Tropic Castle on the Beach

This project starts with two stock images: a medieval castle and a sunny beach. Of course, you can use any two images. My before and after images are shown below.

  1. Because the edges of the walls are straight, I used the polygon lasso to select the castle.
  2. I refined the selection with Quick Mask. (Press Q for Quick Mask. D for default colors. B for brush. Put your finger on the X key. Use black to paint the rubylith [mask] around the castle. Press the X to switch to white. Paint out the rubylith where you may have it covering part of the wall.)
  3. When the mask is painted around the castle, press Q to exit Quick Mask mode. The castle is now selected.
  4. With the Move tool, pull the castle into the beach image.
  5. Use Free Transform to flip the castle, (ctrl-F, right-click the image, click flip horizontal) Right-click again inside the Free Transform frame. Choose Skew, Perspective and Distort as needed to make it fit where you want it. Press Enter, or double-click inside the transformation to exit Free Transform mode.
  6. I used a layer mask to bring the palm trees in front of the castle: mask out the castle until an approximate effect is achieved. It should be close, but not perfect. Some blue from the sky will be mixed in with the palm fronds, and that okay because selecting (even with a mask) is not the best way to get rid it.
  7. On a new layer, using my favorite tool, the Smudge (found grouped with the Blur tool in PS5) I shoved pixels around until I had palm fronds drooping gracefully in front of the brown stones of the castle. Smudge walls and fronds over any blue tints. I also used Smudge to straighten the wall edges of the castle.
  8. When it looks right, flatten the image and save it.

Back to Welcome Page

castle

beach

tropical

Use your browser's BACK command to return to the Current Projects page.

1