http://thisandthat.edublogs.org/2012/12/25/christmas-christmas-time-is-here/ - Christmas tree
The three images of the people and the snow on the floor are my own images. The images of Lana and Mollie are old images that I shot in the studio and out on location. The image of Ollie is a new image that I took in a park. He was in the park playing with his sister. Red/green gradient tool because that adds a Christmas feel for me personally.
First I opened the background image of the house in photoshop.
I then opened the image of Mollie and roughly cut her her and pasted her onto the image of the house by dragging the image on top. I added a layer mask to the image of Mollie so that I could remove any things that weren't needed and more background could be seen.
I did the same with the image of Lana, however I played around with scale and size. I made Lana smaller so it looks like she's looking out from the house.
Again I did the same with the image of Ollie and just made him slightly smaller so it looks like he's further back than Mollie.
In the original image where I placed the christmas tree there was a fountain feature so I just used the bottom of that as a guide for where to place the tree.
Next I used an old picture of snow that I'd taken and placed just above the background layer so that the other images that I'd just added would still be seen. I used a layer mask to remove the top part of the snow image so it only covered the ground.
Lastly I used the gradient tool with red and green to add the colour on top on the image.
Looking at the image now, I think it would have worked better without the christmas tree as it just looks a bit out of place and you can see where I've used photoshop to cut the image out. I do like the image though I think it has a weird horror film type of feel to it. I reminds me of something I'd see on the tv show The Vampire Diaries.
