So I have done some more blending and trying to get my image looking a bit more photo-real. I am a complete newbie to Photoshop so am finding this quite difficult, but I’m trying! I have two image ideas that I am tossing up between. One with a single hand in the ground, and one with three hands (which I haven’t blended yet obviously so use your imagination…). I would really love some feedback on which one works best!
Phoebe Chenery- VisCom 
I prefer the single hand. The cross section looks good and so does the blending. One thing that may improve the overall look (maybe), is moving the beginning of the hand up so the tree trunk doesn’t go below the ground level so much and stretching the hand image so that it looks slightly longer. I don’t know how easy/difficult this would be, and it is just a small critique. Over-all think this is coming along really nicely and the fact that you are so new to photoshop makes it even more impressive. When I first looked at the image, I had no idea that the tree and the sky background were from two different shots. Love the ‘fresh’ colours in the above ground part
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On second thoughts, the three hands could work really well also, but you would have to be very careful with how you blend them in with the shadowing on the right side of the tree trunk being quite prominent. I am really looking forward to seeing the finished product 🙂
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I really like the way you’ve composed your photos together so far it’s looking very real! Personally I prefer the 3 hands as in my mind it’s for representative of how tree roots would probably look like. As Shirreechenery suggest you might want elongate the hand a bit more and with he three hands perhaps blend them into each other, for example having the centre hand sharing it’s outisde fingers with the other hands. Otherwise I think you’re doing really well, look forward to seeing the final version.
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I would definitely go for the three hands, but try to make them look different. And also keep in mind that there is no light underground, so there will be no shadows. Otherwise, it looks pretty real.
I’m not sure whether the transparency of the hands is good thing, either, but that’s probably just a intermediary step in your project.
Overall, awesome work!
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Great work so far Phoebe! Your blending has gotten much better and it seems to work effectively! I think that the three hands seems to work really well! Some criticism I have is maybe try making the two “root branches” on the sides to wiggle the roots in a curly fashion rather than it being completely straight? It might add a sense of more realism in the whole ‘tree root’ idea. (Maybe even adding smaller roots off the main ones?) Otherwise I really like where you’re going with this! Awesome work 🙂
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