Making A Dreamscape Girl In Photoshop

In this Photoshop manipulation tutorial I will show you how using only a few stock images you can make a nice artwork. We will use several manipulation techniques and filters to make all kinds of effects.

Resources :

Woman Stock
Rose Petals
Pigeon
Swan
Sky
Sea 

Step 1

Open the model image in photoshop and start extracting the woman from the background. I used the Pen Tool (P) and instead of erasing the background I used a layer mask.

Step 2

Once you have the background masked, add the sky on a new layer below the girl and adjust its size to fit your canvas. Use a soft brush and mask or erase the lower half like in the image below.

Step 3

Now duplicate the sky or paste it again and apply Gaussian Blur. Try to get something like in the image below. Use a soft brush to blend the edges with the other half of the sky.

Step 4

Use a Levels adjustment layers to increase the woman’s highlights, also increase Saturation and with the help of a Color Balance adjustment layer add blue and cyan (using the sliders) to the highlights and mid-tones.

Step 5

Duplicate the woman layer and flip it vertically. Position it below the original layer and open the Liquify filter from Filter > Liquify(Shift+Ctrl+x)

Use different size brushes inside the filter and drag the dress until it meets the original. After you make the reflection, create a layer mas and use the Gradient Tool (G) or a soft brush to hide the bottom part of the reflection. Also make sure you hide the head on the reflection because in the real world it would not be visible.

Change the layer’s blending mode to Linear Light apply a 2px Gaussian Blur and reduce the opacity to about 60%.

Step 6

Use a soft edge brush and 25% opacity and paint some shadows under the woman.

Step 7

Go to the sky layer added on step 2 and add a Levels and Hue Saturation adjustment layers. On the levels, increase the midtones to 1,57 and increase the saturation to +40. These two adjustments will make the sky brighter.

Step 8

Open the sea image in photoshop and paste it below the girl and her shadow layers but above the blurred sky that you made on step 3. Use a big soft brush and mask out the image like in the screenshot below.

Step 9

The water is way to dark to leave it as it is so I added some adjustment layers to turn it blue and also lighter. The main reason why I added the water is because I wanted to have some natural ripples. I could have done that manually but it would take too long so I went for the easy option.

Add a Levels adjustment layer to the pond ripples and change the blending mode to Screen. Also add a color adjustment layer and use the settings shown below. Now I had exactly what I wanted, clear blue water.

Step 10

Open the swan image and subtract it from the background. I used a soft edge brush on the part of the water to blend it nicely. I used a Levels adjustment layers just like I did with the woman to increase the highlights and Color Balance to apply a blue cast.

Step 11

Add the pigeon, decrease its size to about 20% and again use levels to adjust the contrast. This time I used a solid color and blending mode Hue to create the blue color cast on the pigeon.

Step 12

Open the rose petals png in photoshop and grab a few different petals. Paste them over the water, duplicate each one of them and move them down a few pixels to create reflections. Change the duplicated petals blending mode to Soft Light and reduce their opacity to 50%.You will have to increase the saturation and also increase the contrast using Curves or Levels.

FINAL

Source: photomanipulation.org