photoshop exercise

For this Photoshop assignment our task was to place something or someone in a background that they wouldn't be in, and make it look realistic. I chose to put penguins in a desert, because clearly you would not find them there. First I opened the image, then I duplicated the image by dragging it to the new layer icon in the layers palette. After duplicating the image I took the magnetic marquee tool and outlined the penguins, and inversed my selection to allow the background to be selected, then deleted the background. The next step was to add a new layer and fill the layer with a solid colour; I choose green. With the background copy selected, I began to remove the blue halos. I did this by using the airbrush tool, painting away with small strokes, and replacing the blue with green to match my new background. Then I used the magnetic marquee tool for the second time, outlining the penguins again, and then copying them. The next step is opening the second image (the desert) where I pasted the penguins. Now that the penguins are in the desert final touches are ready to be made. I used the dodge tool to lighten the penguins, to match the background better. I also took away some green halos using the eyedropper tool to pick up the colour I wanted, then painted over the green halo's. Now my image is complete.