Photoshop Tutorial: Create a Surrealistic City Scene From Drawings And Photos

In this tutorial I will show how to make a surrealistic city scene, merging different images with some drawings. We will use the following source images:

Source 1: Old paper texture - by Andreyutzu @ SCX
Source 2: Clouds - by Eserna @ SCX
Source 3: Flying books - by Danielle20 @ SCX
Source 4: The statue - most important element of this work, by Paolo Brandao @ Flickr

End result:
Create a Surrealistic City Scene From Drawings And Photos Final Image

Author:

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Practice tutorial

Tags:citydrawingssurreal

Step 1

One of the things we have to do is to mask the statue. Since this statue is quite peculiar we will mask it in two parts, the front one and the back one.

go for it:
1.- Select the channels palette and enable only the red channel, right click on it and duplicate the channel. We use the red channel because it is the one with more contrast between the elements we want to mask.

2.- Disable the Red copy and enable again the RGB channels, back to the layers palette and double click the background layer to unlock it. Now go to Menu > Select > Load selection..., select the red copy channel to make the selection, and click ok.

3.- With the selection enabled click on the little icon at the bottom of the layers palette to create a new mask for this layer.
I usually make a new layer filled with a very contrasted color and place it at the bottom.

4.- Select the layer mask and use levels (ctrl+l) to increase the contrast and add sharpness. Now apply a Gaussian blur filter to make softer borders.

5.- This step is a little tricky; duplicate the layer (ctrl+j) and right click the layer mask and select Apply Layer Mask. Now make a new layer mask and use the brush tool to paint hiding the back part of the statue.

6.- With the back part of the statue masked press ctrl+j to duplicate the layer, with the layer mask selected use ctrl+i to invert the mask and make only visible the back part of the statue then apply the layer mask.

You can also recover the selection of only the back part of the statue if you click while holding the ctrl key on the mask layer

Step 2

Use the Chalk 11 pixels (is a default one in Photoshop CS3) brush to draw the elements of the city, low the opacity to a 50% or so to get a pencil effect.
Use the View > Show > Grid (ctrl+') feature to make the lines straight but not too much.
Increase the brush size and decrease the opacity to add some shadows.

Step 3

Duplicate the elements to make the city. Not too much to say about this step, just try to add variety taking into account that the buildings at the bottom must look smaller to add perspective and depth of field.

Step 4

Place the front and the back of the statue in the city, make a new layer in the middle of them and use the brush tool with a hard rounded brush to draw a heart shape. Reduce the opacity of this layer to make this "heart" look transparent.

Step 5

Pick the source 1 and place this layer on top, desaturate it (ctrl+shift+u) and set the mode for this layer to multiply

Step 6

Pick a soft brush and a in dark grey paint the shadows with low opacity (5-15%) on a new layer in multiply mode.

Step 7

Now on a new layer in overlay mode paint the highlights with a light grey, using again a soft brush with low opacity, do not forget to use the masked layer as clipping mask.

Step 8

Open the source 2 and copy the sky piece, paste into your document in the background, use overlay mode for this layer.

Step 9

Enable only the layer with front part of the statue, use the lasso tool to select one letter and then click Menu > Edit > Define brush preset... to make a new brush of it.
Repeat with several letters, you do not need to make the complete alphabet, just a few letters to add variety
Use the new brushes to paint the letters flowing to the sky, for each brush you pick use the Brush presets to make them look randomly created.
Use the brush tip shape to add spacing, In the Shape dynamics tab play with Size jitter and the Angle jitter. Enable the Scattering feature,leaving the scatter slider selected just in a low degree.
If you are using a tablet you may also want to enable the Other dynamics tab to control the opacity and the flow with the pen pressure.

Step 10

Almost finished
Open the source 3 mask the book and desaturate it (ctrl+shift+u). Copy and paste onto your document applying a subtle transformation each time to make them look different.

Step 11

Finished

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35 Comments:

dinomario10 says:

Awesome work, nice tutorial! This sure is going to be approved.

(1 year and 292 days ago)

George55 says:

Very nice, and interesting tut.

(1 year and 291 days ago)

alwani says:

WOoooooOW , very nice i like it

(1 year and 289 days ago)

Guest says:

thanks tutorial added tutorialriver.com

(1 year and 289 days ago)

mistermister says:

muy bueno

(1 year and 288 days ago)

Guest says:

very cool

(1 year and 288 days ago)

Guest says:

really interesting tut, good job. cheers.

(1 year and 288 days ago)

Guest says:

Fantastic work, thats pro!

(1 year and 286 days ago)

Guest says:

thank for share

(1 year and 283 days ago)

sunnysideup says:

this can be done in cs3?

(1 year and 282 days ago)

Guest says:

Tutorial added to the web tuts

(1 year and 282 days ago)

Guest says:

Amazing! Great Job!

(1 year and 279 days ago)

RichieMB says:

Fab

(1 year and 277 days ago)

Guest says:

Amazing!!! nice tutorial....

http://www.clippingimages.com/blog/

(1 year and 276 days ago)

Guest says:

Amazing !!!! very nice

(1 year and 274 days ago)

Guest says:

thanks a million, how did you get this idea, plz share me if you have time, i very interest in it.

(1 year and 271 days ago)

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(1 year and 265 days ago)