How to Create a Surreal Pirate House Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Give the other distant rock on the left part of the scene.

Step 23

Give another object to the scene. We will add ships. Open the ship image and add it to the document. Take free transform tool (Ctrl+T). Scale the size of the ship accordingly.

Here is the ship after being given water lines below it and shadow.

Duplicate the ship and place the duplicates where needed.

Step 24

On the next last steps, we will do some tweaking for overall mode of the scene like more color adjustments and lightning. First of all, we will add some mist to the scene. Create a new layer above all the other layers. On this layer create cloud filter. Go to filter > render > cloud.

Set this cloud layer to screen blending at about 27% opacity.

Go to filter > blur > Gaussian blur.

Mask the cloud a bit. Let the cloud around the lower part of the building a bit thicker.

Step 25

To add more mist to the scene, we can use the background texture previously created. Duplicate the texture and position the duplicate above the cloud layer.

Set the texture to screen at about 30% opacity.

Step 26

Now we will do some color adjustments. First, we give the scene selective color layer. Place this layer above all the other layers. Set this layer to normal at above 55% opacity.

More two other adjustment layers: color balance and vibrance.

The result should be:

Step 27

Finally, after doing overall color adjustment, we will do some tweaking on the pirate house layer. We will add some lightning on it. We just make use of the provided cosmos image to achieve this. Duplicate the cosmos layer and place the duplicate above the gradient map layer within the pirate house folder. The part circled in red is the one we will use to create the light on the building. Make sure to give this cosmos layer a clipping mask.

Set the cosmos layer to overlay at 100%

Duplicate the cosmos layer and set the duplicate to color dodge. There it goes, the building got some light now. If we feel the light is very strong around certain parts, we can mask this duplicate layer round the parts.

Step 28

Create a new layer with clipping mask above the cosmos layers within the folder. On this layer, paint reddish orange color as the one below to give red highlight.

Provided this color, we should set this layer to soft light at 100% opacity.

To give more vivid red highlight, we can duplicate this provided color and set this duplicate to color dodge blending. Mask to some areas if we feel the color is overlapping to them.

Step 29

Finally, again, create a new layer with a clipping mask above the reddish layers within the folder. Take a very soft round brush. On this layer, paint subtle combination color of yellow white and a bit blue.

Referring to this provided color combination, we will set this layer to soft light to have result below:

Finally, we have done with the pirate house. Give this folder a layer mask. Mask some areas around the lower part and some edges of the building as indicate in red highlight.

Step 30

It’s almost done. To complete the scene, we also will add some light spots to the distant rock. To do this, create a new layer above all the other layers. Take brush tool (B). Hit F5 to show the brush preset. Set the shape of the brush. With this shape, click the brush to paint spot. Use soft yellow color for this.