Matte Painting Tutorial (VERY DETAILED) !

today in a very detailed way I'm gonna explain how to transform an idea like this into a real image [Music] hey there my name is Ali I'm really excited for today's tutorial I'm gonna go really slow explaining everything step by step okay first I want you to understand something about brushes I link my brush down in the description below you can download it then you stand on the brush tool press right click you will find a small gear icon top right you open this gear icon you press load brushes and then you click on this one which is called mine this is my brushes or wherever you download it on your desktop you will have all the brushes here so you can follow along because if you follow along and you upload this photo on Instagram I'm gonna give you a shout out okay let's get started I downloaded these photos as you can see all of them from unsplash on splash on splash I decide that this one is gonna be our Mountain the main mountains for all of them these two are gonna be the landscapes this one we might use it I'm not really sure for a landscape I like the path it has here and I just saw this bridge unlike that maybe we're gonna use it I don't know yet we will see okay first I'm gonna drag my Mountain this one I believe it's gonna be the main mountain we're gonna use it all like the mountains I'm gonna use the quick selection tool here just to get rid of the ones at the back I only want this one in the front the mountain okay after I made my selection I'm gonna add a layer mask it did the opposite of what I want so I'm gonna just press ctrl + I so it means the reverse so now I have the amount one thing I need you to understand if you look closely you see the details here they are big because the mountain is close to the camera however if I want to add this mountain somewhere here far in the background it's gonna look weird because it's it will have like a lot of big details so this is something I'm gonna do I'm gonna do something like duplicating the texture or making it much bigger okay so now I'm gonna apply layer mask now we have this mountain what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hold alt and and shift and I'm just gonna move it something like that then I'm gonna move this one below so now we have a little bit bigger like texture I'm gonna press ctrl e now to merge these two layers together control it does the merge but you have to select them first then I'm gonna go to the clone stamp tool I'm gonna use a little bit big brush something like that maybe bigger I hold alt and right-click to make it bigger and smaller and I'm just gonna sample from here and add some texture here make sure you're standing on current layer not all layers and maybe sample some from here also this works us duplicating the texture now we have much bigger mountain texture that we can use okay let me drag this one for now look it's already big enough we can make it like now smaller a little bit something like that and I'm gonna select this layer it's layer 3 I select by pressing ctrl and click on the layer select it okay then I'm gonna pull this one on top of it open it I want to rotate this one horizontal so I press ctrl T then flip horizontal so it's matching the like the mountains are going from left to right and the texture should also go from left to right now I'm gonna ctrl click this one I made a selection on this one then I'm gonna add a layer mask on top of this one so now I have this one okay if it's too big we can make use of it or make it smaller so I'm just gonna unlink the mask now I'm only controlling the layer itself not the layer mask so I'm gonna press ctrl T now I will make it smaller something like that I don't want to make it too small because as you can see here I'm going out of the mask you see I'm going out of the Mac so just a little bit smaller and adjust its direction to look more natural something like that should be good and I'm gonna press ok so now we have our Mountain in the back I'm not gonna do any editing now I'm just gonna stick let's try the overlay ok the overlay is good I'm just gonna overlay them on top of the layer in front of them only overlay and then I'm gonna fix them later okay let's jump to the next one let's pull this one again one thing I would do is I'll change this one to rabbit and I'll just keep this one on top of everything and keep it close so we don't have to keep jumping to the other like window we can close this one now we don't need it we have this texture I'm not gonna get rid of it I'm just gonna keep okay let's try to see which one of this control click so it's called layer 4 I'm gonna now hold alt and copy this one here and I'll just remove the red okay I made this so I've copied it so I will have always a copy of this one okay this one let's control D flip horizontal again make it much smaller so it fits the mountain we're gonna place it on top something like that then control click on layer 4 and add layer mask and change it to overlay okay let's jump to the one next to it this one I'll click drag this one remove the red open it ctrl T flip horizontal and we'll keep doing this so on until we're done with all the mountains but you can also like warp it around so they don't all look the same you can play around with the shape a little bit even a little bit like a difference so they don't all look the same and ctrl click to make the selection layer mask it change it to overlay I need this one which is called layer six floppy remove red open a Malecha I'm gonna go to so fast now because I already know how to do it did it many times I'm gonna have this one here and for example let me show you something here layer six if you can see here six we have - vit here another party now I meet my Mountain small so it's only near I can pulled out and just copy it another copy here make it like that and then ctrl click both of them then