I've followed this discussion with a huge interest. as for me, I have an ambivalent opinion about "pure photography" and creative post processing. I mean, why chose? if well executed both can be recognized as artistic skill. that's why I decided to post a tutorial about digital art, to give a closer look at that processing.

All editing steps are "non-destructive" by using layers and masks. Always open a new layer for every brush! So you are free then to switch off or replace a layer, whatever.

And just to give you an idea about the approx. time exposure too - for the concerned picture in this tutorial, I worked on it about 20 hours. okay, let's start now, I hope it will be helpful. enjoy! :)


step 1 - dress the girl
As original picture we have a portrait. We merge the photo with the dress-brush. Now we have to adapt the blending of the blouse to the dress. We do this by adding a mask to the picture layer and with the black soft brush, using approx. 50% of opacity (or more); we reveal the parts of the dress. To make the blending more homogeny, we use the shadow tool.
It is helpful, if you put all on black or white background,this makes it easier to integrate the picture later in a texture.





step 2 - place the girl on big screen

Think over, where you want to place the girl and give enough space to play around with it! You can adjust the position later. Next step will be integrating the window.





step 3 - the window texture

Chose the position of the window well, it has to fit proportionally with the girl and gives depth to the picture. We set the texture layer on "linear dodge". As you see on the little picture, the texture layer covers some parts of the girl. We add a mask on this texture layer and with the black pencil, using approx. 50% of opacity, we reveal the parts of her body and dress. Just try out, how much opacity it needs, this is different in each picture!





step 4 - change wall texture

We put another texture now on the wall, to give more "vintage look“ and set the texture layer on "soft light". The little picture shows, that the girl was covered again by the texture. so we repeat the same procedure like before and add a mask to the texture layer and reveal the parts of her dress and body with the black brush, using approx. 50% of opacity (or more).





step 5 - adding some shadow

Now we add some more shadow on the wall, using the "burning-tool". Don’t forget to add shadow on the dress too.





step 6 - dark indoor shadow

We imagine this girl in a dark room, only lightened by the sunlight coming trough the window. So we have to add more dark shadow around her, to amplify this dark feeling. We do this using the "gradient tool" set it on black and clear and put the dark parts on the floor. We could finish the picture here but we want to give a highlight to the picture.





step 7 - butterflies brush

Imagine some butterflies flying around, and light beams enlightening the dark room. We place the butterflies by using a butterfly brush on a new layer. Two of them near to the window and one single butterfly on the girl’s hand.





Step 8 - light beam brush

As you can see, when we add the light beam brush, the butterflies are almost hidden. We use here the same masking technique to reveal them. Then we put some shadow on the butterflies, to give them a better 3D look.





finish & save

The image is finished now. below you see the layers of what we’ve done.
Flatten the image to one layer, resize as needed, apply sRGB colour profile and sharpen if necessary. Then save as jpeg, upload to your online gallery and you’re done :)





if published, I'll post the oe-picture link later.
until then you may see it here, on my blog.



best, calisto :)

cool stuff :)

Very well done!
Thanks for the insight Calisto.

thank you guys, for the feedback :)

Awesome. Can you write more about the lightbeam brush? I wanna make the same effect for landscape, when sun is behind the clouds, but can't.
Thanks.

Superb article, Calisto! Big thanks for taking the time to write this!

Great tutorial, Calisto!
Thanks!

deviantart is a good address to find free stock of brushes and textures.
but read the individual stock rules carefully.



you're welcome jacob. happy if it is useful :)



glad you like it, thanks for your reply Michael :)

Thanks a lot. Will do. :)
Great tutorial. Awesome PP skills

have fun with it John :)

Thanks a lot Linda ! I will study this tutorial very carefully and hope to learn how to make such great images.

happy if it is helpful dear Angela. let me know when you did something in that direction or whether I can help you :)

such generosity...to share you time and talent. thank you.

Thanks for the tutorial.

brilliant and thanks :)