Photoshop has been one of the best tools for matte paintings and photo manipulations. This tutorial will show you how I created this dramatic lake scene and techniques you can use to create your own.
Preview of Final Results
Tutorial Resources
- Lake View– deviantart
- Moon image– deviantart
- Sky image– deviantart
- White Stones– deviantart
- Flying Birds– deviantart
Step 1
Create a new 8×6 inch document at 300 DPI (). Below is an image of what we’ll be making.
I have planned out what I am going to create on this image. Before creating any Matte Painting “Planning” is the core phase which you have to execute properly. If you’re not planned well, then Matte Painting is a thing which will urge you to bring more and more effects, and finally, you will get stuck only in effects, no proper output will come. So, Planning is most important!
Now we are moving to work actually on the image. First, we will start from sky portion. In an original image, sky is looking natural so to give it dramatic look then you have to replace sky with another image. For this purpose, I have selected following sky image and have placed it properly to occupy complete sky portion:
Step 2
Now to replace original sky, use the Magic Wand Tool and then select only sky portion properly especially spaces between trees.
Step 3
And Delete that portion by pressing “Delete” key after that put the dramatic sky layer behind the main layer and see the output.
Some Correction:If you see in an output, you will find some parts between trees are remaining deselected so to replace it with background, follow this trick.
Step 4
First select only defected area by using Polygonal Lasso. As I have shown in an image:
Step 5
Then in Select menu -> choose Color Range tool. “Color Range”is a tool which selects specified color range in an existing selection.
So to replace faulty portion with background image then in Color Range tool first make Selection Preview: Noneand after that select eyedropper and pick faulty color range only. For reference follow the image below:
Step 6
Finally click on Ok button, you will find a selected portion of that defective part. Just Delete (delete two times) that portion, it will automatically match with background sky image.
