Manipulate a Photo into a Beautiful Fiery Sunset Landscape

In this tutorial I’ll show you how you can create a sunrise landscape in just simple 20 steps. You’ll learn how you can create your own landscape scenery by using less stock images. So, follow the tutorial find out how easy to make this manipulation when we break it down into steps.

You’ll be creating a sunrise landscape. To follow this tutorial you’ll need Photoshop CS3 or higher.

Tutorial Resources

• Sea – Pixabay
• Sky – Morguefile
• Mountain 1 – Pixabay
• Mountain 2 – Pixabay
• Birds Brushes – Candymax Stock

Step 1

Create a new document by selecting File > New then set the setting as shown in the image below.

Step 2

Now, Place the sea image by selecting File > Place. Now, activate the transform tool by pressing Ctrl+T or (Edit > Transform) then transform the image as shown in the image below.

Step 3

Now, activate the transform tool then right click on it and choose Flip Horizontal. Here are the results after flipping it.

Step 4

Now, Place the sky image below the sea layer and transform it as shown in the image below.

Step 5

Now, Add a layer mask to sea layer by clicking the layer mask icon on layer panel.Grab the brush tool by pressing (B) on keyboard then hide the selected the part of sea layer using soft round black brush.

Here you can see the results on layer mask.

Here are the results.

Step 6

Now, place the Mountain 1 image below the sea layer as shown in the image below.

Change the blend mode of Mountain 1 layer to Soft Light and here are the results.

Step 7

Now, place the Mountain 2 image below the sea layer.

Step 8

Now, Add layer mask to mountain 2 layer then hide the selected by using soft round black brush.

You can see the results in layer mask.

Here are the results after hiding the selected part.

Step 9

I added a Selective Color Adjustment layer by pressing the New Adjustment Layer icon on layer panel. On the layer mask of this adjustment layer I painted with soft round black brush to hide the effect a bit not too much. See the image below for the values and layer mask result.

Here are the results.

Step 10

Now, Add a Curves Adjustment Layer then set the setting as shown in the image below.

On the layer mask of curves adjustment layer I painted with soft round black brush to hide effect of curves.

Here are the results.

Step 11

To add warm tone to the scene I added a Photo Filter adjustment layer to the scene. Set the setting as shown in the below.

Here are the results.

Step 12

To light up the entire scene I added a Gradient Map adjustment layer then choose the color #030b13 for shadows and for highlight choose the color #56361e. As always you can see the setting as shown in the image below.

Now, I changed the blend mode of Gradient Map adjustment layer to color dodge. Here are the results.

Step 13

To create a sun I created a new layer by pressing Ctrl+Shift+N on keyboard. Pick the brush tool then change your foreground color to #612828 and paint a big dot as shown in the image below. Name this layer sun.

Step 14

Change the blend mode of sun layer to Linear Dodge then reduce opacity to 55%. Here are the results.