ctrl e now they are merged on one leg ctrl click on layer six to make a selection of layer six and then on the layer of the texture I'm just gonna add layer mask change the blending mode to overlay okay another one for layer seven ctrl T flip horizontal and so on okay now it's getting a little bit bigger as you can see now I'm using a big texture because we're getting closer to the camera so it's natural that the mountain size should become bigger okay so now as you can see the overlay didn't do much difference because the one behind it is 50% grain the overlay how the overlay works if whatever behind of it is bright it's gonna make it brighter like the one at the back and if whatever be behind of it is dark it's gonna make a darker you're gonna see at the ones in the front okay let's stick layer it let's copy this one at their mask and overlaid we can't really see the difference between these two but it's okay we're gonna fix it later there's many ways to give depth to the photo rather than only brightening things up it's gonna get fixed don't worry okay layer 10 I guess this one is near 10 so let me drag this one on top now I'm not gonna flip it horizontally because it's on the other side I don't need to do the flip okay now I made a mistake I pulled the top part if this happened don't press the maximize button just hold click again and keep going up until you see this blue screen and just leave the click okay let's remove the red ctrl click and add layer mask okay as you can see some part here is missing so I have to move it a little bit maybe rotate it a little bit so nothing is missing okay last one is this layer 9 let's drag this one let's open it like that okay this one is gonna be a little bit tricky as you can see it's too wide and it has some part going down then moving to the right so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to leave this part like that and then I'm going to go to the web tool I'm gonna pull this one like this it's gonna be too big actually so I'm gonna make it smaller and then I'm gonna take another copy of it but this one I'm gonna rotate it something like that and I'm just gonna make it something like this but now we have a problem we have some sort of a hard edge so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take the reason make sure it's small and it's soft and just it is some of the edges and of course make sure it's hundred percent opacity and there is some of the edges so it blends together and then ctrl-click the two layers then ctrl e to merge them together then ctrl click the layer and add layer mask now we have the mountain change it to overlay you see it got darker because the one behind of it is thought okay so now we have our mountains it's time for the like the landscape let's see the ones we have we have this one here and we have the other one there let's see this one let's see if you can make it work ctrl T and I'll flip it horizontally make sure u rasterize your layers okay I want to get rid of the part at the back there are several ways actually to do it I don't know which way to stick to okay let's explain like the long way but it's gonna be really accurate you go to channels make sure you're standing on the layer first you go to channels jump to the blue Channel or you gotta see the channel with the higher contrast it's always the blue not always most of the time we need to contrast between the sky and the like the grass so I'm gonna right click duplicate Channel okay and I'm just gonna stand on the blue copy only then I'm gonna press ctrl L this will open the levels I'll make the darks darker I'll make the bright points brighter darks darker right points brighter until you have like the best contrast something like that perfect no I saw some part of the sky here it's getting black also I don't want that okay this is good and you can always like go to the brush with the white brush color this part to make sure it's on the present I love this part white and switch to black and color these parts back and you just press this one here after you press it make sure you stand on RGB back again and then go back to layers and then on this one add layer mask okay did the opposite of what we want so pressing ctrl I it will give us the inverse of what we want okay I don't know if this one will actually work I don't really like it we still have I'm gonna apply layer mask I need a little bit of fixation to this one as you can see behind the trees there is this weird color so I'm just gonna go to select color range this is another way and I'm just gonna select this color make sure it's something like that fuzziness like 150 or something like this and then I'm gonna go back I'm gonna take my eraser here I'm just gonna erase the edges of the trees make sure you're only targeting the edges of the trees not like the houses not anything else and control D okay this is much much better okay let's make this one a little bit bigger something like that mm-hmm I don't know if it's working as it should or not but we will see okay let's take the other one the other landscape let's open it in a new document this one it's gonna be easy to separate I'm just gonna use the quick selection tool something like that then I'm gonna lay your mask all right a little bit slow I apologize for that after masking press ctrl I we have the opposite to just drag it here it's gonna be huge of course make it smaller let me put it somewhere here I like this position and let me pull this one on top of it I guess in this one it doesn't work because as you can you look closely the camera here is from below like the man is standing down and he's looking up to this that's why it's not working and it's never gonna work properly because of the perspective you can't fix perspective in Photoshop so I guess I'll try like several ways to make this one work I don't know if it will work perfectly or not but I'm