This image was a fun shape and concept, but the background was horrible. I selected the wooden guy and his shadow and copied it to a new layer. I then created a new layer in the background. I selected a dark but vivid blue as the foreground color and used a nearly white grayish blue as the background color. I then applied the Render>Clouds filter to get the cloudish pattern. I made a minor levels adjustment until the clouds looked nice. I then created a new pattern consisting of the two strip colors. I filled a new layer above the clouds with the pattern and changed the blending mode and opacity. I don't remember what settings, but I would assume overlay mode and about 60%. I had difficulty getting the shadow to look right on the background. If I change the blending mode to make the shadow look right, it made the wooden guy look wrong. I ended up erasing the shadow, then making a rough selection of the original shadow shape and filling it on a new layer. I was then able to blur it, then adjust blending mode and opacity to make it look better. Looking at it now, I still do not feel like I got it right! Anyway, that is where "Adopted" came from!! I forgot to say I did some dodging and burning on the wood. I then duplicated the wood guy layer, changed to overlay and reduced opacity to 30%. That gave the wood richer looking tones.

This won a POTD at www.bestfoto.com on february 8, 2005!