The Making of Mysterious “Faraway Land” Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

In this Photoshop tutorial, I will show you the process used to make this mysterious, faraway land photo manipulation.

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

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Stock Images Required

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stock images:

Mountain

Ocean

Nebula By Euderion

Planet By Smattila

Boat

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1400px * 720px with black background. Load the mountain stock image into Photoshop, select the mountain:

Copy and paste the selection onto our document, remove the bottom grass area off the mountain layer as shown below:

Apply the following image adjustment layers as clipping mask to the mountain layer:

Black and White

Levels

Curves

My intention was darken the mountain so it’s only barely visible for a far distance. By using the above image adjustments, we will achieve the following effect:

Step 2

Load the ocean stock image into Photoshop, select the entire image, copy and paste it over to our document. Place the new layer below the mountain layer:

Apply the following adjustment layer as clipping mask to this ocean layer:

Black and White

Levels

Use a cloud brush, paint some cloud/fog effect over the ocean:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 3

Load the planet stock into Photoshop. Copy and paste the planet into the position shown below. Make sure the planet layer is below the mountain layer:

Apply the following image adjustment layers as clipping masks to the planet layer:

Black and White

Levels

Curves

and here is the effect so far:

Step 4

Load the nebula stock image into Photoshop, select some stars out of the image and place it over our image as shown below:

Make sure you use “screen” blend mode for these new star layer:

Select the nebula and paste it to our document, as shown below:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 5

Load the boat stock image into Photoshop and select the boat. Copy and paste the selection to our document as shown below, in the middle of the ocean:

Apply the following Black and White image adjustment:

Use a soft black brush, paint a bit of shadow under the boat:

and here is the effect so far:

I further added some colours via a couple of image adjustment layers:

1. Selective color
2. Color Balance

and this is my final result: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you learn a thing or two from it and if you have any questions, just drop me a comment below.