i was wondering if anyone knew how to get this like smooth, 2d-3d-ish effect with that type of lighting, ive looked everywhere and nobody has a tutorial or anything on these type of covers. would really appreciate any help 🫡
#i need help with getting this specific effect...
craggy horizon
remote stone
Difficult to say before seeing the original photos and how they have been lit.
I think though that there is a good amount of dodge and burn on top of general grading, most possibly decrease the contrast (You can also have a look at the Shadow/highlights menu (see screenshot) and play with the different sliders)
You can do that either by painting on a neutral overlay blening mode layer with a soft, low opacity black and white layer (Works really best with a graphic tablet as it's mainly drawing. Typically 5% opacity of thereabouts) or use curves/levels adjustment layers (typically 2, one for making areas lighter, 1 for marking them darker) and paint on the mask with a soft brush to reveal.
The second method is a bit more complex (not by far) but more versatile in the sense that you can undo what you have done by painting the mask back to black if you've made a mistake.
You don't necessarily find tutorials explaining the whole workflow, but you can find them for each process, or just read the Photoshop doc to see what they do.