Advanced Photoshop vol.18 - legend

Master the art of Adobe Photoshop ®

®

Over 500 professional Photoshop tips

NEW FOR CC

Volume 8

PREMIUM COLLECTION Build advanced composites

Discover digital painting

Construct stunning graphics

Build fantasy landscapes

Create surreal effects

Enhance portraits

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Welcome to

It’s an exciting time to be a digital artist, and a detailed knowledge of Adobe Photoshop is now a valuable asset. With that in mind, this book compiles the best content from the last 12 months of Advanced Photoshop magazine, consisting of immersive features and top tutorials to help you develop expert Photoshop skills. With sections covering photomanipulation, digital painting, photo editing, typography and graphics, all the essential techniques are accounted for. Follow the guidance of experts and creative industry professionals, who have drawn on a wealth of knowledge to bring you in-depth example projects incorporating a wide range of tricks, secrets and shortcuts. In addition, this book comes supplied with a free disc containing asset files to use alongside many of the tutorials, plus free fonts worth $60, brushes, wallpapers, textures and more. We hope you enjoy the book.

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Imagine Publishing Ltd Richmond House 33 Richmond Hill Bournemouth Dorset BH2 6EZ +44 (0) 1202 586200 Website: www.imagine-publishing.co.uk Twitter: @Books_Imagine Facebook: www.facebook.com/ImagineBookazines

Head of Publishing Aaron Asadi Head of Design Ross Andrews Production Editor Mike Hine Senior Art Editor Greg Whitaker Design Sarah Bellman Photographer James Sheppard Printed by William Gibbons, 26 Planetary Road, Willenhall, West Midlands, WV13 3XT Distributed in the UK & Eire by Imagine Publishing Ltd, www.imagineshop.co.uk. Tel 01202 586200 Distributed in Australia by Gordon & Gotch, Equinox Centre, 18 Rodborough Road, Frenchs Forest, NSW 2086. Tel + 61 2 9972 8800 Distributed in the Rest of the World by Marketforce, Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London, SE1 0SU Disclaimer The publisher cannot accept responsibility for any unsolicited material lost or damaged in the post. All text and layout is the copyright of Imagine Publishing Ltd. Nothing in this bookazine may be reproduced in whole or part without the written permission of the publisher. All copyrights are recognised and used specifically for the purpose of criticism and review. Although the bookazine has endeavoured to ensure all information is correct at time of print, prices and availability may change. This bookazine is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein. Photoshop is either a registered trademark or trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries and is used with express permission. Advanced Photoshop Premium Collection 8 © 2014 Imagine Publishing Ltd ISBN 978 1909 758 612

Part of the

bookazine series

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Contents PAGE

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DIGITAL PAINTING 62 Expert matte painting 70 Paint a fantasy snowscape 76 Create a cyborg 82 Produce fantasy lighting 88 Character design and illustration 94 Paint a steampunkinspired portrait PAGE

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Great art is most often reached through a patient use of your basic tools

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PHOTOMANIPULATION 22 Creative retouching 32 Create dynamic lighting 38 Master layer masks 44 Advanced compositing 50 Apply liquid paint effects 54 Expert blending 6

Advanced Photoshop Premium Collection

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PAGE

PHOTO EDITING

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100 Photo-editing techniques 108 Retouching in Photoshop CC 114 Stylise architectural images 120 Expert automotive retouching 126 Cra atmospheric landscapes

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TYPOGRAPHY

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134 20 type secrets 142 Design illustrative type 146 Design 3D Type 152 Create stylish vintage type 156 3D type projects

GRAPHICS

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Both illustrative and collage type are a growing trend in digital art

164 15 ways to master infographics

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172 Master portrait illustration 178 Blend graphics and type 182 Master polygons 188 Metro-style websites WorldMags.net


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WorldMags.net 75 PROFESSIONAL PHOTOSHOP TIPS

T

here are various ways to use Photoshop successfully, and it is likely that many of you will already have a set routine for creating great effects quickly and efficiently. But a little help can’t hurt, right? In this mammoth tips feature, you’ll find everything you need to know to use Photoshop to its full potential across a plethora of themes and subjects. We’ve got 75 tips from some of the creative arena’s biggest and best digital artists, covering tools,

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graphics, photography, painting, new media and Photoshop CC, all ready for you to put into practice. We’ve also provided you with some of the most essential shortcuts to help you speed up your workflow even further. Over the next few pages you’ll find great advice on creating inspiring effects, mastering specific tool techniques and improving your productivity. We’ve gone into detail with an array of relevant topics, including commercial lighting effects, ways

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to tackle 3D with Photoshop, professional retouching tricks and more. We pore over Photoshop tools old and new, from the latest CC options to wielding the always-reliable Pen tool. You can put these tips into action in the tutorials throughout this book. Photoshop CC is explored in particular on page 11, providing you with creative tidbits you may not even know about. So read on, grab a tip and get creating now!

WorldMags.net 75 PROFESSIONAL PHOTOSHOP TIPS PROFESSIONAL PHOTOSHOP TIPS Industry experts let you in on their essential tips for illustrating, designing, retouching and more

001 USE SCRIPTS

© Jeffrey R. Schmidt

J. R. SCHMIDT

www.cargocollective.com/jrschmidt When working with 3D, it’s best to render multiple passes and composite them in Photoshop. This offers you more flexibility when colour correcting the final image. Once you have rendered your passes, there’s an easy way to bring them all into Photoshop quickly by selecting File>Scripts>Load>Files to Stack. Browse to the folder containing the passes and select the ones you want to work with. Everything will be brought into one document as layers. From here on in you can tint the shadow pass blue or reduce the ambient occlusion pass by 50 per cent without having to re-render. © Kirk Nelson

Before

© Kirk Nelson

Aer

002 EDIT LIGHT

003 AUTO UPRIGHT

ADAM SPIZAK

Photoshop CC now includes a very quick and easy method for correcting vertical and horizontal distortions in photographs. It’s well hidden within the Camera Raw dialog box, which can now be applied through the Filter menu. Switch to the Lens Correction area and open the Manual tab. There is now a series of icons under the heading of Upright that makes quick work of distorted perspectives. It’s perfect for those challenging city shots where the building appears to be curving in towards the vanishing point.

www.spizak.com Start by adding a Black & White adjustment layer as a clipping mask to your image, then set the layer’s blending mode to Multiply. You will then need to invert the attached mask and apply a 25px soft brush to this, which will create deeper shadows. Add another new clipped Black & White adjustment layer, set the blending mode to Screen and add the same brush in the same way, this time adding light.

