Path to Heaven

Surrealist Photoshop Project

Background layer was filled with wallpaper pattern. Then, it was darkened using Colour Overlay and Gradient Overlay effects. The Colour Overlay was set to an opacity of 86% and the blending mode was soft light, with the colour being a light brown. The Gradient Overlay had an opacity of 14% and the blending mode was Multiply. The Gradient chosen was the Black-White colour set on reverse, and using a radial style at an angle of 90 degrees with a scale of 100.

The next layer was filled with another pattern, the dirty paper. This was to make the wallpaper holes seem more realistic since the dirty paper works as a trick. It makes viewers believe that it is the actual wall that they are seeing. Once, again a new layer was added with old newspapers. To give the wallpaper an old aspect.

Background

The wallpaper layer was later placed on top of both the other layers and a Layer Mask was added to erase some areas. The Drop Shadow effect was added with an opacity of 75%, Blend Mode of Multiply and the angle was set to 90 degrees.

Then, the image with the old curled corners newspapers was added. Some areas where erased using a Mask Layer, just like before.

Background

Then, to create the final touch and make it seem a little bit older and gloomy, a new layer was created once again. It was filled with blacktransparent radial gradient. The Blending mode was set to Multiply, the opacity 85% and the radial angle was of 90 degrees.

To create the foreground, a checkerboard image was added into a new layer. Then using the puppet warp using a feather of 2 px, the direction at which the board was pointing was redirected.

Using the adjustments panel, I varied the levels to make the ground seem a little bit darker. I wanted to create this effect because the central point would later be the painting, so everything around it had to be symbolic but not stand out as much.

Foreground

A New Layer was created where I added the checkers at the left side of the image. I used the Magnetic Lasso Tool to remove the Background from the image. The same technique was used for the checkers in the right. The brownish checker that appears to be fallen was added onto a New Layer. Since I couldnt find one on the same kind of image, I was forced to make some adjustments. The checker piece was originally coloured white, so I used the Mask tool to select the area on top of the piece. Then, pressing Q I selected the area I had drawn on, however all of the area around it had also been selected as well, so, using the Select tool on the tools bar I pressed Crtl + Shift+ I to inverse the selection and only select the desired area.

After selecting the area, I added a New Fill Layer, Solid Colour and had to experiment with the colour palette to be able to make the white chess piece similar to the others.
Then to make it seem as if it had fallen, I used the puppet warp tool to flip it.

Foreground

As to the black checker thats in the middle of the board, I used a Polygonal Lasso Tool to remove the piece from the background.

The Frame image was inserted into a New Layer.

Inner Glow Layer Style was added to the frame. The Blending Mode was Overlay, with a 75% Opacity. It had a softer technique and the source was selected to come from the edge rather than from the centre to make it much more interesting.

The Layer with the frame was then duplicated. After going to Filter, then Other, the effect high pass was added under a radius of 1.5 pixels. The Blending mode was set to Overlay so that it added more vibrancy to the frame. Then, a shade layer was created and placed in the empty space of the frame. It was filled with a black colour and the opacity had been lowered to 85%. Using the Quick Mask tool, the layer was selected and it made it easier to apply the effect. The shade was blurred using the Gaussian Blur, and therefore making it better since it would help the painting stand out.

Painting

Then, on a New Layer the image chosen for the painting was added. Using a New Fill Layer, A brown fill was added to the sky, with a Blending Mode of Hue and opacity of 97%. This helped increase the vibrancy of the sky.

After going over the painting I was able to see that it lacked people and feeling, so I chose to add more and different kinds of people.

The boys lying on the ground looking for food up front, were removed from their backgrounds using the Magic Wand Tool and Quick Selection Tool. Then, to shorten the image, the scale tool was used.

Painting

A boy standing almost at the end, wearing orangy clothing, was removed from his background using the quick selection tool. Then, I used the warp tool as well as the rotate tool to be able to position him in the direction desired.

On the right, almost far end there are some brown sort of clothing. Those are some cow skin pieces I wanted to add to give it a much deeper felling other than just a street of people, but a street were they have learnt to hope and survive.

After already having the theme of Poverty framed clearly, I thought of it a good idea to implement the Religious aspect.

As it is shown on the image on the right, on top of the white housing shown in the left hand side of the image, there is a small sign. The sign says heaven. To be able to place the sign into the appropriate direction I used puppet warp to modify it. Then, I used the vibrancy tool and changed the brightness and contrast to give it an eye-catching sign.

Painting

At the very end of the paining we can see a door frame, from where clouds are coming out from. To create that effect of the clouds I used the brush tool, the quick mask tool , the eraser tool and the rectangular selection tool.

Because I knew already what I as going to put in next, I decided to apply a Gaussian Blur to the whole of the background painting image of 1.5 px For the people Gaussian Blur was applied but only at 0.6 px For the door to heaven and heaven sign, I used an iris blur of 0.4 px.

To be able to create the effect of the boy entering the painting I had to do several things. To be able to achieve this, I first removed the background from the image of the boy. To create that effect, what I did was: I dragged the image of the frame on top of the book we are talking about.

Boy

The boys hair was improved using some Colour Overlay, and then doing final touches with a smudge.