Adding surreal mist to give dreamy look to pictures

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to add mist over the water surface and give it a fantastical dreamy look.

We will turn this image:

to this:

Open the image in Photoshop and select the lower half of the image. Press CTRL+C to copy it and CTRL+V to paste it creating the new layer.

Adjust the Hue/Saturation of the image so we can get rid of that orange color on the image. So go to Image>Adjustment>Hue/Saturation and set the value as shown below

Now press Q on your keyboard to enable quick edit mode. Select the brush from tools and paint over the image like as shown below. Be careful not to paint over the rocks.

You can go close to then but be careful while paint this. Your image should look like this after painting.

Now take the eraser tool and clear the rocks more precisely. Also on the top of red mask paint over with eraser so it look like something below.

Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and put this value to give a more blurry effect around the rocks.

Now press Q on your keyboard again and you will see it turn into selection. Now go to Select>Inverse or simply press CTRL+SHIFT+I to inverse the selection.

We will add Gaussian blur filter to this selection so go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and add effect like shown below:

Select the original layer and duplicate it by moving it to the new layer icon in the layers palette. Move the new layer to the top. Go to Filter>Blur>Radial blur and use these setting and hit OK.

Turn the opacity of the layer down to 77% and select the bottom half of the layer with select tool. go to Filter>Distort>Twirl and adjust the settings as follow.

Hit ok and press CTRL+D to deselect. Now as you notice there are some grains in the picture and we can remove them by applying the Reduce noise filter. Go to Filter>Noise>Reduce Noise and set the setting as shown below.

Now add a layer mask to this layer. Select the brush tool from tools and set the color to black and paint over the sky and rocks. Again, be careful while painting over rocks. Result should look like something below:

Now create a new layer.
Select the brush tool.
Choose white color and draw random lines like this. (It does not have to be exactly same)

Go to Filter>Blur>Radial Blur and hit OK.
Now select the bottom half of your document. Go to Filter>Distort>Twirl and hit OK.
Finally go to Filter>Other>Maximum and set this value and Click OK.

Now Create layer mask on this layer and clear out the rocks as we did earlier on the other layer. Turn the opacity down to 57% for this layer.

Now to give it a more nicer look we are going to change the sky. I found this picture www.smugmug.com/photos/279777952_JsNQB-D.jpg and took the sky. When you put the new sky in your document adjust the layer at the bottom of original layer like illustrated below:

Now for that final greenish look add a new layer and fill it will #61760a color. Turn the blending mode to Overlay and opacity to 46%.

Again add a new layer and fill it will #445368color. Turn the blending mode to Overlay and opacity to 66%.

There you have it. the final Image.