Tutorial : Photo Manipulate

Photo Manipulate a Surreal Space-Age Landscape

a tutorial by http://psd.fanextra.com

 Step 1

Creating a new document  and fill your canvas with black:

Step 2

Go to filter>noise>add noise and then add noise at 20%, gaussian, (monochromatic).

Step 3

Adjustments panel create a ‘levels’ adjustment layer. Apply the settings shown below in order to generate a nice star-field effect:

Step 4

Create a new layer called ‘clouds’ and go to filter>render>clouds. Then reduce this layer’s opacity to 15%.

Step 5

Now, with your clouds layer selected, go to image>adjustments>levels. Apply the settings below to increase the contrast of your clouds:

Step 6

Create a new layer called ‘radial gradient’. Drag out a radial gradient from the center of your canvas, ranging from yellow (ffe400) to transparent.
Then change this layer’s blend mode to ‘overlay’. Then duplicate this layer twice.

Step 7

Create a new layer called ‘circle’. Now create a circular selection in the center of your canvas and fill it with black. Then apply an inner shadow and outer glow effect (settings below):

Step 8

Download this great image of a mountain range: mountain range.
Cut it out and paste it into the bottom right of your document:

Step 9

Repeat this step with a second mountain range photo: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1280637.
Erase the edge of this photo so that it blends nicely with the first mountain range:

Step 10

Now apply the levels settings below to your two mountain range images:

Step 11

Cut out and paste in this photo of a house:
House Photo. Make sure that it’s layer is beneath your mountain layers.

Step 12

Now apply the levels settings shown below:

Step 13

Now paste in two more images of buildings and apply the same levels settings.
You may need to decrease the saturation of your photos to fit with your main composition:
House 2 Photo.
House 3 Photo.

Step 14

Now use your dodge/burn tool on each of your mountains and building layers. You want to give the impression of the planet’s light casting light down on your scene. Therefore the lightest areas should be closest to the yellow light, and the darkest areas furthest away from it:
Try not to go overboard with this step, and use a brush exposure of around 50%.

Step 15

Now create a new layer called ‘yellow highlight’. Use a large, soft, yellow (ffd800) paintbrush to paint over the areas that you used your dodge brush on.
Then reduce this layer’s opacity to 10%.
This should give a nice yellow tint, cast from your planet:

Step 16

Copy and paste in this photo of a swan, and position it on top of your right side mountain:
Swan Photo.

Step 17

Now apply the previous levels settings to your swan layer, as well as your dodge/burn brush.
Then apply the yellow highlight brush again, to give that ‘basked in light’ effect:

Step 18

I want to give a shadow to my swan layer, being cast on the mountain range. I start by duplicating my swan layer. Then I flip vertically it and fit it underneath my original swan.
Then I go to edit>transform>warp. I warp the reflected swan to fit better with the shape of my mountain range.
Go to blending options for this layer and apply a black color overlay.
Then go to filter>blur>gaussian blur and apply a 3px blur. Reduce this layer’s opacity to 75%.
Finally, you want the shadow to become less pronounced as it gets further away from the swan. Use a soft, low opacity erase brush to erase away the bottom part of your shadow partially.

Step 19

Now apply a gradient overlay adjustment layer, with a 20% layer opacity:

Step 20

Finally apply a color balance adjustment layer (settings below) to add a more murky, blue feel to the piece:

And We’re Done!

You can view the final outcome below. I hope that you enjoyed this tutorial and would love to hear your feedback on the techniques and outcome:

Final Image

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:


THANKS TO:

http://psd.fanextra.com/tutorials/photo-effects/photo-manipulate-a-surreal-space-age-landscape/

Introduction to Photoshop

It is not in detail it will cover enough  to teach you how to edit (resize, crop, merge) images by yourself without asking somebody else.

Tools and Options Panel

	Move Tool	select and move images (objects) on any active layer.
	Rectangular Marquee Tool	making selection on the image (objects) on any active  layer.
	Magic Wand Tool	making selection (similar colors at once for example)
	Polygonal Lasso Tool	free selection
	Slice Select Tool	selecting slices
	Crop Tool	cropping images
	Patch Tool	correcting images
	Brush Tool	drawing freehand
	History Brush Tool	restoring specified history state
	Clone Stamp Tool	selecting a source and copying (drawing)
	Gradient Tool	gradient effect on images
	Eraser Tool	erasing
	Dodge Tool	making images lighter (And Burn tool makes the opposite – darker)
	Horizontal Type Tool	inserting text to image
	Path Selection Tool	selecting the active path
	Custom Shape Tool	insert pre-specified (ready) shapes to image
	Pen Tool	creating vector shapes
	Eyedropper Tool	selecting color
	Notes Tool	inserting notes on the image
	Zoom Tool	zooming in or out
	Hand Tool	dragging image

 
Working with Images

1. Cropping

• Select the area you want to keep 
• Press Enter on your keyboard
• You can also press on the Move Tool instead of pressing Enter on your keyboard
• If you are satisfied with your selection just press on the Crop button and your image will be cropped. 

Make a selection	After you made your selection press Enter	Result

 2.Copying & Pasting

• Make a selection and press Ctrl + C or go to Edit > Copy
• Press Ctrl + N to open a new window or go to File > New and press OK
• And now press Ctrl + V to paste the copied image or go to File > Paste  

3.Image Adjustment

• try some of the effects on image by using Brightness/Contrast, Auto Color.
• Sometimes you can use Photoshop’s pre-defined Image Adjustment 
• Try using Auto Levels, Auto Contrast or Auto Color on your photos before you proceed with other options.

4. Working with Texts

• Select the Horizontal Type Tool (T) and click on the window 
• If you want to make changes to your text, highlight it and change the properties from Options Panel
• When working with Texts it’s important to click on Move Tool (V) after you are done typing. 
• There is another way to change the properties of the Text ,by using Character Panel. 

5. Working with Layers

• the blue circle is located on the Top Layer, named the Layer as “Circle”, 
• red rectangle is on second layer, named this layer as “Rectangle”. 
• Layer that is on top of the stack will cover the layers below. Thus you see the Circle covering Rectangle. 

 

5.1 Changing layer positions

•  To move the particular layer just click on it with your mouse and while still holding your mouse move it up or down. 
• Or you can click on the Layer that you want to move and use shortcut keys on your keyboard to move it up ( Ctrl+] ) and down ( Ctrl=[ ).

5.2 Active Layer

• Active layer is the layer which you are working on .
• active layer will always be highlighted (selected).
• you want to move particular object you should select it’s respective layer first, then only you can move it.
• The “Eye” icon on the left of the layers means that the layers are currently visible, if you toggle them off then the object will become invisible.

As you can see from the screenshot above, I have deselected/removed the eye icon from the layer Rectangle. We still can see the rectangle in the Layers Panel but it is not visible on our image – we can only see the blue circle.

 
6. Saving for Web (as JPG or GIF)

To save your image for web go to File > Save for Web or press Alt+Shift+Ctrl+S and you will see an identical window and you can choose which format you want to save.

Source :
http://www.adesdesign.net/blog/tutorials/photoshop/introduction-to-photoshop/