The making of If fish could fly!, step by step...

create light and ripples in photoshop using transparent gradients and ripple plugin...

Start adding florals and upper leaves. Build some floarls in illustratotr and photoshop. Make sure you start hi res and shrink down. Create clipping mask so to add correct light and make sure the light and shadows corresponds witht he direction of the central and upper light source. Added tree leaves to top and copied the layers. Then darkened, stretched and lower the transparency to create the black strokes of light within the white light creating the 3d effect.

In the previous step we added the background florals behind the light strokes. Now do the foreground florals and fish and bits and pieces. Added a burst of light coming from the middle. Used a brush and transparencies. Make sure you duplicate the floral layers and flip them verticaly, apply a ripple effect and fade the transparency to give that reflective feel.

Add more foliage all over even if that means covering alot of your previous work. It makes it look more real. Apply perspective shadows by dupicated layers, applying a black colour overlay and fading the transparency (you may have to distort it too). Add insects and more foliage plus get out the brush tool and start creating sparks little timy ones all different sizes.... And go crazy

Keep building up and add more of everything especially more light in the center along with shadows and sparks. Here I added the 3d text and amde sure i added loads of clipping layers with various lights. Add sparks and swirls of light (make lines, warp them, fade them and add a glow). Include your goldfish and warp them too using ctrl-t and use the mesh based transform not the free transform... Add foliage and more light and shadows all over and almost done. I put int he pc logo and made sure i darkend it as it left the light source. I also cut off the bottom of the p leg then pasted it back in and faded the transparency to give the under water feel.