Create a Mysterious and Eerie Surreal Image in Photoshop

In this tutorial, we will learn how to create an eerie depiction of a dream through photo-manipulation. We are going to learn how to create a seamless surreal image of a mysterious window-headed man in a haunting, desolate road. We are going to learn the process of creating depth of field using a few Blur tools. We will learn how to create light and darkness to make the background look seamless. We are going to learn how to use textures and give life to our image, and we are going to learn how to create a moody, black and white tone using a few adjustment layers.

Preview of Final Results

Resources

~~Road 5 - Nighfate stock~~ (Alternative)
Canim Lake 4 - Little stock
Window - Mehrunnisa stock
Cliff type 2_2 - The Strawberry Tree
Suit Stock 2 - rhyfelwr stock
~~Swing Stock 2 - Shoofly-Stock~~ (Alternative)
Metal Texture 15 - Wojtar stock
Paper Texture 1 - Wojtar stock

Step 1: Create a New Image File

Let's start, first create a new image file, go to the Menu bar and click File > New, and then input the following values on their respective fields:

Width: 3000px
Height: 3000px
Resolution: 300pixels/inch
Color Mode: RGB Color; 8 bit
Background Contents: Transparent

Step 2: Create the Road

In this step, we will be creating the foreground of our picture which is the road. To begin, open the image "road 5" by night fate stock. Once you have the image is open, remove the watermark by cropping the image. To do that, activate the Crop tool by pressing Ctrl/Cmd + C on your keyboard. See the images below:

Once you've cropped it, activate the Move tool by pressing V on your keyboard. After activating it, left-click on the image and drag it to the 3000x3000pixel canvas. Move and position the road on the canvas as shown on the image below:

We positioned it there so it would be easier for us to resize that image into a square. Now, before resizing let's rename this layer to "road". To rename a layer, simply double-click on the words: "layer 1" (that is our road image) to prompt a text box to appear. Once that appears, you may now rename the layer. After that, we will now proceed to resizing. First, activate the Transform tool (Ctrl/Cmd + T). Activating this will prompt little squares to appear on each side of the image. Once done, right click on the canvas to bring up the contextual menu and choose "Rotate". The next step is provided on the image below:

The result should appear like this:

Don't worry about its uneven sides, we're going to fix that later. Now, activate the Transform tool again (Ctrl/Cmd + T) because we're going to resize the image. Drag the little square on the lower right-hand portion of the image to the bottom to fill the canvas and do the same thing on the top to fill the uneven portion. See image below:

The result should be similar to the image below:

Next, activate the Transform tool again (Ctrl/Cmd +T), and then right click on the canvas to bring up the contextual menu. Once open, click on "Warp". When activated follow the instructions below:

The result should be similar to the following:

Now, we would need to adjust the road's Color Balance to make it blend with the next series of images. Select the image and go to Image > Adjustments

Color Levels: -24, -12, 0
Tone Balance: Midtones
Preserve Luminosity: Check

The result:

Step 3: Create the Sky

Now, we will proceed to creating the sky. First, let's open the image "Canim Lake 4". We're going to use the sky of this image because it blends well with our road. To transfer this sky to our canvas, first activate the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M).

5 comments on “Create a Mysterious and Eerie Surreal Image in Photoshop”

Kath says:

January 18, 2019 at 2:23 pm

These instructions are huge and I appreciate how detailed they are. Thank you for sharing. :)

Su Hall says:

January 16, 2019 at 5:09 pm

This is an oldie! LOL I think I'll give it a go! Thank you!!

1. Photoshop Tutorials Staff says:
  
  January 16, 2019 at 11:41 pm
  
  It is. We have a lot of tutorials that are still good but just need a bit of update/fixes with the resource links :)
alec says:

October 7, 2013 at 10:22 am

i love photoshop

bephot says:

March 2, 2013 at 4:19 am

nice work