Learn how to create this mystical image of an angel rising to the heavens from inside a castle. This tutorial will show you how to create bright heavenly light and ambient lighting, blend images together to create an angel, and finish it off with a soft-focus photo effect.

Preview of Final Results

How to Create a Rising Angel Photo-manipulation in Photoshop

Tutorial Resources

• Nightstock 701 - Nightstock
• 262-float - wolfcatstock
• HQ Angel Wings Render - ~Requiem-K
• 394 look up - Wolfcatstock
• Winter SnowFlake Brushes PS7 - KeepWaiting

Step 1

Now, let's start by creating a new image file, go to the Menu bar and click File > New, and then input the following values on their respective fields:

• Preset: Custom
• Width: 2480 pixels
• Height: 3508 pixels
• Resolution: 300pixels/inch
• Color Mode: RGB Color
• Background Contents: Transparent

Step 2

In this step, we will be creating the stairway inside the castle. To start, open "Nightstock 701" by Nightstock. Next activate the Move Tool by pressing V on your keyboard and then left-click on the stock image and then drag it to our canvas. Position the stock image as shown on the image below:

Step 3

Next, we will resize this image to fit our canvas. To start, activate the Transform tool by pressing Ctrl/Cmd + T. Once the Transform tool appears, a series of squares would appear on the sides of the stock image to be transformed. Drag the encircled square to the respective direction as shown below:

The resized image should appear like this:

Step 4

Now, we would need to image's angle and to do that we would need to activate the Transform tool (Ctrl/Cmd + T) once again. Now, that it is activated, right click on the canvas to prompt the appearance of the Transform tool's contextual menu. Once it appears, click on Distort.

Now, let's distort the image:

The result:

Step 5

Next, we will fix the lighting on this stock image. To do that, select the image and then activate the Curves adjustment tool by pressing Ctrl/Cmd + M. Once it opens, drag the line to the point shown below or you may also input the following values on their respective boxes:

• Channel: RGB
• Output: 125
• Input: 103

The result of that should be similar to the image below:

Step 6

Now, that we're done, select all the layers that we've made in this step and then press Ctrl/Cmd + G to group them. We would need to group the layers in order to avoid confusion in later steps.

Rename the layer to "Background", renaming a group is similar to renaming a layer - simply double-click on the words: "Group 1" (you can find that on the layer window) to prompt a text box to appear and then type in the name you want to put.