© Adam Spizak

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WorldMags.net 75 PROFESSIONAL PHOTOSHOP TIPS TOP TEN PHOTOSHOP TOOLS Discover little-known ways to apply the most essential tools

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04. PATCH TOOL

05. DODGE & BURN 06. PEN TOOL

07. B&W ADJUST

08. HEALING BRUSH

This is used a lot by retouchers looking to remove elements like tattoos. Many of you will work solely in Source mode. However, when working with skin, use this mode to clean and Destination mode to rebuild skin areas.

Dodge and Burn are used by creative retouchers and photographers to stylise photo-based images. When working with them, always have Protect Tones active. It’s good at preventing problems with haloing and washed out colours.

This adjustment can be used to nicely equalise shadows and highlights in your photos. Simply add a Black & White adjustment to the top of your layer stack and apply a Luminosity blending mode. Now tweak sliders to get the best effects.

The Clone Stamp is great for editing images, but the Spot Healing brush is more intuitive, especially when editing out very fine elements. Set its mode to Darken, paint over stray hairs with a similar-sized brush and they’ll disappear.

Accurate selections are the name of the game with this tool. Set this to Paths and always activate the Rubber Band setting for the most accurate application. To instantly change a path to a selection, hit Cmd/ Ctrl+Enter.

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09. LAYER MASKS

10. LAYER STYLES

11. REFINE EDGE

12. BLEND MODES

13. CHANNELS

Many Photoshop artists will use a layer mask to paint out detail. However, you can invert it (Cmd/Ctrl+I) or add an inverted mask (Alt/ Opt-click>Add Layer Mask) to paint elements in. You can even affect your masks using filters.

Layer styles can create exciting effects and change the appearance of layers, but sometimes when sharing across Smart Objects the settings update to all duplicate layers. Resolve this by selecting Layer>Layer Style>Create Layers.

With this tool, always make sure that Smart Radius is active; this will evaluate the radius for hard or soft edges separately. This generally provides a better selection than when it’s turned off, which treats the entire border uniformly.

Don’t ignore these. The right one can really enhance the outcome of painted effects, especially with lighting. Screen and Color Dodge will ensure that specular highlights shine. Multiply and Color Burn really saturate shadow areas.

To make accurate selections, duplicate a channel, then apply a Curves or Levels adjustment to increase the contrast. Use the Dodge and Burn brushes to paint in areas, then hold down Cmd/Ctrl while clicking the copy.


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WorldMags.net 75 PROFESSIONAL PHOTOSHOP TIPS TOP TIPS IN PHOTOSHOP CC Discover new ways to add the latest tools and options, with advice from Kirk Nelson

017 PEN AND SPACEBAR

014 BRUSH ROTATION KIRK NELSON

http://thepixelpro.com/ Photoshop’s Brush engine has seen many improvements over the last several version releases. From the Mixer Brush tool to the Natural Media Bristle tips, the painting capabilities in Photoshop continue to expand. However, one feature frequently overlooked is brush rotation. This is a huge help to digital painters who regularly use custom brushes in Photoshop. Previously, to adjust the rotation of a brush tip you would have to have the Brush panel open then focus on the Brush Tip Shape section. This was cumbersome because the Brush panel is fairly large and consumed a good deal of screen real estate. Now in Photoshop CC, the same brush rotation widget is available through the contextsensitive Brush menu, activated by Ctrl/rightclicking on it. Adjust the rotation then hit Enter/ Return, or just click back on the canvas to hide the menu away again. This will really speed things up.

light a scene by using a high dynamic range image. This was used to control light sources and variations in ways that would be nearly impossible to accomplish when setting up lighting rigs in the 3D space. This is known as Image Based Lighting (IBL). Renders using IBL are more realistic and convincing because lighting and shadows better mimic a real-world environment. In Photoshop CC, IBLs are the default setup for 3D environments. This alone improves the quality of 3D renders many times over previous default lighting setups. Use it as the starting point for any 3D scene, then add lights to further develop the appearance you want. Adobe even offers additional IBL images to freely download and use on its website, available at www. photoshop.com/products/photoshop/3d#. © Kirk Nelson

This tip is really trivial, but is one of those tiny details that just makes life a little bit easier for anybody attempting to illustrate in Photoshop. The spacebar has long been a favoured hot key associated with moving control elements. It lets you scroll along a project and reposition a selection, even while you are drawing it out. Now in Photoshop CC, the spacebar allows you to move a path control point before you’ve even finished the path. While using the Pen tool to draw out a path, hold it down to reposition the last point.

PHOTOSHOP CC SHORTCUTS Automatic enlarge Let the new Image Resize command do the hard work for you. Always make sure it’s set to resize fast by hitting Opt/Alt+1.

018

Affect multiple shapes Photoshop CS6 supplied us with completely new Stroke and Fill shape options. Now you can add these to a number of layers at once by activating layers simultaneously.

019

Path Isolation mode Double-click on any path with the Path Selection tool to isolate that path for easy editing. Turn off the isolation mode with the switch at the top-right of the Layers panel.

020

016 LIQUIFY SMOOTH TOOL

© Kirk Nelson

015 IMAGE BASED LIGHTING Ever since Adobe took a brave step into 3D with Photoshop CS3 Extended, every subsequent version has pushed its capabilities a little bit further. One of the most recent capabilities was the ability to

The beloved Liquify filter has seen some dramatic improvements. In CS6, Liquify became much faster and responsive due to the increased performance of the Mercury Graphics Engine. In the Creative Cloud version of CS6, Liquify was even supported by Smart Objects. Now in Photoshop CC there’s another reason to love Liquify: it has a new Smooth tool. This tool is related to the Reconstruct tool, but instead of scaling back or removing a warp it actually smoothes the effect.

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3D object management In the 3D workspace, Ctrl/right-click on a mesh in the 3D panel to add, delete, group or duplicate objects within the 3D scene. It’s now even easier with the upgrades to CC.

021

Instance 3D objects Create instances of 3D objects that can be moved independently, but will reflect edits made to the source. Links to the original can be broken by freezing the instance.

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WorldMags.net 75 PROFESSIONAL PHOTOSHOP TIPS DIGITAL GRAPHICS TECHNIQUES Quick and exciting ways to perform image effects and create stunning illustrations

023 DIGITAL COLOUR KRZYSZTOF DOMARADZKI

www.studiokxx.com I always find it best to colour my images digitally using a drawing tablet and a hard brush. Applying strokes with this brush creates a solid contour. After this initial pass you can start to alternate your tool size and style. Try to combine solid colour with detailed areas to create a more visually appealing piece of art. Once you are satisfied with the results, you can play around with various texture brushes and paint effects. Splatters, rust, watercolour or ink will suffice they blend to create bold colours enhanced through texture. Practically anything goes at this stage, as long as it’s barely visible and just enough for the image to become more intense. Play around with different blending modes and layer opacity too.