gonna try if we do something like that it might work just trying to play around with it a little bit changing the perspective I guess this is fine now I just need to add layer mask use a brush I'm gonna use this tree brush I have here and I'm just gonna erase some of these parts one more thing I'm gonna stand on this layer just like the foreground I have I'm gonna stand on its mass and using the brush I'm gonna make it really small and I'm just gonna erase parts of the edges so I blend these two together okay so like that is gonna be good okay still as you can see we didn't fix any colors or anything I'm just only doing like placing the objects in the right place I'm not fixing any colors or light or anything okay now it looks good so far let me see if we can make use of the last image this one I didn't think we were gonna use it but as we can see here is coming handy I'm gonna make it smaller something like that then what I'm gonna do is this is I'm gonna paint this one like I like to do this way it's the opposite you add a layer mask then you press ctrl I now it's invisible now if you take the brush with white color whenever you paint you're gonna make it visible I'm gonna control that and then I'm gonna take this normal brush and I'm trying to paint this one like that I don't know if it's gonna work it doesn't really look nice but let's see I guess we can make it work I'm gonna switch to black to a race and I lower the opacity as you can see I don't want to completely erase was a little bit a turf this one also and this one I just saw something I want to have some sort of a path going this way oh wait till you but this mountain is standing like blocking it so I need to fix it somehow I'm gonna on this one I'm gonna use the white to paint here but it's not gonna work so I'm gonna hold alt and just make another copy with this one behind of it then I'm gonna move it to the top like that control T make it like much smaller maybe pull it up a little bit make it smaller from this way it's like that here I'm gonna paint black on top of the whole mask now it's invisible but whenever up I am gonna paint white it's gonna bring it back to visibility but with hundred percent opacity if I paint white like that I'm gonna bring it back so we can have some sort of the environment here something like that but then we need to fix the solid edge I'm just gonna move this one unlink it and try to move it a little bit down something like that but then I have to get rid of the sky of course well I'm not gonna get rid of the sky I'm gonna stand on the layer and use the clone stamp and just stamp some of these areas here also so adding environment instead of the sky I always like as you can see to zoom out just to see an overall look of what I did it's much better now okay so now we have our composite I'm gonna set it for this one you can always like every time you take another look to your image you should be able to add something or fix something about it but in this case I'm gonna go like subtle to what we did now and I'm not gonna fix anything else I just saw this I don't like this soft thing here so I'm just gonna go to brush I'm gonna use this one the V brush and I'm just oh I have to stand on the layer and okay okay let's add our sky in this photo I'm gonna use this sky I have this one here it's gonna be like a desaturated dark blue sky where is it here I'm gonna put it down on top of the background okay so now we have our sky here it's a very dark blue sky I'm gonna make it a little bit brighter you go to image adjustments you have brightness contrast I'll just make it a little bit brighter okay now one thing I need to explain as we go further to the background or to the sky the mountains should look more like the sky so if the sky is like I believe this mountain is much brighter than the sky so I'll either first let me just erase it I'll either make the sky much brighter to match the value of the mountain or I'll make the mountain darker but in this case I'm gonna stick to making the mountain darker which is this one I'm gonna bring it back to normal I'm gonna bring all my let me close all these layers back there we have and let me take all of these Mountain layers we made and change them to normal okay now all on normal this one is the one farthest back to the background okay first thing you saturation this is too yellowish green and we have a blue environment so just desaturate it okay so now we got rid of the very bad like green okay second thing is the value so I do it by either curves I jump to curves make sure it's linked and you take the dark point you move it on I have actually a trick I want to use in this photo just stand on top of everything add a black and white Lake now everything is black and white this is really really helpful and important make sure you always use it once you remember like I did now if you're on black and white colors we'll never gonna distract you so now we have everything in black and white you see now the values here and there let's say you still have a problem to decide if this one needs I believe this one still needs brightening but let's show you another way to be hundred percent sure you you stand on any layer and you click on the color let's stand on this one you see where this one is it's here down at the dark part you see once I move to the sky you see what happened it jumped from here till here to a very dark very bright spots so you see the sky it's in this range from here to there and you see the mountain it's in a range which is much below er so I'm gonna take the mountain layer again jump to the curves and just make everything brighter again something like that let's do our check you can do this check if you're standing on a layer mask that's why I said stand on a layer first then sample color now this one you see where is it it's in the middle a little bit to the top this one is still