Advanced' Photo Effects Tutorials

Step 001


In this case I have selected this turtle image because he has a nice hump and will be useful for me in the future.


Duplicate the original turtle image and hide the bottom (1st layer) now you will erase the sky as shown in the images bellow.

Keeping only the turtle and the sand.

You may do so by any method you prefer, masking, pen tool, polygonal lasso tool.
You decide.
As long as you leave it as in the image below.
Name the turtle layer as turtle.

Step 002

Now open an image of the ocean as the image bellow.

Now you will select the ocean image and place it over the turtle image layer.

The ocean is smaller than the turtle so you must press ctrl+t and hold down the shift button and re-dimension the sea to make it bigger as in image bellow.

You will dimension the sea sort of at the angle I show in the image below.

Step 003

Now you will select the "Rectangular Marquee Tool" and select all the sea part.

Once you have selected the sea as shown in image bellow.

Once selected, you shall click ctrl + t and click right button of the mouse and select the "Distort" option.

This will make you be able to distort the edges of the selection.

You will distort the bottom edges as shown in image bellow.

I do this so the water perspectives may look good according to the overall image.

Your image shall look something like this.

Step 004

I just realized I'll need the original light from the sky in the future and it will need to be the opposite way around because of the lighting on the turtle.

Therefore, you shall click ctrl + t on the sky/ocean image and right click the mouse and flip horizontally.

Step 005

Name the ocean layer as ocean.

[Edited by User on 9/4/2011 11:08:17 PM]

Step 006


Ok, now is where the tutorial begins.

Create a clip mask on the ocean layer.

Step 007

This step can be pretty tricky but very useful.

With the ctrl button pressed you shall click on the turtle layer.

This will make a selection over the whole turtle as shown in image bellow.

Now you shall erase the water and sky off the turtle making it look like the image bellow.

Step 008

Now I have chosen this image to work with the underwater part.

Select the image and paste it under the turtle layers.

Now re-dimension it the way it shows in the image bellow.

NOTE: name this layer 'underwater'

Step 009

Now you shall clip-mask the turtle image and erase smoothly the back sharp edges until it looks a bit like the image bellow.

This will give more perspective to the underwater scene.

Step 010

Now you will open once more the underwater image from step 008 and place and re-dimension it over the turtle image.

If a part of the water gets over the top part of the turtle (part that is over the water) just erase it normally with the eraser.

Now the bottom part you shall clip-mask it and go erasing softly were the turtle body is just like the image bellow.

Step 011

Now you will duplicate the ocean/sky layer and blur it as shown in image bellow:

Now you will lower down the blurry layer just a few clicks with the down keyboard button.

Now erase the top part of that layer leaving only the blurry border.

Step 012


I think the basics of how to create an underwater image has been explained.

I shall now work all alone with the lighting and colors because it would be too difficult to explain step by step on how to do so.

here goes a small resolution of the .psd file just in case you would like to DL and see how i did the rest.

http://rookery9.aviary.com.s3.amazonaws.com/9686500/9686515_362e.psd