PRO TIP GRADIENT IMPACT GRZEGORZ DOMARADZKI http://iamgabz.com/

025 A lot can be achieved when you are shading graphics using the Gradient tool (G). Make a whole selection of the graphic then use a Linear or Radial gradient set to ‘Foreground to transparent’. Try out different opacities and blending modes. Here, a red to transparent gradient was used to accentuate the mystery behind the character.

© Grzegorz Domaradzki

the previous screen, beginning with an angle of 22.5 degrees for the first screen. For example, a four-colour poster would have screen angles of 22.5 degrees, 52.5 degrees, 82.5 degrees and 112.5 degrees respectively. The pattern that these complementary 30-degree angles create is called a rosette and is considered the pattern most pleasing to the eye.

© DKNG Studios © Whooc Publishing Ltd

024 USE SELECTIONS RAPHAËL VICENZI

www.mydeadpony.com There’s one easy way to distress an image and make it more interesting while keeping control of the elements. Start by making a flattened copy of the whole image by clicking Cmd/ Ctrl+Shift+Opt/Alt+E. Activate your Lasso tool (L) and draw out a selection of your liking. Now copy this selection to a new layer (Cmd/Ctrl+J). Experiment by moving the layer around until it fits your composition. Repeat this process where necessary, using smaller selections to break the image up in a more subtle way. You can refine this technique by changing the layer blending mode or by using a layer mask to keep what works best.

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PRO TIP 027 INNER SHADOW GORDON REID

www.middleboop.com

026 POSTER ART DKNG STUDIOS

www.dkngstudios.com Photoshop contains an essential final step for converting smooth vector graphics into clean halftones, while avoiding moiré patterns. This is great when creating final print separations for screen printed posters. The trick is to make sure that each halftone separation is at the correct halftone screen angle. In order to give you the best chance of avoiding moirés in the printing process, make sure each separation’s screen angle is 30 degrees apart from

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A good tip for using Inner Shadow is to add a small distance, around 15% choke and 45px size, which will give you a fantastic shadowed effect. To add a worn effect to your piece as a finishing touch, use Filter>Noise>Add Noise and set it to Gaussian, check Monochromatic and keep the amount between 20% and 40%.


MIKE HARRISON www.destill.net

028

Add depth Build up depth in your background by using a mix of textures. Start with a base image and use adjustment layers to darken or lighten, then add Watercolour texture on a new layer set to Multiply mode.

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A sense of movement Using a custom brush, target an area or element to accentuate. Add the brush to that area on a new layer then add a mask to the layer and mask out parts, leaving only a trail of paint that gives a sense of movement.

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Varied detail Use Particle brushes, or make your own on a new layer. Duplicate this multiple times, then resize, rotate, reposition and re-colour each one. This will help to avoid repetition of detail.

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Creative masking Add in a Watercolour texture then add a layer mask to it. Use a few Watercolour brushes to mask out parts of that texture, creating an entirely new one that works better in your composition.

031

Organise adjustments Create a folder above all other layers. Now add adjustment layers to this, such as Levels and Gradient Map. Play around with them to try out different colour options that can dramatically change the mood of your image.

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032

© Nike

DIGITAL GRAPHICS SHORTCUTS Group layers This way is a lot quicker than using the Layers panel fly-out menu. Simply select the layers you want to bring together then hit Cmd/Ctrl+G, for instant layer grouping.

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Paragraph Text Use Paragraph Text to fit type to a design space without distortion. Ctrl/ right-click your text layer then select Convert to Paragraph Text. Continue typing before resizing points.

034

Editable boundary Create a shape path then add your Type tool in this, mapping text to the shape boundary. Now you can use the Anchor Point tools to edit the path and how text interacts with this.

035

Select all layers This is especially useful when looking to merge all to create a group from all existing layers. Simply hit Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/ Alt+A. All layers will become active simultaneously.

036

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Reselect layer This Adobe Photoshop shortcut saves any designer from performing accidental clicks away from a section. Just press Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+D to reselect your layer.

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WorldMags.net 75 PROFESSIONAL PHOTOSHOP TIPS GREAT WAYS TO PAINT DIGITALLY Master Photoshop brushes, blend modes and more to paint light, colour and form

038 CHARACTERS TOMMY KINNERUP

www.tommykinnerup.com Designing appealing characters can be a challenge, especially when there are many aspects to be aware of. A crucial thing is to avoid too much repetition. You will only limit your actual capabilities if you draw the same type of characters over and over again. Try to think outside of the box and challenge yourself with new techniques to come up with your initial character sketches. It’s very useful to explore new characters by putting yourself in the character’s position. In that way you can ask yourself questions that eventually can reveal more of the character’s personality and look. Let these thoughts guide you to an expression that reveals a certain emotion and attitude, or an interesting pose that holds a story to make it more believable. All of which should appeal to you.

PRO TIP START SMALL ANDREA FEMERSTRAND http://noukah.com I sketch the line drawing on a canvas smaller than A5. This way you can experiment with different designs, and you don’t have to worry about getting stuck with detailing too early. It’s also helpful because the file won’t get too heavy. Also, try to have as few layers as possible when you draw. Keep things rough and loose when you start. Go nuts.

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© Andrea Femerstrand

brush opacity. This created a realistic yellow glow. Smoke effects were also painted in, using smoke texture brushes also at a low opacity. If you need to add believable fire or smoke to your scene, this technique is useful as well as quick.

041 REALISTIC EYES SARA BIDDLE

© Tommy Kinnerup

039 PAINTED GLOWS FRANCESCO CORVINO

www.francescocorvino.com Although matte painting works with photos, many of the special effects you see are actually painted by hand, much like in this example. Fire at night stock was gathered from the internet and placed into the scene, in the right positions with the proper scale. These layers blending modes were then set to Screen in order to hide all the black parts in the photograph. However, this still wasn’t enough and painting techniques were needed. A new solid layer filled with black was created a set to a Color Dodge blending mode. A soft yellow brush with airbrush options enabled was then painted to the layer above the fire stock at a low

www.salizabeth.net Add in radiating streaks moving outward from the pupil, using several colours for a realistic effect. Including random dots of colour will also add some variety and uniqueness. For the lashes, use a small brush and paint each one beginning at the eyelid then curve your stroke slightly. Finish by applying small, light-coloured specks, with the brush mode set to Vivid Light, creating eye reflection. Also add this brush around the tissue and bottom eyelid.

042 TRADITIONAL EFFECTS MARTA NAEL

www.martanael.daportfolio.com In order to create a traditional effect with digital software, you need to use textured brushes. These let you create an expressionist style in your base image using several brushes strokes. Another way to create this effect is to paint onto a new layer and then emulate brush strokes by erasing with a textured eraser. This will show and combine the layer below.

