Create a Floating Island Scene Similar to James Cameron’s Avatar

Now that the first floating island is in place, we would need to separate it from its background. Activate your Magic Wand (W) tool and select the regions you want removed and after selecting those just press delete. Notice that the Magic Wand tool doesn’t totally remove all those unwanted areas, so we would have to erase it manually. Activate your Eraser tool (E) and erase the areas that have not been removed. For more accuracy, I suggest you increase the zoom to 400%. You can do that by going to the Navigator window and increasing the Zoom slider or the Zoom level. Erase those areas and come up with an image similar to the one below:

Next, we will fix the shape of the island. Activate the Polygonal Lasso Tool (L) and see reference below for the area we need to remove.

Now the image should be similar to this:

To thoroughly fix the shape of the island we would need to transform it. Activate the Transform tool and click on Warp from the contextual menu.

After doing that rename the layer to “island 1” and reduce its Opacity to 90% to make it blend with the background.

To make it more seamless, we would need to decrease the opacity of a small part of the island. Activate your Eraser tool (E) and use the following values:

• Brush size: 200px
• Hardness: 0%
• Opacity: 100%
• Flow: 100%

For the second island, we would need to duplicate (Ctrl/Cmd + J) “island 1” then rename the duplicated layer as “island 2”. Resize “island 2” through the Transform tool and after resizing it, flip it horizontally. We would need to flip it horizontally to give variety over the islands.

Then after that, reduce its Opacity to 80%. Now duplicate “island 2” and rename that layer “island 3”. Activate your Transform tool once again because we need to reduce its size.

Now we would need to make this small island different from the two other islands. Activate the Eraser tool (E).

After that, reduce its Opacity to 55%. Duplicate “island 3”, rename it “island 4” and then scale it down using the Transform tool.

Reduce its Opacity now to 40%. Click on “island 2” and duplicate it. Rename that layer “island 5” and resize it using your transform tool.

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