Project #2: Northern Lights

Ciao, ragazzi! Come state? ("How are ya'll?")

For my Photoshop project I wanted to do two things:

1) Transform something. Not just "cut and paste" but completely make over an image into something new.

2) Work with water in some shape or form.

The following are the before and after pictures:

Before

After

Basically, I transformed this image of an arctic wasteland into large glacier formations floating in a sea under an Aurora Borealis. For my first attempt at Photoshop, I have to say I'm really pleased.

The trickiest part was creating the surface part of the water. I had to mask out the ice formations into a different layer and then rendered a couple of fiber effects on top of a solid blue rectangle shape. I used the "Perspective" transform tool to make the ripples in the water look like they were coming from the horizon. As for the reflections, I masked out each of the large glacier formations, used a horizontal flip, placed them underneath the water effect and lowered their opacity.

The sky is just the MacOS Snow Leopard background with a rendered cloud effect placed over it with an "Overlay" blender.

The last thing to do was a color correction for the glaciers so they were no longer the stark blue. I added a little purple in the mid-tones and shadows to add a little warmth and make it look like the Northern Lights were reflecting upon them.

And there you go. I hope you like it!

Alex