Create an Incredible Twilight Surreal Scene with Floating Islands

Feb 18, 2020

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Create this magical twilight landscape with floating islands, a old sailboat, and a surreal moon background. This tutorial will teach you how to mix stock photos, apply filters to create a twilight scene, and even some matte painting basics!

Preview of Final Results

Tutorial Resources

Forest Mountain – Unrestricted – Cat-in-the-Stock
Stars – paulinemoss
Sky levels – TACLUDA – rgbstock
Corner Leaves 2 – Evelivesey
Belltower – Evelivesey
Unusual Tree – Evelivesey
Colonial Ship – Thy-Darkest-Hour
Agglestone Rock, Dorset – rgbstock – Purplepic
Colonial Ship – Elysawu

Step 1

Let’s start! Create new file 1920×1080 size.

Step 2

Choose Forest Mountain stock and place it:

Step 3

Add new adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer) with Brightness/Contrast).

Step 4

At adjustment layer make mask. Use big (ex. 200px) soft brush and draw:

Step 5

Then, paste Sky levels stock as new layer. You should transform it, to fill canvas. Change blending mode to Multiply.

Step 6

On this layer, use mask. Try to mask all the trees from the bottom side. you should use big, soft brush (ex. 300px or more). My masking results are below

Step 7

Paste Stars stock, as new layer. Then add mask to this layer. Again use soft, big brush on contours of mountains.

Step 8

Change blending mode of stars to Screen.

Step 9

It’s time to paste moon stock on new layer. Place it as shown. Change blending mode to Screen

Step 10

As you can see, moon is too big and the color doesn’t goes with this landscape. You should change that. First – mask. Use big, soft round brush (100-200px) and mask it on the bottom.

Step 11

Now hue of the moon. Add adjustment layer with Hue/Saturation and create clipping mask (RMB>Create clipping mask).

Step 12

You should make moon brighter. Compliment won’t work ;). Holding ctrl choose Moon and Hue layer. Duplicate it.

Step 13

Add new layer. Choose Gradient Fill tool and #362f2d color. Arrow will guide you :)

Step 14

Change blending mode of this gradient to overlay.

Step 15

Add new layer. Choose soft, big (370px) brush, #6dcff6 color and set opacity to 70%. Draw gently glow around and near moon. I also draw a few spots on the edges of mountains.

Step 16

Change glow layer blending mode to soft light.

Step 17

Now you will know some matte painting techniques. Add new layer. Choose soft brush, 40px wide, #929397 color. Draw on the edges of the mountains/plants. This is very important step! It can appear like fog, and give mystic look!

Step 18

Change blending mode to Soft light. Will be awesome! :)

30 responses to “Create an Incredible Twilight Surreal Scene with Floating Islands”

red luna

May 8, 2018

Great tutorial! It looks fantastic.

Reply
Tony T.

May 8, 2018

Thank you very much is a great job and I was surprised by the castle, since it belongs to my city Almadén (Ciudad Real) has been an incredible detail.
regards

Reply
Optical Overlays

June 15, 2017

Super cool ❤

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Suki Ogle

December 12, 2016

Thanks, love this tutorial, and thanks for posting. Explains a lot of techniques. One thing I would add is to delete (or mask or cover) the stars that are showing thru from behind the moon. Unless they are meteors, they would not be visible behind the opaque moon.

My 2 bits

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Alan

September 2, 2015

what’s a spatter brush?
(:: – Step 55
Create new layer. (Hey! Without making clipping mask :]) Choose spatter 59 px brush #baf3f0 color. Draw on the edges of trees.)

Reply
parul soni

June 23, 2015

can u sent me this tutorial

Reply
Anonymous

May 5, 2015

amazing show

Reply
Gina H.

December 23, 2014

This is completely insane! I am glad you offer the resources to get started as well.

Reply
xx

December 22, 2014

A lot of material can’t download, site won’t open

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Maidul Islam

October 17, 2014

amazing!! great to see the amazing work of great experienced art directors!!

Reply
yuuki

June 30, 2014

my final is not really the same (lol)…

thanks for the tutorial, i had fun trying it :)

Reply
Sean C

May 5, 2014

In Step 4, you say “At adjustment layer make mask”. What does this mean? I’m pretty new to this, so any help would be great!

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Steve

April 26, 2014

Hi, can someone please explain to me in details how step 4 and 5 was done? After I made a new mask layer and colored in red the sky area, I then proceed to paste the sky stock. That sky stock image appeared as a new layer and not on the mask layer called “Sky – mmtEvr6.” How do you merge the sky layer with the landscape to appear as one image?

Thank you.

Reply
1. Joseph
  
  May 9, 2014
  
  For merging two layers, select both layers and press Ctrl + E.. Hope this helps..
Joseph

April 16, 2014

Hi Monika,
Fantastic Tutorial..! Thanks for posting..! I too have a blog with Photoshop Tutorials aimed for beginners..

Keep on posting nice tutorials like this.. Happy to revisit..!

Reply
Tinaras

April 8, 2014

Its great, Thankyou.

Reply
Daniel Thomassin

March 31, 2014

Bonjour;Je vous remercie beaucoup pour votre tutoriel et l’utilisation des calques et des masques.
Je vous souhaite à tous une bonne journée à tous

Reply
mizan.ngbd2013

March 28, 2014

This is really nice. I loved the your photoshop. it ok

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@yura

March 27, 2014

its so cool.., absolutely great tutorial, thank you so much for make this tutorial.. ^ ^

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Minh Hai

March 20, 2014

great tutorial thank you so much i like it

Reply
Eve Livesey

March 20, 2014

Would be really nice if you would inform me when you use my stock in a tutorial – we could do some social sharing and promotion

Kind Regards

Eve

Reply
Lucy matagaro

March 13, 2014

The photos are really amazing

Reply
Eliana Palomino

March 12, 2014

This is really nice. I loved it!!!

Reply
Photoshop

March 11, 2014

thank’s so match I like that

Reply
Jordan

March 9, 2014

I think this could have all been a lot shorter now that i’ve read through the whole thing.

For one, hyper links, use them and just say repeat this process such as the saturation, hue, contrast and brightness factors, as well, it’s really hard to learn this tutorial if you were a beginner, saying to just “mask” something is far easier said than done if you have no idea more effective ways of doing the like with the quick mask or the layer mask.

I hate the ship, it’s like heres rocks and trees and everything natural not a single bit of water showing, oh and here’s a ship. I took it out of mine on personal choice but it’s up to you.

Last thing I’d say is the rocks you created, they look far more detailed then just using a brush to create them I’d say you took multiple layers using different sections of the rock each time and layered them on top of each other to give more depth to the photo, if you want nice crisp clean jagged rocks try using the lasso tool and deleting the brush layer piece by piece.

Reply
1. Anonymous
  
  March 1, 2020
  
  hater
Hera

March 6, 2014

Wow, love this tutorial! Amazing job, I should try it out myself. ;)

Reply
YASIR IQBAL

March 6, 2014

i like your work style

Reply
Ifat Sharmin

March 4, 2014

Fantastic graphics work..Have to ask all of our designers to follow your articles..Thank you so much..

Reply
Julie

March 4, 2014

What a great tuto! Trying to be better in photo manipulation this was really helpfull.
Just having a weird result on step 30 when trying to add lights to the stone, it needed to be set at 5% opacity not to have those white mass…
And also step 56 I’m not able to have something like yours, I just have this white edge as if it wasn’t well cut out, took me time to fix it but nevermind, I learnt a lot thank you! (and sorry for my bad english ahah)

Reply