One of the ways to create a digital image is to make a composite from various sources, such as using parts of a digital photo and superimposing it on a painted background. Any number of elements can be combined in this way.

Ideally, the digital artist will blend all these elements together so that the final image looks like a single piece, not a hodgepodge of randomly thrown-together pixels. Because I've seen this done very badly more often than I've seen it done well, I am going to offer some of my thoughts on the process.

This tutorial presents an overview of some of the key steps I use in creating a digital image. This has relevance whether the image source or sources are rendered with a 3D application such as Poser, taken with a digital camera, painted digitally with a program like Photoshop, or painted in traditional media and scanned.

This is not intended to be a tutorial on 3D rendering or digital painting. It is a tutorial about combining elements seamlessly.