Jacquelynn's Mountain
The overall scope of this project was to extract a piece of a photo and set it naturally into another landscape. From the finished picture, the floating mountain, the planet, the shooting stars, and the waterfall were all extracted from separate images and placed into this final product. The technique that I mainly focused on was making sure there was no pixel fringe and all the different pieces looked natural when laid upon the background layer.
Before truly starting to design and make the picture look creative, there was a small piece of pre-production. In order to place the mountain into the sky I had to select and extract the parts that I wanted from the original photo. In the picture with the sky, I had to use the Content Aware tool in order to remove some text. I also had to duplicate the entire picture and change the blend modes on the layers so they would overlap and create a darker, more shadowed sky. When all of this was said and done, I placed the mountain into the sky and began to mess with its surroundings in order to make it look like it was supposed to be there in the first place. I had to take the cloud on the bottom of the picture-that was originally behind the mountain-and bring it to the front. I then proceeded to add a shadow in order to show that the mountain casted over the cloud. Adding the other pieces of the picture followed the same process, although slightly altered for each in order to make them look natural.
I really enjoyed this tutorial because it was easy to follow and allowed me to go on my own creative path without getting lost or confused. I learned how to use the lasso tool in order to move clouds or specific shapes in front of the mountain that we placed on the background. I also learned how to select a specific shape with the refine edge tool, which in fact, really came in handy. This is one of my favorite pieces I have created so far. I had to toggle with the blend mode a lot on the stars and planet that I added into the piece. I did this because I wanted them to look like shadows of themselves from space instead of looking like they were directly behind the mountain. I placed clouds in front of the planet and changed the size and opacity of the shooting stars. Another very handy tool that I learned about was the Content Aware tool. This allowed me to remove the text that was previously on the sky background. I selected the area where the text was, clicked delete and then chose Content Aware and pressed OK.
In further projects that consist of having so many different and important layers, I will make sure to name them in order to be identified. Without the small preview beside each layer I would have to select and see each layer individually to be able to tell which is which.
I believe that I did a pretty solid job to make the ending product. I went back and changed the waterfall many different times and I'm very happy with how it looks now. The planet in the top left corner is what I would want to add again in future projects because of how it looks.
Once again, I really enjoyed creating this floating mountain and would really like to do more projects that were as creative as this one in the future.
