Preparations:

We will be using 3 images here. Lady in white dress, snowy mountains and clouds.

You need to install these brushes: Falln_BrushesFeathersSet1 (download)
FallnBrushesAngelWings (download)

All rights of these resources belong to their respective owners.

Step 1 – Setting Up Environment:

Create a new document of 750×550 pixels.

Open up the snowy mountains and remove the sky along the rocky edges with a Soft Brush tool (size around 20pts).

Step 2 – Adding Clouds:

Insert the image of clouds below the layer of mountains.

Go to Edit > Free Transform and scale the clouds proportionally till it fits the document nicely.

Step 3 – Adjusting Levels:

Create a new Levels Adjustment Layer.

Insert the values: 7,1.38,255. This will brighten the environment and more details are shown.

Step 4 – Placing the Subject:

Crop the lady out using Pen tool. Place her at the position shown in the diagram.

Use the Soft Brush tool with color #000000, paint some shadow around bottom of the dress.

I will provide more methods to extract a subject away from its background in my next post.

Step 5 – Adding the Wings:

Load Brushes > FallnBrushesAngelWings and select FallnBrushesAngelWings12 with 400pts.

Create a new layer and name it as wings. Choose #FFFFFF as your foreground color and paint in the angel wings.

Go to Edit > Free Transform to distort the left side of the wings upwards slightly.

Step 6 – Enhancing the Details:

As the wings seem to be transparent, I duplicated another layer of wings and set its mode to Hard Light.

Use the Soft Brush tool with color #000000 and opacity 50%, paint some shadow around the sides of lady’s arms.

Step 7 – Rays of Light:

Create a new layer and call it as light rays. Select Soft Brush tool with size 100pt and color #FFFFFF. Set its opacity to 40% and start drawing vertical lines across the layer.

Edit > Free Transform to distort the rays in a way that the light source comes from the top-left.

Step 8 – Adding the Feathers:

Load Brushes > Falln_BrushesFeathersSet1 and select Falln-BrushesFeather4.

With several different sizes, paint some feathers around the document. Right-click on the feathers layer and select Blending Options. Check on Outer Glow and set Blend Mode: Linear Dodge (Add), Opacity: 100%, Color: #FFFFFF, Size: 10px.

Step 9 – Magical Dust:

Select the Soft Brush tool with size 3pt and color #FFFFFF. Go to Brush Properties and check on Scattering. Set Scatter to 1000%.

Create a new layer and call it as glowing dust. Start drawing several lines of scattered dots around the lady subject. Right-click the layer and select Blending Options. Check on Outer Glow and set Blend Mode: Linear Dodge (Add), Opacity: 100%, Color: #FFFFFF, Size: 10px.

Step 10 – Adjusting the Colors:

Create a new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer at the topmost. Set Hue:-17, Saturation: -38, Lightness: 0.

On top of Hue/Saturation, create another Curves adjustment layer. Select the Blue channel and pull the center of the curve upwards. This is to add a blue tone effect seen in most fantasy scenes.

That’s all! Click here to view the final image.