Our overview of the main types and styles of processing photos in Photoshop (Photoshop) with examples.

List of styles that will be discussed in this review.
Glamor, Fashion, Vogue, Beauty, High Key, Low Key, Instagramm, Grunge, Swag, Сlub style, Pop-Art, Esquire, Pin-up, Retro style, Vintage, Fantasy, Vanil, Street photography, Golden photo, Black and Red, Noir, Sunlight, Dunhill, Habana, Deep Blue, Pencil drawing.

The first in our group will be very fashionable, glamorous and similar ideas and options for processing photos, but they also have significant differences.

A brilliant and luxurious style - for placement in the personal photo album of a fashionista, and for publication in an expensive glossy magazine. All the best in the model in the photograph is usually effectively emphasized, and all the flaws: scars, moles, redness, folds and irregular proportions are hidden. Very similar to the "Fashion" style.

These are photographs about fashion and for fashion. That is why the main task of Fashion photos is to highlight and show clothes, accessories and other objects related to fashion in the pictures. This style is used to create a sophisticated look. Delicate pastel shades, highlights, light natural range of shades, etc. The value of fashion photographs is that not only clothes and accessories are shown, but also the general image of the model: poses, facial expressions, makeup, hairstyle, emotions and belonging to the era and time of creation. Very similar to the style of "Vogue".

"Vogue"
Basically, this is a photograph taken for the cover of a fashion magazine. Soft colors and shades emphasize the femininity and beauty of the model. Men in this style are almost never filmed.
The Vogue style is very similar to the Beauty style.

This is a close-up photo that focuses on the eyes and lips, mainly the model's makeup. The main difference between such shooting and portrait photography is the gloss, which must be present. It is widely used by models to create their portfolio.

Special photographic processing techniques resulting in delicate gradation, almost airy images. These shots are composed almost entirely of “white” with very light gray tones.
In this style of processing, the bright areas of the photos should be much larger than the dark ones.

Photos taken in this manner usually have a lot of black tones, and shadow details often disappear completely. There is very little light in these pictures. These works are usually very contrasting. They often emphasize only the silhouette and the lightest areas in the photo.

Next, we have highlighted the most modern and popular types of photo processing.

The distorted color scheme in the photograph is the "calling card" of this style. Using a variety of color filters allows you to add different tints to these images.
Instagram processing style is a fail-safe technique that helps to make an original out of any bad picture.

Grunge is a style of photography with a "rebellious spirit". The emergence of this style in photography is mainly associated with rock music. Such shots are characterized by soft, muted tones, blurred edges, dirty textures and backgrounds. These spectacular techniques make photography more expressive, stylish and original.

"Swag"
Usually suitable for youth work. These are unimaginably luxurious and bright images that distinguish not only the style of clothing, but also gold jewelry, outfits from the most famous designers, luxurious cosmetics and expensive perfumes - all this adds up to Swag.
These photographs perfectly convey the mood, they are literally defiantly saturated with movement and emotions.

"Club style"
Photos, in club style, are bright and positive. Often these are photos from parties and nightclubs. The overlay of special effects perfectly conveys the atmosphere of a noisy holiday.

The Pop Art style is a stylization of the works of famous artists who worked in the style of popular art. The image loses fine details. Emphasis is placed on color spots and large details - with the help of this technique, the main idea of \u200b\u200bthe photograph is emphasized.

These are mainly portraits. They have become the magazine's calling card for successful gentlemen. It was this magazine that gave the name to the new style of "Esquire". Slight blurring, glare of light reflecting in the pupils, unusual shades make the photo different from the rest.
In the portrait, they try to highlight the iris of the eyes to add volume, shine and expressiveness.

The next group in our review is - how to call it - unusual photo editing styles or "antique".
We added the “Fantasy” style to them, since it didn't fit anywhere else.

The best method for working with female portraits in the style of the once popular Pin-up cards. After correction, the photo takes on a completely new advertising look.

This is a stylization of the picture for the vintage. They have soft colors, often black and white or sepia, the presence of small scratches and harmoniously arranged artificial spots that make the picture look like an old one.