© Sara Biddle

043 PLAY WITH SETTINGS JEFF LANGEVIN

© Francesco Corvino

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www.jefflangevin.com Creating custom Photoshop brushes can be a great way to add extra interest and yield unexpected results. Paint with these brushes while adjusting brush settings, such as transparency, spacing and angle jitter. If you experiment with blending modes you can quickly achieve impressive depth and colour in your images.

WorldMags.net 75 PROFESSIONAL PHOTOSHOP TIPS MICHAEL PEDRO http://mpedro.com/ Painting atmosphere

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© Michael Pedro

044 PAINT ATMOSPHERE

Custom brushes are a handy alternative to the standard Photoshop airbrush, depending on the kind of atmosphere you’re looking for. Using smoke textures in your brushes is a great way to quickly add movement and volume to image atmospherics without too much hassle.

045 ESSENTIAL BACKLIGHTING

If you’re hoping to create a darkened, moody scene, backlighting is the key to achieving this atmosphere. For authentic effects, electively add illuminated haze behind the objects in your scene to accentuate silhouettes and call attention to focal points.

046 USE THE LASSO TOOL

Use Photoshop’s Lasso tool to isolate objects you wish to backlight. Not only does this allow you to paint illuminated haze only where you want it, but it also keeps your backlit edges as crisp as possible. This is especially effective in higher image resolutions.

DIGITAL PAINT SHORTCUTS 047

FLIP HORIZONTALLY

Flipping your canvas makes you look at the painting with fresh eyes, and you can see any proportions or compositions that may be a bit off. Create an action that flips it when pressing a specific key, perhaps F2.

050

SWAP BRUSHES

Dial through the brush styles in your brush panel more easily using these shortcuts. Hit < on the keyboard to jump to the next brush in the list or hit > to go to the previous brush on the list.

048

RESIZE BRUSH

There’s no need to fire up the brush panel and use the Size slider to select a style. Instead, just hit Cmd/Ctrl+Alt/Opt and drag left and right to change the size, and up and down to adjust the softness.

051

HUD COLOR PICKER

Activate the HUD Color Picker by holding down Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/Alt when the Color Picker is selected. Swap between wheel and strip views by going to Photoshop> Preferences>General menu.

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049

ALTER HARDNESS

Changing the brush settings with sliders makes your workflow slower. Hold down Shift and hit the bracket keys to decrease or increase the brush hardness in 25% increments instead.

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SAMPLE COLOUR

Quickly sample a colour with one of the Pencil, Paintbrush, Colour Replacement, Gradient or Paint Bucket tools activated by holding down Opt/Alt, switching to the eyedropper tool.


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GREAT PHOTO EFFECTS Master effects using adjustments, layering techniques and masks

053 HYPERREALISM JOSH ROSSI

http://joshrossi.com/ Creating a successful hyper-real look in your image hangs on how you choose to apply Dodge and Burn techniques. Start by creating a blank layer above the image and change the blending mode to Soft Light. It’s this blank layer that you’ll be painting to, using black and white brushes set to 20% Opacity. White makes things brighter and shinier, with black making things darker and the colour richer.

To create your hyper-real look, start by applying your black brush. Follow the contours of an object, making them darker and bolder. Now with your white brush, add some shine to the light areas by decreasing the brush size with each stroke. Apply three or four strokes. The shine will start to appear.

You can do 50 percent less work but still achieve credible results by using the right filter 054 WORK WITH BLUR OLIVER WETTER

© Josh Rossi Photography

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http://fantasio.info/ There is a wide variety of techniques available to you when trying to create realistic robotic looks. One way is to draw and paint using brushes until you reach a point where you obtain the same realism as a photograph. However, you can work smarter and do 50 percent less work but

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still achieve credible results just by using the right filter. For example, when adding synthetic tubes, apply the Field Blur filter that can be found in Photoshop from version CS6 onwards under Filter>Blur. The example supplied here shows where the blur is being applied. Similar to a rotary knob, you can perfectly assign the amount of blur desired on a specific part of the canvas. The goal is to make the whole image look artificial with a strong blur and solve the problem of an unfinished look in the painted tubes all at once.

WorldMags.net 75 PROFESSIONAL PHOTOSHOP TIPS Shadows A good way to add shadows is to take a small to medium sized brush with Hardness set at 80% and Opacity at 50%. By Opt/Alt-clicking you can find the desired colour for your shadow right in the dark areas of your image.

057

Gradient haze A mystical aura can be added using the Gradient tool. Use a Foreground to Transparent style, applied from the bottom to the top of the image. Fog and haze have a higher density at ground level, getting clearer as they near the sky.

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Frontal light An easy but effective method of adding details is to go with silhouettes. Pick a dark colour befitting your haze and paint outlines with a small hard brush. Fill with the same colour afterwards and go for minor detailing.

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Soft edges It’s important to soften the edges of your layers when working with stock images. To do this, make a selection of your layer, set Select> Modify>Contract at 2px then Select>Modify> Feather at 2px. Invert the selection and hit Delete.

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Monochrome noise To add some monochrome noise, create a new layer, fill it with solid black and place it on top of all the other layers. Go to Filter> Noise>Add Noise set at 50% with Gaussian and Monochromatic active. Change the layer’s blending mode to Soft Light and Opacity to 15%.

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© Tobias Roetsch

056 SEPARATE TONE

PRO TIP 055 LIGHT WRAP EDMOND YANG

www.yangmedia.com Make it easier to composite a subject into a background with a light wrap. Adding a low opacity inner glow, using the background colour is one way. But for more control, duplicate your background and add a Gaussian blur to it. Add an inverted layer mask, hiding all, then use a soft white brush to paint edges back in around the subject. Change this layer’s blending mode to Soft Light.

ANDY POTTS

www.andy-potts.com With the majority of my photo collage illustrations, I like to be able to separate the light and dark tones of a photograph into separate layers. This offers the versatility to use these areas in a number of creative ways. Desaturate the image to black and white and using Levels to boost the contrast, getting the most dramatic light and shade. Use Color Range to select the black or white areas and lift them onto a new layer to use as you wish. Fill with a vivid pop-art colour, paste texture in or reselect areas from the original photo.

