How to Create a Mysterious Floating Box in a Desolate Land

Activate the Brush tool (B) and input the following:

Brush size: 600px
Hardness: 0%
Opacity: 25%
Flow: 100%
#: 000000

Now, let’s paint:

The result of that should be similar to this:

When you’re done, select all the layers that we’ve created and press Ctrl/Cmd + G to group them. Once grouped, rename it to “Background”.

Step 4: Create the Mysterious Box

Now, we will be creating the eerie floating box. To start, let’s open “Basic white cube 1” by svilen001. We would need to take the box out from this stock image and to do that, we would need the Polygonal Lasso Tool (L).

Once this tool is activated, create a selection area around the box:

Next, activate the Move tool (V) and drag this box to our canvas. Rename this layer to “box”. Make sure to put this above the “Background” group.

Position it as show below:

Next, activate the Transform tool (Ctrl/Cmd + T) and resize the box as shown on the images below:

The result:

Step 5: Create the Texture for the Mysterious Box

In this step, we will make the floating box look more realistic. The step above will now serve as our guide in transforming the textures that we would be applying to the box.

To start, open the texture “Concrete Wall 3” by mdpratt. Now, we won’t be using the whole texture, instead we will be cutting parts of the texture and applying it on each sides of the box. Activate the Rectangular Marquee tool (M) and create a selection area around the region shown on the image below:

Once you’ve done that, activate the Move tool (V) and drag it to our canvas. Move it and position it as shown below:

Next, rename this to “side 1”.

Now, it is time we distort this layer. To distort it, activate the Transform tool (Ctrl/Cmd + T) and right click on the canvas to show the contextual menu. Once the menu is up, click on “Distort”.

Follow the instructions on distorting “side 1” as shown on the images below:

The result of that should be similar to this:

Next, we would need to darken this layer to make it blend with the sunset; to start, create a new layer (Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + N) and name it “darken side 1”. Right click on this layer and then choose “Create Clipping Mask” to focus the paint only on this layer.