From the Jupiter Cave

View of Saturn from the Jupiter Cave, photo collage by author
The How To for the Jupiter Cave
This manipulated photo just made the cover for the#5 issue of Riggwelter, A British online journal of the arts, so I thought I would take a few minutes and explain how the photo-collage was put together.
Basically, I used two images. One was taken by yours truly on a hiking trail through Bryce National Park and the other was a Cassini spacecraft photo of the planet Saturn. Here they are below.

Saturn from the Cassini spacecraft

Rock opening on a hiking trail in Bryce NP, photo by author
From this point I took the trail photo and opened it in Photoshop and then went to the levels Command. Then using the RGB channel I took all the color out of the photo by using the slider. Then I went to the Blue Channel and added some color. That’s where all the blue-purple in the picture came from.
Next I created a new layer and added the Saturn image to it. Without changing the image I pasted it on top of the rocks and with the Arrange Command, I set the Saturn picture as background behind the crack in the sky.
Finally, I added the stars that surround Saturn with a Brush Tool. Notice that the stars are not pure white, but that they have a bluish tint to them.
That’s about it, pretty simple really.
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