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.

Tutorial Resources

• Bay – Pixabay
• Sky – Morguefile
• Waterfall – Pixabay
• FisherMan – Freeimages
• Foliage Packs – Designer Candies
• Birds Brushes – CandyMax Stock

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 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 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.

You can see the overall and layer mask results.

Step 4

Place the sky image below the bay layer.

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.

Here are the result.

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.

Here are the results.

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.

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

Step 8

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

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.

Here are the results on layer mask.

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.

Here are the results.

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%.

 

Here are the results.

Step 11

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

Here are the results.

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.

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

Step 13

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

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

Step 14

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

Step 15

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

Here are the results.

Step 16

Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to the waterfall.

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.

Here are the results so far.

Step 17

Add a Photo Filter adjustment layer to the waterfall.

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

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 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 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 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 22

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

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 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 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%.

Here are the results so far.

Step 26

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 31

On the other side clone these parts as well.

Here are results after cloning.

Step 32

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

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 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 34

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

Step 35

Add a Photo Filter adjustment layer to foliage.

Step 36

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

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

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 38

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 42

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

Here are the results.

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.

Here are the results.

Final Results

Download the PSD

Tutorial by Bunty Pundir