This is nostalgia for the past, a fashionable and very specific direction in photo processing, which is based on the revival of certain trends of past generations and entire eras. This style is usually characterized by the presence of elements of romance and sophisticated luxury, such as elegant hats, lace and quirky antiques. Vintage style is increasingly popular with celebrities and top models.

Basically turns a photo into a fantastic picture. Uses all kinds of effects, creating fabulous images and landscapes. The image undergoes significant artistic retouching and color correction, but does not lose touch with reality.

We included the rest of the processing styles in this group, because some of them are already outdated, and some are still relevant, but not so in demand or are just standard.

"Vanil"
Such processing of the image gives the photo some fuzziness, adds warm, soft and delicate "vanilla" tones. Often used for romantic and wedding photography.

These are street shots of ordinary passers-by surrounded by the city. The main differences of this style from the rest are the naturalness and emotionality of the models.

The style of this processing is to give the photo a golden or bronze tint.
The whole photo looks like a single detail in gamut and color, but with clear midtones and shadows.

Photo processing was very fashionable before. This is a black and white photograph with some elements highlighted in red or scarlet. For example, a black and white photo in which the scarlet rose petals are highlighted, or the contours of the lips are emphasized - this gives the photo a great expressiveness.

"Noir"
When processing photos in this style, they are made in black and white. In them, the main criterion for expressiveness is the play of light and shadow. Examples: water on glass, autumn rain in an old black and white film, contrasting reflections in water, the outlines of old buildings in cloudy weather. Mostly used in landscapes.

The opposite of the "Noir" style.
Light golden sun shades, dawn morning, watercolor.

The essence of this type of photo processing is in "texture", volume, and the use of coffee flowers. They are based on the atmosphere of autumn and rain.

The main distinguishing features of these images are the colors of Cuban rum, the ocean breeze and a bright, highly contrasting picture.

The use of water, cold shades when processing photos. Sea, north, diving.

Photo processing in the style of "pencil drawing", artistic style of sketching, sketching.

There are many more different and interesting styles of photo processing that were not included in this review, but we hope that we could help you a little to learn something new and start understanding these areas.

We should get something like this in the final:

For work we need:
1. Two third-party plug-ins for Photoshop: Imagenomic Portraiture and Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0. Finding them online is very easy. Naturally, you can do without them, by means of Photoshop itself, but in my opinion they make life a lot easier
2. Original photo, preferably not phone-quality or matchbox-sized

3. Photo to create the background. This can be an image of a forest, a flower garden, nettle thickets, etc. In general, something vegetal, with a fairly large amount of detail and tone transition. Not even necessarily high quality. I used the following stock image:

4. A couple of cliparts: grass in PNG format and a snail to create horns:

So:
1. Open the original photo. It is clear that in order to substitute a new background, you first need to remove the old one. We will do it in the most convenient way. Usually I prefer to just simply delete the background around the object with a hard eraser when zooming in, but this time I used the Magnetic Lasso tool, selected the shape and transferred it to a new layer using Layer via Copy:

Hide the background layer, most likely we won't need it anymore.

2. When applying the Lasso Tool, most often there are some unnecessary details, pieces of the old background, dark unnecessary outlines, and therefore we take a hard eraser and carefully traverse the edges of the shape with it, cleaning up this mess:

3. In some places closer to the edge, the shape is still darker, for example, hair, but we need it to fit better into the future, rather light background, so take the Dodge Tool with Exposure equal to 15-20% and lighten the edges:

4. Now you can substitute the background. We transfer it to our picture, put it on the bottom layer and blur the Gaussian Blur pretty much to an almost uniform state:

5. Let's leave the background for now and start retouching the face (in general, this is always the most painstaking part of the work). First, remove all the defects (just the defects, not the entire texture from the face) using the Clone Stamp Tool and the Healing Brush Tool:

Now you can soften the texture of the face a little, here the Imagenomic Portraiture plugin is very useful to us. Duplicate the shape layer (now there should be three of them, except for the hidden background). Apply a plugin to the top layer, but it is advisable not to overdo it with the settings, so as not to get a completely plastic skin:

