Making an Alice in Wonderland Portrait with 12 Hours of Photoshop

wonderlandhead

After my Star Wars photo-manipulation went viral, I was contacted by a fellow in Hong Kong who wanted to surprise his wife with a bit of Wonderland. He gave me some photos of him and his bride, and then graciously gave me artistic freedom to create the photo above.

Thanks to input from my last venture, I explored the possibilities of using Refine Edge and the pen tool for selections. Refine edge… mind blown. Still, and this goes for the pen tool as well, there were some fine-tuning times I still opted to use my trusty brush tool.

There was much trial and error, with many evolving ideas. Instead of boring you with everything that didn’t work, for the most part in the video, you’ll only see the bits that made it into the final artwork.

I wish I could report with gusto that my editing time was cut in half (heck I’d settle for a third). I DID indeed save a ton of time with selection — loved it. But since the concept evolved, I ended up at about the same Photoshopping time of about 12 hours.

first

second

third

wonderlandhead

I hope you enjoyed watching the process!


P.S. Be it known that my computer crashed and lost one of the screen-recording clips near the end, so you’ll see the foreground elements and some grass details magically appear; alas, you still get the gist.


About the author: Tanya Musgrave is a photographer based in Southern California. You can find more of her work and writing on her website and blog. This article was also published here.

Discussion