In this tutorial Andreea takes us through a landscape photo manipulation. Using some provided stock images you’ll learn how to blend in different landscapes creating a surreal effect.


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IntroductionLandscape manipulations are probably the easiest of the genre that can be done, if you have a nice scenic image in mind, you find the right stocks and can put them together to get a realistic-looking image. This tutorial will teach you how to achieve that.
So the first step, as in all of my tutorials, is to find the right stocks. For starters I’ll be using these 3 images;
Stock

Step 1Take all the files and copy/paste them onto a new canvas (file-new). Just make sure it’s pretty large in height because for now we don’t know how large the image will result as and it’s better to have it large and then you can crop it out.
Step 2I took the image with the rocks and moved the layer (click and drag in layers menu) below the castle one. Now the image should look like this.

For the blending I’ll go with the easiest method known to Photoshop users so far, and that is the eraser. I took a soft round brush for the eraser, size at 100px because I have a medium sized canvas. If your is small you should go with a smaller brush.
Step 3I moved the background image (with the rocks) a little bit so the water areas of the 2 images blend in. The lighting and tones don’t really match so I used curves (image>adjustments>curves) to darken the rocks image.

Step 4I brightened (image>adjustments>brightness/contrast) the castle image a little bit and added a hint of copper to it with the color balance tool (image>adjustments>color balance). I just added a bit of red and yellow and got this.

Time to use image #1.
Step 5I used the magic wand tool to select the sky of the castle image, it’s all pretty clean and I had it all erased in just 2 clicks. You can also use the color range option. Then I placed the mountain mage below it and used a soft round eraser brush on the castle image to blend the hill at the far left end with the background I just added. Use the color balance if necessary to match the tones.
Step 6Now I just need to find a sky image to complete the image. I’m gonna be using this image

that is a personal resource.
Step 7Same as the usual, I wanted to blend it in with the mountains so I erased the bottom half of the image to uncover the mountains. I went with a medium sized eraser with a soft round brush.

Step 8One of the final steps is adding a few highlights. Just go with your gutt and what your instincts tell you natural lights should look like. I did that with the dodge tool, a smaller round soft brush, set at highlights and 20% exposure.

Step 9And the very final step is of course the postwork. I always hit auto-levels (image>adjustments>auto-levels or simply shift+ctrl+l) so it balances the tones of my image. You can also use color balance just to see which tones suit your work best.
Here is my final result.

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