Building a Picture~using Photoshop Layers

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Start with a boring photo of a mule at the break of day...the reds in the sunrise turn his coat into silky beautiful colors, enhancing it naturally.

Now the sky is boring and blown out. So I got rid of it.
Still pretty boring right?

So I grabbed a photo with a beautiful sunset from last week.
I cropped and edited this photo to put in sun-rays [how to do that HERE].

Next I overlayed the edited sunset over Badger and erased [using layer mask] the distractions on his chest.

Nice...but now the bottom of the photo looks awful ... blah.
So I inverted the sunset and added it to the bottom of the photo in a seperate layer. Here is how it looks with Badger erased out of it...

Then I flattened it and well...there you go, a picture with a bit of editing, added color and a bit of a 'fantasy' feel to it.

All from a boring morning photo.