Enhancments

Each image has been enhanced in different ways, some methods are similar and some images require less editing than others. Here is how I enhanced one of the more complicated images.

I added two more colour layers and set one to “Color” and the other to “Overlay” the combination of the two added more intensity and depth to the colours of my image.

I found a free stock photo online of rippling water for the background. To this layer I added the “Sponge” filter in filter gallery.

To shade the tin soldier I added a second colour layer and used the dodge and burn tools to add shadows and highlights. These tools on a high strength can add very intense tones, which gave the soldier a shine and tin like appearance.  

In the previous image I felt the fish and water looked disjointed, as if they were two separate images and the fish was not submerged in it but simply on top of it.

To fix this I added a layer of blue on top of all the other layers set it to multiply and lowered the opacity slightly, giving the image over all a slight blue hue.  

I wanted to give the impression that water was moving fast and the fish was thrashing around to get to the tin soldier.

I found another free stock image online of water splashing and spiraling. In photoshop I edited the water so it looked like it was wrapping around the fish. I used various filters to take away the realistic appearance so it suited the drawing style. I set the water layer to multiply, duplicated it and set the second water layer to overlay to enhance the colours.

 

 

To create the classic children’s book appearance I put each of the images I created into vignettes. This also created a focus to my images and framed them nicely rather than having the images scrawl off the edges of the page.