Advanced' Photo Effects Tutorials

This tutorial isnt as detailed as it could be, since that would require a hundred or more screenshots and a few thousand words. If you have a basic working knowledge of Photoshop and some experience with the most common techniques (perspective, clone and patch tools, curves, etc.), then you should be able to follow along.

Note: This tutorial was inspired by this tutorial: http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photo-effects-tutorials/how-to-make-a-dark-post-apocalyptic-city-illustration/ on PSDTuts, but I took it quite a few steps farther, and the end results are quite different.

Step 1
Arguably the hardest part was finding the right image to start with. I had a basic idea in my mind of what I was looking for a widescreen pic of a city with an open plain in the middle and buildings on both sides.

I tried out several images I found on SXC.HU, but eventually came back to this image after the rest failed: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/883785

To get the widescreen city image that I was looking forward, I created a new canvas twice the width of the above image, duplicated the layer, flipped the duplicate horizontal, then aligned them in the center.

The result was a nice widescreen image:

Step 2

This step was the most time consuming, and took nearly a full week to finishremoving every bit of life. All cars, signs, bikes, people, shadows, sewer grates, telephone booths, newsstands, etc. had to go. Because many of these items blocked the buildings behind them, the lower half of almost every building in the photo will have to be recreated.
To start with, use the clone tool and the patch tool to remove the easiest of objects, like legs.

This step takes a considerable amount of time, and an outstanding amount of patience. The most important thing to remember is to take it pixel by pixel, section by section, click by click. Dont become impatient and stamp out large sectionsit will look incredibly fakeand never make your brush bigger than 20 pixels.
When finished, you should have something like this:

Step 3

To give that smooth white asphalt cracks, apply a stock image of cracks, stones, cobble, etc.
Use the perspective and distort tools (right-click, perspective), to match the angle of the road, and set the layer mode to overlay.

STEP 4

Now that you have your basic image to destroy, start with the basics: grass. Find a stock image of grass or weeds on a stock website, then download a few grass Photoshop brushes and install them.
Once youve installed the brushes, paste the stock grass image onto the sidewalk of the city picture. Select the border of the layer, then right-click and choose Perspective. Alter the perspective to match the angle of the sidewalk. Change the layer mode to Multiply, Screen, or Overlay (whichever one looks best with your stock image, it varies).

Use the eraser tool to remove grass from patches of broken asphalt.

The final result should be something like this:

Step 5

Remove the sky using the pen tool.

Overlay a grungy texture to the buildings; concrete and stone textures work best. Set the textures layer mode to overlay, then lower the layers opacity to around 30% (will vary based on the texture you use).

Step 6

Find a stock image of clouds and paste it onto your project. Move the cloud layer below the city layer so that the clouds are visible where you erased the sky in step 5.

At this point, youre just left with applying the final small adjustmentsthe biggest one is using the pen tool to remove random selections from random windows to make then appear broken; to do this, just make random geometric shapes with the pen tool, right-click and select Make Selection, then fill it in black.
You can also use a cracks brush to apply cracks to random buildings. Add grass and plants to ledges as you see fit. I added a tree to the top of one building, for example. There are dozens of different options.

Step 7

Finally, to make it all blend together into one cohesive picture, I used the burn tool to create a vignette around the edges of the photo.

I didnt like how bright and blue the light was in the image, so I used curves to give it a darker, greener tint.

Youll notice that in my photo theres a feather and lightning. These are a couple of small effects I decided to add, and both of them were achieved using brushes I found online. You can add birds to give it a small hint of life, or darken it and add a moon, etc.

FINAL IMAGE

To view and download the high resolution version of this wallpaper, please visit: http://www.deathwaterthebook.com/downloads.html