Begin by finding a stock photo of the countryside that resembles what would have been seen in World War two. I like to start with color pictures and then tweak as needed for my vision of the project.
I then desaturated the picture, and began adding aircraft. In this case it was a B-17 bomber that I had photographed at an airshow. I used free transform (CTRL + T) to control the orientation and size of each bomber. I then added varying opacity and contrast until it was what I wanted.
Next came the Messerschimidt. Again a plane that was photographed at an airshow, inserted, sized and rotated where I wanted. I then desaturated the aircraft to better match the overall scene.
Then the star of the show was put in place. A P51-D Mustang stategically placed in the foreground, slightly larger to give some dimension to the photo and free transformed in such a way to appear to be banking in a life and death struggle with the German aircraft. Same procedures as abobe followed with some desaturation to better blend with the overall picture.
Final step was to add clouds and this is easily done in Photoshop CC with the Render --> Clouds filter. The clouds wil fill the entire screen so place a mask on this layer and use the opposite color brush to place clouds where you wish. A bit more desaturation and the image is complete. Hope you enjoy this brief tutorial.
