Creating fantastic landscapes in Photoshop isn't difficult. All you need is some good stock photography (as ever!), some painting skills, the Pen Tool and a lot of patience.When I went to start MOUNT SCORPIO I had no fixed idea of what the outcome would be, but the result was pretty pleasing. Something to bear in mind when tackling a job like this is to let the environment inform the development of your work as you go. Pay close attention to things like light and shade, composition and atmosphere as the work develops. Nature develops along logical lines, if that makes sense - and your work should, too.
I began with this landscape:
It's visually striking, which is a good starting point, but the dimensions were all wrong for what I had in mind. I knew I wanted some sort of weird mountain, which meant the image had to become portrait format.The easiest way to do that was simply to paint the sky above it. I resized the image to 1200px high by 1000px wide:
.You can see the problem that caused - that big white space needed dealing with, first.[Edited by User on 6/30/2011 8:44:53 AM]
For me, the best way to get the sky part looking natural was to paint it. I created a new layer above the base landscape, and (sampling the sky colour as I went) painted a new sky on top.
It's a bit rough and ready, but gave me a visual starting point for the next stage of the image.I use a Wacom Tablet and custom brushes in my work - there are plenty of free photoshop brush resources on the internet. In this case, I used a soft opacity airbrush for the basic blue tones, and a 'mist' brush to dapple in the clouds. I also was very careful to introduce light directions here - remembering how it will affect everything I add next.Be subtle at this stage; the sky is not finished yet!
Next, I wanted to define a mountain shape. To do this, I found a suitable stone texture:
I placed it onto the background, roughly where I needed it, and rotated it until the light and shadows matched up. Then I went into IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > HUE/SATURATION and toned the rocks down to suit; likewise IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > COLOUR BALANCE to play around with the colour tone until I was happy it looked natural.
Using the PEN TOOL, I draw a shape around the stone texture layer defining the mountain (for illustration purposes here I've removed the stone layer to show only the path selection}:
Using this Path, I masked away the stone area I didn't want. This can be done by making the Path an active selection and copying/pasting the stone layer inside it, then making a layer mask from the selection. This time using the Pen Tool makes the edges of the mask too smooth - rock formations are rarely so clean edged, so I needed to look at the details next. Using a tiny, soft edged brush I zoomed in very close and painted into the mask to bring out all the small, rough edges to the stone.This part takes a long time to do, but be patient. Look closely at the natural formations of the stone as you work to take advantage of the existing cracks, shadows and so on:
[Edited by User on 6/30/2011 8:46:28 AM]
OVERPAINTING:There is no easy way to do this. Overpainting on a photographic image is a skill that comes with practice - and lots of it.There is a huge amount of overpainting in this image - shadows, lights, foliage, roots, trees, , birds, streams, rivulets, vines and so on. Keep it subtle as you work. Overpainting can be done on a separate layer, to allow for mistakes to be easily corrected. I always sample the exisiting photographic colour as I work.With the mountain shape suitably defined, I saw it still didn't look natural, so on a new layer I used a soft, low opacity airbrush set to 'multiply' (30% black) to paint areas of shadow, or set to linear dodge (20% white) to lighten rock surfaces. I added shadows to the ground, and especially around the sunken base of the mountain.I also added the waterfall around this point, just to make things more interesting. It's just done by placing the waterfall source on a new layer, masking it, sizing it correctly, then working at the mask with a black brush to try and define it naturally on the stone. To make it sit more comfortably I painted some spray over it using a wide spread custom brush.Then I used a single point soft edged brush to paint in dangling roots and organic growth, occasionally blurring them with the smudge tool to make them more subtle. The trees and bushes are single 'stamp' brushes overpainted with light and shade.
[Edited by User on 6/30/2011 11:34:26 AM]
It's getting there; but it was still looking flat. I selected the Rock Layer and gave it a UNSHARP MASK FILTER at 25%, Radius 8, Threshhold 1 - to bring out highlights and detail.There was still no focus; I added the little lighthouse and used the Dodge/Burn Tools to add shadows.As a final touch, I felt my painting of the sky didn't quite cut it here, so I sourced a few images of cloudy skies:
I put a Gradient Mask on one of them, and pasted it behind the mountain, then set the Blend Mode of the Cloud Layer to "Overlay" - this added to my painted sky with the suggestion of photographic clouds, while retaining the balance of light and form I was working with throughout the process:
And finally...Anyone who has ever read one of my tutorials will know the last thing I always do is Add a Photo Filter Layer over the top. This has the effect of tying together any disparate elements with a subtle colour balance....and that's it!I hope this helps you in your work - the techniques I used in the actual chopping of this image are fairly basic and easy to work with - Masks, Pen Paths and so on. The hard part is having the patience to work with the fine details - a lot of the time here I was working with actual pixels, the zoom was that close.Have patience, and have fun!