How to Create a Surreal Scene Full of Life in Photoshop

How to Create a Surreal Scene Full of Life in Photoshop
How to Create a Surreal Scene Full of Life in Photoshop
  • Clicking with the Quick Selection Tool will add to the selection
  • Holding Alt/Option and clicking will subtract the selection
  • You can quickly change the size of your brush holding Alt/Option, clicking anywhere in the canvas with the right mouse button, and dragging to the left to decrease the size of the brush, and to the right to increase it
step-004a

Copy and paste the turtle into our image and use the Free Transform Tool (Ctrl/Command+T) to increase her size a little bit (see the image below for reference). Now use the Move Tool (V) to place the turtle in the ocean.

step-004b
step-004c

Now comes the fun part! Create a layer mask to the turtle layer and with a soft brush paint the bottom part of the turtle with black.

step-004d
step-004e

Right now the edge between the turtle and the ocean is not looking good. To fix this we're going to change the opacity of our brush to around 30% and start painting some areas with white and/or black.

step-004f

Take your time in this step, it's kind of tricky but it's essential for your final image to look good. My turtle turned out like in the image below, but don't worry if your image doesn't look exactly like mine.

step-004g

Now let's adjust the colors. First, let's add a Gradient Map Adjustment Layer (non-destructively, as always). Select the first gradient from the second row and clip this layer to our turtle layer (see the images below for the rest of the steps).

step-004h
step-004i

Your turtle must be looking like this now:

step-004j

Add a Curves Adjustment Layer to the shell of the turtle. First, check the image below to see the line values of the Curves Adjustment Layer, and then paint the layer mask of this adjustment with black everywhere except the shell.

Remember to clip this adjustment layer with our turtle just like what we did with the Gradient Map.

step-004k
step-004l

Your turtle should now look like this:

step-004m

Add a Color Balance Adjustment Layer (see the image below for the input values) and this time we don't want the adjustment to affect the shell, so we're going to paint it black.

Again, remember to clip the adjustment layer to the turtle.

step-004n
step-004o

Now your image should be looking something like this:

step-004p

And to finish this step, like we did last time, group all these new layers (select them and press Ctrl/Command+G) into a new group called Turtle.

step-004q

Step 5: Add the picture frame of our hanging picture

In this step, we're going to start adding some smaller elements into our image. We're going to start by adding the picture, the ropes holding it, the pigeon, and some smoke coming out of the picture.

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32 comments on “How to Create a Surreal Scene Full of Life in Photoshop”

  1. You've made a very nice and comprehensive collection of WordPress Themes. I appreciate it. Really great art work with typography. Thanks for sharing this nice post.

  2. Outstanding tutorial!Clear instructions and awesome picture instructions. Very nice, thank you a bunch.

  3. I can not thank you enough, the amount of things I've learnt in two hours is incredible, would usually take me a week of watching and reading tutorials, but nope, you've used many techniques that made my life easier! Thank you is not enough!

    1. just do what i did , 
      download the attached PSD from up there and take the mountain photo from there :D

    2. @SalahKabbani OK! Got it!I decided to replace the mountain photo with a desert one ^_^Thanks anyway :)

  4. Thank you so much for this tutorial really great photo and great explanation love it. 
    but i have a problem with the mountain photo , the link of this photo doesn't work , can you please upload it again or give me another photo that could be good for the tutorial ?
    thanks

  5. Hi Guilherme, From the start of your tutorial you say to go to lens correction and distort the image to + 25,00, it distorts the image considerably !, is that right, ?, by the way it is a great tutorial,
    regards and respect johnny

    1. Its ok, all i did was after the lens correction was used the free transform tool and adjusted the image to cover my canvas again lol, My bad..

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