The Elven King's Gate

[The Dude]

Hi this is my first post.

I really enjoyed this forum so far. Great tutorals and art going on!

I'm not sure where else to put this... I need advice.

I started this about 3 weeks ago, the foreground is complete. I won't show all the versions of this picture but I would like to show it as it progressed so it will help to point out when I made any mistakes in the process.

I'm a bit of newb this was made with Photoshop 7 for Windows the animated version was made with Sqirlz.

First of all what you are going to see is my attempt at photo realistic creation of a picture drawn by J.R.R Tolkien entitled 'The Elven Kings Gate'. It is created entirely from stock photos.
Untouched
With rays of Light
Check out the caption on the bottom I tried to make it look it's made by the rays of light.
Foreground complete
This version has an animated river.
Flowing River

Like I said the I'm of the mind set that the foreground is done and I'm starting on the background but before I go ahead is there any major problems with lighting or whatever that I should content with before I move on to the background?

Thanks for taking the time.

[DannyRaphael]

Welcome to RetouchPRO, Dude:

Although for whatever reason my Internet Explorer wouldn't complete the download of the last animated version, the work on the other images is very impressive -- especially the light rays.

This type of artwork isn't really my thing, so this observation is based on gut reaction, not technical expertise. Something that looked a bit out of place for this theme was the bright green leaves against the very blue sky.

See attachment (also done in PS7) for a before/after (toned down a bit) comparison.

Hope this gives you something to think about. In any event you're off to a great start. Keep up the good work.

~Danny~

[The Dude]

Thanks.

Great advice Danny.

Checked out the attachment you are right about the leaves and sky that’s definitely the direction I would like to go. Maybe some shadow to the right and bottom of the leaves as well?

Exactly what settings did you use to alter the image?

As for the sky it's probably going to be replaced as are many things in the background, I may make a version of it at night as well.

The rays of light I made using a tutorial someone posted here I think.

http://www.tutorialwiz.com/rayoflight/

Used Luminosity instead of Lighten and lowered the opacity to 65%. (Two Quick Questions: What is the difference between opacity and fill anyway? To me they appear to do the same thing. When should I use one and not the other?)

Sorry about the animated version this has given me nothing but grief in terms of sharing it. Try this url Flash River There is a .gif version at this url Animated River it's about 7 mb.
(If you want to view or dl scroll down to bottom of the first page that opens and click the Free button then you have to wait about a minute and enter a confirmation code to see the photo.)

Thanks for the encouragement and help.

[DannyRaphael]

Thanks for the link to the tutorial... That will help other folks who want to experiment doing this type of effect get started.

re: Exactly what settings did you use to alter the image?

I added two hue/saturation adjustment layers and turned on the "colorize" option. Settings (nothing scientific here): 43, 12, -52 and 32, 23, -36. Each adjustment layer was inverted (ctrl + I), then I airbrushed with white here and there on each to reveal the brown toning in desired areas. The beauty of this approach is the ability to easily mess with the colors after the fact by tweaking the HSL controls, fine tuning opacity and/or adding HS adjustment layers for additional tones -- or trash the adjustment layers and start over without having to undo a lot of other work.

The animated .gif is very impressive. Great stuff.