○.ɭɩɑȓʂ ɩɱʈɑƍ.○

The starting point of this tutorial is the photo of an abandoned castel room. This photo is spectral even without any kind of photo-manipulation. Sometimes inspiration derives from a place, like in this case. Each place has something to say, a story behind. Let’s imagine how many things could have happened into a castle bedroom…

Open the photo in Photoshop.

Step 2

To darken the room, duplicate the layer (ctrl+J) and set the duplicated layer blend mode to Color Burn with opacity 30%.

Step 3

Now I don’t like this “warm” atmosphere. So go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Black & White to play a bit with colors. Move the cursors to modify the room colors.

Step 4

To make the details of the room more evident, press shift+alt+ctrl+E to merge all the layers into a new layer. Then apply the high pass filter (Filter>Other>High pass).

Then set the layer blending mode to Overlay. Below you can see the difference between the room before and after the effect.

 

Create a new document. I chose 1000 x 707 px for this design. First download Autumn Road 6 and bring it into your newly created document. Re-size and position it.

On this photo, the sky is ok, however I prefer Apocalyptic Sky. So let's change it. First we want to mask out the sky. Choose the Autumn Road layer, click layer mask and start painting out the unwanted parts with black. The key to successful masking is to first use a large brush with 100% hardness to erase large areas, then use a smaller brush with zero hardness to erase the detailed parts. Here is the final result after masking.

We are ready to add our new sky. Download Apocalyptic Sky, bring it out to Photoshop in a new layer placed under our road photo layer. Re-size and position our new sky.

Step 4

I prefer to adjust the colors and lighting after laying out the composition. Download Cityscape Stock, bring it to our composition and place it between the road layer and sky layer. As usual re-size and position it. Finally mask out the unwanted parts using a layer mask.

Step 5

Next we have our wrecked car. Download Marysville Ghost Town 2, and bring it into our Photoshop file. Place it on top of the layer stack, position and re-size it as usual. Finally, mask out unwanted parts.