Feathers brought to life with PicDrift

Watch this still photo brought to life. Read the PicDrift breakdown below to see how it was made.

Photo Credit: Alik Films

Instagram: @alikfilms

PicDrift artist breakdown:

The main challenge was to separate the feathers from the background while preserving the fine details. The usual methods with the Quick Selection tool and the Pen tool just wouldn't work so I experimented with the Background Eraser tool which gave me the best result.

White feathers against the dark uniform background was a perfect situation for this tool. The only feather I was having trouble extracting was the one covering her face, which I had to recreate from the other ones. I also had to recreate the part of her face and her hair covered by the feather.

I added the random rotation of the feathers which with the camera push in contributed to the effect of them falling.

A slight lens flare and blurring of the feathers closer to the camera added to the realism and made the animation complete.