The Professional Photoshop Book - Volume 7 2015

GATHER ALL PARTS TOGETHER

ADD THE FOREGROUND ENVIRONMENT AND ADJUST LIGHT AND COLOUR

QUICK TIP: IMPROVE COMPOSITES

BY BLURRING LAYER EDGES

15

ADD FINAL DETAILS

To add some eye-catching details, you should

insert some nice looking autumn leaves on the puddle

surface. Open leaves.jpg from FileSilo, and use the Pen

tool to cut them out and add on a new layer under the

puddle. Also you can add some to the foreground

environment, but don’t forget to blur them. To make it

look real, you should add shadows to the water

surface. Add a new layer, change the blend mode to

Multiply, and using a warm coloured brush with soft

edges, paint the shadows under every leaf.

16

CREATE A WATER DROP

Composition is very important for every

image, and to make it logical and finished, you

should add a point where the creature is looking. To

make a water drop, take background.jpg and place it

on a new layer. Make it very small, and using the Pen

tool, cut out the form of a water drop. Then, using a

To polish the final scene, use the Blur tool on the

edges of every layer – this helps a lot to combine

all layers into one complex image, reducing the

chance of a collage look. You can even blur whole

parts of objects to add to the depth of field.

14

FO REGROUND ENVIRONMENT

After you enlarge the puddle, there is a

rough, ugly gap that you should replace. To get a nice,

warm autumn feeling from the image, and to fill the

gap, you can add autumn leaves to the front of the

image. Take front_leaves.jpg from FileSilo and put it

on the top layer. You can shrink the image vertically a

little to fit the perspective of the scene better. Then,

use the Eraser tool and Background Eraser tool to

clear the grass line. Use Gaussian Blur to make a

focus effect, and apply a photo filter as in Step 13.

white brush set to Soft Light, add some highlights to

the left side of the drop. After this, switch to a dark

brush set to Multiply, and add shadow to the right

side. Finally, take the colour of the creature using the

Eyedropper, and with a brush set to Hard Light, paint

a reflection from the creature into the drop.

Photo manipulation

84 The Professional Photoshop Book

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