How to Manipulate a Beautiful Sunset Matte Painting in Photoshop

How to Manipulate a Beautiful Sunset Matte Painting in Photoshop
How to Manipulate a Beautiful Sunset Matte Painting in Photoshop

In this tutorial we'll learn how to create a beautiful sunset matte painting in Photoshop. This tutorial has extensive use of manipulation techniques that will help you to achieve realistic natural landscape scenery. We'll also mainpulate certains stock images such as bay, sky, fisherman, birds etc to create this composite. Follow the tutorial and sharpen your manipulation skills.

What you'll be creating

You'll be creating a landscape matte painting. I have used Photoshop CC 2014 for this tutorial but you can follow it with Photoshop CS3 or newer version.

final-results

Tutorial Resources

Step 1

Start by creating a new Photoshop document by selecting File > New then set the setting as shown in the image below or you can choose your own settings.

Step-001

Step 2

Now place the bay image to main document by selecting File > Place. While placing it keep some space from top of the document as you can see the results in the image below.

Step-002

Step 3

Add a layer mask to the bay layer by clicking on the second button of layer panel at right hand side bottom corner. Now hide the selected part of bay layer by painting with soft round black brush on the layer mask of bay layer.

Step-003

You can see the overall and layer mask results.

Step-003a

Step 4

Place the sky image below the bay layer.

Step-004

Step 5

Add a Curves Adjustment layer to the sky by simply clicking on the third button of layer panel (see the image below). Set the setting as shown in the image below.

Step-005

Here are the result.

Step-005a

Step 6

To add some yellow color tone to the sky I added Photo Filter and Selective Color adjustment layer to the sky. Here are values for both adjustment layer.

Step-006

Here are the results.

Step-006a

Step 7

Head back to the bay layer then add a Hue/Saturation and Photo Filter adjustment to the bay layer as clipping mask (see the image below for clipping mask button). Using clipping mask these adjustment layer only effect the bay layer not the sky layer that's why we use clipping mask so it will only apply the effects on that layer in which we want to not the rest of the layers. Set the setting as shown in the image below.

Step-007

You can see the result below it has only effected the bay layer not the sky layer.

Step-007a

Step 8

Add a Exposure adjustment layer to the bay layer. Set the setting as shown in the image below.

Step-008

On the layer mask of exposure adjustment layer hide the effect partially (see the image below) and keep some parts of bay layer darker because we are creating a sunset landscape so the far most part of bay layer should be darker. You can see the image below for instructions.

Step-008a

Here are the results on layer mask.

Step-008b

Step 9

Now add a Color Balance adjustment layer to entire scene (don't clip it). Set the setting as shown in the image below.

Step-009

Here are the results.

Step-009a

Step 10

Add Brightness/Contrast and Gradient Map adjustment layer to the entire scene. Set the setting as shown in the image below. Also, change the blend mode of Gradient Map adjustment layer to Color Dodge and reduce the opacity to 33%.

Step-010

Here are the results.

Step-010a

Step 11

Add a Color Balance adjustment layer and set the setting as shown in the image below.

Step-011

Here are the results.

Step-011a

Step 12

Time to create light effect using some basic lighting techniques. Create a new layer by pressing (CTRL + SHIFT + N) on keyboard then name it 'Light'. Activate the brush tool by pressing (B) on the keyboard and change your foreground color to #4e2106. Paint a big stroke on the scene as shown in the image below.

Step-012

Change the blend mode of light layer to color dodge and here are the results.

Step-012a

Step 13

Paint some more light on bay water portions by creating new layer and using the same color in previous step.

Step-013

This time change the blend mode to Linear Dodge and reduce the opacity to 38%. Here the results.

Step-013a

Step 14

Add waterfall to the main document as shown in the image below.

Step-014

Step 15

Using your favourite selection tool extract the selected part of the waterfall as shown in the image below.

Step-015

Here are the results.

Step-015a

Step 16

Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to the waterfall.

Step-016

On the layer mask of Hue/Saturation adjustment layer hide the effect in selected part as shown in the image below because I don't want to darker those areas of waterfall which is reflected by the light source.

Step-016a
Step-016b

Step 17

Add a Photo Filter adjustment layer to the waterfall.

Step-017

Hide the effect of Photo Filter adjustment layer on selected parts of waterfall that will only effect the water parts of waterfall.

Step-017a

Step 18

Add the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to the waterfall. Set the setting as shown in the image below and also hide the effect in selected parts of waterfall or leave it.

Step-018

Step 19

Reduce the brightness and increase the contrast of waterfall by adding a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer. Reduce the opacity of Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer to 70% and also hide the selected effects as shown in the image below.

