Dazzling Dancer

For this exercise I created a poster of a dancer. I followed a tutorial and tried to recreate the final image as closely as possible. This exercise required a lot of photo manipulation, so I believe I learned and improved a lot on that front. First, I started by opening and positioning the clouds image in front of the dancer. Then I had to make the sky disappear, and only leave the clouds visible. By moving the black input slider towards the right in the blending options I made the dark background disappear and clouds gain some transparency. After this step I created a black background layer and placed it at the bottom of the list of layers. With eraser tool with very low hardness and transparency I carefully erased the bottom of the clouds so that the transition from clouds to background would be smoother. With low opacity paintbrushes I added colourful swatches to create a more dynamic and interesting final design. Then, to recreate the light beam, I selected the Pen tool, created a curved path. I experimented with the size and hardness of the Brush which determined the look of the beam. I found that maximum hardness and smaller size Brush creates a more elegant and professional look. From shattered glass images I created something like sparkling rings around the guy's ankles. I did not include them in the first image because I did not like the look of them. I am not satisfied with the final images. I believe I could have made a few adjustments - made the background darker to make the dancer pop out more and selected harder brush with full opacity to make it look more professional.