Make a Story Book Come to Life in Photoshop

Learn how to create this surreal photo manipulation in Photoshop. You’ll learn the basics of combining stock photos, how to blend them in by adding light and shadows, and complete it with a vintage photo effect.

Preview of Final Results

How to Make a Story Book Come to Life Photo manipulation in Photoshop (Custom)

Story Book Coming to Life Photoshop Tutorial

Tutorial Details

Program: Adobe Photoshop CS2
Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Estimated Completion Time: 1 hour

Resources

Tileable Wood Texture by ftisis-stock (Creative Commons License)
Orange Sunset by night-fate-stock (Creative Commons License)
Premade Background 20 by night-fate-stock (Creative Commons License)
Grassy Field by foxstox (Creative Commons License)
Long road by night-fate-stock (Creative Commons License)
Street Clock by ro-stock (Creative Commons License)
Book 2 by Renaude Hatsedakis (Creative Commons License)

Step 1 - Create a new image

We will be creating a square canvas for this image so to begin, let’s create a new Photoshop document with the following settings:

Width: 3000 pixels
Height: 3000 pixels
Resolution: 300 dpi
Color Mode: RGB Color; 8bit
Background Contents: Transparent

Step 2 - Create the background

In this step, we would be creating our background, specifically the table and the sky. Let’s start by creating our sky. Open the stock image: Premade Background 20. We would only need the sky in this image so activate the Rectangular Marquee tool (M) and click on a point on the edge of the image and drag the mouse down to where the sky meets the ground. See image below:

Now that you’ve selected the sky, activate the Move tool (V) then left click on the selected part of the image and drag it to our 3000x3000 canvas. As you can see, the image on our canvas is rather small so we would have to resize that. Activate the Transform tool (Ctrl/Cmd + T) and then right click on the image to bring up the contextual menu, when the menu pops up, click on Scale. Now the Scale tool helps in accurately resizing an image. To resize, just move the square buttons located on the edges of the image.

After that, let’s open the stock image: Orange Sunset. We would be adding this image to enhance the look and feel of our sky. thepirActivate the Rectangular Marquee tool (M) and then select the sky, and then drag that selected layer to the canvas. Once the new sky is on our canvas, activate the Transform tool (Ctrl/Cmd + T) and then scale the image as seen below:

Now that our new sky has been transformed, let’s change its Opacity so it would blend in with the sky layer under it. On the Layer window, go to Opacity and reduce its level to 70%.

If you’d look carefully there are some clouds from our first sky layer appearing on the second sky layer. This doesn’t look good, so we would need to brighten that part.

To brighten that region we would be using the Brush tool (B). First, let’s create a new layer (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + N) and when the box opens, change the name to brighten. Now, activate the Brush tool (B) and input the following settings:

Brush size: 1000 px
Hardness: 15%
Opacity: 100%
Flow: 100%

Note: To reduce the Hardness, right click on the image while the Eraser tool (E) is activated, then you’d see the Hardness scale, which is at default – 100%, just move the slider to the left to get 0%.

We would also need to change the color of the Brush to white. There are many ways to change the brush’s color, but for now, we will be learning how to change it instantly from black to white and vice versa. From the tools menu, you’d notice a black box and a white box.

15 comments on “Make a Story Book Come to Life in Photoshop”

Milana says:

September 13, 2014 at 2:08 pm

Thanks a lot! Your tutorial is very useful. Your approach is very helpful to into all the details =) Here is my version http://milanaserk.deviantart.com/art/Once-Upon-a-Time-482135725?ga_submit_new=10%253A1410641999

Opal Bassett says:

May 2, 2014 at 5:56 am

suche a good tutoriel

Opal Bassett says:

April 28, 2014 at 5:23 am

doy!

renee says:

January 27, 2014 at 2:32 pm

awsome tutorial

Talal says:

December 31, 2013 at 5:51 am

thank u. very much

Ryan says:

August 11, 2013 at 5:28 pm

Please add the links again.. I want to try this!

greg says:

June 15, 2013 at 4:31 pm

Thank you for posting a tutorial that actually works. Not only that, I learned a few things.
Once again, thank you.

kendal says:

April 20, 2013 at 1:58 am

i am make a book

Hideki says:

March 21, 2013 at 1:19 pm

Beautiful tutorial and I want to try but stock links broken?

1. Photoshop Tutorials Editor says:
  
  March 21, 2013 at 8:24 pm
  
  Yes the stock links seem broken. That is the downsides of using free stock photos; they can sometimes disappear without any warning.
jack says:

January 25, 2013 at 7:09 am

most links of stock were died, who can give me links??
Thx

1. Photoshop Tutorials Editor says:
  
  January 25, 2013 at 11:52 am
  
  Thanks for letting me know! I've updated the links including the long road picture. There was one picture that I couldn't find the link for but it's just a cloud picture that's easily found somewhere else.
Jeffrey says:

January 20, 2013 at 4:15 am

Great tutorial! I really love it! I only have one problem... It seems the image of the long road is not available anymore :( Any chance you know where to find it or maybe mail it to me? I can't find any other good images to use as replacement. Thx

Stefan Orn Olafsson says:

December 6, 2012 at 2:37 pm

used this tutorial for my Lotr fan art http://d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net/photo/6009214_700b.jpg

1. Dreams says:
  
  January 10, 2013 at 1:17 am
  
  OMG ! , i saw it ... it was amazing , a really great masterpiece ^_^ ..... keep up the great work !