Create this awesome sci-fi photo manipulation in Photoshop! You will learn how to combine stock photos and apply sci-fi lighting effects to create this artwork. This tutorial is recommended for intermediate-expert Photoshop users.

Preview of Final Results

Tutorial Resources

• Man – sunshine114
• Sky – Photoxpress
• Background – sxc.hu
• Explosion – sxc.hu
• Fireball – sxc.hu
• Crack – sxc.hu
• Rocks – Creativetuts

Step 1

Create a new document and fill it with white. You can choose the size you want but in this tutorial I choose the width larger than the height.

Open background stock. Press C to active Crop Tool and make selection of background as shown below:

Right click this selection, choose Crop to complete this action:

Use Move Tool ( V) to drag it into white canvas, remember to resize to fit the background:

Name it as "land".

I want to remove the pile on the right side so on land layer, use Polygonal Lasso Tool ( hit L to active it) to make a selection on the left side with feather = 20:

Right click this selection, choose Layer via Copy and we have it on a new layer. Go to Edit-Transform-Flip Horizontal then move it to right side to hide the pile:

Hide background layer ( white canvas) then press Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E) to merge all visible layers ( "land" and "remove pile" layers). Call the new layer as "land 1" or whatever you want.

Step 2

Open sky stock. You can use another image if you can't download this sky from Photoxpress but a dark one with dramatic look is a good choice.

Use Retangular Marquee Tool to make a selection for the part you want and set feather as 20 ( depends on the size of your picture):

Use Move Tool to drag it into our document, downsize and place this layer under "land 1" layer but above "land" and "remove pile" one. Name it as "sky 1":

On land 1 layer, add layer mask and use soft black brush to remove sky part of land:

Duplicate sky 1 layer, apply Flip Horizontal for it then move it to the right like the image below shows:

Name it "sky 2". Add layer mask to remove some parts to make this sky blend better with background:

Step 3

To make color of the land fit sky, I use a new adjustment layer for land 1 layer with Clipping Mask. On land 1 layer, go to Layer-New adjustment layer-Hue/Saturation: