Submarine in the Sahara

[Stifnek]

Hello everyone,

I'm a newcomer on Affinity Photo and here's my first attempt. I used three pictures I borrowed on the net and put them together. I wanted to experiment with layer masks, detouring etc. 

It's not perfect but with practice, I hope I'll get better. Any advice are welcome!

[AdamStanislav]

Looks like you already are good.

[GarryP]

That’s a great start.

I’m no expert in this area so I can’t give any expert advice but there are two things that I think may need some attention:
1. The sky, when zoomed in, is very ‘blocky’. This may be because you are using a low-resolution image or you might need to check your export settings (zoom in to the camel train and you will see that the elements have ‘ghosts’ around them).
2. Lighting. The sun seems to be behind the submarine, maybe not quite over the horizon to the right, but ‘our side’ of the submarine seems to be nicely lit, and we can easily see the camel train, and the dunes are also very visible. Unless there’s also a large lighting rig in the desert – over to the left – then I don’t think that’s quite right.

The sky thing is probably easy to fix as it’s probably just a matter of image choice and export options.
The lighting thing may be more difficult to fix as you could be limited in your choice of images when it comes to submarines which are lit 'in the same direction' as your sky.

Since this is your first attempt I wouldn’t worry too much about these things while you learn the tools and techniques but they are worth keeping in mind for later work if you want to make things look more realistic.

All-in-all though, nice work.

[Stifnek]

Thanks for your comments! There's a lot to learn but it's all fun.