Carnival

This is two merged images: the carnival and my sunglasses. I figured those massive glasses would fit right in to a carnival, so I cut my self out with scissors select and put myself there.

I adjusted the color hue and saturation of the sunglasses; I wanted to make them more yellow-greenish to fit in with the ride. To get the glare on the glasses from the sun, I used the Lens Glare filter. Pretty much, it gives you a bunch of options as to the type of glare, the placement of the glare, and the opacity of the glare. Make sure you use it with preview turned on.

The background picture did not have nearly the dramatic light source I wanted. I used the Lighting Effects filter to change the light. I made sure that I was editing directional light and placed it where it worked best. You can also change the color of the lighting, but it didn't look good in the picture. I increased the saturation and hue of the background to create more startling colors. The sky wasn't quite as dark as I wanted it so I used a low opacity airbrush to darken the left section on the sky.

I'm still unsatisfied with unnatural colors of the me and glasses in the left corner. I tried playing around with them (even used curves) but it didn't really work. Any suggestions?

Photo credit of carnival: kocojim on flickr