--> Colors

Question: How do you change the color of the eyes in a collage?

I do one of two things to make my eyes change color. The first I try is to select the circle marque tool and on it's own layer, circle the eyes of the image I want to change.. then I add go to layer>hue/saturation and adjust the level of the color I want.. usually adding to the saturation as well. Once there, I play with the blend modes to see if I can get anything even better in color. Sometimes I will duplicate the hue/sat layer and use two different blend modes. I find that multiply gives a very intense look. If for some reason the hue/sat won't work, I magnify the image, select the airbrush and a color.. then I go and color the eye by hand. For a more realistic look, I use 2 or 3 colors and then use the smudge tool to blend them all. I also highlight the whites of the eyes using the Dodge tool and add some wetness with the airbrush on white. Finally, when an image is completely done, I might use the Burn tool on the inside of the eyes to add some depth :) By Val.

uestion: How do you do those sparkles in your collages?

For the sparkles on my collages, I start out with a stock image, like the ones you can get at http://www.gettyone.com . This is one of my favorites to use: http://linzee.philedom2k.com/stars.jpg

Then, depending on what look I'm going for, I try a couple different things. If I want them to be *really* bright or glowing, I go into the layers pallett, and turn their layer option to "overlay." 

When I use that, they don't show up on a black background, but they reflect the light of a brighter collage really well. That approach works better when I want them to be on the top of a collage, as the
final picture before I flatten the image. If I want them more as background, I use "screen" which removes everything except the sparkles. Then I adjust the brightness and contrast until they show up over the collage. When I get them to where I want them, I erase the edges and/or any parts of the sparkle picture I didn't want.:-) By Linzee.

Question: Do you have any particular tip on how to work with colors? Yours are so good and the blend so perfectly!

As for your question about colours, here are my tips:
I mostly use a portion of a stock image that has colours I think could work, I run gaussian blur (value around 13) and then start putting layers on it. I usually blend them with screen, soft light or overlay mode. Screen and overlay in particular let the background show through and help a lot to add colour. When I have added all the pics and blended them, I usually have to "retouch" the colours because they're often more or less intense than I wanted. So I pick more stock photos, run gaussian blur again and use them to add more colour.
In most cases I crop the sections that have the colours I want, enlarge them if they're too small and then blur them. Sometimes I also adjust the colours with hue/saturation or colour balance in Photoshop. That's all ... I hope that's clear. :) By Tere.