Enlightenment from above

[etienne]

This challenge was left W I D E open...loved it. Here be my submission.

The composite image consists of basically 5 layers with a few adjustment layers on top of that. All of the individual images were yanked off of google image search. From the bottom up:

Base layer: A greenish creek bed cropped to fit...uhh thats it.

Fish: Extracted him from an image with my trusty extraction weapon of choice, the pen tool. His angle was a touch off so I used the liquify tool . He also has a brightness/contrast adjustment layer and opacity tweak. The last touch, the bubbles, a cool brush-set courtesy of Adobe Action Xchange:
http://xchange.studio.adobe.com/axAs...sortorder1%3Dd

Water: Started out with a tutorial from http://www.spoono.com/tutorials/photoshop/water/ . The original was a little too turbulent for my needs so I modified it it. Instead of running radial blur on the clouds layer I ran a motion blur. This didn't give the contrast for a proper "wave" effect. So I hand painted some black and white wavy bits and stylized with bas relief and chrome. I then added a wave and zig zag distort to my liking. I finally adjusted w/ Hue/Saturation to get my coloring.

Eagle reflection: One of the wings was definitely not going to work. So I erased it, copied the other wing to another layer flipped it and nudged it into place and merged. When I'd placed him I adjusted his brightness, contrast and opacity to achieve a reflection.

At this point I ran adisplacement map on both the fish and the bird. I made a copy of my water layer, greyscaled it and saved it as a seperate file, displace.psd. I ran filter>distort>displace w/the default settings once on each animal. Heres a link to a wicked diplacememt tut:
http://www.polykarbon.com/tutorials/...splacement.htm

Talons: made a copy and did a light gaussion blur and stylized w/ wind twice...trying to give a sense of movement. I ran a hue/sat adjustment layer to get the orange huer and then hand painted the mask to bring the talons back.

There were a few final tweaks that I did but unfortunatly lost my first description so this one is by memory.


Cheers,
Etienne

[jeaniesa]

Very cool!! I love it!

Jeanie

[DJ Dubovsky]

I agree....Way Cool. The water looks so real.
DJ

[Ed_L]

A split second later and you'd have to classify this image "R" rated due to extreme violence. First time I ever saw a fish sweating! Extra cool! Big thumbs up.

Ed

[Jakaleena]

Yes! Definately way cool. Or even waaaaay cool....!

[jerry]

Wow.... Just ...... Wow.....

Jerry

[T Paul]

Fantastic job on your entry Etienne! I absolutely love the viewpoint on this! The look on the fish’s face is simply priceless. Excellent description and with links too! THANKS so much!

-T

[etienne]

I've never even fathomed the thought of being an artist and not that I even consider myself one now , I do see a small glimmer at teh end of the tunnel.

Thanks for the oppurtunity,
Etienne

[CJ Swartz]

Etienne - I also love the image - the expression on the fish's face is telling, and the use of just the talon plus the reflection is creative.

"History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed;
Art has remembered the people, because they created."

--- William Morris (1834-1896)
English artist, poet, and social reformer

[fugitive]

I like it..............but, if you want to improve it, here's what I would do. Sharpen the eagles claws till their in focus.
Add or darken shadows below water, both these things will add more contrast and punch to the image.
greg

[farron]

The expression on that fish's face is priceless!

I like it. Fun, fun!

_^..^_
Farron

[tom c]

A little late getting here....but that is one great image.....love it
The fish expression is just right....
tom

[pstewart]

Etienne, I really love your eagle/fish picture. Wonderful idea, and well-executed!

Phyllis