much brighter still needs more brightening something like that ok good it doesn't have to be hundred percent the same because it's closer than the sky it's not the sky itself ok ok so now we did the first mountain let's jump to the second one which is this one let's go to the curves but first I'm gonna take the new saturation I'm just gonna hold alt and copy it to every single one of them and link it below this one there is no difference between them because all of them should lose the green color ok and then let's jump to curves and let me pull this one make sure it's linked below of course let me pull this one if I go too much now it's the same as the one behind of it I don't want that I need to make a little bit of difference so that my eyes can decide and see that there is a little bit difference between this one and that one and we're gonna enhance this difference don't worry okay now I'm gonna copy these two on top of this one link them which one is this okay it's this one then I'm gonna just getting the curls make it a little bit darker so now we can see there's a difference in the edge between this one and that one copy these two by welding out link them below okay so this one this one I'm gonna make it a little bit darker because this one is a little bit close to the camera let's take these two copy them okay which one is that one okay so this one okay you can see the difference between this and that this is the most important thing you need to be able to distinguish the difference okay let's link them to this one which one is that okay embroider like this and let's take them to that one link them below I linked by holding alt and pressingly hold alt until you see this shape then you press click okay this one I'm gonna actually darken it no I don't want to darken it a lot I'm just gonna leave it the same as it is actually I'm gonna delete the curves we don't need it because I'm gonna leave it the same way as it is and this one also I'm gonna leave it the same way as it is however this one and that one okay this one I'm gonna add a curves adjustment I don't know about its color so I'm not gonna do that you saturation now I can't see colors I'm gonna link it and this one I need to make a darker so it looks closer to the bag to the environment okay and this one and that one and that one I'm gonna merge them by ctrl e so they are one layer because they are the oh no I don't I should not do this because they have different colors or actually they all must have the same color so I'm gonna merge them and I'm gonna go to the curves I'm gonna darken make sure it's linked below of course darken them out something like that okay so now working in black and white helped us to see the values take a closer look like now we see it's clear that it's going gradually from like the dark to the bright of the sky okay let's get rid of the black and white friend okay this one we forgot to add the hue/saturation it's very obvious as you can see and link it below of course so it only affects this layer this one it's too colorful also we should add a new saturation but this one it it's a little bit different because it's very green so how I'm gonna fix it I'm gonna go to the green Channel so now it's like as you can see all these the mountains they have yellowish cream but this one is a green green so if you look at the green here first we went to the green channel make sure you do that and then if you look at the green and the yellow the green is right to the yellow so if I want to make it yellow I move it to the left so I'm gonna move it to the left okay but as you see it didn't target the whole thing so I'm gonna just pull this one this is it's telling you what it is targeting it's targeting from green so a little bit of yellow you can move it around so it targets more green and more yellow I want to make sure it's targeting the whole grass whether it's cyan whether it's green whether it's yellowish and just move it to the left so now it's yellowish color okay good and I need to add a curves adjustment layer also and I believe needs a little bit of brightening okay now it's good and one more I'm gonna take any of the curves adjustments I have and then I'm gonna jump to the blue Channel because the opposite of blue is yellow I need to add a little bit of yellow to this one so it matches you see now when I added a little bit of yellow it's matching the ones behind a lot okay now we're done with the houses I don't like this part no it don't work like that can I remove it I'm gonna make a selection like this and delete it okay yeah much better I didn't like it thing okay now what we're gonna do is let's make them look more natural okay let me take the first one one thing that always do you see the blur tool just stand of the blur tool stand on the mask I'll show you what its gonna do in this one then I'm gonna do it really fast make sure it's under eight percent normal and just with the blur tool on the mask make sure the mask not the layer I'm just gonna do with this I'm clicking now you see you blur the edges because in real life we don't have super sharp edges so you must do it on every single mask of them once you stand on them okay but let me first fix ok I'm standing here top of them I'm gonna go to color balance make sure it's linked below and let's add cyan let's add it to the highlights because this one is bright add some blue and some cyan so it matches the color of the background okay good I'm gonna copy this one actually on top of every one of them but the ones close to the camera are not gonna have the same amount of color so I'm gonna fix it I'm gonna show you just like I'm showing you a very fast workflow a very fast pace to it okay now I added the cyan on top of all of them but only the ones that the back should have very strong cyan because they are close to the sky which is affecting them so what I'm gonna do is this