starting out


I am interested in learning to do DMP because I need better skies with more dramatic clouds to use as a back plates for my scenes. I have been looking at a lot of 19th century landscape painting for my inspiration like the oil painting below. As I have never done this before I am trying to figure out what is the approach to doing this.

I have tried using Vue but it is very processor intensive for the resolution I need (18000 x 13500) to do anything except really basic looking skies with clouds. The knowledge base for using Vue is also pretty thin. If software is a time efficient way to approach this what are people using besides Vue? I have also looked into painting skies in photoshop. After looking at tons of youtube videos it seems that doing something more complex than a basic white cumulus cloud at noon by making a custom brush requires high level experience. When you ad color variation for more prismatic skies it seems very daunting. If painting skies with dramatic clouds in photoshop is the better route to go are there good tutorials that anyone would recommend that go beyond making a brush? I am specifically interested in tutorials that in part address color. Would it be easier to do this by collaging photos?