About This File
This one was much more difficult to make than it might appear. The idea here was an attempt to get total realism in the flames, reflection on the brass casting on the fireplace and on the front of the couch in the bright area as well as completely altering the original image by adding my dog on asleep on the chair complete with lighting and matching shadows from the lamp, a painting above the fireplace, a totally different scene outside the windows and a number of other minor changes to the original image.
A real fire was video taped complete with sound, sparks, embers and such and the original fireplace was carefully replaced. Masking, three dimensional transforms and and other techniques were used to get the fire itself and the inside of the fireplace to look totally natural. Photoshop, screen captures and such were used to carefully create the masks for the flames reflection on the brass casting on the fireplace and reflections on the bright front of the edge of the couch. These required careful sizing, placement and opacity control. PNG transparencies were created to remove the original background outside the windows and replace them with a totally different scene. 3D transforms, masking and png transparencies were used to place the oil painting above the fireplace complete with realistic shadows, etc. A very simple scene, but hours of painstaking work in PTE as well as in PhotoShop was necessary to get the desired effects.
I was happy with the result because it adds those seemingly insignificant shadows, reflections and such to give the scene realism. Thanks to the fantastic capabilities of PTE this was possible. These techniques are some of the things I cover in some of my tutorials.