Photoshop Practice

I have been doing some photoshop practice for my front cover.
This is the image I started off with:

I opened up photoshop and then rubbed out the background so only Ben was in the picture, not any of the rocks. I used the 'Eraser Tool' of this. I did this so I could put him on a different background. Before I rubbed away the background I cropped the image, this made it easier because I had less of the background to rub away.

As Ben's leg is covered by the rock when I rubbed out the background part of his leg looked like it had been rubbed off, to solve this I used the 'Clone Stamp Tool' to duplicate parts of his leg which was already there to fill in the rest of his leg to make his leg look normal.

This is the image when I had cropped, clone stamped and erased the background.

I then went on and used the 'Blur Tool' I did this because Ben look very sharp around the edge and he didn't blend into the background, by doing this it made a drastic improvement to the realism of the picture.

Next I increased the contrast of the image, this made the image look better, I also increased the brightness. By increasing both the contrast and the brightness made the image look a lot more interesting and lively.

This is the image when I had cropped, clone stamped, erased the background, blurred & increase the brightness and contrast.