Working with layers

[jugati]

Hi all, I thought I would write down what I did to this picture
Before

After


I started by duplicating the background then I did a little burn and dodge on her eyes to make them pop a little.
I then removed any blemishes of any kind from her skin as I wanted a pure look.
I then removed her top strap as this seemed to take away the viewers eyes from the finished picture.
I opened a pic of the world and dragged it onto the original image, resized and placed over the scocer ball.
I added a vector mask to this layer and then got my brush tool set the background colour to black and brought her fingers back through.
I flattened the layers and cropped and sharpened this layer.
I then open my copy of a smoke texture I downloaded from a flickr member irisb477 and dragged this onto the original, I played with this for a while resizing, rotating until I liked how the smoke framed her, then I put a vector mask onto this layer and brought the earth back through and then reduced the flow and opacity and with a soft brush gentle worked on her face and hair and fingers.
When I was happy I changed the layer to hard light.
Flattened and image finished.
I hope this makes sense as I have never explained what I have done before and those out there that are experts, if you read this and know a better way please let me know.
Cheers
Julie
PS the model is my daughter Abby 12 half.

[Nathan deGargoyle]

That is beautiful work Julie and thank you for sharing your workflow!

[harrypalmer044]

Hi Julie,
Have to agree with Nathan, this is a stunning image and one of my favs. Thank you for sharing it and how you undertook it with us, it is very much appreciated. Will have to try it myself sometime if I can ever get to grips with the software I am using...
Have a great weekend.

[Glayva]

Stunning work. Very well done and, again, thanks for the explanation.

[sandman935]

Wow! Very creative and well done!

wow, thats crazy, i was attempting to fix an image with layers for the first time yesterday...boy have i got alot to learn!

[Snuffy]

Excellent!

[Busybee]

Brilliant work! I loved it.

[windrider86]

Wonderful job on making a snap shot into a piece of art! I found that same smoke texture and love it!

[BreathOfLife]

I really like this , I just have a question as a newbie with no PP experience at all, when you drug the world and resized it then placed it on the soccar ball, does it automatically go under the fingers? Or is there a special way to do this?