Create a Simple Composite in Photoshop

Create a Simple Composite in Photoshop

This tutorial builds a surreal composite from four separate source images — a long-exposure night sky with trees, a jellyfish, a galaxy photo, and a tent — using mostly the Screen blend mode, layer masks, Smart Objects, and a Liquify warp to bring everything together, before tying it all into one cohesive image with a gradient map, split-toning, and film grain. The sample images are available as a free download on PHLEARN.com.

Planning This Composite

Open all four source images at once, then zoom each one out slightly to see them side by side. Rather than trying to bring every element in at once, the approach here is to work one element at a time: jellyfish first, then the trees and stars they’ll be placed behind, then a galaxy glow, then a tent for foreground scale, and finally a color and grain pass that unifies everything at the end.

Adding and Positioning the Jellyfish

Use the Move tool to click and drag the jellyfish image directly from its own document into the night sky document, which brings it in as a new layer. Add a layer mask and paint black over the parts of the jellyfish photo’s background that shouldn’t be visible, without worrying yet about making that masking perfectly clean, since the goal at this early stage is just hiding the obviously unwanted parts of the frame rather than achieving a polished final edge. Softening any hard, obviously-cut edges helps avoid the telltale giveaway of a composite, since a crisp, unnaturally clean boundary between two photos is one of the first things a viewer’s eye catches. Change the layer’s blend mode from Normal to Screen, which makes all of the dark background areas of the jellyfish layer disappear entirely while keeping just its bright, glowing parts visible against the sky, which works because Screen mode compares each pixel against the layers beneath it and always keeps the lighter result, so a jellyfish photographed against black effectively erases its own background for free.

Building a Cluster of Jellyfish

With one jellyfish looking good, use Command/Ctrl+T to flip it vertically and horizontally via the right-click transform menu for variation, then Command/Ctrl+J to duplicate it several more times. Scale each duplicate to a different size, some large and close, some small and distant, to build a sense of depth, and, while transforming a few of them, right-click and choose Warp to subtly reshape them so no two jellyfish read as identical copies, since several visibly identical copies of the same shape would immediately read as duplicated rather than as a natural cluster. This step is mostly about composition, deciding roughly where each jellyfish sits and how big it should be, rather than getting every edge perfect yet; fine-tuning the blending and masking on each individual jellyfish can wait until the overall arrangement across the sky already feels balanced.

Placing the Jellyfish Behind the Trees

At this point the jellyfish sit awkwardly in front of the trees rather than behind them. Select all of the jellyfish layers together and right-click, then Convert to Smart Object, which groups them into one editable unit while still allowing them to be moved later by double-clicking into the Smart Object. Converting takes away the blend modes the individual layers had, so change the Smart Object from Normal back to Screen. Click on the background layer, go to Select, then Color Range, and click on the trees; lowering the Fuzziness value helps tighten the selection until the trees show light in the Color Range preview and the sky shows dark. Click OK to turn the light areas into a selection. With that selection active, turn the jellyfish Smart Object back on and click its layer mask icon to load the selection directly into the mask, then invert it with Command/Ctrl+I if the trees start out hidden instead of visible.

Hold Option/Alt and click the layer mask to edit it directly: use the Lasso tool to select any patchy gaps in the tree silhouette, fill them with white through Edit, then Fill, and use the Brush tool set to Overlay blend mode painted in white to brighten any weak, patchy spots in the mask without affecting the already-dark areas, since Overlay blend mode on a brush only strengthens tones that are already relatively light and leaves genuinely dark areas of the mask alone. Switch the brush back to Normal blend mode when finished so later painting doesn’t accidentally apply that same selective brightening. With this mask complete, click the link icon between the layer and its mask to unlink them. Now the jellyfish Smart Object can be moved around freely and will always appear correctly tucked behind the tree line, since the mask is doing the work of hiding anything that overlaps the trees rather than the jellyfish’s own position being fixed in place.

Matching the Long-Exposure Motion Blur

Since the background sky is a long-exposure night photo, its stars show a slight directional motion blur that the sharp jellyfish don’t share yet. On the jellyfish Smart Object, go to Filter, then Blur, then Motion Blur, and match the angle roughly to the direction the star trails are streaking, using a modest amount, around 10 pixels, so it reads as a subtle match rather than an obvious smear. Because it’s a Smart Object, this Motion Blur remains an editable Smart Filter that can be toggled or adjusted later.

Warping the Background with Liquify

To make it look like the stars behind the jellyfish are being distorted, as if seen through water, duplicate the background layer with Command/Ctrl+J, then go to Filter, then Liquify. Enable Show Backdrop so the jellyfish placement is visible while working, since liquifying blind without a reference to the composite so far makes it easy to warp the wrong area entirely. Use the Bloat tool, which pushes pixels outward from wherever it’s clicked, directly over each jellyfish’s position to create a warped, rippling distortion in the stars right around it, the same kind of subtle refraction a lens would show looking through moving water or glass. This step trades away a little bit of the background’s original sharpness right around each jellyfish, but that’s a fair trade since the galaxy glow layer added next covers most of that same area anyway.

