This Photoshop Technique Will Blow Your Mind

In a recent article, I showed you how to create mist and atmosphere in Lightroom using a clever combination of masks, contrast, and dehaze. It worked great for woodland photos yet involved some manual masking. Today, I show you an even simpler technique for adding atmosphere in Photoshop.

The editing trick I show you works best for architecture and cityscape photos. Those contain geometric shapes and clearly defined objects. They allow for more precision than in typical landscape photos.

Depth Blur Neural Filter

Real atmosphere, haze, and mist are more intense toward the background of your images. When adding atmosphere in post, you should try to mimic reality and increase the intensity from foreground to background. 

Often, it means a lot of manual masking, like in the Lightroom technique I showed. But with the help of the "Depth Blur" filter, which you find under "Filters - Neural Filters ...", you can automate the creation of your masks. 

1. With your image layer active, scroll to the "Depth Blur" filter under "Neural Filters..." in Photoshop.
2. Activate it.
3. Scroll down and activate the "Output depth map only" checkbox before pressing "OK."

The result is a grayscale image on a new layer. It represents the depth in your photo, and although it is seldom perfect, it's mostly good enough for architecture photos.

Adding Atmosphere

The next step is to use this depth map to add atmosphere. Head to the "Channels" palette and "CTRL/CMD + Click" on the RGB channel. It will load the grayscale image as a selection. Back in the "Layers" palette, add a "Solid Color" adjustment layer and give it a warm or cool color, depending on the mood you want for your photo.

At first, it will look unnatural, but we are not finished yet. Delete the layer containing the depth map, as you no longer need it. Select the mask of the "Color Fill" layer and head to "Image - Adjustments - Levels...". Moving the dark and midtone sliders to the right, you can push the effect more into the background.

Then group the "Color Fill" layer. You can now apply a black mask to the group and completely hide the effect. With a soft white brush of 10-20% opacity, you can now draw in the mask to gradually bring back the effect.

It might be tempting to add a thick layer of fog to your photos using this technique. But try to be more subtle and aim for a dreamy look that doesn't deviate from reality too much.

Finishing Touches

If the atmosphere looks too intense at first, use a "Curves" layer on top of it to give the image back some contrast. I prefer this technique to reduce the opacity of the atmosphere group because it brings everything together. Parts of the photo where you didn't apply atmosphere will also be more dramatic now. It is great for the sky, which you should usually exclude when adding mist.

If you have city lights in your photo, you can emphasize those by adding a soft glow. Create an empty layer and set the blend mode to "Soft Light." Select a bright, warm color that fits the lights and draw around the streetlamps. I show all of this in the feature video above.

Conclusion

This technique is once more bending reality, so use it carefully. What I found is that I'll typically overdo the effect first. The image then needs to sit for a few days before I come back and apply some finishing touches that often include reducing the opacity of the effect layer. You should also refrain from applying this technique to all your cityscape photos. I find that historic architecture benefits from it, while modern architecture usually needs a different treatment.