Tutorial: Creating An Abstract Landscape Image

Posted on February 20, 2012 | 15 comments

In the comments for the original post of this image, many of you expressed interest in seeing how it was created. I’m still very new to Photoshop and by no means to I claim to be an expert. I’m sure there are better and more efficient methods for doing this but these steps got me where I wanted to go. This is the first image tutorial I’ve posted so I hope that I have included enough information and you are able to follow along. So, without further delay, here is the method I used to create “Stand Against Time”.

Here we have the original image with a few basic Lightroom adjustments applied. As you can see, it isn’t a very exciting or particularly interesting photo. Let’s export it to Photoshop and see what we can do to change that!

Starting Image for Stand Against Time

Once the image is open in Photoshop make a duplicate of the background layer and rename it to something like ‘Base Layer’.

Now we are going to add our blur so select Filter->Blur->Motion. Set the angle of the blur to around 87 to align the motion with our leaning foreground tree. Set the Distance to 999 pixels to acheive the maximum effect. Go back to the Filter menu and do that again to really get some blur going. Applying the blur filter a second time helps smooth any elements that did not completely smooth during the first application; it’s not always necessary and you may wish to reduce the radius the second time around.

Motion Blur Settings for Stand Against Time

That left us with the blur added to the entire image and we could just move forward from here creating an interesting image in it’s own right but we’re going to go a step further and seperate our tree from the background. To do this, we’ll add a layer mask to the base layer and hide the blur effect from the tree. Make sure the layer mask is selected, choose the Brush Tool, select a soft medium brush and set your foreground color to Black. Now just ‘paint’ over the tree with the brush tool to reveal it. You may want to reduce the opacity of this layer to help you see the edges in the base layer.

TIP: If you paint over an area the you don’t want revealed, just change your foreground color to white and paint over that area to hide it again.

To help blend the tree into the background highlight the layer mask, select a small soft brush and zoom in close to the edge of the tree. Set your foreground color to white and paint along the outside edges of the tree. This will serve to ‘blur’ the edges slightly and keep the tree from looking like it was pasted into place.

Paint the layer mask to reveal the subject

The next step is to start bringing the image to life so let’s add a Hue/Saturation layer. The adjustments you make here are purely artistic and depend entirely on the image that is being processed. Below are the settings that I used.

Hue and Saturation Settings for Stand Against Time

My first Hue/Saturation Layer didn’t bring out quite as much yellow and brought out too much green so I added a second adjustment layer for these changes.

Hue and Saturation Settings for Stand Against Time

The changes made with the Hue/Saturation layers have really started to make the image pop but let’s add a Vibrance layer to further enhance those changes. Here I’ve set the Vibrance to +25 and the Saturation to +5.

Vibrance Layer Settings for Stand Against Time

The contrast still looks a little soft so we’re going to add a Levels layer to help. I brought the Black point up to 5 and the White point down to 244. This adds just enough contrast to remove that hazy look.

Levels Adjustment Layer for Stand Against Time

Let’s add some sharpness to our tree. Select the topmost layer and merge everything together into a single layer using Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E on PC (Command-Option-Shift-E on Mac).

Select Filter->Other->High Pass and set the Radius to about 8 pixels. We only wanted to sharpen the tree so press ALT on PC (Option on Mac) and click the Add Layer Mask icon; this will add a Black Layer Mask that hides the sharpening effect. To reveal the effect select a soft medium brush and set your foreground color to white. Make sure your new layer mask is selected and paint over your tree. We don’t want to paint all the way out to the edges of the tree, this will help blend the tree into the background. Now, change the blending mode of your High Pass layer to Hard Light and reduce the opacity to about 50%.

High Pass Filter Settings for Stand Against Time

High Pass Filter Layer Mask for Stand Against Time

Save the image and move back to Lightroom for some finishing touches.

At this point you should have an image very similar to the one below – don’t worry, we’re about to change that dramatically!

Stand Against Time Before Final Lightroom Adjustments

I used a free Lightroom preset called Cold Autumn to completely transform the background to a vibrant gold. Again, this applied to the entire image so we need to export the file to Photoshop one more time to remove the effect from our tree.

Now that you’re back in Photoshop you can simply create a layer mask on the background layer, select a soft medium brush with a foreground color of black and paint over the tree to remove the effect of the preset. Save the image and we’re back in Lightroom.

I did use a brush tool on the tree in Lightroom to darken it a bit then added some vignette but basically that’s it!

Feel free to save the images in this post and try this yourself if you like.