Make clouds soft and fluffy, not hard and harsh

Monday 11 August 2025, 20:20 by Nando Harmsen | 3,748 views | 4 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

A landscape with a beautiful cloudy sky is appealing. Never edit clouds too heavily. Don't try to overdo them. Keep clouds soft and fluffy.

A beautiful cloudy sky in a landscape photo is a delight to look at. It could be a typical Dutch cloudscape, or dramatic clouds that don't bode well.

Clarity and Dehaze in Lightroom allow you to make every tiny detail in the clouds visible.
When editing a photo, you have plenty of tools at your disposal to get the most out of clouds. You often end up seeing details that weren't even there in reality. Avoid the temptation to do this.

A lot of effort has gone into making the clouds look as intense as possible. They look coarse and harsh.
Clarity and Dehaze in Lightroom, in particular, allow you to greatly increase the contrast in a photo in a simple way. You can use a mask to apply this exclusively to the sky.

By making the contrast so strong, the photo becomes harsh and coarse. There is also a risk of halos forming where the sky meets the foreground. But more importantly, the sky becomes so prominent that it starts demanding too much attention.

Softening the appearance of the sky and clouds makes it much more pleasant to look at. The details are still there, but they don't dominate.
Making the sky and clouds less harsh gives the photo more balance. You can often even set Clarity to a negative value. The Texture slider can then be raised slightly to compensate for the loss of detail. The clouds will look much more realistic as a result.

The exaggerated and unrealistic contrast is absent. Yet the sky is still full of the same details.

Avoid the temptation to give clouds a coarse and harsh appearance. Although it may look impressive at first, it makes the photo unrealistic and, above all, too busy. It often has a negative effect on the composition.

However, it can sometimes be useful to add extra contrast to the clouds. Do this subtly by working locally with a mask. This technique is called dodging and burning, and it gives you the chance to emphasise a little more detail in specific parts of the clouds.

There are situations where you may want more definition in parts of the clouds. Don't be afraid to do this, but keep it subtle and use a mask.
Always think carefully about editing a cloudy sky. Remember this rule of thumb: more detail and contrast is rarely better for the photo. Keep it subtle instead.

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