This is a project for GA course. Details from my submission to the class:

Here we have a advertisement postcard for the fake company, Windmill Tourism, advertising it's Ancient Greek Adventures tour.

I started out with 4 images and decided on using 3.

The background and overlay is an image of a couple walking away from a sunset on a beach. The light was fairly bright while the landscape was dark... Perfect for what I wanted. In the sense of the finished postcard, I see them walking away from the sunset (like most people wouldn't with one this pretty) because they are having such a wonderful time seeing the ancient ruins of Greece through this agency. Bother the overlay and the background are the full size of the final image.

The next image is what looks like an old amphitheater. This one covers the entire image as well. I choose it because It gave me a tall structure on the left with some stone on the bottom (kind of like a border).

The next image is of an oracle structure I think. I just needed something that fit the scenario but didn't have an overpowering presence.

Sooooo, The process...Hmmm If I can remember.

First. I set up the left ruin as the background with the right ruin on top and the couple image onto of both of them. Then I used overlay on the couple image and I was surprised at what I saw. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for though. The top half of the couple was VERY light compared to the bottom half. So I tried making a copy of the couple image and placing it as the background. No go, but it gave me something else I was looking for. I wanted the couple on top and the sunset behind the ruins. So this started to work for that goal.

Now that I have the basic setup, I used the magic wand and cut out the darker part of the couple image and pasted it under the overlay. Perfect, all of the couple was now dark. With that out of the way, I magic wanded the sky on both ruins and convert the selection to masks allowing the background sunset to break through to the top of the image.

Now I had an issue with the pedestal and the woman showing on the right ruin, so I moved it below the left ruin and applied a lighten blend. It just didn't seem to work right so I removed the blend. The important part is that the pedestal and woman was hidden now making the right ruin look connected to the left ruin somehow.

Next I wasn't sure what to do. I tried a few things that didn't seem right and then BAM, I tried a picture frame. Ooooo... I can make a postcard out of this I thought and Windmill Tourism was created!

The windmill is a transparent stock from Deviant Art (actually all the images are from DA). I sized it to fit in that bulk of darkness in the bottom left and put the company name right under it. Next I created the band, and copied it. Then texted Ancient Greek Adventures. I used the text as a mask for the second band. Then added a small glow to the text to smooth it into the bottom band. Last step was the fake address up on the top right to fill in a bit of the light space.

The rest was just blur, dodge, etc to clear up some spots here and there.

I'm pretty proud about this one. I think it came out looking really well and 99% the way I had envisioned it from the conception of it.

BTW: 56k warning here! It is 1200 by 800, basically a 6:4 postcard. I did re-size it and print it once to make sure it worked well enough in postcard size, and it did.

Links to stock art on DA:
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