Manipulation Tut
First off, I want to say that this image was not made with Photoshop - I do not have Photoshop yet, but I am hoping to receive it soon. Instead, I used a built-in program on my computer called PhotoImpression to create this manipulation, so I do not have all of the tools and brushes and things needed for Photoshop. I just have a regular computer and an okay program.
Of course I am not the best graphic maker, I’ll admit, but I think this turned out to be a pretty good first manipulation.
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Okay, let’s get started. I encourage people with or without Photoshop to try it and see how your finished product turns out. Okay, let the tutorial begin!
First, I opened an image of a sunset I found online and saved to my computer. http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i272/Varianna/1SUNSET.jpg
Second, I opened another picture saved on my computer of a desert and a moon at night. Then, I cropped the moon out of the desert picture and copied it over to my manipulation picture (sunset). http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i272/Varianna/2MOONPIC.jpg,
http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i272/Varianna/3choppymoon.jpg
Third, I slightly darkened the image of the moon by slightly decreasing the highlight, midtones, and shadow of the moon and placing the cropped moon into the upper hand left corner of the screen. (There should be a cluster of small, dark clouds). http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i272/Varianna/4darkenmoon.jpg
Next, I opened a final picture of a mountain and cropped it out of the background. It's okay that the images are choppy - I'll blend them later using the 'blend' tool. After cropping the mountain and placing it on the sunset picture, I flipped the background image (sunset) and the mountain so the sunset is facing the brighter side of the mountain. Leave the moon as it is. http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i272/Varianna/5flipmountain.jpg
Now it's time to blend. When I blend, I never set the blend tool to 100%. This makes the picture blend at full strength. We want a subtle, hidden blend. For this I used 23% and a very small tool to make the moon look like it was supposed to be in the picture. http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i272/Varianna/6blending.jpg
I began to blend the mountain. I used the same setting and a smaller tool to accomplish the goal. Also, it will be a little blurry, but it will look better than a pixilated outline around the object. Try to blend the sunset and the mountain into each other a little bit. This will make it look less abnormal.
Once I blended both the moon and the mountain, I decided to add this texture. http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i272/Varianna/7texture.jpg I copied the image onto my manipulation and then resized it. After resizing the texture, I rotated it so that the yellow was down near the mountain, the blue was in the middle and the pink was up top near the moon. Built in with my program is a bar that separates each image for individual fades. I faded the texture until it was only slightly visible and finished with my end result.
The whole process to create the manipulation took about 30-45 minutes and it was my first manipulation ever. I hope at least one person found this tutorial helpful, if not, it was still very fun to make!
