Inserted the tennis ball into the image, desaturated it, then overlay-patterned it with the stone texture from step 2.
step 4 of 22
Painted a shadow over the ball on a clipping mask layer, then made an an adjustments layer over the ball and darked it with curves.
step 5 of 22
Selected, and copied the head onto a seperate layer.
step 6 of 22
...did the same for the cape.
step 7 of 22
Began coloring things in with colorize/hue adjustments. Gave the body layer (the untouched original layer) a flesh tinge, the tennis ball, a lime-green, and the robe, a red color. Now selecting the face with an inverted freeze mask.
step 8 of 22
Finished coloring everything in. The beard is a light brown, the eyes, grey with a blue tinge, and the face, the same color as the body. Finally, added a bit of shadow to the ball on a seperate masked layer, using a soft brush.
Put atlas on the Parthenon background and added a few duplicated layers with overlay over the Parthenon, strengthening it.
step 12 of 22
Here's where the tiny details come in: with two curve adjustment layers, on dark and one bright, I masked both and filled in the mask, then painted over the mask in minute areas to bring out either shadows or highlights. I learned this technique from this excellent tutorial: http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photo-effects-tutorials/how-to-turn-humdrum-photos-into-cinematic-portraits/
step 13 of 22
Finished curves adjustments painting.
step 14 of 22
Added a gradient map on a clipping mask over Atlas.
step 15 of 22
Set the gradient to overlay.
step 16 of 22
On a new, merged copy of Atlas, I use glowing edges and levels to get the shown result.
step 17 of 22
Set the glowing edges layer to overlay and 14% transparency. The resulting effect is subtle, but visible.
step 18 of 22
Here, I made a merged copy of the parthenon layers, erased most of it (leaving just the top part as shown in the picture) and brought levels up to max. This will be the first step in creating the light beams.
step 19 of 22
Now, on the max-levels parthenon copy, I used zoom blur and desaturated. This effectively gives the look of some light beams. Light beams are moved slightly into the corner.
step 20 of 22
Here, I once again made another merged copy of the Parthenon and used the Luce filter (link provided) to added some more light beams over it. Using a soft eraser, I deleted all of the new beams except for those joining with the ones I made in step 18-19.