Tutorial #01

[goodbyebird]

Ok, we start with this cap from leavemethewhite.com. I want to focus on Wendy without any of the clutter around her, so I use a combination of the Smudge Tool and the Clone Stamp Tool to replace the surrounding items with just more plain, background wall.

Since you'll be continuing to extend the background you copy and paste it into a 300x300 square, which gives you more space to work on. Repeating the steps you took previously and you should end up with something like this:



Paste in the original cap two more times(without repositioning/resizing this time), and put both layers on soft light. There's a couple of dark splodges on the left side, just use the Smudge Tool to get rid of those. We now have



Re-size it so it's 100x100.

New Layer/Levels:
RGB 8, 1, 211
Blue 0, 96, 255

New Layer/Curves:
RGB input 105 output 125, input 158 output 182
BLUE input 94 output 87, input 153 output 142

We now have



Add this texture by lookslikerain, apply a Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur filter set at 0,8, plus smudge away the bigger blots at the top. Set it to Soft Light.

At last you add a Soft Light 54% opacity layer between layer 2 and 3, and paint in a couple of white blobs to add some extra light to frame Wendy. Merge and sharpen as you see fit, and that's it!