And then lower the opacity of the top layer to 60-70 percent (but in general this is all done by eye and depending on the size of the source) and erase the areas around the eyes, mouth and other strategically important details of the face that should not become blurred with a soft eraser. They will show through from the bottom layer:

6. Give the eyes some shine and color saturation. To do this, copy the irises of the eyes to a new layer, usually I roughly select them with the Rectangular Marquee Tool, put them on a new layer using Layer via Copy and apply the Color Dodge blending mode for the layer. The unnecessary parts are simply removed with a soft, small diameter eraser:

Let's saturate the eyes a little with color (or we can change it altogether). Go to Hue / Saturation (the iris layer should be selected) and move the sliders to taste. When we are satisfied with the result, click ok and we can merge the top two layers. To give even more shine and some glow effect, you can lightly walk along the lower arc of the iris with the Dodge Tool:

7. Now let's take up the painting work) Touch up the areas of the face. To do this, select a flesh-pink color with a soft brush with a low intensity (5-7%) and on a new layer with the Overlay blending mode we go over the forehead, cheeks, nose and chin, especially over the cheekbones:

We treat the lips in the same way:

8. I got a little wedged into the makeup process by using the Clone Stamp Tool with a soft brush and Opacity \u003d 25-30% to soften the wrinkles under the eyes, uneven spots above the lips and the areas of the chin and the tray (the tray is not a tray on which bring, but what is under the nose):

9. Continue coloring Personally, I wanted to add shadows on the eyelids and always some fresh spring-summer colors, and light green is just right here. The same principle as in point # 7:

10. What seemed appropriate to me to add here is freckles. I really love freckles, but I don't have enough of mine. Here a brush helped me, which is very simple to make, but you can find it on the net. In the form of a scattering of irregular dots. I chose black for the brush and applied the freckles on a new layer, all with the same Overlay blending mode:

11. Let's now pay attention to the fact that the contours of the figure are in strong contrast with the background, because it is blurred, and the contours are very clear and in general, they look somehow unhealthy. Therefore, we take the Blur Tool and blur them, stronger on the shoulders and hair and not too zealous on hands:

12. It's time for third-party details. Open the file with the grass, drag it with the top layer onto our document, place it as it is convenient for us and simulate defocus, blurring it with a Gaussian Blur. To adjust the tone of the grass, because the original is a bit dark, I think I used the Photo Filter, adding yellowness:

You can not be limited to grass, add leaves, flowers, whatever your heart desires, the main thing is not to turn the foreground into a smeared vinaigrette completely

13. Finally, I decided to turn myself into a complete snail-type ram using the shell of that very snail. Drag the snail image and adjust it so that the shell forms a horn, and then remove the snail itself with a soft eraser with a slight transparency (poor fellow "src \u003d" http: / /planetaphotoshop.ru/images/smilies/swoon.gif "/\u003e) and part of the base of the shell so that it as smoothly passes into the whiskey as possible (I must admit that this moment is somewhat limping for me). Slightly blur the snails, because they should not very clear:

The snail is too dark, so it had to be lightened a little and the whole thing was aggravated by the Dodge Tool with range - Highlights:

14. I tried to combine the whiskey (VISOK - m. The side of the head ... (c) Dahl) and the horns with some kind of hair, but it didn't work out very well, maybe you can do better. Select the Smudge Tool, and a soft brush with a very small 2-3 pixels in diameter (if the photo is very small, then generally 1 pixel) we connect the horns with the hair and vice versa:

You can flatten layers.

15. In my opinion, some kind of mishmash is missing, as one friend put it - pseudo-fairy highlights
I create glare as follows: on a new document with a transparent background, in a mess, put blurry spots of white, of various sizes. It turns out a kind of a kind of falling snow out of focus:

Place this snow on top of our work and set the blending mode to overlay (again this overlay "src \u003d" http://planetaphotoshop.ru/images/smilies/nea.gif "/\u003e). The snow turns into yellow highlights, but very bright, so slightly lower the opacity of the layer and erase the highlights from the face area with a soft translucent eraser so that they do not give the impression of some kind of exotic skin disease:

16. The picture is almost ready, but some kind of final processing that summarizes all the elements would not hurt it. This moment is my favorite. For this I am using the Nik Color Efex Pro plugin. I can tinker with it for an hour, choosing settings and effects to my liking:

The balcony photo I used in this tutorial has been removed from the file hosting service. Therefore, look at my screenshots and do similar operations.

