Photoshop Tutorial: Fantasy with a Photo

Step 1 :

Start with a new document of 1200 pixel by 768 pixel, and 72px/inch resolution.
It isn’t necessary that you take this size. You can select any document size you like.
Name it “photoeffect” and save.

Step 2 :

Now open the image you think you will work with. Here I choose one keeping in mind the mood of the character which will establish the mood of the overall graphics. Now take a new layer and fill it with deep blue (R0 G59 B114).

Step 3 :

As you can see character is on black background, we need to separate it from the background.
For this we will pick pen tool from tools. Now start drawing path to select character.
Selecting hair can be a very tough job, so do not select that part pixel-by-pixel. Just roughly select the flow of hair.

After completing selection go to path panel. Save path and name it selection1. Hold Ctrl key and click on path thumbnails. Next  go to Select>Refine Edge  or  hit Alt+Ctrl+R. Set value in dialogue box and click ok. Now take out character in different layer by layer via copy (Ctrl+J).

As I mentioned before we can just select the hair roughly because now we will do some smudge job on hair. So take smudge tool and select brush as shown below.

Now smudge hair part to smooth it. Sometimes you may need brush tool. Use same brush as smudge tool and draw hair with black color. Again use smudge tool for smoothening. You need to change ‘Strength’ time to time for variation. Do these processes until you reach your desired point of perfection.

Finally it will look like this.

Step 4 :

In this step we will enhance ‘Level’ of the image i.e. Shadows, Midtones and Highlights. For that take Level Adjustment layer on character.

You can see below the setting we have maintained.

You might think the highlight is too much but we need to do this for fantasy lighting. And on lighting we have to do some extra treatment.

Take brush tool and set ‘Hardness’ to zero and foreground color black .Click on brush thumbnail and brush on character.  You need to change ‘opacity’ accordingly. We will apply that process many times later. I would like to name it “Hide and show” technique.

It will look something like this.

Step 5 :

In this part we will colorize the character. Take one ‘Solid color adjustment layer’ upon ‘Level Adjustment layer’. Set the color to R254 G0 B179. Change the blend mode of that layer from normal to ‘overlay’.  Now repeat “Hide and show” technique to recover some highlight area.

In a similar way, take three more ‘Solid color Adjustment layer’ one upon the other. Set three colors as [R42 G182 B255], [R18 G255 B0] and [R255 G252 B0]. Don’t forget to change the blend mode to ‘Overlay’.

Now apply “Hide and show” technique on mask of ‘Solid color Adjustment layer’ to get the following effect.

Though in final touch, we might have to work on color.

Step 6 :

In this step we will work on the background. For background we need two images.
First take an image of beautiful sky. You can select any sky image that you like. What I have chosen is shown below.

Resize image as necessary. Bring this layer below to the character layer

Now mask the whole layer of sky by clicking mask button at the bottom of layer panel. Again repeat “Hide and show” technique on mask. Finally we will get the result as shown below.

Next task is to add the ground. I chose an image of water surface.
This time take water layer just upon the sky layer. Repeat the process as you did for sky layer.

After completing that step you will get something like below.

Step 7 :

In this step we will work on water splash. To do this we need one image of water splash. It is often difficult to get transparent water splash, without background. So just take any image of water splash and eliminate the background. It might take a test of your patience but the effort is worth it once you receive the final result.

See how it looks.

Now make 3 copy of that layer. Select on layer of water splash and hit Ctrl+T and resize it to fit the figure. After resizing (don’t hit ‘Enter’ key) we need to wrap it with the curve of cloth. So right click on transform bounding box and select ‘Wrap’ from list. Adjust node to fit the curve. See below.

Similarly repeat this for other two water splashes. Now set blend mode for each water splash layer to ‘Screen’ and you can apply gradient overlay on it by layer style.

Finally after completion of this step you will get what is shown below.

Step 8 :

We are almost done. In this step we will work on overall graphics to give it final touch.
So let’s add few planets in the sky. To do this first take a new layer and pick ‘Elliptical Marquee Tool’ and draw a perfect circle by holding shift key. Fill selection with white. Don’t deselect. Now go to Select>Modify>Contract and put value to Contract by 30. Now hit Alt+Ctrl+D and  put 20 in Feather selection dialogue box. Then press delete. See below.

Make few copies of the bubble layer. Resize them to different sizes and place on the sky to add an effect of depth. You can draw imaginary land over the bubble to make it look like a planet. Set different opacity for different bubble layer but not more than 50 and set blending mode to ‘Overlay’. You can see how I did this.

Next we will add some sparkle to our work. To do this take brush tool and set hardness 0, opacity 10, and brush size 10. Take a new layer and set its mode to Dissolve. Now paint with the brush on this layer. You will get sharp white dots. Few dots are necessary and erase those that are not.

Now Take a new layer above it and select both layer and merge it. Set blend mode to ‘overlay’.

There are many things you can do to add more elements to the work. You can experiment with colors and textures. There is a lot of scope to make this job more gorgeous and stunning. Before you go ahead let’s see where I am finally leaving you. Thank you and have a nice journey.

We hope you have enjoyed this tutorial. Watch this space for more interesting tutorials.
Thank you.