20 Stunning Matte Painting Tutorials

What are Photoshop matte paintings?

Traditionally, matte painting was a hyperrealistic art effect used in photography and film. This allowed photographers and filmmakers to create cityscapes, armies, and machines by painting directly onto glass or film. The same idea has translated to Photoshop, in which we can build worlds and landscapes using digital photo manipulation.

Here are 20 of our favorite matte painting tutorials for Photoshop:

Create a Snow Covered, Coastal, Mountain Town Matte Painting

You will learn to make the best use of matte effect so that you can add mountains and different smart objects to the scene and then customize the picture using different features so that it seems to be just real. Matte painting effect can also be used to create unrealistic images or fantasy images. You will be able to introduce new layers, smart objects and then edit those smart objects to create a matte painting. These tutorials will walk you through the basic steps so that you can put your own creativity into the work later.

Use Photography to Create a Scenic Matte Painting From a Sketch in Photoshop

You have to multi-task as you will be using different features collectively to manage different things and put everything in a proper place.

Create a Mountain Fortress Using Matte Painting Techniques in Photoshop

Photoshop tools allow you to fully change the scene and customize it according to your desire in just a few lapses of time.

Create an epic fantasy digital matte painting

Learn the simple photoshop techniques to create unrealistic and beautiful images using the matte effect.

Basic Principles of Digital Matte Painting

A 3D effect can be introduced to the image using a technique called digital mapping or camera mapping.

Matte Painting 101: Meteor Impacts

You will learn to add a smoke in the air and crack different the building into different parts.

Matte Painting 101: Basic Extraction and Composition Techniques

You will be using basic matte effect techniques to extract a landscape image and compose it properly for after effects.

Matte Painting 101: Basic Destruction Techniques

You will learn to destroy or modify a particular smart object in the image and other similar destruction techniques.

Matte Painting 101: Lighting Fires

You will learn to light up fires using 2-3 photoshop tools. The matte effect can be used to introduce such art images and other such creations to the image.

Creating a Devastating Tidal Wave in Photoshop

You will learn to add a tidal wave image and then incorporate nicely and uniformly in the picture along with other smart objects.

Planet X Matte Painting in Photoshop

You can create fantasy and unrealistic scenes using simple matte photoshop tools

Matte Painting Tutorial

You will combine and customize each image separately to create an colorful and unrealistic manipulation.

Matte Painting: Making of Barbarossa

You can create everything that is imaginable and unrealistic using the tools essential for introducing matte effect to the picture.

Matte Painting Tutorial of Tajmahal Using Photoshop

You can create or customize taj mahal using matte painting effect and dive into the adventurous trip of editing and modifying such pictures.

Making of Urban

Creating and introducing a particular weather effect, introuding rain into the image and doing such different things will take your photoshop experience to the next level.

Matte Painting: Cleopatra Queen of Egypt

You will learn to remove people from the image, customizing the ground surface, introducing 3D smart objects into the image and similar techniques that you will also learn in other photoshop tutorials.

Create a Post-Apocalyptic Matte Painting

You will learn to create a hole in the upper roof and intorduce a light source there.

Create a Realistic Panoramic Matte Painting in Photoshop

You will work on the small details of the image so as to introduce a panaromic effect to the whole picture.

Create a Fantasy City Using Architectural Photographs