Photoshop Dispersion Effect Tutorial (Birds & Dress)

Photoshop Dispersion Effect Tutorial: in this tutorial, we’ll talk about how to quickly use brushes and masks to create a dispersion effect that will work with any image. We’ll also use a photo of a flock of seagulls to create a cluster of birds that are flying out of our dispersion effect in this tutorial. Photoshop gives us incredible leverage and power to create an effect like this with relative ease.

Inspiration: https://www.instagram.com/p/BtioUJyl3xz/

The brush used in this tutorial: https://www.brusheezy.com/brushes/58621-free-disintegration-photoshop-brushes-16

Stock photos used in this tutorial:

Couple: https://stock.adobe.com/images/romantic-fairytale-newlywed-couple-hug-kiss-in-field-at-sunset/103327013?prev_url=detail

Birds: https://stock.adobe.com/images/flying-seagulls-isolated/177733208?prev_url=detail

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Recording notes:

1. Open stock photo of the wedding couple
2. Select subject and expand selection and pop copy of them to new layer
3. Content-Aware Fill to make them disappear from original layer
4. Duplicate copy of them
5. Name top layer “warpVersion” and bottom layer “normVersion”
6. Liquify the top layer to make the dress much bigger
7. Add filled mask to that layer
8. Add white mask to “normVersion” layer and use a brush to dust away the edge of the dress
9. Use a white brush to add the floating particles coming off the dress using the mask on the “warpVersion” layer
10. Open the birds image and split each bird onto its own layer using New Layer Via Cut command
11. Drag all these bird layers to the couple photo
12. Scale down the birds to 70% of the original image
13. Start grabbing and placing birds
14. Use Free transform to scale, rotate and flip birds as needed
15. Group the birds layers together
16. Also Cmd + click birds with the Selection tool to select them and then Alt + drag out copies of birds to really fill out the cluster of birds escaping from the dress
17. Clip a Curves layer to this group of birds layers and brighten up the birds
18. Darken the birds closer to the dress by painting black in the mask to cover up the curves effect as the birds get closer to the dress
19. Create a gradient map layer and mask it to the dress and birds areas by shift-clicking all those layers and making the mask
20. Add a Color Lookup Table and use the Pastel 8 Hues LUT from the Abstract drop down and set the layer to Soft Light
21. Add a Color Balance layer above this: M: +20/-10/+20 S:0/+10/+15 H:+20/-5/-30
22. Then go over the image and tweak the lighting where you think it needs it. Maybe a little dodging and burning to really get the back of the dress/birds just right would be good.