A Guide to Photomanipulation with Photoshop ver 1.

ManipTutorial
I S S U E

01
JAN ENGLISH VERSION
2009

http://alegion.deviantart.com

LEVEL Adobe Acrobat Reader

INTERMEDIATE

Photoshop:
Adobe Photoshop 7
and above required

Rock Manor:
Step by step scenery
manipulation
!
EE
FR
STOCK RESOURCES
1. Rock: sasicd
2. Bridge: jackies-stock
3. Castle: Maliciarosnoir-stock
4. Sky: night-fate-stock
This is my first tutorial, and it is far
from perfect as well as my photo-
shop techniques. So I will take any
suggestions for any tutorials. This
project also gave me a good rea-
son to practice my Adobe Indesign

1
Email Me
skills.

I made a simple and quick scenery

manipulation. Also called “photo-
montage” since it involves multiple
photos.
Home Site

The images to your left are down-

loadable if you click on them your
browser will open to the site for di-
rect download.

You should be able to do everything

in this tutorial if you have Adobe
Photoshop 7 and later. I made it so
you will not need any 3rd party filters
or plugins.

4 Manip Tutorial
January 2009 LEVEL
Issue 01
Version 1.1
By Colin Foss
email: fosscolin@hotmail.com
web: http://alegion.deviantart.com

Done in Adobe InDesign CS4 INTERMEDIATE

STEP 1
1. File > New
2. Set image at 20x30 inches and resolution at 300 ppi
3. Background should be transparent. Press OK.

STEP 2
1. File > Place
2. Select the rock/cliff file and press OK.
3. Select Move Tool.
4. Check “Show Transform Controls”. 2
5. Click on the corner box of the active image, and drag the
corner box by holding left mouse button and then releasing

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when reaching desired size.
6. Click on the “Maintain Aspect Ratio” icon.
1
Note: You will notice this image is particularly blotchy due to high
jpeg compression. I fixed this problem with median noise reduction
under more tools with a freeware program called Jpeg Enhancer
. It seems to do a bit better job at removing noise than photoshop
without making the image unusable. Jpeg Enhancer is an ad-
vanced application that lets you remove the artifacts and a blotchy
look from your images, making them look as if they have been
saved at a 100% (“super-fine”) quality. It may be downloaded at

4
www.download.com.

STEP 33
STEP
1. Press F7 Key to bring up the Layers Window.
2. Click on the Mask icon as shown in the image to the
right.
3. Select your Lasso Tool of choice and begin selecting
areas around the rock. optional step
4. Set your active color to black.
5. Click on Brush Tool with opacity at 100%
6. Begin painting the selected area with the Brush Tool. It
should begin to erase. If you have made a mistake you can
unerase with the color white.
STEP 4
1. File > Place
2. Select the castle image and press OK.
3. Repeat STEP 2 for this image. Use the rock image as a
guide to get the desired size.
4. Repeat STEP 3 to remove the sky. Instead of using the
Lasso Tool use the Magic Wand Tool to erase the sky.

STEP 5
1. Change the Brush opacity to 26%.
2. Select a soft brush with any size you feel comfortable.
3. Begin erasing with the Brush Tool at the bottom section
of the image of the castle indicated in the image shown
on the bottom right of this step. You might have to erase
certain sections multiple times to get the desired blend.

STEP 6
1. Press CTRL L(COMMAND L) for Hue/ Saturation
window.
2. Bring saturation down to -31 or close enough that it
matches the saturation of the mountain.
3. The Castle is a bit more sharp than the rock its on. Since
they are the same distance lets try to match them up a little
by blurring the castle. Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur Ra-
dius 2.7 pixels. Matching trees from both images will give
you a good key where to set your blur radius.
4. Check and see if you need to make any color adjust-
ments, but in this case the castle and rock seem to match
fine.
STEP 7
1. File > Place
2. Select the bridge image and press OK.
3. Repeat STEP 3 for this image. Place this layer so it is
behind the rock and to the lower right. You will not need to
resize this image if you are going by the size setup for this
tutorial.
4. Repeat STEP 6 for this image if you’d like to adjust the
bridge. I personally didn’t make any adjustments.

