How to Create a Surreal Scene with an Invisible Man Inside a Mystic Cave

Now merge all these layers in one (select them and press Ctrl/Cmd+E). Name this new layer ‘Plants and bird’.

To finish this step, let’s add some lighting to the elements we just added. As usual, select the layer we just created and hit Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+N to create a new layer with the following settings:

Now grab the Dodge Tool (Shortcut: O), set the range to midtones, the exposure to 50% and start adding some shadows and lighting to our plants.

We clipped this layer to our ‘Plants and Bird’ layer, so you don’t have to be so precise with your painting because it will only affect the plants and the bird, not the background
Give the plants some lighting in the top (based on the position of the sun)
Paint some dark areas in the bottom of the plants and the bird

Here is my Lighting layer in normal mode:

And here is the result of my lighting layer:

To finish this step, add these two layers we created into a new group called ‘Plants and Bird’.

Step 13: Add some people to our scene

Let’s add the girls in our cave. Open the Girl 1 stock and select her using the Quick Selection Tool (Shortcut: W).

Copy and paste it into our project and place her layer above the Cave group.

Use the Free Transform Tool (Ctrl/Cmd+T) as usual to resize her (remember to hold Shift). Then move her to the left side of our image.

Let’s add a torch in the hand of the girl. Open the photoshop file Old Torch and select it by holding Ctrl/Cmd and clicking in the thumbnail of the Layer 1 of this project.

Now use the Free Transform Tool (holding Shift) to resize and rotate the torch like this:

Let’s improve the fire a little bit, select the Smudge Tool with a 1px brush and set the Strength to 80%. Then click and drag some areas of the fire to make it look more natural (see image below for reference).

Here is my result:

Now that this girl is ready, let’s add another one to the other side. Open the Girl 2 stock and select her using the Quick Selection Tool (Shortcut: W). Don’t worry too much about little details over the hair because she will be really small in our final image

Copy and paste her into our project.

Now resize her using the Free Transform Tool (holding Shift) and place her on the right side of our image.

Now that the girls are in place, let’s add their shadows in the cave. Create a new layer, name it Shadow and place it above the Cave group.

Now grab a soft brush and start painting this layer with black following the image below:

To give the shadows a more natural look, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur and set the radius to 7px.

And here is the result:

Let’s add some lighting to the girls. First, merge (Ctrl/Cmd+E) the girls and the torch into a new layer called Girls.

Now create a new layer pressing Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+N and set the values below:

Select the Dodge Tool (Shortcut: O), set the Range to Midtones, the Exposure to 50%, and start painting the Lighting layer.

Make it look like the sun is affecting the girls
Make the torch brighter

Here is my lighting layer in normal blending mode for reference.

And here is the result:

To finish this step, select these three layers we just created and add them to a new group called Girls.

10 comments on “How to Create a Surreal Scene with an Invisible Man Inside a Mystic Cave”

Maidul Islam says:

September 22, 2014 at 1:08 am

Some of these tutorials are extremely good, magazine like. Thanks for sharing!

Danni says:

September 13, 2012 at 5:51 am

Excellent tutorial. Easy to follow and very, very informative. Thanks for the knowledge.

Leann says:

September 11, 2012 at 7:07 pm

I did thank you. It took a while but after a while I got the hang of it.

bassam says:

September 4, 2012 at 8:45 am

excellent work

mike says:

August 27, 2012 at 12:41 am

buen trabajo amigo

rakesh says:

August 17, 2012 at 8:09 am

good work

Hackmen says:

August 13, 2012 at 6:58 pm

nice

Trishona says:

August 3, 2012 at 5:05 pm

Cool tutorial...got to learn a lot of things... Thanks a lot... :)

1. Guilherme Pejon says:
  
  August 9, 2012 at 5:51 am
  
  thanks, glad you like it =D