Ola and welcome to another guest blog post from Gina Hernandez. This is the second part to a two part series for these images of award winning journalist Jennifer Santiago.
Goddess of War Case Study by Gina Hernandez
1. The element we choose for this photo was fire, as we wanted to create a Modern Goddess of War. First I made a basic retouch to make it ready to start adding different elements.
2. I added a second pair of arms from one of the other images Joao sent me. So I cut out the second set of arms and placed it in my working image. I Re sized it using Free Transform and Warp option.
I usually lower the opacity of my layer as this helps me to see how the reshape will look:
3 . I added a levels adjustments layer to make my blacks darker and a Curves layer to give the image a bit more of contrast.
With hue/saturation layer I changed her dress and make up to red color:
4. I extended the white background to give more space at the top.
And then I made her skin whiter by desaturating it a little and adding a white solid color with blend mode to Screen and opacity adjusted.
5. I added a New Empty Layer and here I used some smoke brushes with an orange color and placed them near to her hands.
6. In a New Layer I used this time some fractal brushes and placed them in her hands to start creating some fireballs.
Using the Layer Style Effects, Lower the Fill Opacity to 0%.
And choose for Gradient overlay a black, red, orange color with radial option.
Add a Layer Mask and paint the hands with black and a soft brush to make them visible.
7. For the inside arms I added an image of a fireball which had a white background and I select as Blend Mode Lighten.
Duplicate the fireball image, change the Blend Mode to Normal. Add a layers mask go to Edit>Fill>Black.
Paint the center of the fireball with white and a soft brush to make the fire more visible.
8. Duplicate the layer where the fractals brushes were used and place it at the top of all the other layers.
In the Layer Style Box:
Gradient Overlay: Orange to yellow with Linear option.
Color Fill: Orange with Blend mode – Vivid light, lower the opacity
Inner Glow: Yellow Color with Blend Mode – Color Dodge, lower the opacity
9. To make the Glow more intense duplicate again the last layer.
And go back to the first layer with fractal shapes and use Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur with 1 to 2px.