Open the balcony photo in Photoshop. With the Pen Tool (P) in Paths mode, draw a path along the railing and grab the top of the image. As a result, the outline should be drawn around the balcony background. Right-click on the path and select Make Selection (or use the shortcut Ctrl + Enter). After that press Delete to remove the background.

Go to Image\u003e Canvas size and resize the canvas to 2000x1500 pixels. Open the background image provided at the beginning of the tutorial in Photoshop and with the Move Tool (V) drag it into the first document. Place this layer under the balcony layer, keeping the original size.

Step 2

Open the girl's photo in Photoshop and use the Pen Tool (P) to extract it from the background. You can also use the channel selection method or the Magic Wand Tool (W). Paste the girl into the main document above the balcony layer. Use the Free Transform Tool (Ctrl + T) to resize the girl layer to 43% (this can be specified in the tool parameters at the top of the program).

Step 3

Before continuing, let's color correct the balcony and sky. Color corrections are needed so that all colors match the color of the sky. It is necessary to increase the amount of blue in the balcony. I always recommend using adjustment layers as they don't harm the base layer.

Above the balcony layer, create a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer (Layer? New Adjustment Layer? Hue / Saturation) and increase the Saturation value to +25. Then create a Levels adjustment layer (Layer? New Adjustment Layer? Levels) and enter a value for the left slider of 176. Finally, create a Color Balance adjustment layer (Layer? New Adjustment Layer? Color Balance) and adjust as shown in the screenshot below.

To enhance the edges of the brick fence, make a copy of the balcony layer (Control-J) and go to Filter? Stylize? Glowing Edges. Set the Blending Mode of the balcony copy to Screen, and lower the Opacity to 50%.

Step 4

The girl also needs to do some color and light adjustments. All this needs to be done using adjustment layers. Make two copies of the girl's layer, right-click on them (in turn) and select Create Clipping Mask. One copy is for sharpening and the other for softening the skin.

Apply the Unsharp Mask filter (Filter? Sharpen? Unsharp Mask) to one of the copies of the girl's layer: Radius - 0.3 pixels, Amount - 215%, Threshold - 3 levels. For the second copy, apply the Surface Blur filter (Filter? Blur? Surface Blur) with a Radius value of 2 pixels. Then apply a layer mask to the second copy, which will hide everything. To do this go to the Layer? Layer Mask? Hide All. Select the Brush Tool (B) with soft edges and white color to paint only the girl's skin.

Above the layers with the girls, you need to create several adjustment layers, and apply a Clipping Mask (Ctrl + Alt + G) to each. Create the following adjustment layers (by clicking on the black and white circle icon at the bottom of the layers palette, you will see a list of adjustment layers):

Levels
Photo Filter
Color balance

The settings for the adjustment layers are shown below:

Step 5

Extract the crow, owl and rose into the main document. Use a Color Balance adjustment layer to change their colors to suit our painting.

Step 6

The main element of all photo manipulations is shadows. The right shadows can make an ordinary painting look very effective. There are several ways to create shadows.

In our case, we will create a soft shadow, since it does not have a specific light source, and there are no other shadows in the picture that would tell us the direction of the light. Select the Brush Tool (B) with soft edges and low opacity. Draw shadow under the girl, owl and rose.

You can see the detailed drawing process in this video.

Step 7

It's time to apply the dodge and burn tools to highlight every detail of the objects. Create a new layer (Ctrl + Shift + N) on top of all layers and go to Edit\u003e Fill and choose 50% Gray. Set the Blending Mode of the layer to Overlay.

