Create a Surreal Dark City with Meteorite Fall Scene in Photoshop

Posted on June 4th, 2012 in Photo Effect.

Tags: dark city photoshop, meteorite fall, surreal city, surreal photo manipulation

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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!

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)

PSD File Download

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!

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