Tropical dreaming

check out Inspiration Avenue on Monday for others’ tropical creations.

I took all of the photos here.  In 2009 I spent several months travelling around the island nations in the Pacific.  The chair was on a small island in Vanuatu; the island / atoll is In New Caledonia; the one above is Tana which is part of Vanuatu, the one above in Isle de Pines in New Caledonia, the top right corner is Tonga and the one below is also Tana.

Interesting that I think of the beach photos when I think tropical.  But then regular readers will have notice that I take lots of beach photos in Scotland too.

The digi process

For those who are interested in the Photoshop Elements creative process here is what I did (everyone else is excused).

The background is made up of two photos.  I used the eraser with a soft brush on 15% opacity to erase the top of the chair photo above the curve of the palm, until there was no line.

To help the words stand out I added a 3px stroke in green and a default drop shadow.  I often add a stroke layer style to help text stand out.

The five ‘dreaming’ photos are clipped onto a shape.  I used one of the talk bubble shapes that comes with PSE but cropped it to just the top bubble.  I added layer styles to all of the shapes too – default drop shadow and a 3px stroke in white.  I played with lots of different layer styles, including bevel, before settling on this.  I created the style I liked on one shape and then copied the layer style, selected all of the other shapes, and pasted the layer style (copy and past layer style is on the menu when you right click on a layer in the layer panel).

If you have any questions about what I did, ask them in the comments