Installation is a couple of clicks, and the suite of tools appears under the Photoshop plug-in menu, not the filter menu. Finally, and happily, the latest Astro Panel X Pro embraces the newest chips from Apple, and I did my testing on both a MacBook Pro with an M2 Max chip (12 cores and 32 GB unified memory) and a new Mac Studio with an M2 Max with 12‑core CPU, 38‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine, and 96 GB of unified memory.Īstro Panel Pro X requires Photoshop CC and is only compatible with Adobe Photoshop CC from 2021 to the current 2023 version and, as I said, it is compatible with the new Apple Mac M1/M2 processors and Windows. If you don’t have time for that, you can always refer to the free sky collections above.Recently, I stopped using the plug-in as it did not work with Apple Silicon Macs (it does work fine with Windows). In a matter of weeks you will have a sizable collection of sky overlays. Spend several days watching the skies above your head and taking photos of the most interesting cloud patterns. With objects present you may get a shadowy background and you will need some ND filters to darken the sky. Without background objects it’s also easier to get a balanced exposure. Otherwise it will give you more work when you need to remove these objects from the image. Avoid background objects like hills, houses, trees. When you take sky photos, use these simple rules. Add sky photos for different weather and lighting conditions. You can have your own categories of skies: clean blue skies, clouds, overcast skies, golden hour skies, blue hour skies. Create your own collection of sky images by building a new habit: take photos whenever you see a particularly beautiful sky. But you don’t always need to search for and buy sky stock photos. You have access to tons of good sky photos above. No credit is necessary, but we will appreciate a link back to this free collection. Cookies should be allowed in your browser so that you can see the contents of the shared folder. You can download the images one by one or all together. The images are located in a shared Microsoft One folder. We’ve taken photos of skies during different seasons and on different devices from Android devices to iPhone to a mirror camera. All these visuals are free to use in personal and commercial projects. We leave that to you to decide if you want to download these photos and use them in your work.

Occasionally, you will find “intruders” in our photos, like planes, boats, birds. They include clouds, blue skies, golden hour skies. Here is our own collection of free sky overlays.

Photoshop sky overlay free