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I’ve been trying to get better at creating a sense of depth in my digital paintings, but my background elements always end up looking flat and unconvincing. I’m wondering if anyone has a good method for atmospheric perspective when working with just a few layers.

I tried a three layer setup and leaned on atmospheric perspective. For the background I drop saturation, push it toward cool blues, and blur the edges a bit so it reads as distant. The midground stays crisper than the background but softer than the foreground, and I keep the contrast lower on far shapes.

I add a faint veil of color over the far layer, like a light haze, and I only keep the far shapes with very soft edges. It felt kind of trial and error. Sometimes it helped, sometimes not, but I kept going.

I keep a tiny palette for far away in muted blues greens and a touch of violet for depth cue. I compare screenshots with the real world and note how the far landscape looks washed out and blue. Then I apply that to the distant layer, little by little.

Do you think the real problem is lighting or layer order?

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