12
ADD MORE BUILDINGS
Repeat this process with more
buildings and structures. Play with Levels, Color
Balance, and Blur as you go, keeping each
element within a certain range but varied
enough to appeal in an illustrative sense. If a
structure is looking too colourful, add a Hue/
Saturation adjustment layer and pull the
Saturation slider to the left as you see fit.11
INCREASE CONTRAST
If the building is looking a little faint now,
you need to up the contrast. Clip on a Levels
adjustment layer, with the black set at around 26
and the white at 245. It also needs to look a little
bluer, to reflect its environment, so clip on a Color
Balance layer and in Midtones set Cyan/Red to -8
and Yellow/Blue to +20.13
SEPARATE THE BUILDINGS
Sometimes, in an illustration like this,
elements can get a bit lost amongst those around
them. If that happens to any of the buildings, apply
a bit of misting behind its layer, to separate it
slightly. Select a brush like the one used earlier
and paint a subtle dusting behind the building.
With the Brush tool selected, pick a light colour
from the background, by holding down Opt/Alt and
clicking on a colour you like. Again you can keep
the flow at around 1%.10
REDUCE OPACITY
Reduce the Opacity of the Building layer to
around 90%. This will add an additional sense of
depth and distance, and lend the layer some of the
colour and tone of its environment. With all that
metal and glass in the scene, it will also create an
illusion of reflections. Now add a layer mask, and
pull a gradient up and over the base of the structure.
Ghosting this out helps further with depth, and as the
city comes together and it allows the buildings to be
moved around the composition freely without tearing
out their foundations.09
PRESERVE DATA WITH SMART OBJECTS
The city itself will be quite complex and you may want to go back and re-edit many elements,
many times, so to preserve the original data convert the Building layer into a Smart Object (Layer>Smart
Objects>Convert to Smart Object) then add a Gaussian Blur of between 0.2 and 0.6 pixels. You can now
change the amount of blur at any time by clicking the little arrow at the right of the layer title and double
clicking on Gaussian Blur.ADD THE BUILDINGS
USE STOCK PHOTOS AND PHOTOSHOP TOOLS TO POPULATE THE CITY001 SMART OBJECTS
Convert all of the cityscape elements to Smart Objects so that you have full
control over them and can rearrange them if necessary002 SMART FILTERS
Once you’ve made a Smart Object and applied a filter, use the icon on the layer
palette to change the filter strength at any time003 CONSISTENT LIGHT
Flip or rotate some of your imageelements so thatallthelightiscoming
from the same direction. If light isn’tconsistent the image won’t work001003002You may want to go back
and re-edit many elements,
many times, so to preserve theoriginal data convert the Building
layer into a Smart Object