realistic images / combining layers

Compositing images together can be so much fun.

So this month I taught to classes here in German the basics of several pieces of Adobe software.  During my three days of Photoshop... I showed the following video.  One of my students actually rewatched it and was able to create a similar effect.  I was really impressed by her work.

Now the video below is just a screen recording to music.... but wow, breathtaking.  I was really surprised by my student was able to follow the video on her own and recreate the same type of idea.

So I hope this inspires you.  I know there are several tutorials on YouTube that will give you step by step by step instructions.  But this is a pretty cool video to watch even if it is not a tutorial

https://youtu.be/T9T8jWGDxfs

To make something that looks realistic you need to start with good Images. With good images you can even make images that are not realistic look good.   You can not make poor images into a good quality realistic looking image.  Here is an example of a before and afters image not realistic but it looks high quality good. Before And After  And you can reconstructs missing parts of images using existing parts.

I agree with all that has been said above regarding starting with images with sufficient detail etc and especially regarding lighting. You can use a combination of adjustments and masks to alter the lighting on composite elements. I did that, using your images above to give this:

Dave

You may not like what I'm about to write.  You are acting like a your a baby that requires information bottle fed to them by caring adults. There are many Photoshop Tutorials on the web and Photoshop Classes available for you.  If you want to learn Photoshop you should take advantage of what is available.  Bottle feeding is something caring Parents do out of love other do it for Pay.   I have no problem with you asking for help with a particular problem you are having. However asking  for a free education for a complex application like Photoshop with step by step instructions is asking a lot in a forum it could take years.  Photoshop has a huge learning curve and the are bugs in Photoshop you need to work around.   Do your parent know Photoshop.

You can learn a lot reading  and participating in forum you should take advantage of them IMO asking for custom step by step Photoshop education is a bit too much ask for. 

To save yourself a lot of grief, look for images where the lighting matches (direction, etc). Don't attempt to change an image.

You also need to color match the elements. Compared to the lightning, everything is too warm. It should be cool like the clouds. The other suggestions are spot on, especially the lighting.

As c.p. mentioned, you really need to pay attention to lighting (that's lighting without the n). It is very far from realistic.

Lighting is why most composites look unrealistic.

The foreground and figure need to be much darker and in shadow, illuminated primarily by the bolt of lightning itself.

And a technical point: Did you combine the elements as plain Layers or as Smart Objects? 

Hi

The first thing that I noticed is your image sizes, you have the fence image size of 355 * 242 px and floor image size of 267 * 189 px and the sky image size is 1280 * 720

You're resizing the lower res images to match the higher res main image, hence the blurring/stretching effect, try to find images of matching sizes, the higher the resolution the better

• One problem in my opinion: You distorted the lightning too strongly. 

• But maybe the main one: The person does not cast any shadow on the ground and its lighting does not correspond to the situation.

If the lightning bolt is intended to be the main light source the person is lit plain wrong. 

• And neither the fence nor the floorboards seem to feature wood-planks that would appear plausible in relation to the human person.