40 Matte Paintings To Push You To Real Photoshop Artistry

• By Dirk Metzmacher
• Posted in PHOTOSHOP
• 3 comments

Traditionally, matte paintings stem from the movie industry. Used as extensions of a film setting, they provide more depth to the whole scene and removing the limitations of a studio location. Today, with green and blue screen techiques, these paintings are still in heavy use, while – certainly – digitally created backgrounds took over the heritage from their usually glass-based predecessors. To inspire the Photoshopper in you, we spared no effort and dug up the highest-class and most astonishing matte paintings we were able to come up with.

An essential tip beforehand: Don’t content yourself with only looking at the embedded screenshots. Instead make sure to follow the links to enjoy the full-fledged original scenes in all their glory. It is only this way, that you are able to delve into all the details.

Then, let these examples spur your artistic creativity and push you to the next level of Photoshop artistry. You say, there are some minor quirks as to your basic capabilities? If so, watch out for the mini-tutorials throughout the following collection. Here we help you out with some essentials to have you up and running in no time.

Supernatural 1

Created by: Jim Maxwell

Create a Devastating Tidal Wave in Photoshop

Created by: Ed Lopez

Supernatural 2

Created by: dylan

LA 2146

Created by: Andrée Wallin

Supernatural 3

Created by: JeanMarieVivès

Basic Principles of Digital Matte Painting

Created by: Daniel Johnson

Destroyed 1

Created by: El Rafo

Designing The Foundation Of A Matte Painting

01 Choice of adequate image material

First, we need to think of a topic for our painting. I like the apocalyptic kind, so I decided to create a destructed industrial area. The needed base material was easily found on Shutterstock.com:

Factory Ruins | #95822182 | Taras Kolomiyets

A Pile of Debris | #66922396 | Tatiana Morozova

Old Factory Ruins | #116643286 | Taras Kolomiyets

Abandoned Factory | #59888428 | Tomas Skopal

Demolition Building | #75249925 | bluecrayola

Landscape of Sunset | #64391617 | narcisse

02 Knocking Out The Not Needed Parts

I knocked out everything unnecessary using the same technique. Then I created a new PSD in the planned size of my matte painting and moved the first building onto the canvas. Using a free transform with Ctrl+T I reduced the element to an adequate size. Afterwards I pushed Add Layer Mask at the bottom of the layers windows.

Inside the mask I set pixels in black foreground color to transparent. Beforehand we could use the Pencil Tool to prepare the knocking out of the background of the building. The Polygonal Lasso Tool cares for the details. This is how it is gonna look. Below you see the mask of the first building.

03 Addition Of More Buildings

I went on with the knocking out of the unneeded parts in the other images, afterwards moving them to the canvas of my new painting. The sunset will serve as the new background of our matte painting to-be. Everything looks a little tinkered at this stage of my project.

mp63

Created by: Yanick Dusseault

Industrial 1

Created by: DAN

Industrial 2

Created by: Ditlev

Snow scape 1

Created by: chrike

matte painting tutorial

Created by: Der-Reiko

Snow scape 2

Created by: crahzz

DMP

Created by: Leonardo Sedevcic

Snow scape 3

Created by: tharmine

The Art Of Rene Borst

Created by: Rene Borst

Ironing Out The Rough Spots

01 Adjustment Layer: Black & White

To have the base painting look as homogeneous as possible as quickly as possible, we take to the main manu and choose Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Black & White. We confirm by clicking OK and pull the sliders for the different color values to our own liking. We highten the transparency of the layer to better let the native colors shine through a little.

02 Dodge & Burn

Now we push Shift+Ctrl+N, thus creating a new layer. We name the layer “Shadow and light”, assign a color, change the mode to Overlay and activate “Fill with Overlay-neutral color (50 % gray)”.

Using Burn we paint the shadows. Using Dodge we brighten up desired areas of the image. I darkened the picture quite heavily by intention, as in the next steps I am going to apply targeted lightening here and there.

Destroyed 2

Created by: soumitra

Making of Barbarossa

Created by: Daniele Scerra

Supernatural 4

Created by: dylan7

Somnio Studios

Created by: Somnio Studios

Bringing Back The Colors

01 Color Lookup or Layer Mode Color

To check for the appropriate color look, Photoshop offers a new function called Color Lookup rom CS6 onwards. From the main menu we choose Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Lookup. Now we choose freely from one of the presets: – 3DLUT-File, Abstract or Device Link –. This is something to experiment with. The presets are not configurable. It is only with the transparency value of the layer, that you can slightly adjust the impact of the preset.