Draw the light and dark areas with the Dodge Tool (O) and Burn Tool (O). Use a low Exposure value for both tools (10%).

This is how the layer should look with the Blending Mode set to Normal.

And this is the result before and after working with the lightening and darkening tools.

Step 8

Combine all layers into one separate layer (Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E) and name it “Final”. Right-click on it in the layers palette and select Convert to Smart Object. Now all the filters that we apply to this layer will not damage the pixels of the layer itself. Make this layer (Ctrl + J) and name it “Final Adjustments”. Set the Opacity of this layer to 70%.

Step 9

Select the “Final” layer and go to the Image? Adjustments? Shadows / Highlights. Enter the values \u200b\u200bshown below.

Then go to the Filter? Render? Lighting Effects and adjust as shown below.

Since we converted the layer to a smart object, it is possible to change the filter settings at any time.

Step 10

Select the “Final Adjustments” layer and go to the Image? Adjustments? Variations: Select More Cyan and press OK.

While on the same layer, go to the Filter? Distort? Diffuse Glow. Use these settings:

Step 11

Finally, create a Gradient Map adjustment layer (Layer? New Adjustment Layer? Gradient Map): adjust the gradient colors as shown below. The Blending Mode of this layer is Overlay and Opacity is 15%.

Conclusion

When doing this kind of photo manipulation, I advise you to do a few things:

Use the Dodge Tool (O) and the Burn Tool (O) to soften the skin and improve the glow and shadows on body parts. Shadows are very important, don't forget about them.
Use techniques that do not harm the main pixels of the image (adjustment layers, smart objects, etc.).
Use the Lighting Effects filter. It improves the picture by 99% in most cases.
Don't be lazy to organize your layers palette. Group the layers and name them meaningfully. With a large number of layers, it will be easier for you to figure out where and what is.

Final result:

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Translated from www.psdbox.com, the author of the translation is indicated at the beginning of the lesson.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a fantasy city in the style of Minas Tirith from The Lord of the Rings.

Before starting, I advise you to watch the video with this lesson.

Source codes

Note: If the photos are no longer available, you will have to find a suitable replacement.

Note: the tutorial does not provide detailed explanations of all actions and commands, so it is not recommended for beginners.

Part 1: Preparing materials

Step 1

Let's open one of the photos and try to neatly cut out the city. Let's start with the sky.

Step 2

We activate Magic wand tool (Magic wand) (W).

Step 3

Click on the sky with a stick until you select it completely.

To make the selection neat, use the following options for the tool.

Step 4

Now open the window Refine Edge (Enhanced Edges) to customize the selection.

Adjust the parameter Edge Detection (Face detection) depending on the image you are using. When finished with the selection settings, press the Delete key to delete the sky.

Step 5

Now we take Rectangular Marquee Tool (Rectangular Selection) (M) and select the area you want to keep.

Step 6

We pass Image - Crop (Image - Crop) to crop the image.

Step 7

Step 8

The previous step will need to be applied to all the images we will be cutting. We open the next photo.

Step 9

Select the sky.

Step 10

Be especially careful in difficult places like these trees. In such situations, zoom (Ctrl ++) can make the job easier.

Step 11

When finished, we get this result.

Step 12

Remember to use Refine Edge (Enhanced Edges).

Step 13

We repeat the previous process for the rest of the photos. Save them as PNG and move on to the next step.

Part 2: Getting Started Construction

Step 1

Now the real work begins. To begin with, open the source with the fortress of Mont Saint-Michel, which we will use as the basis for our city. The image is large enough so we'll be working directly on it. If you have a weak computer, try reducing the photo size a little.

Step 2

We use Polygonal Lasso Tool (Rectangular lasso) (L) to select one of the towers.

Step 3

Copy it and move it to another location to add another tower. You can create more copies if you want.

Step 4

We activate Rectangular Marquee Tool (Rectangular selection) (M).

Step 5

Now we need to get rid of everything that looks modern: metal loess, tourists, shop signs, etc. To do this, you can use Spot Healing Brush Tool (Spot Healing Brush) (J) or Clone stamp tool (Stamp) (S).

