Embedded Files
I've spent quite a bit of time playing with FraxHD, and have gotten some lovely images from it. It is always a challenge, however, to find a good way to use them in compositing an image. One way I have used FraxHD images is as a surface of a scene, such as a surface of a planet. Here I've used a FraxHD image as the surface of the moon. The blending of an apt face, with eyes looking ominously sideways, lends mystery to the final image.
I started with this photo from Pixabay, a source of copyright-free images. I like her sideways yet serious expression, which I thought would work well for the Man in the Moon. Also her nice round face seems a good match for the moon.
FraxHD output. FraxHD is a fun iPad program. The free version is easy to use. You can look at different fractals and "fly" over them to find an interesting pattern, which you can then save and reuse. Here is one that I will use to wrap a face over for the Man in the Moon. I thought the hills and canals would make interesting planetary features as well.
In iColorama, in Effect/Blend, I blended the fractal over the girl.
Here features sort of got lost in the blend. So I used Effect/Blend again, this time with an inverted brush mask to paint back the eyes and the lips, at medium opacity. I saved but did not remove the brush mask.
With the brush mask still in place, I intensified the color of her eyes and lips using the Vibrance slider in Adjust/Vibrance. Then I removed the brush mask.
I used Effect/Raise for more definition.
I used an inverted brush mask with Tone/Enhance to increase the intensity of the eye color.
Here I used one of the Form/Deforms presets to make the image into a circular one, which will be the moon.
I used this photo from Pixabay to provide some "outer space" background for the moon.
Using Effect/Blend, I blended the Pixabay image as a background, using a brush mask to confine the effect to the area surrounding the moon. Then I removed the brush mask and modified the overall image color in Tone/Enhance to make it less green.
I cropped to remove a section along the left edge of the image that had a bunch of distracting shapes. The result is a more round-feeling moon, with more emphasis on the eyes and other facial features.
I like the image so far, but I felt that the background was too flat. So I used this photo from Pixabay to add some misty areas to the background.
In Effect/Blend, I blended the Pixabay image over the background at partial opacity. I feel it gives the image more depth overall.
To add more mystery, I used Adjust/Levels to add contrast (with the Min Input slider), and Tone/Duotone at low opacity in Multiply mode to add a mysterious dark tone to the shadows, and I used Preset/Border 2 for a bit of vignetting, to make the eyes and face more prominent as the focus of the image.
Google Sites
Report abuse