3.Initial Practice

For an early practice piece I have gone over my current skill set to create an image that relates to the one of the genres I have chosen for my final piece.

The effects are fairly evident, but I feel this will just showcase my progress better.

I took a picture of a church from the internet; I tidied up the grass and headstones using the spot heal brush and used the content-aware patch tool to remove two headstones from the front.
I then added a plastered wall texture over the image which created a mottled effect on the sky, giving the illusion of scattered clouds. This layer used the soft light effect.
I then added a dark image of a ghost which I cut down using the lasso tool, I then shrank the image, placed it and changed the opacity to 54%. To cover some of the ghost I took one of the headstones I originally removed and layered it over the lower half of the ghost. Lastly I added a cracked paper effect over the top of the whole image using the darken layer type.

This is the original image;

This is the edited image;

The effect is as though it is a weathered and crumpled photo. As I previously said the editing is obvious and it gives me a good starting point. 

I have used techniques in the making of this that correlate with techniques used for horror, making the image darker and unnerving. Next I will try to use my current skill set to adapt an image to match that of one used for Fantasy!