Making a Haunted House in Photoshop

There are several ways to create a "haunted" house in Photoshop just about all involve blending images together and this is no exception. To make it easy on you I used photos from the gallery on VirtualClues, so if you would like to follow along, you'll need these two photos:

The House: This is actually a photo of the Culver House which is located in Decatur, Illinois - my hometown. . It is notorious for its reported hauntings so I thought it would be fitting to use it in this example. If you'd like to scare yourself a little read this.

Download House Photo

The Clouds: The clouds will provide the background for the sky and the fog in front of the house!

Download Clouds Photo

Here we go!

1. Place the house and clouds photos in your Photoshop file. Make sure the house layer is on top of the clouds. Select the Quick Selection Tool and choose 20 for the Tolerance level and click on the sky. Hit delete to remove it. You do not have to worry about being precise, as long as you remove most of the sky you're fine!

2. The clouds layer should be behind the house, if it isn't make sure it is! select the house layer and change its layer blend mode to Overlay, the opacity to 33% and the fill to 28%.

This is where we are at this point. As you can see the house barely shows behind the clouds.

3. With the house layer still selected, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels. This will place the adjustment layer just above the house.

Adjust the Levels similar to the image below. Basically, we're just trying to make sharp contrasts between the light and dark areas.

Below: After adding the Adjustment Layer

At this point, we already have a spooky looking image and you can stop right here if you like but I wanted to wash out the colors of the image to make it more monotone and that's the next step.

4. Select the house image and duplicate its layer. Drag that layer above the Levels. (See below.) Change the blend mode to Color Burn, its opacity to 42% and fill to 71%. This will help make the house more prominent so it's not so hidden by the clouds.

5. Now to change the Hue and Saturation. Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation. Make sure this adjustment layer is the very top layer.

Hue/Saturation Settings:

Finished Haunted House!

Oh, and one last tip. Use the Dodge Tool to go over the light areas on the house, like the window frames, porch and steps. This will help bring out the architectural features as well as make the steps more inviting. Maybe "inviting" isn't the right word. Anyway, get as crazy as you want!