I want to make an effect of an underground city under this hole, but it just looks super flat

[supple mesa]

what can I do to improve this? I'm running out of ideas

[real bison]

Does it have to be solid gold? Some additional contrast will help

[limber fractal]

I think finding the right sort of image to start with makes a big difference...

I generated that one using Midjourney

[supple mesa]

I think gold works really well and I've found another way to make it golden that doesn't make it look like an oil painting, contrast definitely helps!

[supple mesa]

damn it does! I don't have midjourney unfortunately, but I will consider buying it now.

But perhaps it would be better to learn how to make things like this on my own? like what if midjourney didn't exist

[limber fractal]

If it AI image generation didn't exist, you'd still likey need to find a 'source image' as the basis.

unless you want to literally learn to paint/illustrate - which is an entirely different skill-set to photoshop.

I'd call myself a professional photoshop user, but I still can't 'draw' any better than my 8 year-old daughter.

In fact, I think she's better than me.

[real bison]

Have you tried Adobe Firefly?

[supple mesa]

I haven't and I don't even know what that is but I'm looking into it right now

[supple mesa]

I think I would be able to put together this basic image of the city from many different photos but the process would take me like 1-2 weeks and I'm not sure if it's because I'm bad or because it actually takes so much time.

[supple mesa]

this is great haha

[supple mesa]

@real bison @limber fractal this is my final product, thank you a lot for helping me!

[woven linden]

Gave +1 Creative Carma to @real bison (current: #356 - 4)