one is the furthest back I'm gonna leave it as it is this one is much closer so I'm gonna stand on the color balance and just lower its opacity a little bit this one I'm gonna lower the opacity a little bit more this one I'm gonna lower the opacity even more this one lowering the opacity even more this one and that one I'm gonna lower it much more and this one okay so now I'm affecting like cyan from the back to the front gradually okay let's do the blurring thing which one is that one you're blurring the masks which one is that one this one okay this one is that one the big one I knew it's the big one because of its mask you see the mask shape it's big so and I knew it's this one this one where is it okay it's that one this one here just taking blurring the edges making it look more natural okay still we have a lot to do with this photo okay let's do again the mountains let's jump to the one farthest back this one okay I'm gonna add now a layer on top of it and I'm just gonna take a brush and I'm gonna sorry I'm gonna hold alt click just to sample this color from the sky make it a soft edge brush make sure it's on top so it doesn't get affected by the adjustments and with a low opacity I'm just gonna add some brightness here and there so it looks more natural and shall we do the now okay let's do the fog now I'm going to jump to this brush it's the cloud brush I used the most and I'm gonna add but this one I'm gonna do it with high opacity I'm just gonna add some fog here and there I pressed for as you can see to get 40% opacity so now we have some sort of let's let me unlink this actually no can't it has to be linked okay so now we have the fog let's take the layer next to it this one yeah one thing I need to do not now I'll just give it a violet color - no this one is the form and maybe the slower though a little bit too strong let me add a new layer link it give it a violet color this is the fog okay and with the brush first I'm gonna do the edges like I did to this one but with a low opacity because the edges are exposed to the sky they should have more light and then I'm gonna do in the inner part to create some sort of a distance between it and the one behind a bit and lower the opacity okay this one is the next one add a new layer link it give it a violet color and let's just do this fog thing and this one let's add a new layer if it the violets and yeah we have some fun it's okay if it's too strong because you can always lower the opacity and here you know I'm gonna do actually the fog not with the brush not with the like that we're gonna do the fog with the normal brush and I'll go back to this one also and add some again with the normal brush this one I'm gonna move it a little bit down lower the opacity okay then this one let's create a layer on top of it if it the violet so we know it's the form and the C as you can see here if I didn't do this you don't know which mountain is front which one is back but once you do this it's very easy to distinct distinguish which one is in the front which one is in the back right and lower the opacity and this city let's do one below of it something like that then smooth the normal brush lower the opacity make sure it's violet so we know the fog layers later on which ones are which one okay mmm looking good well I think we need to do like some final adjustments this one I'll take the dodging burn make sure you run the shadows and I'm just gonna dodge the edges of most mountains because the lightest should be hitting them and I can burn by holding alt and click you will do the opposite of dodging which is burning okay I'm standing on delay I'm gonna explain again now you stand on the layer you want you take the Dodge and the burn tool make sure it's in the shadows now you're dodging the dark areas so if I dodge now this part it will make this part brighter why I'm dodging this part because it's close to the sky so it's the part which is catching the light however if I can change this one to burn or I can hold on once I hold alt it's gonna know it's not gonna dodge it's gonna burn so I hold alt and I do this does the opposite which is burning not dodging so I dodge the parts facing the sky I burned the parts away from the sky let's do two this one the same let's take the dodge dodge this one dodge the edge and hold alt to burn burn the parts away from the sky that's was too much so I'm gonna press come to accept ctrl alt Z to go back to x okay now one thing I'm gonna do on this one this is a layer okay one thing I need to teach you always once you're working you go to crop you press a click you see all these I have at the back if I'm sure I'm not gonna use them I'm gonna click on the delete cropped pixels and press yes you see my file size is gonna reduce much much faster now because the file size reduced okay now one thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go to the where is it the color lookup no not the color lookup sorry the Selective color area this one I'm gonna jump to the greens so now I'm affecting only the greens I can make the Greens yellower or more to the blue I'm gonna make them more to the cyan you play around with every single color by its own so I take the scions I make them to the right I take the yellows make them to the left here you can make it brighter or darker but the greens are not gonna do much difference because most of what we have is yellow so yeah we can move it towards the red or towards the cyan I'm gonna move them towards the cyan and this one you can make it more yellowish or more blueish I'm gonna make it more blueish and you can brighten or darken I'm gonna darken a little bit and you can choose to have more green or more magenta I'm gonna remove the green so now I'm trying to blend all the colors together okay I guess I'm gonna take this one I'm gonna make an adjustment to this one I'm gonna just draw a pass like that then I'm