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In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to turn a random picture to an amazing cinematic poster. I’ll use Photoshop CS4 and this whole tutorial will depend greatly on layers and Layers mode. So try as much as you can to be organized and name all of your layers for reference later. If all goes well we should have something like this in the end:

Step 1

Let’s start by bringing in a picture of a person and remove the background, if there’s any.

Step 2

Now, with the Dodge Tool, we want to make his eyes stand out. In the Dodge Tool Option on the top, set the Range to Highlights and an exposure of 15% and carefully go over his eyes to bring up the highlights as shown below.

Step 3

Now bring in a clouds image. Here I used a small image and duplicated it several times to fit the screen instead of enlarging it.

You can blend them using a large and soft eraser and moving very carefully around those rough edges.

Step 4

Next thing will do is darken the person image. With the person’s image selected, go to Layer, then New Adjustment layer and choose Curves. Name it Dark and put a check mark next to Use previous layer to create clipping mask

Below are the settings I used for this Curves layer:

Now, the whole image got darker and I want only certain parts of it to be dark. With the mask layer selected, go to Edit, then Fill and choose 50% gray. With a soft white brush, go over the parts that you want to be darker like the eyes, lips, eyebrows, etc.

Step 5

For the parts that we choose to be dark to be clear we need to increase the highlights a bit around the other areas. Add a new adjustment layer and choose curves. (Don’t forget to put a check mark on ‘Use previous layer to create clipping mask’). Name it “Light”. Below you can see the values I chose for this layer:

Again, with the mask layer selected, fill it with 50% grey and with a white soft brush, go over the parts where you want to increase the highlight such as his face, right part of his neck, his forehead, hair and so on. If you make a mistake, you can choose a black bush and hide the highlights.

You have to do what gives best results at your end because not all images are the same. If you’re not getting the result you want with the values I’m using, try to play around with different ones.

Step 6

I still need the image to have a darker color so I’ll add a dark blue Gradient Map to it. Go to layer, then New Adjustment layer, and choose Gradient Map.

The value I used for the blue Color is: #0f2c3a. Choose a gradient from Dark Blue (Again, adjust the color according to your picture. The idea is reduce the yellow color in the image here) to white and put a check mark beside Dither. Make the layer blending mode to Soft light.

Step 7

Now let’s move to the clouds image. Create a new layer above the clouds image and fill it with 50% grey. With the burn tool, burn the edges of this layer so it will darken the corners of the cloud image.

To give a darker and more mysterious feel, I’ll add a Curves and a Gradient Map layers.

For the Gradient Map I used the following values:
Dark Blue - 0d3660, Yellow - e3dfb5

Step 8

Around my image, there’s a very thin white line which doesn’t make the picture look good. What I did is, I added a glow behind him to hide that. To do that, add a new layer behind the picture, and with a soft white brush of opacity of about 30% and flow of 60%, trace the image carefully so it wouldn’t be too much.

Now, we’re done with adjusting the image. Let’s add some more effects. NOTE: while you add more effects to the image, you might need to go back a few times to adjust the curves layer or any other effect you have applied earlier to the image.

Step 9

So, let’s add a bit of steam to the bottom of the image so it would appear as if it’s coming from the rain will add in the next step.

Duplicate the cloud image that you have and bring it to the top. Set the layer blending mode to “Screen” and opacity of about 40%. Go to Filters, then Blur and choose Gaussian Blur. A 3px blur will be fine for this. Add a mask layer and with a black brush, remove the steam from the whole image and leave a few at the bottom.

Step 10

Now, let’s create the rain. Create a new layer and fill it with 50% grey. Go to filters, then Noise, and choose Add noise

Now go to filters, then Blur and choose Motion Blur.

Step 11

Double click the layer to go to the blending options and at the bottom at Blend if, set it to Grey and apply the values below.

p class="tuttext">Again, go to Filters, then Sharpen and choose Smart Sharpen.

p class="tuttext">Set the layer mode to soft light and duplicate the layer a few times until you get the amount you want. Then merge them by clicking on the first layer and keep clicking Ctrl+E till they are flattened.

Step 12

I have an image of a water splash which I’ll add to his shoulders as shown below.

Since the image background is black, I’ll set the layer mode to Screen to hide it.

Step 13

I also had this water drops image which I added to make it look a little bit more realistic.

Again, apply the Screen mode so the black background would disappear.

Step 14

Now, let’s create a lens flare. Create a new layer and fill it with black. Then go to Filters, then Render and Select Lens Flare. Set the layer mode to Screen. I’ve placed it right behind his shoulder. You can add a mask layer and with a black brush remove unwanted parts of the flare.

Step 15

Now select all the layers and duplicate them then merge them together. After you’ve merged them, duplicate it one more time. Name one of the layers High Pass and the other one Inverted.

Select the High pass layer and go to Filters. Choose Other and then High Pass.

Set the layer mode to Overlay.

Step 16

Now go to the inverted layer and click on Ctrl+Shift+U to set the saturation to zero.

Click Ctrl+I, to apply a negative effect to the image. Then go to Filter, then Blur and choose Gaussian Blur. Set it to about 45 pixels.

Set the layer mode to Overlay and opacity of about 20-30%. And there you, you got yourself a very cool picture.