
Now get the Brush Tool (Shortcut: B), right click anywhere inside the canvas and select a soft round brush (Hardness:0%). Make sure the opacity of your brush is at 100% (just below the Window menu button on the top bar).



Don’t worry about the size of the brush, but remember this shortcuts:
· To increase the size of a brush hit ]
· To decrease the size of a brush hit [
We’re going to be painting with black (to hide unwanted parts of our image non-destructively). To quickly get black as your foreground color just hit “D” on the keyboard.
When painting a layer mask, you can hold Alt/Opt and click it to see exactly what you’ve painted. What you should aim for in this step is to hide the corners of the image, the sky part of the clouds, and blend the clouds of this layer with the clouds of the layer below. To do this last step (the blending of clouds), you can lower the opacity of your brush to something around 10~25%. Here is what my layer mask looks like if I click it while holding Alt/Opt.

And here is the result of this layer mask:

Now we’re going to do the same thing with the other clouds layer (Cloud 1), but this time we are only going to erase the sky part of the layer. So repeat the same steps, create a new layer mask, and paint the sky part with black to hide it.


Here is the result:

Now let’s improve our sky a little bit. Select the Sky layer (from the Field stock), and add a Black & White filter. You can do that by clicking in the circle button in the layers panel:

Now select the Green Filter from the presets and clip this adjustment to the layer below (good photoshop practice). You can do that by clicking in the first button in the Properties window of this adjustment (the button with a square and an arrow next to it). Also, bring the opacity of this layer to 80%, and the Fill to 75%.


The second adjustment we will add to that layer is a Curves adjustment layer. Click in the same button you clicked before, but choose Curves this time.

With the RGB curve selected (default), add two points to it and change its shape to something like mine in the image below. Remember to clip this adjustment to the layer below as well (by clicking in the same button we did before).
29 responses to “Create a Surreal Photo Manipulation of a Monk in the Caves”
-
Good job Awesome work
-
u’re wron
-
-
Beautifully done.
-
Love this TUT! it took me a couple of hours but well worth the end result. Great job!
-
Please re uploaded PSD file because when i click on download showing 404 error, this is best work for me i want check how did you do this
-
Thanks a lot, I learn a lot form this tutorrials
-
Wow. Thank you for sharing this experience with us………..and for the challenge.
-
Thanks for this great tutorial. One of the best I found so far. But I do have a question, since one step doesn’t work out like it should. I have finished the cave and put the layers in a Group Folder as the tutorial says. The next step would be the cave lighting layer. But when I try to create it, Photoshop won’t let me add a clipping mask. For some reason it won’t do that above a group folder. To help myself I merged all cave layers into one, that way it works, but of course I can’t change any details now, which is a bit annoying. I would be glad if you or someone else could tell me what I’ve been doing wrong. I use Photoshop CS4.
-
Hey man. Thank you so much for this awesome tutorial; thanks for being so specifici with everything. Here is what I did following your instructions, hope you like it:
Regards from Mexico.
-
Excellent tutorial! I can’t believe I did it! Thank you for such perfect instructions! I learned a lot!
-
nice
-
Very nice examples. Thanks.
-
i love u jerry
muawwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
tzup@x!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -
Oh great! Thank you.
-
Great tutorial =)
Thanks a lot !Here’s my try : http://gohusdesign.com/surreal.html (in the bottom of the page)
-
Thanks Man, Good tutorial it really help with some techniques i already knew and did know :P Thanks!
-
Great tutorial. I loved it, and my end result turned out really well. I learned a tonne about layer masks so thank you :D
-
This worked ! Could do it as a beginner. Neat description. Great tutorials.Thank you!
-
A bit cheating with the cube but it works. Proper way is to create a cube with isometric transforms.
-
<3 <3 <3
I love your tuts!! -
AWESOME
-
Thank you for your tutoring.I am very appreciate your time.
Wish you and your family have wonderful weekend.
-
Awesome tutorial…keep them coming..Thanks
-
Terrific tutorials, as ALWAYS!
And trust me, a lot of users see your tutorials, even if they don’t leave feedback.
Thanks, as always!
-
I always learn something from the great Photoshop Tutorials here.
-
On the part where you pick random parts from the island, you should have placed the layer inside the main PSD & use layer masks. Duplicate layer, paint in layer mask, repeat.
-
Better vextor mask to cut out than layer mask to fading edge
-
-
One of the best tutorials- very detailed. Thanks a lot.
-
Awesome work!!!!
Leave a Reply