One Step At A Time

Time to keep going.
I started to piece parts of photos together, blending them until they looked right.

I wanted to add this statue but the colours didn't fit. so I desaturated the image which gave me a stone colour.

Then I submerged it in the river, I rotated and resized it.

Applied a layer mask and painted away parts using a custom brush that gave a splash effect to add realism of water rushing past the statue.

Then to end the river in a natural way I have tried to direct it around the back of the screen.

You could say I am over complicating this image but I am enjoying this process and learning a lot of how to use photoshop. So I cut out the bridge placed it and skewed and altered the perspective until it looked right.

Then one step at a time blended parts of photos building it up slowly.

This image was really hard to cut out. I just wanted the wooden beams and trees. I used a channel mask but this still didn't work properly (a valuable lesson to learn when actually taking the photography, think of how it can be manipulated in photoshop.  

After removing parts using a channel mask I used a foliage brush to paint or cut out the rest of the image. and added other parts of photos until I was satisfied.

Then It was a case of small steps

Slowly building the image up 

Blending 

And painting

Until I was happy with the result
Now I have the image the next step is the graphics, the message and the final composition. I have layered file saved so I have the freedom to play around with the image without the worry of not being able to go back.