Urban Airplane Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

MASKING, COMPOSITING, AND COLOR EFFECTS IN THIS PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL!

Original artwork sent to me was created by this artist! (click to check them out!)

In this Photoshop CC tutorial, we’ll use a few stock photos to create this complex and cool geometric photo manipulation effect. We’ll cover creating a channel-based mask, transformations, working with layer masks, brush tips and tricks, compositing multiple objects into a photo, cool ways to create grain and vignettes, LUTs, adjustment layers, and more! Enjoy!

Tutorial Recording Notes:

Disclaimer: these are the actual notes I used to record this video and are written in a language you may or may not understand. Hopefully, you find them useful or cool.

1. Resources are linked in the bio!
2. Duplicate background layer
3. Channel based selection of sky
4. Mask OUT the sky for the new layer
5. Split the layer in two and duplicate mask to new layer
6. Select both layers and Rotate them
7. Resize and position the new layer to get it lined up just perfectly
8. Merge both rotated layers together
9. Unlock background and add layer below all the stuff
10. Draw a black to white gradient to create sky base
11. Clean of edges of the buildings by applying all the layer masks
12. Then defringe the edges 2px for each of these layers
13. Select the channel that we created to select the sky and apply this as a mask to the rotated layer
14. Use a poly lasso tool to trim up edges and black/white the mask to clean up and make desirable edges
15. Add a new layer and clip it to our sky and Render>Clouds and add a 100px Motion blur at 90º and reduce opacity to 20%
16. Cut out the airplane and darken it a lot with Levels & Desat it
17. Resize and place it in the sky where it should go
18. Drag in the moon and rotate and resize that as well and set to Screen
19. Create a simple rectangular selection and fill with white to create trails
20. Blur by 10px until they look better
21. Perspective adjust to widen the trails
22. Mask away any other bits of the trails that need to be
23. Reduce image contrast with Curves
24. Add a TealGreen LUT
25. Add a Rich V dark aqua/blue to beige gradient map
26. Add a Color Balance layer to pull it all together
27. Create a vignette with camera RAW
28. Add a Grain layer with grain from Camera RAW
29. Call it a day! BOOM!