Ever wonder what else could google earth be good for than just taking a virtual trip around the world? Well, with this really short tutorial we are going to show you that google earth is more than that.
Just take an image of a place you like in google earth, and in photoshop do all of the magic.
1. Google Earth Image
If you have the Google Earth app, you can choose a place, and save a picture of it.
2. Import to Photoshop
Simply take your image and import it to Photoshop.
3. Adjust the image
3.1 Use the crop tool to make the canvas bigger
3.2 Erase or cut out unwanted parts or watermarks that the image may have.
3.3 Press ctrl + T to fix the perspective of the image.
4. Add volume to the image
4.1 Using a mask in the layer panel, with the lasso tool, start erasing parts of the image according to topography.
4.2 Draw a base, you can also do this with the lasso tool.
4.3 Once you have the base, finish erasing parts of the image according to topography.
5. Extra features
5.1 In this case the image was a bit pale, so with the adjustments panel, we made it warmer. Also added some shadow to the base with a soft black brush and a low opacity.
5.2 You can add some lines to have some explanative text if you were to use this image on a presentation project. (At the end we decided to take them off lol)
5.3 For the main title, we did the same like for the image, ctrl + T to adjust the perspective of the title.
6. Adding filter
6.1 Using the camera raw filter, you will adjust the color of your image.
6.2 Also adding a filter, in this case we added the patchwork texture, just go to Camera raw filter > Texture > Patchwork. Adjust it to make it look more real.
7. Adding brushes
7.1 With brushes, you can add, birds, trees, people to give it that realistic look to your architectural illustration.
7.2 Add as many people you like, (well it also depends on the context)
Final result. We decided it looks better without the lines, and we added some trees to separate the “city part” from the “beach”.
What did you think of this tutorial? Have you done something similar? If you have or haven’t, follow us on Instagram and tag us in your illustration! We want to see how it went 🙂
Check out this same tutorial but in our YouTube video!