gonna show you this layer by holding alt and pressing click on thigh and then I'm gonna take the brush I'm gonna sample this color heel of the road make it hundred percent and then I'm just gonna draw on top of it and solo it again by pressing ctrl click again so now we have our path here and let's take this layer now let's solo it no I can't salute actually I'm just gonna stick to the same color and again I'm gonna make my selection like that and alt backspace to color now I colored with the same color but it's too bright here so because we have these adjustments on top of it and everything so I'm just gonna go to image adjustments brightness contrast and I'm just gonna lower the brightness control D so now we have some sort of a path going here and there one thing I'd like to do to the ones at the further back which is this one I like to lower the opacity oh but we can't because the sky is small so I'm just gonna make the sky a little bit bigger something like that then I'm gonna lower the opacity of this one when you lower the opacity it blends much better with the sky this one also you can lower the opacity of it oh but we have will have a line so forget about it just lower the opacity of this one okay one thing I need to do to the house is here I don't know if it will work or not but we're gonna try I'm gonna add a new layer let me give it a red door and orange and let me take a red or an orange color something like that let me take it to overlay and let's add some amazing red color and orange color making more yellowish and brighter and let's add something like that here and there like this village is gonna have lights because we're making everything dark ok another layer make it red or orange but this one I'm not gonna make it overlay just gonna even as it is it's too strong of course but we always can lower the opacity okay we can lower the opacity now let's try putting it below and above of this better and we can try actually the the linear dots okay looks good let's keep it this way for now and see what its gonna look like okay let's now edit the whole thing in one go I deleted this layer we don't need the grass one okay so now we have the composition we have the blending let's try blending everything together it doesn't look perfect of course but when we add layers on top of everything together they will blend together I always like to do curls I like to pull the blacks take the shadows pull them down and make the highlights brighter sometimes I do this and then pull this one down also okay you see what did this did it blended everything very beautifully to depth okay then the color grading there are many ways to color way the photo this is too dark or too strong you can lower it or we can leave it as it is and then go to a brightness contrast and just increase the brightness of the whole image together the more layers you accumulate on top of everything the more it's gonna blend together and look much better okay let's add another layer now the coloring we did the the curves and the brightness contrast was the value which is the black and white we tried to make them as close together as possible now it's time to do cut the coloring I go to the gradient map or the curves or color balance I'll start with gradient map this is basically works by having two colors the first one I'm gonna tell him I want to dark blue in my shadows and then I want this dark blue you see here the shadows are gonna be blue and it's gonna go to this yellow bright color but I don't want a yellow or white or I don't want orange we can make it like from blue to orange but in this case I'm gonna stick from blue to cyan to a bright cyan something like that so we have dark blue going to bright cyan and of course it looks horrible but if you lower the opacity this is zero you see now is giving it a very beautiful mood I'll keep this one to ten percent and then I'm gonna press ctrl G I have another copy of this one I'm gonna make it to like 30 or 20 percent change it to overlay you see these are the color I'm gonna show you okay first we had like different levels of yellow and green this is very yellowish this is little bit yellow-green this is D saturated so I made the Selective color to try to make them all almost the same level of green or the same level of yellow whatever then these two I tried to make the bright as you can see this point is bright this point is dark we have differences and brightness and darkness so these two were to try to make them bright and dark together and these two are trying to bring the colors all together you see now I hope now like this tutorial are going super slow so everyone can understand and still if any of you have any questions please put them down below and I'm gonna explain I'm gonna close these two just so my file goes a little bit faster okay more adjustments to make go to the colors let's try the color balance let's go to the shadows let's try it now and we're just playing around we can like different color than the shadows this is like completely depending on your taste now I can make it I like actually the magenta a little bit let's bring this to zero I'll try the blue the blue actually looks better than the yellow on the sign so a little bit I'm gonna add two to the blue and go to the magenta and I don't know if I should go to the cyan or the red side I'm just gonna leave it as it is zero and then let's jump to the highlights the highlights no I don't want the Reds not the yellow either I actually like really the magenta white it makes it more Moody and dark something like that so I'm not gonna add I'm gonna add a little bit magenta in the mid-tones this is just playing around with the color so this is the before and this is the after if you believe it's too strong or you're like you don't know you like both you like this one and that one just you know where the opacity and it's somewhere in the