Photoshop Tutorials: How to Create a Mountainous Matte Painting in Photoshop

How to Create a Mountainous Matte Painting in Photoshop

Posted: 12 Aug 2013 03:01 PM PDT

Preview of Final Results

misty40-final

Create A Misty Landscape Matte Painting in Photoshop

Resources

Sky -sxc.hu
Background mountain – Stockfreeimages
Left rock – Pixabay
Right rock – Pixabay
Mid rocks – Pixabay
Trees 1 – sxc.hu
Tree 2 – Morguefile
Tree 3 – Morguefile
Tree 4 – Stockfreeimages
Bottom right rock – Stockfreeimages
Waterfall 1 – Pixabay
Waterfall 2 – Morguefile
Arch 1 – Morguefile
Arch 2 – Stockfreeimages
Ruin 1 – sxc.hu
Ruin 2 – Morguefile
Ruin 3 – sxc.hu
Mist brushes – Ideasplayer

Step 1

Create a new document and fill it with white or any light and bright colors. I choose the size with 1300×900 px. Open sky stock. Use Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to make a selection on sky part as shown below:

misty1

Then active Move Tool (V) and drag this selection into our white canvas:

misty1a

Step 2

Open background mountain stock.Take the background with misty mountains only and place it at sky part (don’t resize it):

misty2

misty2a

Click the second button at the bottom of Layer Panel to add layer mask to this layer. Now use soft black brushes with large size (I use 250-260 px) to paint on the top of this background to reveal sky added in first step:

Step 3

To reduce saturation and increase brightness of the mountains to fit the sky, I use some adjustment layers with Clipping Mask. On background mountain layer, go to New Layer-New Adjustment Layer-Hue/Saturation:

misty3

Curves:

misty3a

misty3b

Step 4

Open mid rocks stock. Extract them and locate them at the middle section of our picture. Right click this layer, choose Convert to Smart Object then use Cmd/Ctrl+T to resize it as shown below:

misty4

I want to remove the rock on the right so I add layer mask to this layer. Use Polygonal Lasso Tool (L) to make selections at the left corner and right rock:

misty4a

Now on layer mask use black brush to remove selected areas:

misty4b

Step 5

I create some adjustment layers to change color and darken the rocks.

Hue/Saturation:

misty5

Curves:

misty5a

Color Balance:

misty5b

I use soft black brush with opacity about 40% to blur dark effect on the top of the rocks (they will get more light from sky so should be brighter than the rest):

misty5c

Photoshop