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Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop. We will be using some of the new brush presets in Photoshop CS6 and use them to add the fire burning effect and the falling particle effect.

This is an intermediate level Photoshop tutorial so some steps can be tricky.

Note: The Photoshop tutorial is done in CS6 - therefore some screenshot may have slighting different layout as in the earlier version.

Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

dark tree snow scene flatten 467x700 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Step 1

Create a new document sized 800px * 1197px with black background. Use either the cloud filter or a cloud brush to paint some subtle cloud texture over on the background layer:

1 paint cloud 461x700 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Load the Tree stock image into Photoshop and select a portion of the ground, copy and paste the selection over to our document, use the free transform tool to add some perspectives on this ground texture, also erase the top edge with a soft eraser:

1 pesp 500x449 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Add the following 3 adjustment layer as clipping mask to this ground texture layer:

Black and White

1 bw Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Levels

1 lv Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Curves

1 curves Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

and here is the effect so far:

1 effect 500x191 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Add some cloud effect above the ground for some dramatic effect:

1 effect 2 500x175 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Step 2

We will now add the tree into the image. Use whatever selection tool to make a rough selection on the tree image, and cut out the centre portion of that image:

2 sel 500x549 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Paste the selection onto the image, position it as shown below:

2 paste 500x492 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

We will get rid of some parts of the tree by applying the following layer mask:

2 mask 500x440 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

and here is the effect after the layer mask:

2 effect after mask 500x409 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Add the following 2 adjustment layers as clipping mask to this tree layer:

Black and White

2 bw Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Levels

2 lv Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

and here is the effect so far:

2 effect Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Step 3

We will add another branch into the image - so let's select this part of the image:

3 sel 500x267 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Copy and paste the selection onto our document:

3 attach 500x240 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Again we add a layer mask to hide some parts of this branch:

3 mask 500x274 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Add the following 2 adjustment layers as clipping mask to this branch:

Black and White

3 bw Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Levels

3 lv Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

and you will have the following effect:

3 effect 500x267 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Step 4

We will now add the lady figure into the image. Load the model stock image into Photoshop and cut out the model, paste it onto our image and place it to the position as shown below:

4 paste 500x388 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Add the following 2 adjustment layers as clipping mask to this model:

Black and White

4 bw Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Levels

4 lvs Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Create a new layer and set its blending mode to overlay, use a soft white brush to paint some highlights to this model:

4 high 500x301 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

and here is the effect so far:

4 effect Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Step 5

OK we will get to the fun part of this tut :) Choose the following brush from brush palette (note: this brush is new to CS6, if you don't have CS6, use alternative similar brush) and pick an dark orange colour:

5 brush 500x278 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Set the brush flow and opacity to around 50%, use the brush to paint some fire texture over the tree texture:

Hint: use a soft eraser to remove unnecessary painting off.

5 paint 431x700 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

We can also add some real fire texture over the image by copy and paste from the fire stock image we downloaded:

5 sele Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Choose this Round Point Stiff brush from the panel, paint some falling fire particles with it:

5 brush 2 500x201 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

5 effect 493x700 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Step 6

We will add some falling particles to the image - again we use the round point stiff brush to paint some particles around the image:

6 brush 500x187 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Then we can apply the following motion blur filter effect to this particle layer:

6 mo blur Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

And you will see the following falling effect on the particles:

6 effect 500x312 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

6 effect 2 500x302 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Step 7

We're almost done :) For some final retouches, we will add some sky textures over the top of the image:

7 sky 500x305 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Load the crow image into Photoshop and add a pair of crows into the image, as shown below:

7 paint crow 500x521 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

Use the blur tool to blur out some parts of the wings to add some motion to the flying creature:

7 wing blur 500x443 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

7 wing blur 2 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

I further added some colour adjustments over the image, and you will have the following final effect: (click to enlarge)

dark tree snow scene flatten 467x700 Create a Surreal Burning Tree Scene with Falling Particle Effect in Photoshop

That's it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful! Till next time, have a great day!

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