This is how a well-processed photo should look like.

Below you can see which items have been removed. Don't worry about the cars for now, we'll get rid of them later.

Step 6

Through Polygonal Lasso Tool (Rectangular lasso) select the main tower of the castle. Copy it and paste it on a new layer. We'll need it later.

Step 7

We open the image with the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral.

Step 8

Insert the dome onto the working paper. Do not forget that each new architectural detail must be on a separate layer. This will greatly facilitate the work.

Step 9

To adjust the contrast, go to Image - Adjustments - Levels (Image - Correction - Levels). Adjust the entry and exit sliders until the contrast of the dome matches the contrast of the fortress.

Step 10

Now we need to close the hole below the dome. To do this, duplicate it (Ctrl + J).

Step 11

Move the duplicate below to close the hole.

Step 12

Now we need to crop the top of the dome to make it less recognizable. Select it and go Layer - New - Layer via Cut (Layer - New - Cut to New Layer) (Shift + Ctrl + J).

We will leave the upper part with the cross, and delete the lower one, while reducing the height of the top of the dome.

Step 13

Open the next image with a dome.

Step 14

Copy and paste it onto the working document, then adjust the size (Ctrl + T).

Step 15

Adjust the levels to adjust the contrast of the dome.

Step 16

Now we cut out the roof to connect the two domes with it.

Step 17

To add more detail, copy the small spiers.

Step 18

Create two copies of the paired spiers and flip one of them horizontally Image - Transform - Flip Horizontal (Image - Transform - Flip Horizontally) to create a solid section of four spiers.

Step 19

Place it on the edge of the fortress as shown below.

Step 20

You can add more spiers. The less the strength is similar to the original, the better.

Step 21

Duplicate the piece of the roof railing and use it to add new details.

Step 22

Open the tower image and transfer it to the working document.

Step 23

Select three windows.

Step 24

With these arches we will add new details. Copy them and transfer them to the main building, as shown below.

Step 25

Reduce the size of the arches a little and duplicate them.

Step 26

Select the bottom of the arches and duplicate it several times. Place the copies over the entire height of the wall.

Step 27

Apply this technique to add more arches to other walls.

Step 28

We will now add large walls. Select an empty piece of the wall on one of the buildings.

Step 29

Duplicate the wall several times.

Step 30

To make the result look more realistic, we will add another wall.

Step 31

Place the copied wall in the right place and transform it. Through eraser (E) you can erase excess areas.

We now have some great walls.

Step 32

Opening the image with the London towers.

Step 33

Paste one tower onto the working paper and reduce its size. To maintain proportions, pay attention to the size of the bricks and windows.

Step 34

Adjust the contrast of the tower.

Step 35

To change the appearance of the tower, we will crop it a little and insert new details. Experiment with duplicating individual tower elements, their size and slope.

Step 36

With the tower finished, we can start to create a bridge to connect it to the main architecture of our city. We open a snapshot of a beautiful Belgian castle.

Step 37

Zooming in on the picture, we can see a wonderful base for our bridge. Select it and copy it to the working document.

Step 38

Duplicate this area and bridge the copies one by one.

Step 39

Select, copy and paste the appropriate piece of the wall to create the support and finish the "construction" of the bridge. If necessary, duplicate the columns so that they reach ground level.

Step 40

Select the spire of the original tower, which we copied at the beginning of the tutorial.

Step 41

Move the spire to the new tower. Now she is completely unrecognizable.

Step 42

Open the next castle image and select the right tower.

Step 43

Place it on the working paper and adjust the size.

Step 44

Duplicate the tower with the bridge, move it to the right side of the city and flip it horizontally.

Step 45

Cut off the top of the tower.

Step 46

Use a copy of the group of four spiers to decorate the tower.

Step 47

Duplicate the round tower and place it next to the upper dome.

Step 48

By duplicating the tower several times, we can make it much taller.

Step 49

Copy the right half of the tower and flip it horizontally.

Step 50

We make the tower even higher. Also add a copy of the spire, which we copied at the beginning of the tutorial, so that the tower looks like a huge needle. Also, don't forget to adjust the contrast.

