How to Create an Amazing Futuristic Matte Painting in Photoshop

Lower the opacity of the layer to 50%.

Open the building stock and remove the sky using the Magic Wand Tool.

Set a vertical guide. Press Ctrl+T and rotate the building to align with the vertical guide. Make a selection, copy and paste into the main file.

Now clip the layer to the base layer. Flip the layer horizontally.

I stretched and squeezed the layer quite drastically. Try to get it right in one attempt. If you back and forth the image will loose data and blurs.

We will use the middle portion of the image. Hide remaining with a Layer Mask.

Adjust the colors and remove that green shades using Curves and Hue/Saturation.

The image is evenly lit. So paint a dark color on the shadow side of the building. Create a new layer above the current layer. Just sampled a dark tone from the background and painted with a large soft brush. The red color in the below image indicates the painted region.

Adjust the highlights slightly. Click back on the photo element, press “Q” to enter quick mask mode paint over the right edge with around 50% brush opacity. Press “Q” again to exit the quick mask mode. Invert the selection by pressing Ctrl+Shift+I, adjust the highlights slightly.

Deselect the selection. Reduce the saturation of the layer.

Create a new layer and paint a shadow. Clip to the base layer.

The lighting isn’t strong enough. Paint a lighter color with a soft brush. I painted with 50% opacity setting.

Add fine details. I picked a 1 pixel brush to paint subtle highlights and shadows. Spend some time to get it right.

Paint structural details. Pick a small brush to paint details.

Continue to add more details.

Create a window shape using Polygonal Lasso Tool.

Duplicate it several times. Finally merge all the windows and pressing Ctrl+E.

We are here so far.

Add some grain to the building to remove some of the smoothness of the brush strokes. Create a new layer and place it at top in the stack. Load selection from the base layer by Ctrl + clicking. Fill the selection.