Photoshop Tutorial- City At Sunset

Create a City at Sunset in a few steps using Adobe® Photoshop®.

For this tutorial, you should have a basic knowledge of Photoshop and some creativity.

Like most Photoshop Tutorials, the first step is.... OPEN ADOBE® PHOTOSHOP®!

Create a new document with a white background at whatever width and height you want. Just make sure it's big enough so that you can explore the canvas. (My canvas was 10 inches wide at 72 dpi). Just to get an idea of the canvas...

There. Okay. Now, set your Foreground color to completely Black, and the Background color to an Off-Black color.

Create a New Layer (Shift + Ctrl+ N) and select the Gradient Tool (G)

Using Linear Gradient, simply fill the layer with a smooth gradient of the two colors you chose earlier.

Next, select a large, soft brush and select a yellow/orange Foreground color. I chose #FFD300. On a new layer, fill in about half the canvas. Then, take the Burn Tool (J) and Burn the tip of the yellow like this:

Now, using the Brush Tool, draw in rays of light shooting upward and outward.

Using a large, soft Eraser, erase starting at the top and go about 1/4 down. Then, Burn the tops of the rays a little bit more.

On a new layer placed on top of everything else, select black as the Foreground Color and draw the ground with the Rectangle Tool.

Use the Polygon Selection Tool on a new layer and start selecting the shapes of some large buildings. Then goto Edit > Fill > Black.

Here I added some smaller buildings...

...and some lights using the pencil tool.

Lower the opacity of the lights so they are not too intense.

Here, I erased a little bit of the ground layer and used the burn/dodge tool. This is the beginings of the water.

Now, duplicate the layer with the large buildings and flip it vertically. Lower the opacity and place it under the existing buidlings. This will be the reflection.

Play around with some Filters to get a wavy effect. I used Filer > Distort > ZigZag

Use the large, soft eraser and erase starting at the bottom of the reflection going up about 1/6 of the canvas.

Now, mess around with the levels of contrast, brightness, and saturation so that the water reflection isn't so intense. The result should be something like this:

With some minor adjustments, I got this:

THE END!

I hope you learned something or were inspired in some way by this tutorial.

For more tutorials like this one, visit http://cornoncob.com