Layers with Birds at Sunset

This was originally for the low light theme but it was hard to get a nice landscape for the wonderful sky. This one had a funny shape tree in it on the left. So I cropped picture to a square but saved one of those little red clouds from the cropped bit in a different layer. I had to chop away quite a bit around the edge as the colour didn't match. I tried just using the opacity to blend it but it didn't work so I merged the two sky layers and used the plaster healing tool to blend in where I'd cut it. I just selected the birds and copied and pasted them into the picture. It didn't seem to work with the composition until I flipped the background sky horizontally then the birds fitted in better. I still have all the layers if you have any suggestions for moving the birds etc.

Layers with Sunflowers

I am posting this to Layers as I have plenty others for the sunflowers. I combined two shots as I liked the background of this one but there were too many gaps at the front. I used a combination of the magnetic selection tool and the one that does straight lines to work around the foreground flowers that were in focus. I just used the move too (arrow) to move it over to the other picture which meant there were two layers. Then I did a bit more selecting and deleting to make the flowers fit in.
Then I clicked on the original background layer and used the highlight tool to select the sky and I gave it more contrast to darken the blue a bit more. I think that was all I did before I flattened the layers. I will post the other two pics to show why I chose to do this.

Layers Sunflower

Background Original with gaps showing the soil

Layers with Sunflowers

Foreground original. I first used the exposure control in PS to get the sunflowers looking the same as the background.

banging pots (layers outtake)

OK, I know this is silly, but I was playing with layers. Every single component in this picture is in a different layer.

I love Moo's sunflower sky picture. This is a poor cousin, very poor, but it is instructive in the use of layers for constructing something.