Sixty six million years ago, Ankylosaurus dinosaurs were on their way to extinction. What a shame. They were 20 to 26 feet long and weighed about 18,000 pounds. I wonder if the ground shook as they approached. How amazing it would have been to see (and photograph) one of these monster, armor-plated reptiles. I purchased a detailed model of the dinosaur from an online source in the U.K., photographed it in diffused light against a white sky, and then carefully made a precise selection around it. I used the quick selection tool to grab the sky, then used the Photoshop pulldown menu command, Select > inverse which selected only the reptile. I feathered the selection using Select > modify > feather (by one pixel) and then copied this to the clipboard with Edit > copy. I then activated the Kenyan landscape photo and used the pen tool to select the two foreground trees that appear in front of the ankylosaurus. I then chose Select > inverse again. This selected everything in the picture except the two trees. I pasted the dinosaur into the background with Edit > paste special > paste into. This made the two trees appear to be in front of the subject. To match the mood of the foggy forest with the reptile, I lowered the opacity of the dinosaur layer to 85% and filled the layer with 10% pale cyan color to approximate the slightly bluish color of the background. Finally, I used the burn tool to darken the underside of the model and the ground since the light was coming from above.
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