Crituique as I work C:

[kangatoo]

So I'm currently working on a photo-manipulation instead of doing my assignments like I should be and I've decided to try something new. I'm actually gonna let you guys critique my work before it's finished that way instead of using the critique for my next photo-manipulation I can use it for this one!

So critique away, I can mess around with almost anything in the image right now. The only thing I can't do is completely undo the smudging on the horse.

I am aware of the fact that the horse needs a shadow/reflection, I'll get to that.
I'd really love any help you guys can give me especially help involving how to make the water look softer and more flowy, how to make the mane and tail look pretty and how to make the choppy parts of the horses outline look better.

Horse stock from: shi-stock.deviantart.com/
Background stock from: fabemiko-stock.deviantart.com/

Attachments:

[Blue_Tornado]

I can try and help? XD

As far as water goes around the legs, I usually take a small brush and lightly smudge around the the water/leg area to make it look like the water is sort of lapping around the legs.

Mane/tail-->I can't help you with that, I'm still learning myself XD

Outline--> zoom in and convolve the outline, just go along the line, it gets rid of little mistakes and makes the whole thing just look smoother.

Hope this helped!

[Emma]

Only thing I can say is the lighting of the horse doesn't really fit with the background.
The best way to fix this is to duplicate the horse layer, set the first horse layer to 'luminosity' mode, and the second to 'Soft light'. That should balance the colours.
I like it, though - looks promising.

[`Poet.]

Looks pretty! I really like the stock you chose.

Smudging: See how the horse look streaky, with smudging lines just going horizontally? There's an easy way to smooth it out, and make it look more... "even".

Just smudge the opposite way. For example, if you had smudged left and right (which it looks like you did on this horse), now you need to go up and down. Or, if you had smudged up and down, now you need to do left and right. So in your case, you need to smudge up and down now (for most areas.)

This just makes the whole thing look smoother, and cancels out all the streaks.

Outline: If you don't want the outline to be so choppy, you can:

a.) Use the pen tool (my best friend!) Also called the path tool, if you use GIMP. maerocks.deviantart.com/art/Cutting-Path-Tool-Tutorial-104537729?q=boost%3Apopular+in%3Aresources%2Ftutorials%2Fdigiart%2Fphotomanipulation%2Fthegimp+path&qo=0
b.) Just take a massive eraser and just dab it on. Don't stroke it, just click and let go. Try and do this as few times as possible, so that you get the rounded edge of the eraser, but still get the choppy areas out.

Mane and Tail: Take a small brush, put the strength or rate on fairly high (between 50 - 90) and just drag out the tail a little bit, to give some fly-aways. I really like the forelock, though. Also, if you want, you can give some highlights and lowlights by using the dodge + burn tool in some areas.

Color Balance: Take a look at the background. What colors do you see? Mainly greens, teals, and blues. If the horse was truly standing there, it would have more blue/green tones on its body - it wouldn't be nearly as brown.

a.) You can use the "color balance" or "hue/saturation" and play around with the horse to see if you can get some more greens/blues, and not so many brown tones.
b.) You can just paint over the whole horse with a green/blue, and then put that layer on color, soft light, overlay, hard light, etc. You may need to lower the opacity a bit.
c.) My tutorial may be helpful for this: poeticjustice314.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2rmran

And I have to go, but if I think of anything else, I'll come back later and edit my post ^^