© Edmond Yang © Andy Potts

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WorldMags.net 75 PROFESSIONAL PHOTOSHOP TIPS COMBINE 3D AND CREATE WEB ASSETS See how Photoshop helps you to enhance your new media workflow

062 C4D STYLES BARTON DAMER

www.alreadybeenchewed.tv Cinema 4D (C4D) and Photoshop were combined to create the 3D shatter shapes you see in this image. The model sequence was shot in a studio environment using strobes and a fill light. Each shot of the sequence was then isolated from the background using Photoshop masking tools. The sequence was then set up in one Photoshop file with each shot on a separate layer. The majority of the scene was modelled in C4D. After adding a plane to the scene, texture it using a shot of the person in the sequence then select the alpha channel from the Photoshop file. This process is repeated for each shot in the sequence. Now you’re able to place your planes in a true 3D space behind the desk and have them interact with the lights in a very realistic way. They will cast shadows across any cubicle elements in a true 3D space and this helps quite a bit when finally compositing back in Photoshop.

064 ADD TEXTURE LUKE CHOICE

www.velvetspectrum.com Creating atmosphere is much easier in Photoshop than in a 3D space. Once I’ve exported my rendered type unit to Photoshop, I bring in a number of textures with consistent patterning, like concrete, smoke, clouds and mountains. I desaturate these then apply different blending modes, such as Screen and Soft Light, to add extra tactility to a layer. Using an image of a snowy mountain range is great for adding depth because of the exposure range between light and dark.

© Marc Goodman

067 HTML5 DESIGN ZEE DURRANI

065 MERGE STOCK MARC GOODMAN

063 BLEND 3D FAST

to blend those elements together, with more traditional photographic stocks.

www.behance.net/elnombre The great thing about using CGI is that as the artwork evolves, you can create more stock imagery to meet your exact requirements. This image started out with solid curved 3D models, using them to build the main structure. But they were too flat and uninteresting alone, so the 3D frameworks and lighthouse model were produced to create more details. Photoshop’s adjustment layers along with Dodge and Burn can then be used

http://creative9.com/ Illustration for HTML5 is so easy to make in Photoshop, even when starting from a sketch. Spend your time organising the major shapes into separate layer groups. This is essential as most of these images are eventually animated. On top of this, CS6’s ability to clip layers onto groups makes adding detail amazingly easy. Before CS6 it was a pain to build your image up like this. © Zee Durrani

NIK AINLEY

www.shinybinary.com Blend 3D renders into a composition with ease using these few basic steps. Firstly, try and match the lighting as closely as possible in your 3D application, which will reduce the amount of relighting work needed in Photoshop. Exporting your renders with an alpha channel will prevent having to trace around it. Matching colours can require an array of Photoshop’s adjustment tools. Start off with a custom Gradient Map based on the area you are trying to blend.

PRO TIP 066 EXPORT LAYERS MATEUSZ SYPIEN

www.digi-mental.com Prepare your work in a way that lets you modify particular elements without touching other parts of your composition. Simply break your 3D scene into objects, textures and lights. Render them separately and combine everything back in Photoshop. This will give you every possibility to experiment with blending modes and apply different effects, and save time.

© Digimental Studio © Nik Ainley

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WorldMags.net 75 PROFESSIONAL PHOTOSHOP TIPS WORK WITH CG TAYLOR JAMES

www.taylorjames.com

This Spring/Summer collection image for the popular Mizuno sportswear brand is a complete Taylor James production, including an eclectic mix of CGI, photography and that added vibrancy in retouching. The campaign for the new Mizuno range, developed by agency Thinking Juice, highlights the broad functionality of their trainers.

Puppet Warp on the toe Using Puppet Warp instead of the usual Transform Warp feature allows the user much more accuracy when distorting the object. Play with the density and mode of the mesh to give the desired effect.

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Specular Pass You can add authenticity to 3D elements just be ensuring that you apply light effectively. Using the Specular Pass from the CGI renders on a Screen blending mode adds the extra highlights that bring the metal to life.

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High Pass filter Adding a High Pass over the top of the whole image on Soft Light gives it extra punch. The amount you need depends on the size and sharpness of the image. We used a High Pass of 5 on 50% Opacity for this image.

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DIGITAL GRAPHICS SHORTCUTS Flexible guides When laying out web design, guides become essential. You can set specific measurements by selecting View>New Guide and input Position, which is easier than eyeing it in.

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Layer cloning So you’ve applied several layer styles to your web elements and want to add them to other layers in your design. To do this, hold Opt/Alt and drag the fx icon to another layer.

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Tracking This works great with your type logos being designed in Photoshop. Hold down Opt/Alt and press the < key to start decreasing the type’s tracking, or > to increase it.

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Drag selection You can keep your selection live after moving it. Make a selection with the Marquee tool and hold the spacebar to move. Once released, you can continue to edit your selection.

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Fold all groups When working with web you can have many layer groups open at one time. Close them all at once by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/ Alt and click the triangle icon. Repeat to open all.

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Photomanipulat Discover the world of photomanipulation; learn from Photoshop experts and get started with advanced image transformation

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22 Creative retouching Discover the tricks behind creating stunning and other-worldy effects

32 Create dynamic lighting Achieve surreal lighting effects with compositing and blending tools

38 Master layer masks Paint with layer masks and develop an imaginative colour scheme

44 Advanced compositing Combine 3D and photographic elements to create an action scene

50 Apply liquid paint effects Use photomanipulation tools to transform a model with paint stock

54 Expert blending Build a sci-fi floating city by combining multiple techniques

Digital artists are now turning to 3D software in the pursuit of enhanced believability 20


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WorldMags.net TECHNIQUES XXXXXXXXXX PHOTOMANIPULATION

CREATIVE RETOUCHING

WE REVEAL HOW DIGITAL ARTISTS COMBINE CG SOFTWARE AND PHOTOSHOP TO ACHIEVE EFFECTS OTHERWISE IMPOSSIBLE IN REALWORLD SHOOTS

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reative retouching is all about the viewer’s suspension of disbelief. Global advertisers are increasingly turning to digital artists to produce effects that wouldn’t be possible in any real-world photo shoot, but that look wholly credible due to creative retouching. As creatives, it’s our mission to ensure precise colour, sharpness, believable textures and a sprinkling of magic are achieved in our results – supplied through a highly technical skillset. Understandably, many digital artists are turning to 3D software to aid in this pursuit of enhanced believability. This is a technique commonly known as CG photography. In this feature we take a look at all the key stages of production. We’ve gathered an impressive host of professionals who share their advice and show you how to achieve expert composition, photorealism and special effects. First though, we start with the ever-essential concept stage. Every creative retouch project starts with either a sketch or a photo mockup, with the latter often following the sketch and using it as a blueprint. When piecing together a draft, the reference images used must contain sound aesthetic qualities. These include defined lights and shadows, as well as a high image resolution, so all the details are visible and pliable in the following phases. Factors such as these are crucial to the success of the final outcome. Working with larger resolutions offers the ability to scrutinise a composite more thoroughly. Creative retoucher Radoslav Žilinský, (www.radoxist.com) reveals how he ensures maximum quality in this preliminary stage: “I often work [with an image] with a resolution that’s at least 30 per cent larger than it needs to be. When you paint something into the image, or cut elements out, you can often miss leftover edges or image artefacts [when working with low-res stock].” However, you won’t when working at higher resolutions, which are likely to look just perfect.

