Here is the html for my entryl:
and here's the url:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3409/...b352abe134.jpg
I think my earlier attempt to submit this entry went into the ether somewhere. In that miss-guided attempt I wrote a dissertation explaining how I did it, and I can't bear to repeat the process. In brief, I started with color and contrast adjustments in Photoshop's lab mode, then returned to RGB mode where I converted the image to a smart object. Ctrl-clicking on the red channel in the channels palette created an excellent selection for a mask of the fish, which I then used in various configurations. I added a high pass filter to the smart object with strength of 10 and a blending mode equal to linear light. I brought into the mix, two new pictures: one of clouds that I had taken earlier and one of the HMS Surprise that I got using a screen capture on a model shipbuilding web site. I isolated the ship on a new transparent layer that I obtained by blending a new transparent layer with the original version of the screen capture of the ship. I greatly reduced the size of the ship by using the free transform tool. I changed its blend mode to linear light in order to be able to see its sails, I used the move tool to position the ship on the horizon, and that's about it. Oh, I also did some cleaning up of the original water with the clone tool on a new transparent layer and did some other cosmetic things like adding a gleam to the fish's eye and accenting the line of his or her mouth. Finally, I flattened the whole mess, resized it to 600 x 900 pixels, sharpened it using smart sharpen at strength 150 and radius 0.8, flattened it again, and saved the result as a jpeg.