DARK THOUGHTS

Step 1

Choosing stock. I’ve chosen a beautiful background image and a picture of a model, both of which are perfect for a fantasy manipulation. You will also need bird brushes and hair brushes.

Step 2

As our background is ready and it doesn’t need any changes, let’s start with the model. Open the picture as a separate image, identify layer from background in your layer manager. Then start erasing the background with a medium-soft brush at 100% opacity. When you finish, paste the model onto the main ( background ) image.

Step 3

Paint the grass over the bottom of the model’s dress to make it look more realistic. Clone stamp tool can help you with this, or you can just do it using a Brush tool.

Step 4

Let’s add some vamp make-up to our model. Use soft brush at medium Opacity to do this. You can experiment as much as you want. Just don’t forget to create a separate transparent layer and then paint. This will help you in case you make mistakes.

Step 5

Our model image stands out from the background not in the good way. It seems too bright for our dark fantasy picture. Go to [ Image ] [ Adjustments ] [ Hue/Saturation ] to a lower level.

Step 6

Paint the hair. You can paint it either from scratch or use hair brushes. Remember that hair strands are usually of slightly different shades of color. When you finish, use Smudge tool to make your hair appear more natural.

Step 7

Add birds. Use bird brushes and experiment with the size of the brush to make the flock look more realistic.

Step 8

Merge visible layers.

Step 9

Go to [ Image ] [ Adjustments ] [Curves ] and set both Input and Output to 255.