Pixiport:Fine Art Photography Photographers In The News Pixiport Ezine Art Magazine

Pixiport:Fine Art Photography Photographers In The News Pixiport Ezine Art Magazine: "Making a multi-layered image, using photos, painting and Blending Modes.
You can build up a picture from as many layers as you want - as many as your computer's memory can cope with! This picture, which will have over 30 layers of photographs and painting, will have the appearance and atmosphere of a Victorian Pre-Raphaelite painting, using present day photographs.
1.Choose a background for the picture. If, like this one, the subject is architectural, you may have to use the Edit... Transform...Perspective? command - to straighten up the verticals. It is a good idea to have a rough plan of the finished picture so that you can choose your photographs from stock, or take new ones especially for the picture. If you want to use an artist's painting for inspiration, this is fine, because it gives you a pre-ordained structure but the components of the picture must be photographed by you. (It is NOT a good idea to scan any part of another person's artwork without permission, because of copyright.)
2. Make a loose selection of a figure, using the Lasso Tool and super-impose, as a layer, on to the background. In the Layers Palette, select Normal blending mode. When making very loose selections, it is easy to clean up the edges by going to Layers?Add Layer Mask?. Reveal All. Now take the paintbrush, and paint around the edges of your selection, which you will see disappearing. If you paint out too much, you can use the keyboard command 'X' and paint the edges back in again. Toggle 'X' and paint more background and so on. Thus, using also a bit of magnification, it is easy to get a perfect selection. "