A little insight into my workflow.....

OK, you may have noticed my new avatar on twitter... I thought I would share how I made this image with you.  Its not in any way a tutorial or anything like that... Simply a chance for you to see what can be done at a fairly simple level.

Actually, when I say simple it's not simple, its really quite complicated, but I meant that it is simple compared to some of the stunning photoshop work that's out there...

So this is what we ended up with...

So to start with I loaded a background image into photoshop:

Then I loaded a picture of me sitting on that same bench (except it was an iPhone photo taken by my son this time) into the same document and adjusted the size and colouration, I also cut out sections so that they images would blend together, I also added a few extra components to give the image a little more interest:
(in this image you can see the extra bits I added to the original photo):

Then bring all the components (the Background and the additional bits) together into one flattened layer. I will call this flattened (this just means all grouped together) layer BASELAYER, as I refer to it later:

So that look OK but its nothing special... I wanted a misty surreal rays of light image so..

I firstly added a gradient map, this is a way of converting to black and white except it gives me a little more control over the contrast and 'punch' of the conversion, you'll notice that I have left some colour in the lily in this next image. I did this using a Layer mask on the gradient map, as I didn't want to lose the lily in the background:

Next a Colour fill layer with a sepia or warm tone:

Right, I want a little of the original colour to com back through, so I took a copy of the 'BASELAYER' and added it to the top of my layers stack, then reduce the opacity right back to around 15%.... Once I did this I then flattened the whole thing down into one layer again ready for lighting effects... ((Actually I didn't, I merged visibles into a new top of stack layer by using ALT+Merge visible so i could retain my layers beneath but it was easier to explain it that way.))

OK so now the light.... I made a copy of the new background, added zoom blur at max from top left corner, set blending mode to 'Screen' and removed any unwanted effect using a layer mask:

Finally, in a new layer i added some mist by simply painting on some white with a reduced opacity brush and fiddled with it in the layer mask.

Ta Daaaaaaa:

Its not a super sleek pro job, and its wouldn't stand up to much criticism if viewed too closely, but you get the idea right??

Also, the chances are that non of that made much sense to you... but here's the thing, there are loads of tutorials on YouTube to get you working with the basics of photoshop. Go have a look and give it a try..

Tip of the day: A bland snapshot can suddenly look amazing by simply converting it to black and white.

My brain hurts now from too much typing, have a great day.