where the layer has a low opacity.
