Combine Photo Elements to Create a Surreal Photo Manipulation

Combine Photo Elements to Create a Surreal Photo Manipulation
Combine Photo Elements to Create a Surreal Photo Manipulation

This Photoshop tutorial, you will learn how to use a variety of color, lighting, and cut and paste techniques to create a surreal photo manipulation. Combine your creativity with these Photoshop techniques to create your own photo manipulation artworks.

Final Results

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Step 1 - Place the background

The first step it’s to place the sky, our background, into the image. As you can see, we have changed the color of it. We’re going to create a half of the image with a warm tone and another with a cool tone using the color balance tool. To do this, select the sky and then choose Image > Adjustments > Color Balance. Adjust the input sliders to add red and yellow. Select “highlights” and “shadows” then try adding more of these colors until you like the tones in your image.

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Step 2 - Coloring the sky

Duplicate the layer with the sky. Now we are going to repeat the previous step with the color balance tool (Image > Adjustments > Color Balance) but this time adding blue and cyan tones. Remember to add some color to highlights and shadows as well.

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Select the eraser tool then, in the option bar, select a blurred brush like shown below:

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Now use the eraser tool to erase the left side of the sky in the top layer. This will make the warm tones from the layer below appear wherever you paint. When using the eraser, create curved strokes rather than a straight cut. When you have finished this step, you can reduce the opacity of the current layer to make the color more subtle.

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Step 3 – Add the model

Now let’s open picture of the model. Use the magic wand tool to create a selection of the model then click on the add layer mask button in the layers palette to create a mask of the model. Refine the mask by painting in the layer mask using a brush with a harder edge. When you’re done, position the woman in the centre of the image.

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Step 4 - Coloring the model

As you can see the lighting of the model isn’t blending in well with the background. We’re going to fix this with the levels tool. Choose Image > Adjustments > levels and move the input sliders to add contrast that matches the contrast of the background

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32 comments on “Combine Photo Elements to Create a Surreal Photo Manipulation”

  1. HI. are there any assets to go with this tutorial please, i don't see them anywhere. I love doing your tutorials they turnout so good. David Holmes

  2. People should put nicer coments on this because I do not think they would like their work called crap or sloppy.

  3. Agreed.. the tutorial is quite crappy, not enough info for beginners, and more advanced users will know all that already.

    Also extremely sloppy work on the picture, I wouldnt dare to view it in higher resolution.

  4. Badly explained or for advanced people only (which wouldn't need it). Also extremely sloppy work at the bottom (grass).
    I guess this picture looks extremely crappy in a decent resolution.

  5. Pretty shitty explained... When I use the magic wand tool it always only selects little parts of the model, and I also don´t absolutely don`t know where to save this, or what happened to the layers I worked on before... And where the hell is the add layer mask button??

    1. You should probably get acquainted with basic Photoshop tools first...

      The tutorial is very well done, thank you.

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