How Fanny Papay makes surreal ideas come together.

The Budapest-based illustrator and brand designer shares how she uses AI-powered tools in Photoshop to achieve the impossible.

“My illustration uses Harmonize and AI tools in Photoshop to create a composition which cannot exist in the real world.”

What you’ll need

Practice in the app

Open Photoshop

Fanny creates surreal collages by arranging everyday objects into unexpected, dreamlike compositions. In this example, she brought in a stock photo of a rock and used the Remove Background tool (located in the Contextual Task Bar) to quickly make a clean cutout.

Make an object or subject match the rest of a composition in just a click. After placing the rock into her surreal arrangement, Fanny used Harmonize to automatically match it to the color, lighting, tone, and shadows of the surrounding scene.

Fanny used Harmonize on more objects, like the red ball, to add more realistic details to her fantastical composition. “I like to break the rules,” she says. “Harmonize helps me make the impossible possible.”