middle okay now we did many things we did balancing the value balancing new the first thing we did the first thing at the beginning by adding the photos it's called balancing balancing the perspective like we add all things in propriate then we balanced a little bit colors we balanced brightness which is the value then we balance the colors and the last thing I'm gonna do I'm gonna close all these and I'm gonna add a layer bottom of them this time I'm gonna take a brush this is cool balancing the light direction so now we have light here I'm gonna sample this color this is the color of the light and oh this is too strong I'm just gonna lower and I'm just we should have here some sort of a beam of light and we have some lights here maybe affecting a little bit here but that's too strong so I'm just gonna lower the opacity effecting a little bit here a little bit there a little bit in the middle and this is of course too strong so just lower the opacity another layer to balance light but this time I'm gonna keep it to the overlay mood and then this is like I'm gonna dodge and burn so to do this you have to zoom in a little bit and with a very low opacity I'm just gonna go to the edges or the parts where we should have highlights and I'm just gonna add highlights to them you see we have highlights here so I'm adding highlights highlights highlights here and there highlights on the road and I need some to highlight this village a little bit because it's important also gonna highlight this area also highlight these parts highlight some of these mountains and this one I'm gonna I liked it a lot something like that okay so this as you can see it added a lot of highlights to the photo so these two were just adding light direction you see where the light is going where the light is coming from and then again let's open everything balancing everything so let's close these two and open them you see they added a little are very beautiful light okay now because we added a lot of colors on top of each other this one got a little bit d saturated it's not as clear as before so let me add a layer on top of them I'm gonna try to go with a warm color this time something very warm like that let's change this to overlay and let's take my brush and let's paint some of very warm colors because we have a very cold environment so having warm colors on top of a cold environment will make it pop out very strongly and this is what we want we want the eyes to be attracted to this village and also I'm gonna add some orange to the grass because naturally this light should throw some of the like luminance to the parts around of them to the trees to everything so is gonna make this village a little bit orange color and as you can see here if you believe it's too strong you can always lower the opacity and I always like to try to lower the opacity a lot then control J we have a duplicate and try different blending modes you see the screen but the screen is too strong so I'm gonna stick with a very low opacity with the screen and the higher opacity with the overlay just to add some sort of variation to the image okay one more thing you can always do to see like the overall color is the photo filter a photo filter is just adding color on top of the whole image I'm gonna close it this was the image this is a warming filter I just double click it and then keep pressing down on my keyboard to see different filters this one is very blue very blue cyan this one is red green cyan I don't know if I should stick to a certain sister I guess we already I like the sepia actually but it's removing the blue we have so I'm just gonna get rid of it forget about it okay one last thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add the brightness contrast increase the brightness then I'm gonna press ctrl I now it's invisible now I'm gonna take my brush with the new opacity make sure you run the white color now whenever I paint white it's gonna bring back the brightness and contrast so I'm gonna paint white here and they're just important areas should have white another where the opacity and just make some sort of a vignette so what this did is it made some sort of a brightness in the middle now I'm gonna do again the same but brightness contrast and now I'm gonna darken everything and lower the contrast because when you lower the contrast this is not important okay after I do this I'm gonna press ctrl I invisible again oh sorry I'm not gonna press ctrl I am gonna leave it as it is but then I'm gonna paint with black at the parts where I want to erase I want to race here and there okay just to make this part invisible you see what they did it's too strong I believe I'm gonna lower it a little bit this one's too bright also I'm gonna lower it a little so this is what they did you see they make your eyes automatically be attracted to the point in the middle okay we're done with the editing we hold ctrl alt shift then press E this will merge everything into a new separate layer you can go to filter Camera Raw filter and edit the whole photo now in one go the Camera Raw filter is very very important there are two options here that you can't find outside in the Photoshop which other I like so much one of them is the clarity one of them is the da's I always like to add a little bit of vignette this is something I always do vignette is just a like a black circle around the photo just add a little bit of it negative 5 negative 6 that he is you can always try if you D haze it removes the fog make everything more clearer if you haze it adds from making everything less visible and foggy so I'm gonna stick to D hazing a little bit I like the foggy look here because it's like a city in an abandoned place so the foggy will like help it and in the clarity always not always sometimes if you increase clarity everything is clear or short but it looks awful so we just reduced the clarity