DMIS 10C, Homework 6

This week's homework was to learn about and play with layer masks, and to produce a composite image using masks. We were also to use a poem, "Beginning" by James Wright, for inspiration.

Here's my resulting composition:

Larger Version

I did end up using a number of techniques in this besides masking and adjustment layers. The tree, the wheat field, and the floating girl ended up taking a lot of brushwork. I also used the clone stamp tool in a few places to pull off the foggy horizon.

I'm not satisfied with the way the creation of masks is presented in the in-class material; I am finding a lot of unsightly jagged edges and other problems around the masked images, due to the soft nature of the selection generated by the Color Selection Tool. When you have multiple layers using the same mask with soft edges, the problem is exacerbated. It is possible to correct these problems by brushing the alpha mask, but that is very very time consuming.

I ended up having to do a few tricks to hide these ugly edges.

I used the following images in this composition:
The Tree
The Aurora Borealis
The Floating Girl
The Wheat Field
The Moon

- Miguel SuVasquez