I made these images for my niece. She's three years old now. She loves playing dress-up as a princess. My cousin asked me to compile her photos and create a fantasy-like collage. I didn't know what people consider as fantasy, so I gave my best shot.
The first image was easy. I just piled a photo of some clouds on top of my niece's larger photo, and changed the opacity of the top layer until I was happy with the result, and then I merged both layers. I shrunk the other eight pictures of her and add some layer masks and painted some black on the edges with an airbrush. Done.
With the second image, I used more care to create the apples. Here, I compiled four photos. One was still in the actual size, the other three I shrunk. Same basic layer masks addition to soften the edges. After all the photo layers were merged, I pasted the apple image I made in another window to a new layer. Adjusted the size, then copy-pasted it until I had my border consisted of apples. Done.
The third image only used one photo and three pumpkin carriages. I erased the background of the photo and placed it in the middle of the canvas. I added some background color with gradient fill. I already made the pumpkin carriage picture and only changed the size and color for this collage.
The steps were simple for a professional graphic designer. Not for me. I spent days working on these. But it's all for my niece. Now she can happily show off her charm on her father's YM.
