Power of photoshop

Looking at digital art works I often wonder how they were made. Some artists give an idea about their work process. When I saw pictures made by Erica Leighton I liked many of them.

I just picked one relatively simple example of her work. Here are 3 photos she used as a source. Before looking further, what do you think can be done with these 3 pictures? -

These pictures are stock photos, clicking on them you will get on corresponding stock agency pages.


That's the work of Erica based on the above 3 photos:

I don't know Erica so I can only guess how she works... I suppose she first has a picture in her mind and then looks for appropriate source photos. Even with this simple example (I mean technically it's not too difficult) it looks very impressive what can be achieved with very average source material.
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