The Creation of “Stone Eagle” Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps to create this “Stone Eagle” Photo Manipulation in Photoshop. We will cover the application of textures and the blending of different objects. We will also go through a number of selection tricks and image adjustments.
This is an intermediate level tutorial so some steps can be tricky, but why not have a try!

Note: The Photoshop tutorial is done in CS6 – therefore some screenshot may have slighting different layout as in the earlier version. Some brushes are exclusive to Photoshop CS6.

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

OK Let’s get started!

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:
Eagle (Registration required)
Rock (Stone)

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000px * 1000px with black background. Use a light grey brush to paint a spot light in the centre:

Load the stone image into Photoshop, select a piece from it as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection over to our document, set the new layer’s opacity to 60%, and use a soft eraser to fade the following areas as shown below:

De-saturate this layer, then add the following 2 adjustment layers on top:
Levels

Curves

and here is the effect so far:

Step 2

Now load the eagle image into Photoshop and cut the eagle out:

Paste it onto our document, and use a soft eraser to fade the following parts for the eagle:

Sharpen the eagle layer by applying the following Unsharp Mask filter twice:

Add the following adjustment layers as clipping mask to this eagle layer:
Black and White

Levels

Curves

and here is the effect so far:

Step 3

We will now add the stone texture onto the eagle. Firstly load the selection of the eagle layout:

Drag the selection over to the stone image, and select a piece as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection over and cover the eagle as shown below:

Set the layer blending mode to “Hard Light” for this new stone layer, and mask out the following area:

Then, duplicate this stone layer and move them to different part of the canvas, as shown below:


and here is the effect so far:

Step 4

We want to add some flying stone pieces around the eagle to add some dynamics into the image. So select a small piece from the stone texture as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection over, and resize it as shown below:

Apply the following image adjustments:
Black and White

Levels

Apply a slight motion blur to the stone as shown below:

Duplicate this layer a couple of times, and move them to different positions as shown below:

Step 5

We will add some final touches to the image to spice up the effect a little! We will use the brush tool to make this happen.
Firstly use a solid brush to draw a dot as shown below:

Use the liquify filter to warp this dot as shown below:

This will form some liquid effect as shown below:

Use a soft brush to paint a dot on a new layer, then warp it as shown below:

This will form some lighting effect as shown below:

I finally added some colour and cloud effect around the eagle, and this is the final effect I have: (click to enlarge)

Hope you enjoy this tutorial and find it useful. Drop me a comment below if you have any question.
Till next time, have a great day!