My dream journal sequence narrates an island with lots of warped size objects and out of place items. My dream was of a paper boat floating on the actual sea towards an island. The island is very green and has an abnormally proportioned house on it that the boat is traveling to. I dreamt of abstract items in places that they shouldn’t be, such as the paper boat in the sea and a sunflower sun in the sky. There is also a bridge that travels to an unknown location.
To describe this dream, I found a stock photo of an island that was close to the one I had imagined and edited it to become the space I had in mind. I did lots of placement of other stock photos, clipping them from their backgrounds (largely using the select and mask tools, then cleaning with an eraser) to place them on the image. I used the transform and warp tools extensively to help them fit the spaces they were to occupy more naturally. I used tools such as sharpen edges, outer glow, exposure, contrast, saturation, and dodge to make each object appear more natural. I also created shadows with 30% opacity for the objects in the direction that the sun would hit them to pull the image together.
I added this image of a house as a new layer, using the select and mask tool to remove the majority of its original background. I used the eraser tool to further clean up the edges. I then used the free transform to achieve its desired size, and the warp tool to achieve the shape I wanted for it. I used some filters to give it the appropriate feel in terms of lighting and color.
Next, this image of a bridge was added, again select and masking to remove the original background. There was some greenery in the original photo, so I used the clone stamp tool to make the entire bridge stone. I used free transform to make it the size and location that I wanted, and used the eraser to make it seem like it went behind the mountain. I also used the eraser on varying opacities as well as the dodge tool to blend the bridge more naturally with the water below it.
One of the main features of my dream is this paper boat floating on the sea. The best photo I found was actually orange, so I removed the background and then sharpened the edges. I then adjusted the settings on the exposure, brightness, shadows, contrast, and saturation to turn the boat into the white paper one I’d envisioned. I warped and transformed it to fit, and used the eraser to blend its bottom edge with the water.
To make the objects I’d added look more normal in their new backgrounds, I added shadows to them. I did this by duplicating each layer, turning the exposure to zero, and decreasing the opacity to 20-30%. I was then able to warp and transform the shadows underneath the object in the direction opposite the sunlight.
I added two more separate layers, a sunflower and a sun, to create the sun I imagined. After removing their backgrounds and placing them in a corner that felt balanced, I added outer glow to both and increased the spread of this glow to create a sunny effect.
A lot of these layers had to be ordered a certain way and added with the appropriate blend mode in order for the final image to look cohesive, which I played with throughout my process. Here is a screenshot of my final layers and workspace!