How to Composite a Ruins Landscape

Tip: Avoid using pure white and black color in your photo manipulations. In most cases they look too harsh and unrealistic. Try shades of yellow, blue etc. instead.

Now simply paint the sun rays. Be gentle and not overdo it to get the most realistic result. Take a look at the image below to see how much light you should paint.

As you can surely see there is way too much light on the ruin on the left. To make it more realistic looking add layer mask to LIGHT RAYS and with black brush paint over the ruin on the left to hide the sun rays there. You should end up with something similar to this:

Step 14 – Increasing Contrast

To bring more drama to your photo manipulation you’ll increase contrast little bit. To do that add new adjustment layer Curves on the top of all layers and set it as on the following image.

Step 15 – More Light

Let’s paint even more light to create your photo manipulation more interesting. Add new adjustment layer Curves on the top of all layers and set it as on the following image.

Grab the Paint Bucket Tool (G) and fill the layer mask of this adjustment layer with black color. Grab the Brush Tool (B). Select some soft round brush, set the Diameter on about 20 pixels and lower its Opacity on 20%. Pick white color and paint over the areas facing to the sun.

On the following image you can see where you should paint. It’s highlighted with red color again.

As you can see I painted not only over the ruins but also over the valleys to create stronger hazy effect. On the picture below you can see how your photo manipulation should look like so far.

Step 16 – Violet Tones

Now you’ll add more violet tones to the image to create color which can be seen in the nature right before the dawn. Add new adjustment layer Color Balance on the top of all layers and set it as shown below.

On the image below you can compare how the photo manipulation looks before and after this step.

Step 17 – Adding Mist

Mist is a great element in your work if you want to create enigmatic, magical atmosphere. You’ll add in in this step.

Download the mist brushes listed in the beginning of the tutorial (the one I used are paid but feel free to use any other brushes you find or are used to work with) and install them in Photoshop.

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