This is what I did last night. The pic is ok but what was important to me is the learning process. I did this really late at night, as I had just read about some things I could do with refine edge and couldn’t wait! In doing this I learned several ways of selecting things – the quick select tool is the best – I learned why they call the magic wand the tragic want (I heard a guy from adobe say that). There were several versions of the pic, all of them different refine edge options. Bread and butter workflow seems to be quick select followed by refine edge. I will need to work with this more.
I learned creating layers and solid filling them. So at this point I had cut me out of the original photo and put me on a black background.I then loaded and modified an image of dark wood, created a layer for modifying the brightness of the background.
I then took the picture layer and started trying different effects on it until I found a paint effect I liked, and applied it to both the foreground and background.. i used slightly different effects on both just to see if i could. It’s not an awesome pic – it has me in it, but it was an awesome learning experience. I will continue to tweak it just for fun and then add it to my gravatar.
Its me!
Owen Richardson's Blog 