Create a Surreal Dark City with Meteorite Fall Scene in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to Create a Surreal Dark City with Meteorite Fall Scene in Photoshop. This is an intermediate level Photoshop tutorial and some steps can be a bit tricky, but why not have a try!

The PSD file of this tutorial is available via the PSD Vault VIP members area.

We will go through techniques such as cloud warping, hair drawing and some photo manipulation skills in Photoshop.

Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

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To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:

Ground

City

Model

Rock

Fire

Step 1

Create a new document size 1280px * 800px with black background. Load the ground image into Photoshop and select a portion as shown below:

Copy and paste and selection onto our document, use free transform tool to perspective this as shown below:

Use a soft eraser to remove some parts of the ground as shown below – this centre part will be where the model will be standing:

Add the following 2 adjustment layer to this ground layer:

Black and white

Levels

and here is the effect so far:

Step 2

We will add the buildings to our image – load the city image into Photoshop and cut out the building part:

Paste the buildings onto our document, use a soft eraser to erase parts of the building as shown below – this will create depths and lighting variations on the image:

Add the following 3 adjustment layers as clipping mask to this city layer:

Black and white

Levels

Curves

We can add some cloud over building with a cloud brush or the cloud filter, use the warp tool to warp the cloud so they form different shapes as well:

If you’re having trouble with cloud warping, please check out this video I have on PSD Vault Youtube Channel: (Skip to 4:58 min)

Make sure you have some cloud on the ground as well:

Step 3

Now we can load the model image into Photoshop and cut out the model, copy and paste it onto our document, resize and position it as shown below:

Add the following 3 adjustment layers on the model layer as clipping mask:

Black and white

Levels

Erase the hair and upper body part on the layer mask of the levels adjustment layer so they’re not all dark:

Curves

Optional: you can paint some hair on the model to add some surreal effect:

You can check out this vidoe tutorial here to learn about how to draw hair in Photoshop:

Step 4

We will add a falling meteorite into the image – load the rock image into Photoshop and select a piece as shown below:

Copy and paste the rock onto our document, resize it and erase the edge of the rock with a soft eraser:

Add the following 3 adjustment layers as clipping mask to this rock layer:

Black and White

Levels

Curves

We will add some fire texture onto rock – load fire image into Photoshop, and select the following piece:

Copy and paste the selection over the rock, as shown below:

Change the blending mode to “overlay”:

and add some cloud trailing effect on the rock as shown below:

Step 5

I decided to add a fiery wing to the model for extra surreal effect. Select a curvy piece from the fire texture as shown below:

and use a combination of warp tool and liquify filter to warp this into a wing shape:

This effect is a little tricky to achieve, you might have to have several tries to get it.

Here is the effect you will aim to achieve: (the left wing is a duplication of the right wing, size is slightly reduced to add variety and make the human looks slightly bent to the left)

and here is the overall effect so far:

I then further added some colour effect onto the image with selective colours and image adjustment layer, and here is the final effect I have: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful! Till next time, have a great day!