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In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I used to design this rusty old building with dusky sky in Photoshop. In order to balance the image and make it not too dark, I also added some fresh grass textures on top of it.

Along the way, we will be using lots of layer blending and image adjustment techniques. Also some basic image transformation techniques will be used to create depth, as well as an interesting way to render some dynamic lighting effect.

Here is a preview of the final image for this tutorial:

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000px * 800px, fill the background layer with Black.

Download the following textures from CG Textures and we will use them later on in this tutorial. It might be a good idea to make a new folder and put those textures into it.

Old Building

Rust

Dusk

Grass

Step 2

Load the “Old Building” image into Photoshop, then use the Move Tool (V) to drag the entire image onto our document, resize it to the centre of the canvas:

Name this layer as “Old House”. Use the Eraser Tool (E) with the following settings, remove the sharp edges of the building:

Step 3

Now we can add a bit of lighting contrast to the old house. I would like the upper side of the image to be brighter than the bottom part of the image.

Still on the “old house” layer, apply the following Curves Adjustments (Ctrl + M):

Then apply the following Levels Adjustment settings (Ctrl + L):

Then apply the following Black and White Adjusments (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + B):

The effect so far will look like this:

Step 4

Now we can give this old house some angle and perspectives so it looks not so boring and still.

I used the Free Transformation Tool (Ctrl + T) and apply Distort, Perspecitve and Scale techniques and make the image looks like this:

By doing so you can also expend the depth of the image so later on you will have greater flexibility to add more stuff onto it.

Step 5

Load the “Rust” image into Photoshop, select the centre portion of the image as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection back to our document, this will automatically create a new layer. Name it as “rust texture” and free transform it until it cover the old building:

Then apply the following Curves Adjustments (Ctrl + M) on this layer:

Then change the layer blending mode to “Soft Light” and you will have the following effect:

Step 6

The is an Optional Step: To further enhance the rusty effect, duplicate the “rust texture” once and go to Filter > Brush Storkes > Dark Stroke and apply the following settings:

Reduce the opacity of the duplicated layer to 60% and you will have the following effect:

Step 7

It still look a bit boring if there is just a building ono the canvas, then I thought: why not add some sky and cloud texture on top of building?

Load the “Dusk” image into Photoshop, select the centre portion of the image as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection to our document and name the layer as “dusk sky” and rotate and position the image as shown below:

Then apply the following Levels Adjustments settings:

And you the effect so far will look like this:

Step 8

We can now add some freshness into the image and it will somehow balance the feel of the image a bit so it won’t look too dark.

Load the “Grass” image into Photoshop. Select a random portion of it as show below:

Copy and paste the selection onto our document and name the layer as “grass texture”. Resize and position it as shown below:

Use the Eraser Tool with a big round brush, set the flow and opacity to 60% and 0% hardness, gently erase the centre portion of the grass texture so it reveal the old house:

I also duplicated the grass layer a couple of times and used the Clone Stamp Tool on the duplicated layer just to increase the density of the grass:

Step 9

To further enhance the lighting contrast and create some dynamic light for the image, we can create a new layer and use the Lasso Tool with a 40px feather, draw a few joint selection and fill them with Black and render some cloud:

Then apply the following Lens Flare Settings:

Then Apply the following Levels Adjustments:

Then change the layer blending of this layer to “soft light” and you will have the following image:

Then you can duplicate the lighting layer a few times and drag it to different positition where you want to add more light:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! The rest is left upon your own creativity :)

Below is my final image for this tutorial: (I added some more lighting effect and used some brushes I downloaded from qbrushes.com)

Hope you enjoy this tutorial and find it useful and inspirationa!

If you have any questions, just drop me a comment :)

Cheers and have a nice day!

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