How to Add Sunlight to an Overcast Photo in Photoshop

Do you want to brighten your overcast photos? Dull, dark images taken in cloudy conditions can be brightened with a natural looking sunlight effect. In this article, we will show you how to add sunlight to an overcast photo in Photoshop.

If you don’t have it yet, you can get Photoshop from Adobe’s site here.

Add Sunlight to an Overcast Photo

First thing you need to do is open your image in Photoshop.

Then press Ctrl + J two times to create two duplicate layers of your Background layer. Let’s name the top layer “Vibrance” and middle layer “Lighten”.

Your Layers panel should now look as shown below:

Next, you need to select the Lighten layer and change the blending mode to Screen. Also, reduce the opacity of this layer to 40%.

Then, add a layer mask to the Lighten layer. To add a layer mask, go to Layer » Layer Mask » Reveal All. Then select the Brush Tool from the toolbar on the left-hand side.

You’ll need to brush the areas where you want to have less light in the image. Make sure that the foreground color is set to black.

After the Lighten layer, go ahead and select the Vibrance layer in the Layers panel and change the blending mode to Soft Light. For a natural-looking effect, reduce the opacity of this layer to 40%.

Now you can go ahead to Layer » Layer Mask » Reveal All and add the layer mask to the Vibrance layer.

You’ll need to select the Brush Tool and set your foreground color to black. Brush the areas where you want to reduce the vibrance in your image.

That’s it! You can see the before and after image below.

We hope this article has helped you to learn how to add sunlight to an overcast photo in Photoshop. You may also want to check out our guide on everything you need to know about photography lighting.

If you like this article, then please follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more free photo editing tutorials.