‘Origin’ is one of the best Christopher Nolan films. The recreation of the world of dreams is one of the most memorable moments. So we are going to try to simulate the same effect of the bent horizons with our photographs and the help of Adobe Photoshop.
Looking through the networks I have found several ways to bend reality in the same way that we saw in the film. I realized that the most important thing is the starting photograph. And understand how light works so that the result is, as far as possible, as realistic as possible.
I have searched for a simple and fast method available to everyone. Surely many of you can contribute ideas to make it look better. So let’s get started creating fantasy worlds right away.
How to make the ‘Origin’ effect with our photographs
I have already pointed out in the first paragraph, photography is the most relevant. As I still cannot access my image library, I have decided to work with a simple image of the Alcarria countryside, with no other pretense than trying to explain it in the best possible way.
We develop photography as we are used to in Camera RAW.
We open the photograph in Adobe photoshop.
The first thing we have to do is duplicate layer (Ctrl + J). Thus we avoid touching the original.
Let’s go to the menu Edit> Free Transform. With the right button of the mouse, and according to our visualization, we choose Rotate 90º to the left or on the right.
If we think it is necessary, we can also, with the right mouse button, choose Flip vertical. We give to Intro to validate the action.
With the tool Move, we place the photograph exactly where we want.
We are looking for the tool Polygonal lasso (under Ribbon) and we draw a triangle to achieve the desired effect.
Once the selection is made, we click on the icon Add layer mask of the window Layers.
If the cut has not been as we thought, we take the tool again Move and we reposition the vertical plane to adjust it in the best possible way.
Obviously, we have to remove the area from the sky. If we want, we can go to the tool Brush, activate the layer mask and carefully erase. But I have a better idea; if we go to Edit> Substitution of Skies we will get a layer mask that, just by clicking it with Ctrl + click, it will give us a perfect selection on the flipped layer mask … If it’s too messy, erase with Brush and ready.
We have almost everything done. You have to give it a bit of realism in the lights and shadows, so that the imaginary effect is clearer.
We create a Curves adjustment layer (Layer> New Adjustment Layer> Curves) that affects only the flipped layer in Layer> Create Clipping Mask.
In the example photo we are interested in clarifying the vertical wall, so we raise the center point of the curve a bit.
To finish we make an empty layer in Layer> New> Layer, just above the original layer, and paint with the tool Brush at the intersection of both layers in black. Now we are going to Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur to blur that line and generate that feeling of shadow.
Surely you will find thousands of more practical examples than the one I have used for this article. The important thing is to understand the process so that later we have the freedom to create what we want. You will show us your results.