Surrealistic Photomontage with Photoshop

Creating worlds you thought could only ever exist in your imagination is possible with Adobe Photoshop. Designer and publicist Carlos Jiménez has spent more than 20 years expressing his ideas in Photoshop, a tool that fascinates him due to the possibilities it offers for visualizing his ideas, without forgetting about pencil and paper. His greatest passion is surreal digital photomontages, where he seeks to transcend reality and model it as he pleases, achieving incredible compositions with realistic finishes.

In this online course, learn to develop your creativity and photomontage skills through the composition of the surreal. Develop an idea from start to finish, following Carlos’ entire production and post-production process.

Begin by meeting Carlos Jiménez, who tells you about his training as a graphic designer, his professional career as a creative director for advertising agencies, and how he came to specialize in his passion: surreal photomontage. Also see some of his main influences across different styles of surrealism, from classical to modern exponents.

Next, Carlos teaches a series of different systems for generating ideas, before showing you the different criteria for making a preliminary selection of photographs. Then do a digital draft to help you make decisions about composition, perspective, and what works best overall.

It’s time for the photographic pre-production phase. Take a close look at the equipment, materials, and props you need to put together your set. Once you have everything you need, see what to consider before your photoshoot and address basic but indispensable lighting techniques. Then make some initial cuts to create the skeleton with separate elements to facilitate putting together the final piece.

Now get to work on the final version! Assemble the background, correcting any distortion of the base photograph, and retouch and/or build up the ground and sky to give it more character. After integrating each element based on the previous assembly, focus on defining the colors as well as tackle light and shadow piece by piece.
Carlos gives you a series of tips to finish off your piece correctly. Shift your attention to the finer details, including color correction for a more uniform look as well as texturing.