Step 18

Open the resource “Statue of Liberty”. Copy and paste the statue into our working document. After you’ve converted the statue layer into a smart object add a layer mask and using a round soft brush paint over the layer mask to hide some of the bottom parts of the statue. This will make the statue blend nicely with the background sky.

Step 19

Make a new layer and clip it to the statue layer. Change the blending mode to Overlay. Paint with some blue sampled from the flag the right side of the statue and with some red paint the left side.

Step 20

Open the resource “Flare1”. Select the upper left lens flare using the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Copy and paste the flare into our working document and convert it to a smart object. Place it as indicated below.

Step 21

Change the blending mode of the lens flare to screen.

Step 22

Open the resource “Lens Flare2”. Unpack the archive somewhere on your disk. You will see that there are 130 lens flares. Choose lens flare 059 and open it in Photoshop. Copy all and paste into our working document over the already existing flare. Convert the lens flare into a smart object and change the blending mode to screen.

Step 23

You will notice some subtle but visible hard lines around our lens flare. Group the two lens flares together (Shift-click on each and press Ctrl + G). Add a layer mask to the group and using a round soft brush hide the hard edges by painting over them in the layer mask with black.

Step 24

Import the smoke brush. On two new layers create two wisps of smoke rising from below.

Step 25

Import the clouds brush. On a new layer paint some white clouds covering most of the bottom part of the working document. If you have exaggerated a little with your clouds or smoke (as I did) you can group them together, add a layer mask to the group and hide away the unwanted parts.

Step 26

Open the resource “Glitter” again. Copy and paste it into our working document and after you’ve converted it into a smart object change the blending mode to Screen. Add a layer mask and hide the area that falls over our guy.

Step 27

Create a new layer and fill it with black (press D first to switch to default colors and Alt + backspace afterwards). Render some flares by going to Filter > Render > Lens Flare. Use the 105mm Prime type of lens flare.

Step 28

Now change the lens flare blending mode to Screen and all the black disappears leaving us only with the lens flare. Add a layer mask and hide away all the bright areas leaving only the lower left part of the lens flare.