Disintegration Effect Abstract Manipulation Tutorial

In this Photoshop video tutorial I will show you how to create an abstract manipulation using layer masks and brushes to create a creative disintegration effect.

In order to create this simple but curious effect I used layer masks and some brushes that I made.

Resources used

• Giraffe
• Flying Birds brush pack
• Final adjustments photoshop action

Disintegration effect – Final result

Step 1

Open the Giraffe photo and use a Curves adjustment layer to recover the lighting of the image because the original photo is a bit too dark. Use the Highlight’s slider to recover the highlights.

Step 2

I used the Magic Wand Tool (W) to make a selection the dark patches of skin on the giraffe’s neck. In order to create the holes, with the selection active (hold shift while clicking to make multiple selections) I created an inverted layer mask by holding down the Alt key and clicking the layer mask icon on the bottom of the layer’s palette.

Step 3

Refill the holes that you created on the previous step using a patch of sky. Make a pretty big selection of sky and copy it on a new layer below the giraffe layer like shown in the image below.

Step 4

Use the provided brushes pack on the resources section and paint some flying birds around. Use the Brushes panel (F5) and add some size and angle variation to your brush. Watch video for more details.

Step 5

In order to get a more interesting and artistic look to for my disintegration effect, I used a Photoshop action created by myself to get some faded golden tones for my final image. You can download this action for free from the resources site. This action can be used in any Photoshop version (CS or CC)

For more details about how to create this abstract manipulation effect in Photoshop please watch the video version at the beginning of the article.