It is possible to add atmosphere to our images and one of my Favourites is to add some mist to a landscape. It is an easy procedure using Photoshop's Graduation tool and you can also vary the opacity, colour and the gradation depth to suite your tastes. Call up an image of your own something like the one below will work well and adjust the levels.

To do this call up the levels palette by selecting Image/Adjust/Levels from the menu bar or by use of the shortcut keys Ctrl+L. Try the auto button first if you are new to the levels palette as it often gives very good results. Alternatively and for more control select the red channel and adjust the input sliders to the first group of pixels on each end of the histogram. Repeat this process for the blue and green channels as shown below.

You can see from the image below that adjusting the levels accurately gives a dramatic improvement to the basic image.

The next stage is to open the Layers palette by selecting Window/Show layers or by using the shortcut key F7. This key turns the layers palette on or off with each press. This is very useful to keep the desktop clear while you are working. To create the mist we need to create a new blank layer above our image and to do this we click the centre icon of the three at the bottom of the layers palette and Photoshop will create the new layer for you as shown below.

Tip. A new blank layer allows you more adjustment and is better than placing the next stage directly onto the base image. With the new layer selected ensure that you have white chosen as your foreground colour and then double click the Gradation tool to bring up the panel below.

When the gradation palette appears you need to select foreground to transparent. You can now click anywhere along the top of the image and draw a line down from the top to the bottom. This tells Photoshop that the foreground colour starts solid at the top and the length of the line decides on the length of the gradation.

Like all Photoshop tools this needs just a little practice and you will quickly get the hang of it. You may find that the gradation effect created is not right. It may continue too far down the image or not far enough. Simply hit undo from the Edit menu or better still use the quick keys Ctrl+Z. I had to have a couple of tries until my gradation ended where I wanted it.

Tip. Add some noise to this gradation layer so that it matches the pixel structure of the original picture. To do this, enlarge a section of the image so you can see the gradation and the original landscape. Add noise from the filter menu to the gradation until it matches the base image. This will look much more believable in the finished work.

At this stage I found that the saturation of the landscape was a little high for the effect I was trying to create so I reduced it by selecting Image/Adjust/Hue/Saturation or via the shortcut keys Ctrl+U shown below.

I finally added a boarder to my image and a thin line round the edge to make the landscape stand out. The technique for this can be found in another of my tutorials called Adding a Border.

What must be remembered with these techniques is that the right effect needs to be put with the right subject. If you carried out this type of manipulation on a brightly lit sunny scene the end result would look unnatural.