Design Urban City with “The Matrix” Movie Effect in Photoshop

In this tutorial, you will learn to how to design Urban City with “The Matrix” movie effect. This is an intermediate level tutorial.

In this tutorial, you will learn to how to design Urban City with “The Matrix” movie effect. This is an intermediate level tutorial.

We will practice a number of photo manipulation techniques such as layer blending, image adjustments, free transform and filter effects.

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

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

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OK Let’s get started!

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

City

Matrix

Man

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1400px * 780px, copy and paste the city image onto our new document as shown below:

Apply the following image adjustment layers on top as clipping masks to the new city layer:

Black and White

Use this layer mask on the black and white adjustment layer:

Levels

Use this layer mask on this levels adjustment layer:

Create a new layer, select the sky portion of the city image and fill it with Black Colour:

Use a soft eraser, fade the bottom of the sky as shown below:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 2

Load the Matrix image into Photoshop, select the following portion:

Copy and paste the selection onto our document, use the Free Transform to distort this layer as shown below, covering the street:

Change the layer blend mode to “Color Dodge” for this Matrix layer:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 3

Copy and paste the Matrix effect once more, this time we cover the entire image with it. Set the layer blend mode to “Color Dodge”:

Apply the following layer mask to this new layer:

Place this standing man in the middle of the street, as shown below:

I further enhanced the colours with a Selective Color adjustment layer, and this is the final effect: (click to enlarge)

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