Discover how to create stunning photo manipulations in Photoshop. In this course, you'll learn everything from photographing models to creating dark conceptual artworks. If you enjoy our photo manipulation tutorials, you will absolutely love this course.
What you'll be creating
You will be creating dark landscape matte painting. I have used Photoshop version CC 2014 to create this work but you can use any version from CS onwards will be fine as well.
Tutorial Resources
- Mountains - TheAJDeviant
- Sky - Xdante-Stock
- Waterfall - Pixabay
- Crow - Freeimages
- Birds Brushes- Candymax-Stock
Step 1
Create a new document by selecting File > New. Set the setting as shown in the image below. You can also choose your own document size but make sure it should be wider enough to cover the mountains image.
Step 2
Now place the mountains image by selecting File > Place Embedded. I have scaled it little bit because I don't want the bottom part of the mountains. You can scale it as you want but remember we don't need the bottom parts.
Step 3
Add a layer mask to the mountains by selecting the second button of layer panel at bottom right side. Now activate the Gradient Tool by pressing (G) on the keyboard and choose a linear black/white gradient then holding the shift key apply the gradient vertically on the layer mask of mountains layer. Here are the results.
Step 4
Now place the sky image below the mountains layer. Scale the sky using Free Transform tool by pressing (CTRL + T) on keyboard so it can cover the entire mountains. Here are the results.
Step 5
To brighten the sky little I have added a Curves adjustment layer to the sky by clicking on the third button of layer panel (See the image below). Set the setting as shown in the image below.
Step 6
Now, back to the mountains layer then add a Brightness/Contrast and Gradient Map adjustment layer to the entire scene. Set the values as shown in the image.
Step 7
Continue colouring by applying Color Balance adjustment layer to the entire scene.
Step 8
Reduce the brightness of scene using a Brigthness/Contrast adjusment layer.
Step 9
Now add the waterfall image to the scene. Place it as shown in the image below.
Step 10
Using a layer mask with soft round basic black brush hide the unwanted part of waterfall to blend it properly to the scene. Here are the results. Note that this is a perfect example when you have proper stock images and it usually takes 1-2 minutes to blend the image to the scene. So, choosing the right stock gives you more realistic results and sometime even better.
Step 11
Now, we have blended the image to the scene but it's colors are still not matching as well as the overall image. Here the comes the job for adjustments layer to adjust the image with existing scene. So, add a Hue/Saturation image to the waterfall as clipping mask because we don't want to affect all the layer.
Step 12
Continue blending the waterfall by applying a Brightness/Contrast and Photo Filter adjustment layer.
Step 13
Add a Color Balance adjusments layer to the scene. See the image for setting.
16 comments on “Create This Dark Matte Landscape Composite in Photoshop”
Fantastic tutorial…..
did you find the mountain image?
i need video tutorial
Awesome
beautiful, but a lot of photos to create the tutorial not found
Brilliant
Hi everyone apologies for broken stock images links.
I just checked the mountains image link, stock provider has removed it from DA (I don't know why). Crow is from freeimages.com and they just upgraded their website with new design and all the id of images has been changed.
New link for crow is here http://www.freeimages.com/photo/crows-1336759
You can also download psd file for mountains image.
No mountain image in link !
I copyed the missing mountain image from the psd file which is at the end of this tutorial
Good thinking Pete !
Where is the file "Mountains". Link gives error: "Oups"
Don't try this tutorial.
Not all the pic's is availble
Great tut, but how to find these images
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awesome
Thanks Bro !