Adding Galaxy Glow Inside the Jellyfish

To give each jellyfish an inner glow that looks like a small galaxy, drag in the separate galaxy photo as a new layer and set its blend mode to Screen, then use Levels to darken it slightly so its own background fades out more. Scale it down and mask out everything except its brightest, most colorful core, typically the Milky Way band itself, using a large soft brush to paint black on the mask and fade the edges smoothly, checking carefully for any stray visible corners left unmasked. Rotate and position that glowing core so it sits centered inside one of the jellyfish, adjusting size until it reads as a light source coming from within the creature rather than floating separately on top of it. Duplicate this glow layer with Command/Ctrl+J for each additional jellyfish that should get its own galaxy effect, then use Command/Ctrl+T to make each copy small and move it into place.

Adding a Tent for Scale and Color

Bringing in a small tent image adds a sense of scale and perspective to the whole scene, plus another color note that helps the composite feel more cohesive, since without any recognizable foreground object the jellyfish scene has nothing to compare its size against. Drag it in with the Move tool, set its blend mode to Screen, scale it down to a reasonable foreground size, then hold Option/Alt and click the layer mask icon to create an all-black mask, and paint white with a brush wherever the tent should actually be visible. Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer clipped to just the tent layer to shift its color from a slightly yellow starting tone toward a warmer orange, then group the tent and its adjustment layer together into one folder to keep the layer stack organized, alongside a similar group for the galaxy glow layers, since by this point in the build the layer panel has grown crowded enough that grouping related pieces together makes it much easier to keep track of everything.

Unifying the Composite’s Color

With every element in place, add a Gradient Map adjustment layer at the very top of the stack to pull the whole image’s color palette together. Open the Gradient Editor and build a custom gradient running from black on the left to white on the right, since a gradient map assigns the left end of the gradient to the image’s darkest tones and the right end to its brightest tones. Add a bright yellow near the highlight end, a teal in the middle, and a dark blue toward the shadow end, which shifts the entire image toward a cohesive yellow-teal-blue color scheme. Because this effect is strong applied at full strength, lower the Gradient Map layer’s opacity to blend it with the image’s original color, and paint black on its mask over specific areas, like the tent, where more of the original color should show through.

Split-Toning Shadows and Highlights with Levels

For an additional layer of color cohesion, add a Levels adjustment layer, switch to the Blue channel specifically, and raise the dark end of its Output Levels slightly to push a subtle blue tint into the image’s shadows, then pull the light end in a little to add a complementary yellow tint to the highlights, applied across the entire composite for a final unifying color pass.

Adding Grain to Tie Everything Together

Since the composite is built from several completely different source photos that were never shot with the same camera or lighting, a layer of grain helps disguise that and make everything read as one consistent photograph. Create a new layer on top of everything, fill it with 50 percent gray through Edit, then Fill, then go to Filter, then Noise, then Add Noise, and apply a fairly strong amount. Change that layer’s blend mode from Normal to Soft Light, which makes the gray disappear and leaves just the grain texture visible over the whole image; if the effect looks too intense at full resolution, it usually reads much more naturally once zoomed back out, and the layer’s opacity can always be lowered further if needed.

Why This Workflow Scales to Any Composite

Nearly every step in this composite relies on tools already covered elsewhere: Screen blend mode to combine bright elements, layer masks to control visibility, Smart Objects to keep filters editable, Color Range to build a selection from contrast, and a gradient map to unify color at the end. Once each of those individual pieces feels familiar, combining four unrelated photos into one believable scene becomes mostly a matter of composition and patience rather than any single complicated technique.

Final Thoughts

This composite comes together through a sequence of individually simple moves: place and mask the jellyfish with Screen blend mode, tuck them behind the trees with a Color Range selection, add motion blur and a Liquify warp for realism, layer in galaxy glow and a foreground tent, then unify everything at the end with a gradient map, split-toned Levels, and a pass of grain. None of those steps are complicated in isolation, but stacked together they turn four completely unrelated photos into one cohesive, surreal scene.

Quick Reference: Keys, Menus and Settings

• Bring in a photoMove tool drag, layer mask to soften edges, blend mode Normal > Screen
• Flip, copy and warpCmd/Ctrl + T, right-click > Flip Vertical, Flip Horizontal or Warp; Cmd/Ctrl + J to duplicate
• One Smart ObjectShift-click the layers, right-click > Convert to Smart Object, set Screen again
• Tree maskSelect > Color Range, lower Fuzziness; layer mask icon; Cmd/Ctrl + I; unlink the mask
• Match the starsFilter > Blur > Motion Blur, about 10 pixels; Filter > Liquify, Show Backdrop, Bloat Tool
• All-black maskAlt/Option-click the layer mask icon, paint white to show the tent
• Color and grainGradient Map, Levels on the Blue channel; Edit > Fill 50% Gray, Filter > Noise > Add Noise, Soft Light

No AI, no generative credits.