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Photoshop compositing
This is a promotional trailer for PHLEARN's remade course "The Ultimate Guide to Smart Objects in Photoshop," a from-the-ground-up update of a popular 2017 tutorial, in which the instructor states the 6+ hour course teaches fully manual, non-AI compositing of a sci-fi panorama by building the image in order of depth — from the farthest background elements to the nearest foreground subjects.
The course is a complete remake of a 2017 tutorial that was one of PHLEARN's most popular ever; the new version is over 6 hours long and aimed at intermediate to advanced users.
The course explicitly uses "the latest manual tools in Photoshop with absolutely zero AI shortcuts."
The organizing principle of the whole build is three-dimensional depth: the image is constructed starting with the farthest elements from the camera and working layer by layer toward the front.
The course emphasizes light, color, and real-world physics, specifically how the atmosphere affects the appearance of distant objects.
Construction starts with a background plate made from three photographs shot in Utah, aligned with the Transform tool and blended at the edges for light and color.
Planets are added next using masking, blending modes, and color adjustments to fit them into the sky.
Distant mountains are built from photographs of rocks, whose light levels are adjusted and which are then hand-painted with environment-sampled colors to read as far away; these mountains later become the base for cities.
A major segment of the course is hand painting: using different blend modes with the brush tool to target painting specifically to highlights, shadow, or color.
A custom Photoshop brush is built from scratch (and included in the course download) and used, with colors sampled from the background, to paint towering spires representing a civilization.
City lights are created by duplicating a photographed light flare and changing its colors and light levels across all the spires.
Multiple photographs of a city at night are cut out, perspective-transformed, and arranged onto the background mountains to simulate civilizations.
An animal in the foreground is cut out, color-matched, given adjusted light levels, and has manually painted shadows and environmental effects added to integrate it into the scene.
People are added by cutting them out of their original background; because they were originally photographed standing on sand, the new ground is matched to fit, and light and color are matched so they blend into the environment.
Three-dimensional lighting is taught by sampling colors from the ground and sky and manually painting that light as if reflected onto the subjects.
Finishing touches include motion blur on clothing to simulate wind, final color grading, and matching resolution and grain across every layer so the composite reads as a single photograph.
The course download includes all sample images, the custom Photoshop brush, and a sample PSB file showing every layer.
The full course is accessed by joining PHLEARN Pro.
Background plate blending with the Transform tool — A technique for combining multiple photographs into a single seamless background plate. Apply: Line up three separate photographs using the Transform tool, then blend their edges in terms of light and color so they look like one photograph.
Planet masking and color/blend-mode integration — A method for compositing photographed planets into a sky using masking, blending modes, and color adjustments. Apply: Take regular photos of planets and use masking, blending modes, and color adjustments to make them fit perfectly into the sky.
Atmospheric distance simulation for mountains — A lighting and color technique that makes nearby rock photographs read as distant mountains by mimicking how atmosphere affects far-away objects. Apply: Adjust the light levels of rock photographs, then sample colors from the environment and paint them over the rocks so they look like they belong in the distance.
Hand painting with targeted blend modes — A manual brush-painting method that uses blend modes to restrict paint strokes to specific tonal or color ranges. Apply: Use different blend modes with the brush tool to target your painting specifically to highlights, shadow, or color.
Custom Photoshop brush creation — Building a bespoke brush shape from scratch inside Photoshop instead of using a stock brush. Apply: Create a custom brush from scratch and use it, with colors sampled from the background, to paint the towering spires of the civilization directly into the scene (the brush is included in the download).
Light flare duplication for city lighting — A technique for adding illuminated highlights to structures using a single photographed light source. Apply: Take a photograph of a light flare, duplicate it, and change its colors and light levels to put it across all of the separate spires in the image.
Cutout-and-perspective-transform for city photography — A compositing technique for placing photographed city lights convincingly into a scene's perspective. Apply: Take multiple photographs of a city at night, cut out the lights, transform them into perspective, and arrange them onto the background mountains to make it look like actual civilizations.
Color matching and shadow painting for a cutout subject — A subject-integration technique that corrects mismatched original lighting on a cut-out foreground subject. Apply: Cut out the subject, color match it, adjust the light levels, and manually paint the shadows and surrounding environment over it to lock it into the scene.
Seamless people cutout with ground-matched integration — A technique for cutting people out of their original background and integrating them into a new one, aided by matching ground surfaces at the shoot stage. Apply: Cut people out of the background seamlessly; because they were photographed standing on sand, match the ground of the new environment so it lines up, and match light and color so they blend into the new background.
Three-dimensional lighting via color sampling — A manual technique for simulating how ambient light from the ground and sky would reflect onto a subject in a 3D scene. Apply: Sample colors from the ground and the sky, then manually paint that light as if reflected onto the subjects so they look like they were actually standing there.
Motion blur for wind effect — A finishing technique that adds directional blur to simulate movement. Apply: Add motion blur to the clothing on the subjects to make it look like it's blowing in the wind.
Final color grading — A finishing pass applied to unify the color tone across the completed composite. Apply: Handle final color grading on the composite once all elements are in place.
Resolution and grain matching across layers — A finishing technique for unifying image fidelity and noise characteristics across every layer of a composite. Apply: Match the resolution and grain across every single layer so the final image looks like it was shot on one camera.
Atmospheric perspective (how distance affects light and color) is treated as a dedicated, physics-grounded technique rather than an afterthought — applied deliberately when turning rock photographs into convincing distant mountains.
Hand painting is framed as a central technique of its own, built around using blend modes to constrain brush strokes to only highlights, shadow, or color rather than freehand painting.
The people used in the composite were deliberately photographed standing on sand specifically so their ground plane could be matched to the new environment — the original photo shoot was planned around the demands of the eventual composite, not just fixed in post.
The tutorial's structure mirrors the physical depth order of the final image itself (background plate → planets → distant mountains/cities → hand-painted spires → city lights → foreground animal → foreground people → finishing atmosphere), used as the literal teaching sequence rather than just a production convenience.
Consistency passes — motion blur, grain matching, and resolution matching across every layer — are presented as necessary to sell the illusion of a single photograph, not as optional polish.
«We're using the latest manual tools in Photoshop with absolutely zero AI shortcuts.»
— 00:21
«Over the next six hours, we're going to build this massive sci-fi panorama using dozens of different photographs that I shot myself.»
— 00:29
«We built this actual image following the depth of the scene itself, starting with the elements that are farthest from the camera and working our way layer by layer toward the front.»
— 00:40
«Because this is a manual tutorial, you're going to be using the brush tool a lot.»
— 00:53
«So, the image looks like it was shot on one camera.»
— 00:43
«This is a fantastic tutorial. I had an absolute blast creating it, and I know you're going to enjoy following along from start to finish to create this manual composite.»
— 00:46
Reception
Strong positive reception with genuine appreciation for the authentic tutorial and the skill being demonstrated, with warm nostalgic undertones and no substantive criticism.
The trailer functions as a scoped course preview rather than a teaching video itself, but it lays out an unusually specific, technique-by-technique roadmap of a depth-ordered manual compositing workflow, from background plate to foreground subjects to final grain matching.
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