The Daily Texture for 08/29/2015
Rough Seas
| Here's another Daily Texture/Background for those of you who love the SEA and wish to create some dramatic art! I paired this energetic background with a photo of one of my bald eagles. She was actually landing in a pine tree and had pine needles in front of her foot on the left, and she had a branch across one bottom edge of her tail. Rather than do a lot of cloning to clear up those issues, I used masking to blend her right in with the "water", so those areas are now immersed in the background. As always, I placed her photo on TOP of the background and then did my masking. I did use Topaz Remask on this one to get more of a precise mask around her feathers. Then I actually masked away some of the feather tips and edges of her wings to allow her to blend nicely into the background. I find this additional masking of the edges to be an important step - sometimes when using Topaz Remask or other software which can "cut out" a subject, once placed on the background or texture it can look "pasted on". I don't like that look at all, so after I do the initial mask with the software, I will then use a low opacity brush {with hardness set to -0- to give me the softest possible blend} to further work on the edges and make them fade right into the background. After masking, I duplicated the texture and placed it on top, setting it to soft light at 100%. This brought more light to her head and made the colors deeper and richer. It also brought some of the color tones from the texture into her feathers, which helped create a cohesive look. I masked some of that layer off her belly area, as it brightened that area too much. After I merged the layers, I then boosted the color using a Topaz filter called "Boost". This really made the entire image become deeper and explode with vibrant color, just like I wanted for this piece of eagle art! |  Like this texture? Buy it here for only $2. Commercial Use OK. TIP: Remember, you can always adjust the color tones of ANY of these textures and backgrounds in your photo editing software {or in Topaz Labs software, if you use it}. The tones in this texture are a purplish blue and tan, but if your subject would look better with a turquoise blue or sea green, simply work with it in your photo editing software to adjust the tones to better match your photograph before you begin your project. :) |
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