Making Photo Art from Photography
This image was created using Photo Shop and two original photographs.
The first image, the one I used as the background layer, is a frosty morning photograph. After opening the background image make sure to save this as a new file so the original is not replaced.
The second image I used was a picture of a full moon in clouds. This image was dragged on top of the background image. I chose a Blending Mode of Multiply for the second image layer (the moon layer). To make the moon smaller and fit better with the background image, I used Edit > Transform > Scale, making sure to hold down the shift key and drag from the corners to constraining its proportions. I left the moon a little large for effect.
The moon was centered and too large in the original photograph. It did not cover the background image after being re-sized and repositioned. To make the sky of the moon image big enough to cover the background layer, I selected and copied parts from the edge and added them to the side then used the colon stamp to blend the seams and surrounding areas. I reduced the opacity of moon layer to 80%. I also used a large soft edged eraser to erase parts of the moon layer lighten the shading/ shadows on the snowy field and some parts of the trees. The eraser opacity was set at 20%. Then, I cropped the image to clean up the edges and frame it the way I liked.
Next, I flattened the image which became the new background layer. I duplicated that layer by dragging the background layer to the duplicate layer button in the bottom of the layer pallet. Using Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur in the menu bar, I applied a 7% Gaussian Blur to the duplicate layer. This gave the image a painterly effect by smoothing and soften the appearance of the pixels. I reduced the opacity of the duplicate layer to 85%.
Next, I selected the background layer and applied a strong (around 200) unsharp mask filter to it. (Filter > Sharpen > Unsharpen)
Finally, I flattened the image and saved it as a new file.
The % of adjustments can and should be adjusted to what looks best for the image.
Many of these tricks I learned in my college classes but applying them this way I learned by looking through tutorials and instruction guides on the internet. Refining the technique is a matter of trial and error and practice.
All of the original pictures were photographed by me.
