Alien Mind Control Device
The original pictures for this were taken near where I worked at the time.
I took four pictures from much the same angle at much the same time.
Three of the pictures had a car in the same place, the fourth had a car in the foreground. First thing I did was combine areas of the pictures so as to remove the cars.
Everything was very pale, so I slapped the brightness down and the contrast up, which made the shadows far nicer...
The sky was still very light. In a somewhat lazy sloppy manner I selected the sky and some surrounding area, using only rectangles, then got Photoshop to smooth out the sharp corners, allowing it to overflow into hedges and underflow the sky in places (especially around the monolith).
With the sky selected, I got a huge round brush, and used it as a 'burn' tool. The 'dark-arcs' around the monolith are simply the edges of the brush. The selection prevented the floor and monolith being darkened, except top-halves of lamp-posts and bits of bushes. I rather liked that effect.
The 'lightning' was simply drawn on as semi-transparent white lines.
The slightly rough edges where the car had been patched over were smoothed with my favourite tool, the finger-smudge.
The whole thing still had a garish digital-camera look about it, so I slapped it through a couple of Photoshop filters; Add Noise and Diffuse. It's the combination of these that give it the 'watercolour' feel.
After trying a few different resizes, I decided on the one it is because the "diffuse" patterning was visible in larger sizes. And 640x480 is quite big enough.
And why is it an Alien Mind Control Device? It just is. The real one obviously has invisible energy streams flowing between it and the adjacent streetlights.
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