Step 51

Use the previously created bridge to connect the tower to the dome.

Step 52

In this work, we used architecture from different periods of history. To make these differences less noticeable, we will copy small details from some buildings and transfer them to others. Select one of the tower windows next to the dome.

Step 53

Add the copied windows to the dome.

Step 54

At this stage, the city already looks good, it remains to modify the outer walls. Select a large piece of the wall, flip it horizontally and place it on the left side of the city.

Step 55

To close the gap between the walls, select and copy another area of \u200b\u200bthe wall. Mask the seams if necessary.

I hope that you have each element on a separate layer. Select them all and group them (Ctrl + G). Then we duplicate the group to back up all the items. We'll need them later.

Part 3: Background and Lighting

Step 1

Now we can add a suitable background to our illustration. Open the sky photo and place it behind the created city.

Step 2

The sky does not cover the entire background, so select the left side and stretch it along the entire length of the document.

Step 3

Open the desert image and place it in front of the city.

Step 4

Now we will use a mask to edit the desert layer. Add a mask and activate Brush Tool (Brush) (B). Use black to hide the areas and white to make them visible again.

Use a mask to hide all vehicles and other unnecessary elements.

Step 5

The scene must be properly lit for the illustration to look realistic. The light source is located outside the city, so we need to edit all the buildings so that the distant ones are better lit than those that are closer to the viewer.

Photoshop lessons. Photo processing in the style of fantasy.

We should get something like this in the final:

For work we need:
1. Two third-party plug-ins for Photoshop: Imagenomic Portraiture and Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0. Finding them online is very easy. Naturally, you can do without them, by means of Photoshop itself, but in my opinion they make life much easier
2. Original photo, preferably not phone-quality or matchbox-sized

4. A couple of cliparts: grass in PNG format and a snail to create horns:

So:
1. Open the original photo. It is clear that in order to substitute a new background, you first need to delete the old one. We will do it in the most convenient way. Usually I prefer to simply delete the background around the object with a hard eraser when zooming in, but this time I used the Magnetic Lasso tool, selected the shape and transferred it to a new layer using Layer via Copy:

Hide the background layer, most likely we won't need it anymore.

4. Now you can substitute the background. We transfer it to our picture, put it on the bottom layer and blur the Gaussian Blur pretty much to an almost uniform state:

We treat the lips in the same way:

9. Continue coloring Personally, I wanted to add shadows on the eyelids and always some fresh spring-summer colors, and light green is just right here. The same principle as in point # 7:

You can not be limited to grass, add leaves, flowers, whatever your heart desires, the main thing is not to turn the foreground into a smeared vinaigrette completely

13. Finally, I decided to turn myself into a complete snail-type ram using the shell of that very snail. Drag the snail image and adjust it so that the shell forms a horn, and then remove the snail itself with a soft eraser with a slight transparency (poor fellow "src \u003d" http: / /planetaphotoshop.ru/images/smilies/swoon.gif "title \u003d" (! LANG: swoon" />) и часть основания раковины так, чтобы она по возможности плавно переходила в виски (надо признать, что этот момент у меня несколько прихрамывает). Чуть размываем улиточки, ибо они должны быть не сильно четкими:!}

The snail is too dark, so it had to be lightened a little and the whole thing was aggravated by the Dodge Tool with range - Highlights:

You can flatten layers.

15. In my opinion, some kind of mishmash is missing, as one friend put it - pseudo-fairy highlights
I create glare as follows: on a new document with a transparent background, in a mess, put blurry spots of white color, of various sizes. It turns out a kind of a kind of falling snow out of focus:

Place this snow on top of our work and set the blending mode to overlay (again this overlay "src \u003d" http://planetaphotoshop.ru/images/smilies/nea.gif "title \u003d" (! LANG: No" />). Снег превращается в желтые блики, но очень яркие, поэтому немного снижаем непрозрачность слоя и мягким полупрозрачным ластиком стираем блики с области лица, чтобы они не создавали впечатление какой-то экзотической кожной болезни :!}