To this:
We will combine the first picture with this one to obtain the effect:
Note1: Elsewhere (in my gallery) I have a similar picture which has some sealife added to it. Since this is going to be graphic intensive, I will not be adding any in this tutorial.
Note2: In selecting my "subject" photo, you will note that it includes only a bit of vegetation (in the background). I intentionally didn't want to have to deal with hiding and/or otherwise erasing more than necessary to accomplish this. Additionally, it is also absent of heavy shadows which could detract from the effect we're striving for.
Note3: Likewise, the underwater view I selected had very little sealife in it (at least I was forunate enough that the selection itself had it in the left side allowing me to "hide" it).
1. Start by opening the picture of the ruins in PDN.
2. Select the magic wand and use 45% as the tolerance (as seen below)
3. Click on the clouds near the center, it should look something like this:
4. Next, select the eraser and set the Brush width to a very large number (this will permit us to erase much of the background with a minimal amount of swipes) as shown below:
5. Go ahead at this point and erase the sky:
6. Select the Magic wand again, and then click in the open area as designated by the arrow and then erase it:
7. Next, click once on the selection tool, then click somewhere just outside of the picture to deselect the area we just erased.
8. Again, select the eraser (and you may now change to a smaller brush) and erase the remaining portion of the sky as seen below:
9. If you didn't resize the eraser brush please do so now to the size indicated below. We will now erase the tree from the background.
10. To accomplish this, click on the magnifying glass a couple of times and adjust your view using the slider on the right and bottom to center the tree in our window.
11. Erase the tree and any other artifacts that may exist as shown below (again, using the slider on the bottom and/or on the right to move about):
12. You should now have something like this:
13. Next, import your next layer (the underwater scene). From the menus, I used "Layer>Import from file" and browsed to and selected my image.
14. In this example, my underwater scene is smaller than the ruins that I'm working with, so I will now resize it. Simply click and hold with the mouse the little circle on the corner and drag it down to the corner of our existing picture to make our picture fit to the same size
15. It should now look like this:
16. Next, on the Layers pane, click the down arrow to move this layer down and it should now become a background to our image of the ruins:
17. You will note in our example we can still see part of one of the dolphins visible, so next resize from the lower left corner of our selected picture and drag it further left and down until the dolphin is well hidden behind our scene.
18. Next, from the Layers pane, click on our original background so it is now highlighted as shown:
19. Go to the menus and select "Color Balance":
20. Move the sliders to the settings shown below:
21. Next, using the selection tool, select the background much like I have below:
Note: Please note that I have used the walls as a rough boundary
22. With our area selected, go into the menus and navigate to "Unfocus" as shown:
23. Use the value of 7 and click the "OK" button:
24. Next, with our area still selected, from the menu, navigate to and select "Brightness/Contrast":
25. Adjust the sliders to roughly the same settings as shown below:
26. Next, select the whole picture and navigate to and select "Unfocus" once again using 10 as our value:
27. Once again, in the menu and with our picture still selected, navigate to and select "Brightness/Contrast" and ajust the sliders as indicated:
Note: If you were worried about it before, you will now see that the background is no longer "glowing" as it was previously.
28. Next, from the Layers pane, select the underwater scene, duplicate it, and move it up to the top
29. Next, from the Tools pane, select the "Gradient" tool and "Linear" mode and sweep from the upper right to the lower left about 3/4 of the way through (if the dolphin begins to re-appear backup in the opposite direction until you can not see it - we don't want a ghost dolphin in our picture):
Note: This will give the illusion of the beams of light from the surface eminating onto our ruins as well as changing the shading a bit in the background.
30. Once again from our Layers pane, select the ruins again.
31. Navigate through the menu again to "Brightness/Contrast" and adjust the sliders once more as shown:
You should now have the completed undwater ruins scene:
Edited by jim100361, 25 November 2011 - 11:04 AM.