and press ok but now we edited the whole thing together I don't want that I want to edit only specific parts so you have here some tools one of them in the graduated filter make sure everything is zero first and you just draw now we're drawing a gradient now we're only affecting this area I'm I'm having the I have the gradient here only this area is being affected so now I want to attract the eyes to the village so I'm gonna increase the clarity here so now this village is like much clearer something like that increases the clarity you see now the houses are much clearer and the DA's remove the fog because I want actually the problem with this if you can see it's also affecting the bottom part I only want to affect the village so I'm just gonna press cancel I made a mistake Camera Raw filter again I'm not gonna use the graduated filter I'm gonna use the radial filter this one you can draw a circle as you can see now where I'm affecting I'm having the this exposure just to see I'm affecting this part I'm gonna make it back to zero now I have the clarity I'm gonna make it much clearer you see the hundred-percent is super clear or super soft I'm gonna make it clearer and then I'm gonna make it remove the fog from it the eighth and maybe add some sharpness to it maybe a little bit of brightness to attract the eye some contrast to make it more I catchy and I'll control that sorry one thing you need to know like you have here the options this part down this is the feather and this is the over layer mask this is where you are affecting you can open it to see where you're affecting your thing and this is the further you can have a very sharp selection or very soft you can have it affecting inside or outside this is important I actually have a complete tutorial about the Camera Raw filter in my channel just search for Camera Raw filter and you'll know everything you need about the camera ROFL okay so now I made the eyes look more here I made this sharper I made this more clear it's time to do the opposite to the sky and the background filter Camera Raw filter I don't want people looking here at the sky it's not important so I'm just gonna zoom out and I'm just gonna draw a big circle here this is where I'm affecting but this time I'm gonna bring everything to zero I'm gonna do the opposite I don't want your chart I want the opposite of short I wanted clear I want the opposite of clear and I wanted hazy like I remove the mask just to see this is what the DA's is the saturation sorry this is what the DA's is gonna do is either gonna make it clear or less clear so I want it less clear I want haze around the thing and press okay so now I have this sort of haze around everything and I guess we're completely done so today's tutorial I'm gonna show this is before the Camera Raw filter this is after the Camera Raw filter I always like to check my histogram to see where my values are and you don't want anything completely black you don't want anything completely white because it's gonna be missing data so now we're in a very good spot we have most of our photo in the dark areas we have some bright areas and always look at the Navigator always go to image adjustment sorry image rotation fit canvas horizontal this is very very important it gives you a like a different look to your image making you see things a little bit clearer and one thing only like one time you think I forgot I do in most of my photos I add a new layer on top of everything and then I take my brush make sure it's very low opacity very low flow and I just hold alt sample color from here and just paint around with it sample color from he'll paint around with it sample color from the mountain paint around with it I keep sampling colors from different parts of the photo and paint around with them it was important in this photo because we have very strong details I need to get rid of them so you're just sampling it just like you're smoothing everything in your image together you don't have like very sharp details and everything you do that like only to the things where you don't want sharp details and them I'm not gonna do it with the village of course because I don't want to lose like the beautiful details and the houses and everything I just do it with the mountains which have very strong details just making them softer it's alternative to the like the one I told you about the clarity in the camera roll filter but it's a manual like manual mooned here we have like a short edge as you can see so I'm gonna sample some color from the fog here and I'm just gonna paint with it over this edge maybe sample some color from here oh no you see when you sample color from far I'm gonna controls and it doesn't look good just getting rid of these edges and the road here I'm gonna sample from this color and paint over the road because I believe the color of it was a little bit different and here we have a lot of also like details but it's okay to have details here because this is close to the camera so the details here are not really bad oh it's sampled from a wrong area okay now looking good and that's it for today's tutorial I wanna I wanna say an announcement I'm gonna in the next months I'm gonna buy a complete YouTube set up a camera a microphone everything and I'm gonna do like very detailed tutorials from now on on all of the images that I create so if you have any questions any comments if you have ideas on how I can improve this channel make sure you link them down in the comment below and make sure you subscribe to my channel and like this video if you found it of benefit thank you guys

Channel: Photoshop Hustler

Views: 112,324

Keywords: Photoshop, Photomanipulation, Photoedit, Advanced, Tutorial, Learn, Mattepainting, Blending, Shop, photobashing, conceptart, mindblowing

Id: Tl3_RvPP93E

Length: 61min 0sec (3660 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 26 2018