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I have done a number of images where I blend the face of a person with that of an animal. It is not easy to find a good match. Rather than just drop in human eyes and mouth into an owl's face, I tried to make this more of my own creation through the use of Metabrush strokes.
I started with this photo from Pixabay, a source of copyright-free images. I like her unusual broad face, big eyes and almost sullen gaze.
In iColorama, I used Form/Warp to enlarge her forehead and eyes, and I used Adjust/Tonelab preset 4 and Tone/Enhance to improve color and tone.
I painted over the girl in Metabrush. I used the first Kanji brush, with a medium to large brush size, and medium opacity. In the Brush Settings, I used a high separation and high rotational variance. Look here for more about brushing in Metabrush.
I will use this photo from Pixabay.
I will also use this photo from Pixabay. Her round expressionless face mimics that of the owl.
In iColorama's Effect/Blend, I blended the previous two images, using a brush mask to preserve the eyes, mouth and hair of the girl.
Using Effect/Blend, I blended the Metabrush image onto the blended owl/girl image. Then I applied Adjust Tonelab preset 4 (for clarity and depth) and preset 3 (for saturation), each at low to medium opacity. And I cropped so her face would fill the canvas.
I applied Adjust/High preset 2 at full opacity. This preset sharpens and dramatically lightens the highlights. I also applied Adjust/High preset 1 at low to medium opacity for a bit more sharpness. Then I applied a preset in Tone/Enhance at low opacity to improve the color. You invariably want to use low or medium opacity with most of the Tone presets.
I used Effect/Blend to blend the owl/girl image on top of the work in progress, using an inverted brush mask to bring back the yellow at the tip of the beak.
I applied Style/Coherence preset 1 at low opacity to smooth the image.
I applied Effect/Raise preset 2 and Effect/Sharpen preset 3, both at low to medium opacity, to give more definition to the Metabrush strokes.
I decided there were too many colors in the image, especially red and orange hot areas that drew the eye. So I applied Tone/Sepia at medium opacity.
I applied Tone/Sepia again, this time using an inverted brush mask to apply it to only the orange hot spot in her hair in the upper left of the image. Then, keeping the brush mask in place, I applied levels, sliding the Min Input slider to the right until the tone matched the tone of the hair on the upper right of her face. To finish, I applied a soft thin white border, using Preset/Border preset 3/32 with a small radius and switching the color from black to white.
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