Checking his World

Had some fun doing creating this Rainbow Lorikeet parrot image. Once again, Matt Kloskowski has created a YouTube video called The Photoshop Technique You Didn’t Know Your Needed on blending textures with subjects. Love Matt’s tutorials as they are always very informative and not rushed at all. Already had a really nice bird image taken at the Jacksonville Zoo.

In Photoshop duplicated the background layer with the bird and then selected the bird. Added a layer mask – the bird appears in white in the mask. Replaced the bottom bird background layer with Jai Johnson Soulful Sea Breeze texture bought in 2015 (could not find it now) – her textures are great for wildlife photos. Then added on top her older freebie Wispy Clouds 2 set to Hard Light blend mode at 61% layer opacity – this brightened up the whole image. A layer mask was added and the corners were painted out slightly where it did not look right. On top of this texture another Soulful Sea Breeze texture was set to Soft Light to add strength to the colors – in a layer mask painted with black where it was too strong around the bird’s head. Selected the bird layer on top and blended the edges in using a very soft round brush set to a Flow of 10% very softly building up a nice effect. Last steps were: a stamped layer (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E) for use with the Camera Raw filter where Texture and a new Profile were added; back in PS an Exposure Adjustment Layer was used to sharpen the eye a little bit; and a Vignette was created using a Curves Adjustment Layer set to Multiply – dragged down the top right side to 50 to make a darker image – just paint a large black circle in the layer mask with a very big soft round brush and set the layer opacity to 30%. The blending takes a little time but overall it was a lot fun…..Digital Lady Syd