Bryce Canyon Fantasy

And now for something completely different. In this month's edition of Photoshop User Magazine, Bert Monroy gives a lesson on adding a starry sky to a photo. I thought I'd try it out for some fun and to learn some new tricks and used this photo of Bryce Canyon in Utah that I took a couple of years ago.

Bert is a master of digital art. I went to a training class given by him in LA last year and was just blown away by what the guy can do and as I felt overwhelmed by his mastery of Photoshop and the sheer volume of information he was passing out I kept thinking to myself "What the hell am I doing here"! Bert paints with Photoshop in the same way an artist paints with a brush. He only takes photos of his subject matter to act as aids to memory and for sketching his work; his "paintings" are made completely with Photoshop.

At the time I took his class he had not long finished his masterpiece of the Damen Station on the Blue Line of the Chicago Transit Authority (Damen can be seen on Bert Monroy's website). He told us that the months and months of painstaking work (about 2000 hours in all) that he put into this huge 40x120 inch digital painting left him feeling like he never wanted to do anything like that again.

Anyhow, my piece of fantasy art looks rather rudimentary, but it was fun and I learned some new things. (See larger version here)

If you want to learn more about using Photoshop, I recommend joining the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. As part of your membership you'll get the Photoshop User magazine, which is always jammed full with Photoshop lessons for beginners to advanced. Click here to join NAPP