Create a Devastating Twister With Photo Manipulation Techniques
Tutorial Details
- Program: Adobe Photoshop CS3
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Estimated Completion Time: 4 Hours
Download Source Files
Final Product What You'll Be Creating
If you’re looking to create a really nice photo manipulation, often you will have to combine several photos and apply a few effects to get your desired look. In today’s tutorial I decided to combine a few photos that I took while I was traveling to create a devastating tornado consuming everything in its path. Okay, let’s get started!
Introduction
To create images like this, I recommend you to gain a bit of knowledge of perspective, focal point and vanishing point etc. It helps a lot while bringing together various images into one final plate. Okay, let’s get started.
Step 1
First, create a new document in Photoshop and name it tornado. Create a layer and fill it with some color and come up with a rough sketch of your composition.
Step 2
Open up your images in Photoshop. Use the upper image for the sky and the lower one for the land.
Step 3
With the help of the Lasso tool and a 20 px feather cut out the sky and paste it into your tornado document.
Step 4
Now that the sky is ready, our next job is to make the sky look cloudy.
Step 5
Make some adjustments the image’s Brightness/Contrast and Hue/Saturation.
Step 6
Use the clone stamp tool to help spread out the sky.
Step 7
Use the clone stamp tool to change the shade of the clouds.
Step 8
Open the second image and select some portions of the grass and vegetation using the Lasso tool (5 px feather). I used multiple selections of the ground for my image.
Step 9
Now paste the vegetation fragments of my image then bring them together. Use the lasso tool to spread the vegetation across your canvas.
Step 10
Start selecting portions of the sky and play around with the brightness and contrast just to give it some variation.
Step 11
Use the same technique with other parts of the image as per my sketch and change the shade of the clouds in those areas.
Step 12
At this point it’s time to start laying out the tornado.
Step 13
Use the clone stamp tool to spread the tornado out in the selected area of the drawing.
Step 14
Repeat the same process for the other selected areas.
Step 15
The dust can be created by cloning portions of the sky and by changing its shade.
Step 16
Use the clone stamp tool to create a smooth transition between the various elements in the composition.
Step 17
To enhance our image we now need to create a new adjustment layer with a black to transparent gradient. Set the blending mode of this later to soft light. The purpose of this step is to enhance our image so that the upper edges look darker and that the viewer’s focus is directed to the center. Repeat this step in one more layer if you want more variation in shading.
Step 18
Now it is time to shade the outer areas of the composition. Do this by drawing a rectangle with the rectangular marquee tool (with 0 px feather) in a new layer and fill it with black color. Use the lasso tool to cut the layer as shown. After this, set the layer’s blending mode to ‘soft light’. The purpose of this step is to darken some areas of the image to shift the focus towards the center.
Step 19
Now let’s play around with some color variations. Make sure that, you do it in adjustment layers so that if you don’t like it you can just delete the layer.
Conclusion
That’s it. I hope that this tutorial helped you learn a little about photo manipulation techniques. Good luck!
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Well i am the first ! For me it looks very real the effect ! Good tutorial , very useful material ! Thanks
Dont like the process
Are you serious?! The process works!!!
Of course going over the process takes away from the magic of it, so you shouldn’t need to complain. If there wasn’t a tut and just a pic, you would probably accept it and move on :)
Very nice effects. I love the sepia variation! Thanks!
Niiiiiice. I like the end result.
This is f-ing stupid
As is your comment.
WOW!! simply stunning effect. great tutorial
What a great tutorial, might have a play at htis one over the weekend.
insane cool, thanks!!!
Here’s mine: http://homer8190.deviantart.com/art/Awesome-Twister-Effect-146025664
That is really awesome dude
Cool stuff Aevion
Thanks guys. I’ve made a bunch of epic destruction pieces… you can check them out here (http://aevion.net/wallpapers/my-best-destruction-pieces/) if you want. Thanks again.
This is a well explained tut… great work Shardul!
great looking results and looks pretty interesting from a quick look through. Thanks!
This actually looks really good. I can’t wait to work through this tutorial, it will give me something to do during tomorrows 12 hour train ride.
Such a wonderful tutorial!
Brilliant! I didn’t expect you will create everything from scratch. Great job!
really an awesome tutorial thanks for sharing
Very nice tutorial. I like it,
“Ekdum mast”
Amazing! wow :O
nice tut i like it and in the way to try
I just hope whoever writes these keeps wriitng more!
Very nice, I like it.
It’s a brilliant effect. Wouldn’t have thought of doing it like the way you have but it works very well
:(
i didnt understand the process
What do you mean by “Use the clone stamp tool to change the shade of the clouds.”? In step 6? Can we go into a little more depth on steps 5 and 6?
I’m sorry for coming off as angry, but I just spent the past hour trying to figure this out, and these directions are not detailed at all.
Okay thats a weird process, BUT a good one…
Great effect and great tutorial.
:)
well that is weird. usually i get several pictures that fit the scene and then blend them together. there are a lot of cloning going on here but i will give it a try:-)
nice tut , really i like it
thx for sharing
None of the photos are coming through for me at all. They’re all broken.
That is so cool, an amazing photoshop mash-up. Looks like the END OF THE WORLD!!!!
First scene is very beautiful
The way you created that is awesome.
nice effect.
tanks
First scene is very beautiful
The way you created that is awesome.
nice effect.
thanks
Need some estra work on the tale of the twister
I mean, TAIL of the twister
nice pict
Very good tutorial, thanks.
Even though I’m usually able to pick out whether or not something was Photoshopped, this looks quite real!
Brilliant!
Superb!
I like it very much. Very nice…
My only critic is that the middle part of the tornado looks quite drawn (not so real), like the rest of it… but. good job.
Is it a twister ??? anyway it is very evident that this is a conglomeration of couples photos :(
Oha abi ne yaptın sen ya :)
thank you very mucccccxxx :-)
Great! i like this
lol. This tutorial is fake and photoshopped itself! Even if the end result comes from ps, this is not the way it is produced. The many people who have commented on this can’t have tried it.
I’m sorry dude, but that simply doesn’t look like a tornado.
Did you go look up some reference?
Down of tornado made correctly but top is… strange… Do something with, just fix it.
photoshop is beautifull !!!
very nice techniques…. I love it…
wow!!!pohotoshop!!!tihnikis!!!yaraysiz!!
wow…very nice,i like this tutorial,thanks
WOW, i began using photoshop to create images a while ago, but never seen anything like this tutorial, thank you very much for this detailed information, will try it out with some landscape image i got here!
its kinda impossible to do it
nice
Thanks! This post inspired me to make this tornado scene here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexstandiford/6135312084/in/photostream