PSDFan Extra

Members Area Tutorial: Design a Summer Time Vacation Poster

In this tutorial I’ll show you how to create a surreal underwater photo manipulation that is perfect for a poster design. You’ll work with various manipulation techniques including blending, masking, creating underwater effects, complex extractions and much more.

This is a comprehensive tutorial that will teach you a range of applicable photo manipulation skills to use across your work.

Let’s get started!

Final Image

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Step 1

Create a new document and fill it with white (or any colors you want). Open sky stock. Grab Retangular Marquee Tool (M) to make a selection on sky part and use Move Tool (V) to drag it into our white canvas, place it at the top . Go to Edit-Transform-Flip Horizontal:

Step 2

I use an adjustment layer to change color of sky. Go to Layer-New Adjustment Layer-Color Balance:

Step 3

Open underwater stock. Drag it to the bottom of our picture then click second button at the bottom of Layer Pallete to add layer mask to it:

Use soft black brush to remove hard edges of the top and blend it with sky:

Step 4

I add two adjustment layers with Clipping Mask to change color and contrast of this underwater part:

After darkening with Curves I use soft black brush to erase the top of this underwater area as I want it brighter than the rest:

Step 5

Open sea stock. Take a part from this sea and position it at the center of our image, use Cmd/Ctrl+T to narrow it:

I call this layer “sea surface”.

Step 6

Add a Color Balance layer (Clipping Mask) to match color of this sea with the scene:

Step 7

Extract girl and situate her at the middle section of our image and set this layer under sea surface layer:

Add layer mask to sea surface one. Use black brush with hardness about 70-80% to remove a part of model to make a look of this girl sitting between the sea, also remove hard edge of the sea sides:

Step 8

Create a new layer above girl one with Clipping Mask option. Active Clone Tool (S), ensuring that ‘sample all layers’ is ticked, and remove some hair strands and a part of girl glasses:

Step 9

I use two adjustment layers (Photo Filter and Curves – Clipping Mask) to reduce saturation and change contrast of the girl:

Then I clear the girl part under the sea with soft black brush on Curves layer mask:

Step 10

I want to darken the bottom part of the girl and reduce highlights on model body, hair, fingers so I make two layers (Clipping Mask) and use soft black brush to paint on these areas. I change the mode of these layers to Soft Light 100%. On screenshots, you can see that I vary brush opacity for differents parts:

That’s the end of the preview!

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