Step 6: I opened the Little Girl image in Photoshop (Image #1) at the same time my HDR image remains open in Photoshop. With both images opened, the Little Girl image is my active window, I drag the background layer of the little girl into the open window of my HDR image.

This creates another layer (three total layers at this point). I then duplicate the little girl image, making a fourth layer.

Step 7: I drag my cutout layer to the top of my layers palette. At this point I could see the girl through this cutout. I make the duplicate layer of the girl my active layer, I then go to Edit > Transform > Scale. I drag a corner of this layer and pull it both up and out maintaining its proportions. I take the curser and move the face of the girl around until I'm satisfied with the position of the eye looking through the door. The eye and face had to much color, in other words, to realistic, no surprises, it just didn't work. I needed a lighter tone on the face therefore I used curves, Image > Adjustments > Curves, to lighten the face.
The final results are seen in Image #2.

Step 8: Now I needed to make the image monochromatic to make the illustration a bit more interesting. To begin this process I needed to turn the image into a grey scale image. Image > Adjustment > Black & White.
I adjusted the sliders as needed and the results are seen in Image #3.

Step 9: I wanted the eye looking through the door to blend into the rest of the illustration and catching the mysterious blue hue reflected throughout the walkway. To do this, I take my grey scale image and again open it up in Black and White, Image > Adjustment > Black & White and go to the bottom of the Black and White window and check the Tone Box. I then adjust the slider towards the blue until I get a tone that works well with my HDR image. Once this is done, I need to soften the girls face and I do this by adding noise to the image, Filter > Add Noise. I adjust the amount to 6 > Gaussian > Monochromatic. The final results are seen in Image #4.

Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
Image 4
Step 10: This is what my illustration looks like up to this point. I felt it still had an unfinished look to it. Something was missing, I needed to blend the face with the door while giving the blue glow a source. There was already a glow around the edges of the door but it wasn't profound enough.

I took my cutout layer and created a duplicate layer.

I selected blending options and then selected inner glow. When the dialog box appears I moved the slider on both Spread and Size until I got the look I wanted. I changed the opacity to about 50%. By default the color is a light yellow therefore I needed to change the color to blue. I did this by clicking on the color box and a color selector appears. I played with the blues until I got a blue that matched my composite.

Selecting inner glow also created a glow on the edges of my frame. I didn't want this so I took my eraser tool and started erasing from the edges towards the door. The closer I got to the door I changed the opacity to a lower level.

This is what my inner glow looked like when I was complete with this step. I felt the inner glow gave me the finished look I wanted.

Step 10: The image is flattened. I then duplicated the background layer for last time to make any final adjustments. I applied a slight curve and once again flattened the image and my illustration was complete.

The completed HDR Illustration.
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