An alternative are layers in the mode color. Add a layer, change the mode to color and pick up the Gradient Tool. From the options bar we activate Foregrount to Background in Linear mode. We define both needed colors and draw the gradient.

Destroyed 3

Created by: El Rafo

Jadrien Cousens – Personal project

Created by: Jadrien Cousens

Supernatural 5

Created by: pstraub

Raphael-Lacoste

Created by: raphael-lacoste

Matte painting – portfolio

Created by: Tomas Muller

TOMAS MULLER – Matte Painting

Created by: TOMAS MULLER

Light, shadow and war

Created by: NatMonney

Horizon Matte Painting

Created by: Fubiz

Northern Conveyor

Created by: Geoffroy THOORENS

anomie2

Created by: Mika Digital Works

Using The Matte Painting As A Background

01 Add Actors

As matte paintings are intended for the use as backgrounds in movies, they usually do not show any signs of motion, no moving or potentially moving elements are allowed, be it men, animals, airplnes or even smoke, fire or waves. As we are not into creating a movie, we need not care for these limitations. Let’s add some life to our apocalyptic scenery. I chose an actor I found on Shutterstock.com: Post apocalyptic survivor in gas | #121884493 | Stokkete. I knocked out the background, pasted the soldier into my apocalypse and positioned him.

02 Halo

This soldier has a strong orange color about him, which I found interesting enough to try to preserve and possibly emphasize it. So I created another layer below the soldier and added a light spot to the background, using the Gradient Tool, Foreground: Orange, Foreground to Transparent, Radial and changed the layer mode to Overlay. I like the halo. It adds to the surrealistic atmosphere of the scenery.

03 Badging Out Sections, Add Smoke

As we want the spectator to focus on the center of our image, we create a New Adjustment Layer > Levels and pull the slider from the right to the left, to completely darken the layer at first. In the layer mask we select a soft bigger brush painting black color and cover the center of the image.

We create another layer. Press the letter D on your keyboard to select standard colors black and white. Now we apply the Filter > Render > Clouds. Add a mask to the layer and apply the filter again. Then we right-click the mask thumbnail and choose Apply Layer Mask.

Afterwards we keep the Alt Key pressed and click on Add Layer Mask in the layer window. Now the new mask is filled with black. We pick the Brush Tool and paint smoke using white color.

04 Finishing Touches

Now I press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E to copy all layers to a new layer. This makes for the same effect as if I had reduced them all to one layer. Now I go to the main menu and pick Image > Auto Tone as well as Image > Auto Contrast. Additionally I use the texture Particles of charcoal on a white | #72849385 by Sergiy Telesh to quickly and easily add some dirt and dust as if thrown over by an explosion. Therefor I change the layer mode to Screen.

Limited by a mask I apply the texture Galaxy in outer Space | #116150749 | DTKUTOO in mode Screen also. Now my matte painting got reduced to a mere background for the actor and his accompanying special effects. Remember, this was all achieved by the use of freely available material from around the web. The spark of creativity got this flame burning. You can do that, too. You just need an idea…

Environment: FJORD

Created by: inetgrafx

Colony revision

Created by: merl1ncz

City Above the Clouds

Created by: CAK1776

Canyon City

Created by: ZackF

The Good Colossus

Created by: Marta Nael

Riddick

Created by: Dylan Cole Studio

Mass Effect 2

Created by: Jaime Jasso

Raphaël Lacoste – Matte Painting

Created by: Raphaël Lacoste

Wizard’s home

Created by: Piotrek Swigut

The port

Created by: anubis 1982

(dpe)

Comments and Discussions

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  Reply

  Rebecca, 25 February 2013

  Those are all excellent, but I particularly like Create a Devastating Tidal Wave in Photoshop, Snow scape 3, and Wizard’s home.

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  Reply

  Andra, 27 February 2013

  The Devastating Tidal Wave made the biggest impression with me. It’s probably because tsunamis have always been a nightmare for me. Interesting collection overall.

• Reply

  Good stuff for designers this week posted in various blogs, 03 March 2013

  [...] a large selection of Matte Paintings that will wave an inspiration to Photoshop fans. There are also tutorials and help files for each [...]