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MEET THE EXPERTS

James Lucas and Tom Rose www.limehousecreative.com

2ADOSLAVďǿILINSKƙ www.radoxist.com

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%DVINď0UZINKEVICH www.edvin.lv

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Jonathon Eadie and Bruce Bigelow www.electricart.com.au

Gordon McBryde www.featherwax.com

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© Limehouse Creative 2012


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WorldMags.net PHOTOMANIPULATION EXPERT SELECTIONS Building a plausible fantastical scene will also depend on the selections you make. Working at larger sizes enables retouchers to navigate issues faster, but if you know the best ways to cut out, you can avoid these problems entirely. Creative retoucher and art director Edvin Puzinkevich (www.edvin.lv) uses three separate methods to detach his elements from the original backdrop. “Generally I use the Polygonal Lasso with Smooth and Feather settings active,” he reveals. “I

Once all the elements are prepared, a retoucher has to then fit them together in a realistic and effective way. This means presenting believable depth-of-field effects (DOF), but isn’t always a case of simply eyeing everything into place. Instead, professionals will use Photoshop’s tools to devise ways to create authentic results.

use the Pen tool to target curved edges in automotive, human and industrial objects. I apply separation and outline hair, plants or other highly detailed shapes and particles using Channels.” Often a creative retoucher must combine several techniques to get the perfect edge. Žilinský agrees: “When cutting out a model, it’s good to separate tricky parts, such as hair or a transparent dress, into individual layers. [It’s best to] work on these using a combination of the Refine Edge tool and edit by applying Levels to the attached layer mask(s).”

BELIEVABLE PERSPECTIVE Many artists, including Puzinkevich, will turn to Photoshop’s grid-based options. He explains: “To

HOW TO SHOOT FOR A CREATIVE RETOUCH 2!$/3,!6ďǿ),).3+ƀď3(!2%3ď()3ď%80%2)%.#%3ď/&ď02%0!2).' ď$)2%#4).'ď!.$ď%$)4).'

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SKETCH IT OUT

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TIME TO RETOUCH

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A LITTLE 3D

The more accurate the sketch, the more likely it will be accepted by the client and the shoot phase is likely to be more stable. Here establishing colour, shape and image tones was key.

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PREP THE SHOOT

A simple 3D scene was prepared, so we knew the exact camera placement, lighting conditions and perspective necessary. From this, we knew we’d need to shoot with a 35mm camera lens.

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SHOOT RESULTS

Here the main light source wasn’t enough, so we added extra lighting behind our models to mimic light pouring through large windows, which would be added later.

Always try to capture the most natural aesthetic and maintain advertising qualities such as clear contrast, plasticity and nice colours – especially when retouching for fashion.

Though we did go and apply 3D elements to the background in this image, be aware that this actually doesn’t always have to look superrealistic. Sometimes the smaller details and irregularities are much easier to add in Photoshop.

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!GENCYď ď-57ď3AATCHIďď3AATCHI ď!RTďDIRECTORď ď "RANISLAVď-LADƙ ď4AMƂSď"OHUS ď0HOTOGRAPHERď ď-ARCELď 'ONZALEZ /RTIZďqď!UPARKďSHOPPINGďCENTER

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FINAL COLOUR GRADING

Colour grading makes the final result. Apply a Brightness/Contrast adjustment in combination with Hue/Saturation, because when the contrast is increased, tones will become oversaturated. Continue by adding a Color Balance adjustment, then finish with a Gradient Map set to Color or Hue blend modes.

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WorldMags.net CREATIVE RETOUCHING build geometrical perspective I specifically use shapes and guides. First I use the Line tool to find the correct horizon line in my start image, then mark this with a Photoshop Guide. I continue to apply the Line tool to mark other directions and map out the scene. I also draw out perspective grids using the very useful Vanishing Point filter.” Once this tool is mastered, retouchers can map out guides for straight, perpendicular and rounded perspectives, using corresponding Angle values. However, depth of field isn’t just a matter of varying the size and position of elements, as Photoshop also offers the means to tweak colour and light to boost realism. An advanced colourcorrection and matching process can then gradually be applied to build a believable environment in what is an otherwise incredible scene. It’s also vital that photo elements react to any light source in the image, as this will also determine colour casts and where any shadows will be placed. Photoshop’s Black & White adjustment layer can be applied first, to simplify the perception of existing highlight and shadow areas. A Curves layer can then be added to achieve a perfect contrast and integrate elements seamlessly.

Selective Color adjustment layers are used to make precious tonal adjustments, then there’s the Gradient Map tool. This is awesome as it enables me to add comprehensive tones across the entire image, binding all objects

COMPOSITING YOUR IMAGE ELEMENTS EDVIN PUZINKEVICH REVEALS HOW HE USED SIMPLE PHOTOSHOP TECHNIQUES TO PIECE TOGETHER THIS CREATIVE RETOUCH FOR BAHRAINI CREATIVE AGENCY, UNISONO The models in the base image had to be removed and the interior space was rebuilt by Puzinkevich. “I duplicated usable pieces of the window frame, using Free Transform to scale these layers down to the new window width, then skewing and distorting to match the perspective,” he explains. “I also added 1% Noise to imitate a light grain.” The floor was restored by cloning from its cleaner parts, however, the light reflected on this wasn’t even. Puzinkevich added two inverted Curves adjustment layers and painted to these with a soft white brush to match light and shadow. The ladder was comped in and the Polygonal Lasso tool was applied, set with a low Feather amount. “I made multiple selections of the top of the ladder, then painted these with a light-grey brush to achieve correct lighting,” explains Puzinkevich. “I painted the parts of ladder affected by the light from the window with a darker grey.” All models were separated from their respective backgrounds in two steps. “The guy with the laptop’s head was replaced. The new element was separated using a duplicate Red channel with increased contrast and the Brightness/Contrast tool,” explains Puzinkevich. “I used the Polygonal Lasso tool again to cut out the original model’s body. I applied a low Feather amount (around 0.5) to this selection to achieve more-believable edges.” The Pen tool played its own part and was used to create and place the separate paper sheets in the image. “Holding the Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/Alt keys when applying this tool enables us to adjust paths perfectly,” Puzinkevich concludes.

