" The Rooster " :
Creative Seeing Happens As You Relax
by Jim Austin M.A.
Adobe Certified Expert

    First I took Image 1, above left. At the time I saw Image 1, I was sitting down for the first time after photographing for an hour. As I sat down I relaxed, and thought I'd quit photographing, and so was just "looking" at the scenery without categorizing it to photograph . And, although I'd looked at this plant, called Hens and Chicks, over many years, when I saw it as I relaxed, I saw a face I knew I could enhance in the desktop darkroom, especially when I took a second digital camera picture in black and white.

        Image 3  " The Rooster"  : 

    Back in the studio with Photoshop,  just the right side of the image was cut and
pasted on to the left side of the picture. Then after converting from greyscale to
RGB mode, I used Photoshop's paintbrush to paint color back into the
image and give it a hand - painted feeling, resulting in  "The Rooster", above.

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    Techniques:

I used these steps in the Layers Pallette which you get to by clicking Window > Show Layers.

1. Layer > New Layer.
2. Change layer mode to Darken.
3. Paint color into the image with a toolbox paintbrush set at 100% opacity.
4. Then, Change the layer opacity to 25% which makes the colors you've painted with more pastel.