STEP 8
1. File > Place
2. Select the sky image and press OK.
3. Place this layer behind all layers since it will be our
background. Be sure you place the highlighted section of
the clouds behind the upper corner of the castle (you will
see why later (see image to the right)).
4. Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal.
5. Resize the image using the Move Tool (see step 2). You
will not need to keep the Aspect Ratio.
6. Duplicate this layer CTRL J(COMMAND J).
7. Bring this new layer back behind your original sky layer.
8. Position it so it covers most of the emptyness that the
original did not cover.
9. Repeat STEP 4 and 5 to blend the 2 sky layers together.
10. I duplicate and flip another layer to cover the rest of the
background not covered, and repeated the blending pro-
cess. Feel free to use Clone Tool if you want your clouds
more random.

STEP 9
1. From your layers window click the rock image. You will
know when a double border appears around the thumbnail.
2. Select the Burn Tool.
3. Range selected to Highlights.
4. Exposure set to 100%
5. Run the Burn Tool along the edge of rock to remove
any highlighted areas that stand out. This will give a more
natural look.
STEP 9 continued
6. Follow this same process with the bridge layer.
7. Continue to use the Burn Tool to darken all the highlights
on the rock, bridge, and castle layer using Range set to
Midtones.
8. I also went ahead and darkened the trees and parts of
bridge using Range set on Shadow. Keep in mind that the
light source is behind the castle, so there is a lack of light
source in front.

STEP 9 reviewed
The image should look close to what I have to the right.
Do not worry too much about the upper castle edges, you
will see why later.
If edges appear too sharp try using the Blur Tool at 100%
to smooth them. optional step
STEP 10
1. Create a New Layer by pressing SHIFT CTRL N(SHIFT
COMMAND N).
2. This layer should be above the sky layers.
3. Use your Brush Tool with the settings I have to the
right.
4. Paint behind the castle and upper portion of the rock on
your new layer. Expose just a bit to reveal some white.
5. Create another new layer , and position it above the
castle.
6. With the Brush Tool paint between the castle tower and
the main structure as you see in the image on the right.
5. With both layers we just created go to File > Blur >
Gaussian Blur.
6. Set pixels at 250 and press OK.

STEP 11
1
1. Create a New Layer by pressing SHIFT CTRL N(SHIFT
COMMAND N).
2. This layer should be above the sky layers.
3. Select Polygonal Lasso Tool.
4. Create a triangle shape as shown in image 1.
5. Set your Foreground color to white.
6. Fill by pressing SHIFT F5.
7. Duplicate this layer.
8. Select Move Tool.
9. Twist and resize. Keep in mind to keep this shape
pointed at a south east direction.
10. Repeat 7 - 9 until you have something like image 2. It
doesn’t have to be exactly the same though.
11. Merge all the triangles as one layer. This is our Ray
Layer 1.
12. Duplicate the new merged layer. This will be Ray Layer
2.
2
13. Blur both layers File > Blur > Gaussian Blur.
14. Set pixels at 47.7 and press OK.
15 Move Ray Layer 1 so it’s on top of the castle. Move
between the tower and main structure. Ray Layer 2 should
remain behind the castle.
16. Change the Opacity of Ray Layer 1 to 74%.
17. Change angle if needed using the Move Tool.
18. Duplicate more rays if you wish using the same pro-
cess we just executed for STEP 12. optional step
STEP 12
Your image should look something similair to the one on
the right.
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1. Go to Layer > Flatten Image. You should have a single
image.
2. Press CTRL A(COMMAND A). This command will select
the entire image.
3. Press CTRL C(COMMAND C). This will copy the layer.
4. Go to the History Window.
5. Click on the history before you flattened the Image(see
image 2). This will unflatten everything.
6. Press CTRL V(COMMAND V). This will paste your flat-
tened layer.
7. Move this layer on top of all layers.
8. Press SHIFT CTRL U(SHIFT COMMAND U). This will

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desaturate the layer.
9. Blur the flattened layer File > Blur > Gaussian Blur.
10. Set pixels at 7.2 and press OK.
STEP 13
1. From your layers window change layer to Soft Light.
2. Feel free to do touch-ups or changes to your image.
3. Save.

END