Today, we would like to share with you another tutorial. In this tutorial you will learn how to make a surreal composition with photoshop. This tutorial is intended for intermediate users. Try to work on techniques and if you are stuck somewhere you can always ask in comment section. Here is our final result.

Step 1

Open photoshop and create a new file with any dimensions  you want. We will start with our background.By using dark gray and darker gray colors create a radial gradient filled background.

Step 2

To improve our background we will use a lava texture. You can find some great textures on this post. Bring the texture you choose to photoshop, resize and position it with ctrl+t (free transform) and then desaturate it (shift + ctrl + U). Lastly change the blend mode of this layer to screen. Here is what i get;

Step 3

Now it’s time to bring our model. Download 0350 and export it to photoshop. You will need to mask out the unwanted parts of her. If you are new to masking here is a great post for you to learn how to mask easily with photoshop.

Step 4

Now we will use a great technique to desaturate our model. We will use black and white adjustment layer. This is a great tool that allow you to control black and white values of any image. By using this we will get rid of the bright orange area on the edge of her hair. Be sure you are just applying it to model, add a black and white adjustment layer and apply following settings.

Here is the final result after applying adjustment mask.

Step 5

Next step is changing the texture of her skin. We will start with a grunge wall texture. You can find great wall textures to use in this tutorial. Bring the texture to photoshop, resize and position it to cover the skin. Mask out eyes, lips, dress, hair and around the model. You can use previously created mask with selecting it ctrl and mask out further. Lastly change the blending mode of this layer to overlay.

Step 6

We will further add texture to our model. Lets make her face hotter. Download the  lava texture and mask out just like the wall texture. You can again use previously created mask with ctrl + right clicking previously created mask.

Step 7

Face seems a little dark.  Lets make it a little light with applying a levels adjustment layer to our texture. Again be sure applying levels adjustment layer only to the lava texture layer and use these settings.

Now it looks better.

Step 8

As a final touch, we can bring out the blue eyes. Sure we can copy the eye part from original image however this is more fun in my opinion. Create a new layer and get a soft brush. Paint on the eyes with a blue color and change blending mode of this layer to overlay. The color will blend nicely with form of the eye and bring out a great color to our composition. Of course you can use another color just experiment with it.

Final Words

This is the end of our tutorial. You can further improve it by playing with color channels or adding a photo filter. Just try, experiment, use other techniques mentioned in photoshop tutorials. Here is some experiment that i made.

I use dodge&burning technique, added some overlay orange to light up the background and finally apply a warming photo filter to whole composition. Honestly i prefer the original work however it is an example how you can change the composition with little touches.