Great Cormorant - A Composite Picture



Original



One of the pictures that I took the other day when I was at 3rd beach in Middletown, Rhode Island, was of a Great Cormorant flying. However, the picture by itself, although we gave a good look at the Cormorant was basically uninteresting.  Therefore, taking my artistic license.  I adjusted.  First, the picture of the Cormorant, and then inserted it into a picture I had of the moon with a blue sky.  I ended up with a much more pleasing picture.  Of course, when I show this picture, I do tell that it is a composite.  In my old days, doing black and white pictures in the darkroom, I also would make a composite.  Just because I take photographs does not make me any less of an artist, and when I adjust the picture, I add my personal likes on how the picture on how it looked to me.

Here are the steps that I used to create the final picture.

in LIghtroom

I opened the picture in Lightroom and adjusted it to give me the look I wanted of the Cormorant.

After levels adjustment

I then crop the picture, took the  picture into Photoshop and performed a  levels adjustment  to give me a pure white background.


Photoshop

 Then I selected the magic wand and selected the background and put it on its own layer and then put the Cormorant on its own layer

I then opened the picture I had of the moon that I had in light room and opened it in Photoshop , floated both images, then, utilizing the move tool, moved just the layer with the Cormorant in it onto the moon picture and adjusted it to where I wanted to place it.  Then saved the composite picture..
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