In this tutorial, I will show you the process of creating this “Resurrection” surreal photo manipulation in Photoshop. The photo manipulation simply tells a story about a girl’s spirit being resurrected in a surreal environment. The environment is filled with space elements such as nebula & star.
Along the way, we will practice selection, image adjustments, object/layer blending, and painting of hair with pen tool.
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Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)
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Let’s get started!
To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:
Water Splash Photoshop Brushes
Step 1
Create a new document sized 1440px * 800px with black background. Load the lake image into Photoshop and select the following portion:
Copy and paste the selection to our document, re-size it to fit the size of the canvas:
Apply the following adjustment layers as clipping mask to this lake layer:
Black & White (set its layer opacity to 90%)
Levels
Use the cloud brush, paint some cloud over the sky. Here is the effect so far:
Step 2
Load the model image into Photoshop. Cut out the model and paste it to the following position. Erase the legs.
Apply the following adjustment layer as clipping masks:
Black & White
Levels
Use the following layer mask on the levels adjustment layer:
Curves
and here is the effect so far:
Step 3
Use the water splash brushes, paint some splashing effect around the body:
Use a soft black brush, paint some subtle shadow effect to the following position:
Step 4
Load the “Nebula 1” stock image into Photoshop and select the entire image, paste it onto our canvas:
Change the layer blending mode to “Screen” for this nebula layer:
Apply the following layer mask for this nebula layer:
Go back to the “Nebula 1” image and use the lasso tool with 40px feather, select the following portion:
Paste the selection to the right side of the model (You will need to reduce its size a bit from the copy):
Load the “Nebula 2” image into Photoshop, select the following portion with the Lasso Tool (again set feather to 4opx):
Copy and paste the selection to our document, paste it to the centre of the sky:
Step 5
We will work on creating the hair in this step. Firstly let’s pick a 4px, soft brush:
Use the Pen Tool, draw a path as shown below:
Right-click the path and select “Stroke Path …”:
Stroke the path with the brush tool and tick “Simulate Pressure”, then press “OK”:
You will have the following effect:
Duplicate this layer and adjust the size with free transform tool:
Use the Hue/Saturation adjustment to adjust the lightness of the hair:
Keep duplicating and adjusting, you will finish with the hair effect similar to below:
Step 6
Use the lightening brush we downloaded, add some lightening effect to the following area:
I added some colour to the image with a couple of colour balance adjustment layers, and this is my final result: (click to enlarge)
That’s it for this tutorial! Leave me a comment below if you have any questions. Enjoy it? Help me share it around by using the share buttons at the top of the tutorial!