EDVIN PUZINKEVICH / WWW.EDVIN.LV

COLOUR GRADING For this stage Puzinkevich uses three tools to correct tones. “I add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to saturate and desaturate objects and make big colour moves,” he explains. “Selective Color adjustment layers are also used to make precious tonal changes, then there’s the Gradient Map tool. This is awesome as it enables me to add comprehensive tones across the entire image and bind all the objects.” Žilinský also applies the Gradient Map tool, but more specifically to colour-grade water elements. “An aquamarine tone resides in water’s darker areas and cyan is in its brighter ones,” he explains. “I’ll apply a Gradient Map on top of my water layer, setting the adjustment’s blending mode to Color.

© Unisono

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WorldMags.net PHOTOMANIPULATION “I work with greyscale (desaturated) photos beneath,” Puzinkevich continues. “This way I can be absolutely sure that there are no colour shifts in the final water composite.”

WORK WITH CG It’s clear that a large amount of a retoucher’s time will be spent endlessly chasing photorealism. However, working with photo stock alone can quickly become an arduous task. Also, with time in short supply, retouching studios are turning to 3D software and what this has to offer. Taylor James (www.taylorjames.com) is a studio that’s leading the way in promoting the use of CG assets. President and founder Glen Taylor explains why working this way is such an advantage to the workflow. “CG provides the flexibility and creative license to make the unbelievable believable, in instances when we couldn’t achieve it with

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photography alone,” he explains. “It enables us to realise the most imaginative or simply logistically impossible concepts.” The beauty of working with CGI is that it lets us achieve any look or feel we want and there will be a few instances where photorealism isn’t a requirement. However, it’s often the basis for commercial projects – creating images people can relate to without questioning what they see Taylor James embarks on a rigorous modelling, lighting, shading and texturing process to achieve such believability. This ensures that all CG assets hit a high level of detail early on. “Our retouchers are experts at compositing many passes, such as shadows and Alpha channels, which CG can output accurately to get all the details,” Taylor tells us.

CG AND PHOTOSHOP 3ds Max is primarily used and supplemented with

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V-Ray for rendering images. “Often there are requirements to use specific software, such as ZBrush, to virtually sculpt organic forms,” adds Taylor. Photoshop is used to texture and retouch. Channels are added to enhance and control the lighting in the scene, with tried and trusted Displacement maps also being utilised to wrap textures and add imperfections. When bringing CGI elements into a photographic background, a creative retoucher must once again seamlessly integrate these into a scene. “We need to be aware of where the light source is coming from, then use adjustment layers and Channels to play with light, shadows and colour,” reveals Taylor. “We often use customised brushes, adjustment layers and different blur techniques to integrate these.” Photoshop blending modes also come in handy, especially when working with CGI render passes.

WorldMags.net CREATIVE RETOUCHING CGI PHOTOGRAPHY WORKFLOW TAYLOR JAMES EXPLAINS HOW CG SOFTWARE AND PHOTOSHOP WERE COMBINED TO CREATE THIS IMAGE COMMISSIONED BY DDB CANADA, FOR SUBARU CANADA

■ CONCEPT

■ CGI TALK

■ DETAILING THE SCENE

The agency supplied us with a 2D concept and a quick mockup. This gave us a basic idea of what they wanted. We imported this into a 3D space, where detailed parts were created and camera and lighting angles were positioned.

A chalk material was applied to the modelled scene, which enhanced the details, ensuring that the correct angles, shadows and light intensity were presented clearly. This enabled the actual materials, lighting and textures to be applied.

The details in soil, grass and water were created separately then combined in the scene. This meant each component could be viewed in greater detail to ensure a photorealistic effect. Materials and textures were added to each part to enhance the realism.

■ LAYERING ON THE TEXTURES

■ FINISHING TOUCHES

At this stage the CGI car was rendered out and supplied for retouching. This shot shows all straight RGB render parts created, combined in a full scene before applying any other passes or colour work.

Here you can see the render passes created in CGI, separated so that colour work could be applied and aligned. Keeping them separate enabled more control over stylised lights, reflections and shadows.

CG gives us flexibility and creative license to make the unbelievable believable, in instances when we couldn’t achieve it with photography alone GLEN TAYLOR / WWW.TAYLORJAMES.COM Agency DDB Canada. Client: Subaru. © Taylor James

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WorldMags.net PHOTOMANIPULATION “These enable us to bring all the elements together in terms of lighting, texturing and depth of field,” says Taylor. “Blending modes also mean we can put the CG passes back together in a way that is mathematically correct.” Even in the few instances where photorealism isn’t overly required, believability is still in the back of a creative retoucher’s mind. The beauty of working with CGI and Photoshop is that we can achieve any look or feel we want. However, when applying special effects, a creative retoucher must always enhance the message of a client’s ad campaign first and foremost.

CREATE A DYNAMIC CAMPAIGN IMAGE ELECTRIC ART REVEALS HOW PHOTOSHOP WAS USED TO CREATE THESE SURREAL EFFECTS

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BASE IMAGE

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BUILD VOLUME WITH CHANNELS

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DUST EFFECTS

By combining photographic and 3D elements we created a desolate, almost lunar terrain for the hawk to sit in. One of the biggest challenges here was creating the correct scale for the shrubs and rocky outcrops. The other challenge was to ensure there was enough sense of distance in a restricted frame for all the action to take place. Adding atmosphere helped to create the illusion of depth.

APPLYING SPECIAL EFFECTS The end results can be either more stylised or surreal, depending on a client’s needs, but attention to quality must be assured. This is a reaction to the print medium that retouch work is presented in. “There is far less flexibility than in other mediums, such as animation and film,” explains Jonathon Eadie, managing director at Electric Art (www.electricart. com.au). “In print the tiniest details can be scrutinised close-up over time and the tiniest detail can shatter the illusion for the viewer. Detail in lighting and colour are extremely important.” Nowhere is this more evident than when making essential relighting edits to certain parts of an image. Even when the overall treatment is more intense, if the underlying basics are correct, the viewer won’t question what they perceive. This means that special effects become the most challenging phase in a creative retoucher’s process. Gordon McBryde, director at Featherwax (http://featherwax.com) concurs: “We try to [achieve] the visually impossible while retaining a realistic edge. If special effects went purely for realism alone, there would be some pretty tame adverts out there.”

The 3D render of the hawk was gradually replaced with photographic material of dust, combining voluminous dust clouds with wispy trails. We applied this through a combination of layer styles, Channel masks and opacity tweaks. A selection was made using the Channel that gave the best definition between the dust and the background. This selection was used to increase or decrease detail contrast where applicable.

