Step 15
Now let's focus on flowers, butterflies and other stuff. The fastest way to create a digital work out of many small elements is to prepare yourself, finding stock images that ale already with alpha channel (transparent background) – for example those in PNG, TGA or already PSD format. If you've got a file in PSD, for “examplegiant_ivy” and “aspidistra” by WammyP, you can just copy the layers to your destination document (ctrl/cmd + a then ctrl/cmd + c on the desired layer in source document, then ctrl + v in our work). Create two groups in your layer manager. One that will contain flowers that’ll be behind the letters, which should be created below the text, and the second one above for the stuff in the front. Paste each flowers etc on one of those depending whether you want them to be in front of or behind the grassy text.
Now let’s add more flowers and leafs. Open Flower_pack_by_Aliedda.psd and copy/paste layers with the flowers into our main document. I’d especially suggest you to use the tulip.
Step 16
In this work more flower means better effect, so now we are going to add “flower_pack.psd” by monika-es-stock. Every flower is on a separated layer, so we just need to copy and paste it to our work.
And now it’s time for “stock9 – yellow flower ” by pralinkova-princezna. In this one, we have to extract it from the background. In this case we can just use quick selection. When we have it in our work, you now need to put it into the right place. When it’s ready, duplicate the layer and resize it. Now from we have two flowers out of one. J
And now the gorgeous butterflies. Open butterflystock.png. Extract each insect from the source document simply select them using Lasso Tool and then do the same as you did with the others. In one of them it'll be great to use Layer mask to make it look like it sits inside one of our flowers.
To do that, pick Layer\Layer Mask\Reveal All from the menu and remember to have the right layer selected before. When you’re on the layer mask start painting using black colour on areas where you don’t want the butterfly to be seen.
As you can see, I added also a small bird from “small_birds.psd” by fairiegoodmother. You can also add some more things to our work like birds, insects, etc… just be creative and find your own stuff.
Step 17
When you’re finished with all those elements, there’s only few final things to do to. I think we should change the colours a bit by adding at the top an adjustment layer with gradient on it. To do so, create a new layer above the SPRING group and fill it with radial colour gradient as in one of the first steps of this tutorial. The settings this time are:
In Blending Mode pick Soft Light and change layer opacity to 50%.
Now it looks much better. Well, the work is finished and now you can put in on desktop as a wallpaper.
