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I gave the name Distance to my image because of the wistful look in the girl's eyes that that seem to be focused on something in the distance, or perhaps some interior mental image or memory. I enhanced this feeling of distance by layering over the image a photo of a layered landscape, with layers of hills receding into the distance. The closest layer of hills can be seen by the pine trees in the lower left-hand corner of the image. To enhance the nostalgic feel, as if the girl is focused on some internal image or memory, I also overlaid a handwritten letter, as if from her past. So as not to distract the viewer who might otherwise try to read the letter, I chose one in a foreign language. In fact, it is an old family letter that was written to my grandfather. The distortion I used in the image has doubled her eyes and given a melting look to her skin, which adds to the wistful and nostalgic feel, as if you are viewing her through an antique pane of glass that has become wavy and distorted with age.
I started with this photo from Pixabay, which is a source of copyright-free images.
In iColorama, I used Form/Warp to change the shape of her face (just drag your finger or stylus across the image to warp it). Then I used Brush/Paint, with white paint and a very small, hard round brush to paint in catchlights in the eyes. Then I applied Style/Flow preset 1 at low opacity to smooth the face.
I plan to create a distorted image. That is, I plan to wrap this image of the girl over a base image that will supply the shape, or the peaks and valleys, that the face will wrap over. For the base image in iColorama's Effect/Distort, I reused this image that I previously created in Metabrush. You can get an idea of how I created it here. You don't have to use a Metabrush image, or even an image that looks like this one, to distort over: try experimenting with some different ones.
In iColorama, I used Effect/Blur preset 2 at low to medium radius. I don't want a lot of sharpness or detail in the results of Effect/Distort, instead I am shooting for a soft, smooth result. So I used this very soft blur.
In Effect/Distort, I distorted the girl over the blurred Metabrush image in Normal mode. Using two fingers, you can move, resize, and rotate the top image until you get what you want, then apply.
Next I cropped the image, using Form/Crop.
I used Form/Warp to pull the two small shadowy areas on the lower left edge of the image off the screen. (Alternatively, you could crop them off. I chose to use Warp so that I wouldn't lose parts of the image all the way up the left edge.) Then I used Adjust/Tonelab 4 at low to medium opacity, to add clarity and depth.
Still in iColorama, I used Style/ET-Flow to produce a softer face where there seemed to be a bit of posterization or unwanted detail. If you play with the settings in ET-Flow, you can get a smoothing blur sort of effect, which I applied at medium opacity. (Alternatively, you can use one of these much easier methods to smooth the face: Effect/Denoise preset 2 or 3, Style/Simplify, or Style/Coherence. I usually try the easiest things first until I find what works best for the particular image.) I used an inverted brush mask to protect detail in the eyes, and I used Settings on the brush mask bar to reduce the opacity of the brush mask. Then I removed the brush mask. (You can find a nice tutorial on masking in iColorama here)
Next I am going to use this photo to blend into the image. It is my scan of an old letter of my grandfather's.
In Effect/Blend, I blended the letter over the girl. While in Effect/Blend, I used two fingers to rotate the image so as to put the text on a slant and to resize it so that it covers the face. In Effect/Blend, I used Soft Light blending mode preset, and I experimented with the Opacity and Feature sliders as well as the Lightness slider under Set, until I got something I liked.
I used the Saturation slider in Adjust/Vibrance to increase the saturation a bit:
Because the Saturation step added a lot of blue to the whites of the eyes, I again used the Saturation slider in Adjust/Vibrance, and this time reduced the saturation. I used an inverted brush mask to paint in the reduced saturation only on the whites of the eyes. Then I removed the brush mask.
Next I want to blend another photo onto the image. This time I will use a photo of a landscape, with hills fading and receding into the distance. Again, I obtained the photo from Pixabay.
I blended the landscape photo on top of the image. In Effect/Blend, I tried several blend modes and slider settings, including the Lightness slider under Set. For a soft effect, I find the Normal blend mode or the Soft Light blend mode often work best. I used my fingers to resize the image to place the diagonal lines where they were least disruptive and to make sure some distracting elements at the bottom and right of the landscape image were off the page, but to keep a bit of the pine trees in the lower left to make it easier for the viewer to identify the blend as a layered mountainous landscape.
Now for the finishing touches. I used two different presets under Tone/Enhance at low opacity to subtly change the color cast of the image to be less yellow. I used Adjust/Levels and moved the Min Input slider very slightly to the right, to add contrast to the image. I used Tone/Duotone in Overlay mode at very low opacity, with a warm-colored preset, to also add a bit of dimension. Again in Adjust/Vibrance, I moved the Gamma slider very slightly to the right to gently lighten the image, because the combination of the above toning steps had darkened the image somewhat. To remove some distracting red hot spots in the lower right of the image, I used Adjust/Vibrance and reduced the saturation, and used an inverted brush mask to paint in the reduced saturation only over the red spots. I removed the brush mask and applied a small touch of Effects/Sharpen preset 4 and Effects/Raise preset 1 to finish the image.
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