In this tutorial we will create a somewhat sad and melancholic photo manipulation of a guy having a cloud pouring rain on him. We'll create a custom brush and use a variety of both simple and advanced techniques. Let's begin!

Final Results

Tutorial Resources

• Underwater
• Shark
• Fish
• Bubbles Brush
• Columns
• Guy with umbrella
• Water Splashes
• Boat
• Islands
• Palm
• Rain Brush
• Cloud Brushes

Step 1

Open Photoshop and create a new document 2736x4892 px (Ctrl + N).

Step 2

Set the foreground color to #467359 and the background color to #80ba84 (click on the two swatches you can see in the toolbar palette). Select the Gradient Tool (G) and drag from the top of the document to the bottom while holding the Shift key to create gradient as shown below. This will be our base sky.
Create a Photo Filter Adjustment Layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Photo Filter ) and use the settings shown below. This will be our atmosphere layer and we will keep it above all other layers we will create at future steps. So remember – any layers you create in the next steps should be placed below this Adjustment layer in the layer palette (F7).

Step 3

Open the file “Underwater” and select all with Ctrl + A. Copy with Ctrl + C and go back to our document. Paste with Ctrl + V and convert the pasted layer into a smart object by right clicking on the layer in the layer palette (F7) and choosing from the drop down menu “Convert to Smart Object”. Resize and position this layer as shown below using the Free Transform (Ctrl + T). You can hold the Shift key while dragging the corner handles to preserve aspect ratio.
Converting to Smart Objects all your imported layers is a good practice because it allows us to modify, resize, rotate and apply various filters without actually destroying any pixel information – this allows us to revert to the original layer in case we do something wrong with the layer. Do this for all your imported layers.

Step 4

Add a layer mask to the underwater layer by going to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal all. Set the colors to default by pressing D and select the Gradient Tool. Click on the layer mask thumbnail (the white thumbnail next to the layer thumbnail in the layer palette) and drag from the upper section towards the bottom to gradually hide the upper section of the underwater layer.
In a layer mask white reveals and black conceals so by creating a black gradient coming from top we will softly mask the upper section of the layer without leaving any visible hard lines.