How to Create a Mystical Glowing Elephant in Photoshop

But perhaps the most important lesson I learned is that there are no walls between humans and the elephants except those we put up ourselves and that until we allow not only elephants but all living creatures their place in the sun, we can never be whole ourselves. In This Photoshop Tutorial, we learn how to create a night scene with a glowing effect. For Final Adjustment, we used Camera Raw Filter.

Preview of Final Image

Tutorial Resources

Step 1

Now, let’s start open a Background image. Go to File > Open and select background photo. Press right click on mouse and in new pop-out window select “Convert to Smart Object”.

Step 2

Next we will open Elephant. After you open the image, use Quick Selection Tool(W) and start selecting the animal. After the selection area has been created, simply copy (Ctrl / Cmd + C) and Paste (Ctrl / Cmd + V) it to our work canvas. Then position the image with the transform tool (Ctrl / Cmd + T). Hold Alt + Shift and resterize like image below. In Photoshop CC only hold Alt to resterize al sides together.

Step 3

Add Adjustment Layer "Levels"

Step 4

Add Adjustment Layer "Hue/Saturation"

Step 5

Add Adjustment Layer "Curves"

Step 6

Add Adjustment Layer "Curves" and press Ctrl/Cmd + I to invert and use Brush Tool(B) Soft Round with foreground color white and paint the highlights parts on Elephant.

Step 7

Add Adjustment Layer "Curves" and press Ctrl/Cmd + I to invert and use Brush Tool(B) Soft Round with foreground color white and paint the dark parts on Elephant.

Step 8

Next, select Elephant layer and Duplicate it (Press Ctrl/Cmd +J) and move it below Elephant layer. We'll use it for a shadow, press Ctrl/Cmd + U to open Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer and set Lightness to -100.

Step 9

Now open a Transform Tool(Ctrl/Cmd + T) and flip it Vertical. To have complete control hold Ctrl/Cmd and move bottom pointers to right side. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set radius to 5.2px.

Step 10

Now create another shadow, create a new layer and use a Brush Tool(B) Soft Round with foreground color black and start painting the shadow but first drop a flow to 10%.

Step 11

Next, create a new layer above all to create a some fog. Use Brush Tool(B) Soft Round with foreground color #bbcdc7 and start painting. Opacity set to 40% and look at example in picture below.

Step 12

Create a new layer and use Pen Tool(P) then start selecting Tush and press right click "Make Selection" Feather Radius set to 0px, check AntiAliased and press OK. Use White color and fill it (Ctrl/Cmd + Delete).

Right click on layer and select Blending Options. We now get an Layer Style options window. 1. Inner Glow

2. Color Overlay

3. Outer Glow

Step 13

Now repeat the same procedure on the other elephant horn only opacity set to 50%.

Step 14

Next, we add Stars but first we need to import brushes. Select a Brush Tool(B) and right click on background. Now click on the gear icon and Import Brushes (Select a downloaded brush).

Now we can paint some stars...

Step 15

Now right click on layer and select Blending Options. We now get an Layer Style options window. 1. Outer Glow

Step 16

Now, go to File > Open and select Leaves. Now that we have opened we need to remove the background, the easiest way to do that is Color Range. Go to Select > Color Range and with the pointer click on white color on image, Fuzzines set to 40 then press OK.