Step-019

Step 20

I want add fog to the waterfall because as the water falls from the waterfall it creates a fog or kind of white smokes. To add it, create a new layer and name it 'Fog' then activate the brush tool and set the opacity and flow of brush to 30%. Now change your foreground color to #494745 then start painting some fog like shown in the image below.

Step-020

Step 21

Add a layer mask to the fog layer and then apply Cloud filter on the layer mask of fog layer by selecting Filter > Render > Clouds. That will properly turn it into the fog. Here are the results.

Step-021

Step 22

Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to the fog layer. Set the setting as shown in the image below.

Step-022

Step 23

Extract the fisherman and place it to the main document. Also hide the water parts of fisherman as shown in the image below.

Step-023

Step 24

Add a Photo Filter adjustment layer to the fisherman to blend it properly to the entire scene. Set the setting a shown in the image below.

Step-024

Step 25

Add a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer to the fisherman. Set the setting as shown in the image below. Hide the selected effect of Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer by painting with soft round black on the layer mask of Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer. Also reduce the opacity of Brightness/Contrast to 80%.

Step-025

Here are the results so far.

Step-025a

Step 26

Load the birds brushes in Photoshop then paint some birds as shown in the image below.

Step-026

Step 27

In this step we'll be enhancing the light effect more precisely. Create new layer then name it 'light' and paint some light as shown in the image below with color #532b03 using soft round brush tool.

Step-027

Change the blend mode of light layer to linear Dodge and reduce the opacity to 38%. Here are the results.

Step-027a

Step 28

Again create a new layer then name it 'light 1'. Using the same color in previous step then paint a big stroke as shown in the image below.

Step-028

Set the blend mode of 'light 1' layer to linear dodge and reduce the opacity to 40%. Here are the results.

Step-028a

Step 29

Again create a new layer then name it 'light 2' and this time paint a big stroke little bit below the last one using same color setting of previous step and here are the results.

Step-029

Change the blend mode of 'light 2' layer to linear dodge and reduce the opacity to 20%.

Step-029a

Step 30

The bay layer has some unwanted parts like pillar, houses, wires etc and I don't want them. So, we'll be cleaning up such thing using clone stamp tool. Create a new layer and start cloning the parts as shown in the image below.

Step-030

Step 31

On the other side clone these parts as well.

Step-031

Here are results after cloning.

Step-031a

Step 32

Open up the foliage pack and choose 'Foliage 6' then place it to left bottom corner.

Step-032

To add some depth to the scene I added a Gaussian Blur filter to the foliage 6 by selecting Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set the radius to 2.7 pixel. Here are the results.

Step-032a

Step 33

Add a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer to the foliage 6 and set the setting as shown in the image below. Also hide the selected effect of Brightness/Contrast on foliage 6.

Step-033

Step 34

Reduce the lightness and saturation of foliage 6 by adding a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to the foliage 6.

Step-034

Step 35

Add a Photo Filter adjustment layer to foliage.

Step-035

Step 36

Now add the foliage 1 to the document and rotate it as shown in the image.

Step-036

I also added a Gaussian Blur filter to this foliage with same setting as in step 32. Here are the results.

Step-036a

Step 37

Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to the foliage 1 and on the layer mask of this adjustment layer hide the selected effect.

Step-037

Step 38

Now add a Photo Filter adjustment layer to foliage. Set the setting as shown in the image below.

Step-038

Step 39

So we have set up our landscape and it's time to head towards the 'Final Adjustments'. Paint some light with color #68421a as shown in the image below.

Step-039

Change the blend mode to Lighter Color and reduce the opacity to 27%.

Step-039a

Step 40

Now start applying the final adjustments. So add a Gradient Map and Photo Filter adjustments layers to the entire scene. Set the setting as shown in the image below.

Step-040

Change the blend mode of Gradient Map to Color Dodge and reduce the opacity to 30%. Here are the results.

Step-040a

Step 41

Continue finalizing the scene with Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer. Set the setting as shown in the image below and reduce the opacity to 14%.

Step-041

Step 42

Add the Color Balance adjustment layer to the scene. Set the setting as shown in the image below.

Step-042

Here are the results.

Step-042a

Step 43

Finally, add a Selective Color adjustment layer and reduce the opacity to 80% (depends on you how much yellow tone you want to add to entire scene). Set the values as shown in the image below.

Step-043

Here are the results.

Step-043a

Final Results

final-results

Download the PSD

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Tutorial by Bunty Pundir

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Thank you for following the tutorial. Hope you like it and learned something new today. I am an artist from New Delhi, India. You can can follow me on Facebook, Behance and Deviantart for my artworks as well as for tutorials. Happy Photoshopping!!!- Bunny

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15 comments on “How to Manipulate a Beautiful Sunset Matte Painting in Photoshop”

  1. I would say: 'Is every adjustment layer necessary? I don't think so. But it was all fun to do your tutorial en I have learned a lot. Thanks again, Hans K.

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