Blending modes were either left at Normal or set to Screen to enhance contrast. Once we had the main form, it came down to detailing the eyes, claws and beak. We created our own brushes, using specific areas from a Channel mask to create trailing dust. Once all the elements were in place, we added extra grit and flying dirt, applying a final overall colour grade to bring the entire image together.

FANTASTICAL ATMOSPHERE The application of effects can be very tailored, with each instance producing very different outcomes. McBryde elaborates: “Special effects in postproduction are very much bespoke. While similar techniques are often used, every project and image is a new challenge that requires a fresh approach.” Bruce Bigelow, creative director at Electric Art (www. electricart.com.au) adds: “Each job is individual, however we do have a group of effects that can be used time and again, with slightly different outcomes. Using Channels, we can create brushes or layer masks for colour to add atmospherics. This way we’re using the existing lighting to enhance the overall image.” Photoshop is a very flexible program that can enable an image’s atmosphere to be enhanced in a number of ways. Retouchers tend to use several layers to build effects in what must become a three-dimensional workspace. “This tends to start with stripping in a new sky,” explains McBryde. “If

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Creative Directors Ben Coulson and Chris Northam, Art Director Paul Meates. © Agency GPY&R Melbourne, Photography Andreas Smetana

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WorldMags.net CREATIVE RETOUCHING

We try to [achieve] the visually impossible while retaining a realistic edge. If special effects went purely for realism alone, there would be some pretty tame adverts out there GORDON MCBRYDE / HTTP://FEATHERWAX.COM

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WorldMags.net TECHNIQUES XXXXXXXXXX PHOTOMANIPULATION Retouch Diego Angarita and Gordon McBryde. © Discovery Channel

we’re creating a dramatic image, we use Curves and the Black & White tools to make this new sky suitably moody. We then layer different effects such as ice, rain and particles in the wind. These tend to be achieved by applying Screen or Multiply blend modes or clipped using a Channel mask.” It’s very important to ensure the colour and focus levels in these atmospheric details are matched to their surroundings, as nothing makes an image scream “Photoshop” more than a rain texture that’s too sharp or background clouds that are too green. “Broad adjustments to contrast and colour using adjustment layers help here,” Eadie explains. “Selective adjustments can be localised. Often it’s the sum of many small details and colour treatments that are most effective when it comes to enhancing atmosphere.” Sharpness is the final piece in creating hyperreal looks and the High Pass filter is greatly endorsed by

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our professionals, as McBryde adds: “Many people will use a destructive sharpening process by merging the layer stack then using either the normal Sharpen tool or the Unsharp mask. ADVANCED SHARPENING “This sharpening technique can be useful at times, especially if the layer is duplicated a few times, with an Unsharp mask applied,” McBryde continues. “One blend mode is set to Lighten the other to Darken. However, the preferred method of sharpening in creative retouching is to apply the High Pass filter to a duplicate layer set to Soft Light. This method is non-destructive, as the filter sits at the top of the stack, affecting the work below.” The Unsharp mask doesn’t need to be avoided entirely. In fact, this tool is capable of producing an interesting selective contrast treatment, when set with a low amount and a high pixel radius. “We

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used this technique on a job for Olympus Tough cameras (seen at our website),” McBryde explains. “An alternative to this is of course the High Pass filter. We apply this in combination with different layer blending modes, which provides very interesting and unique results. Each image is certainly unique and experimenting with various techniques is important to find the best results.” It almost goes without saying that oversharpening must be avoided, as this can end with obvious fringing in high-contrast areas. It can also lead to an increase in image noise, beyond acceptable levels. Of course this is all determined by a factor already discussed – the quality of your CG and photographic assets. “We have worked with RAW files from large-format hasselblad and the tonal range available really determines how much flexibility we have in retouching believable looks,” McBryde explains.

WorldMags.net CREATIVE RETOUCHING CREATE DYNAMIC LIGHTING GORDON MCBRYDE EXPLAINS HOW TO CREATE EXCITING LIGHTING IN YOUR CREATIVE RETOUCH IMAGES

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THREE DIMENSIONAL SPACE

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CREATIVE LIGHTING

We always work on a file in a three-dimensional space. So the first step is always building the background. This has been achieved here by blending several photographs, such as the sky and water.

Dynamic contrast really adds something special. This is achieved by increasing the contrast Curves adjustments, set to a Luminosity blending mode and painting in selective areas. A straight curve set to Soft Light at 50% Opacity is a nice final tweak.

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PAINT WITH CURVES

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POST EFFECTS

The hero talent is composited, so we focused on lighting the elements. If each element is in its own folder with a mask, it’s simply a matter of using Curves adjustments to paint areas of light and dark.

A Black & White adjustment layer at 20% Opacity is added to mute the colours. A High Pass set to Soft Light adds overall sharpness. A second finer High Pass can be added and selective details, such as water splashes, can be sharpened with a layer mask.

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WorldMags.net PHOTOMANIPULATION

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WorldMags.net CREATE DYNAMIC LIGHTING

CREATE DYNAMIC LIGHTING S COMBINE PHOTO STOCK, TEXTURES AND BLENDING MODES TO PRODUCE A SURREAL IMAGE urrealism is the name of the game in this tutorial, as we take you through a Photoshop process that will help you achieve high-end, photoreal, and surreal effects, using an array of comped resources. Lighting effects feature heavily, as we show you how to apply contrast, highlights and shadows to tie all your elements together in a believable fashion. You’ll need to be familiar with basic Photoshop functions as we tackle ways to cut out images using

the Pen Path tool. We’ll also look at how to enhance manually applied lighting, using both brushes and Blend Modes. These lighting effects will bind our image elements together, creating realism in an otherwise unbelievable image. We’ll start with a model image that forms the foundation of the artwork. Once you have completed this tutorial, you will be able to light and construct a photoreal, surreal image and reapply many of the techniques across other light-inspired images.

BRING THE COMPOSITION TOGETHER

ARRANGE ALL ELEMENTS BEFORE YOUR LIGHTING PROCESS BEGINS

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RESIZE YOUR DOCUMENT

Open a new document at 3,800 x 4,900px, then open the ‘Girl.jpg’ and place it in the centre of your workspace. Once you’re happy with your placement, begin removing the subject from the background. We’ll use the Pen Path tool to make a selection and then cut the model out.

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OUR EXPERT KODE ABDO

www.facebook.com/BossLogicInc Kode is an artist from Melbourne, Australia, setting his sights on New York. As a self-made graphic artist he continues to learn and apply new skills.

SOURCE FILES All the images and brushes used to create this image, including the model, photo stock, textures and rendered images, are supplied. Ready-made PSD files also feature.

REFINE THE HAIR DETAIL

Soften the edges of your model so they’re not overly sharp. Do the same with the hair using the ‘Painted Hair Brushes’ supplied, painting to a separate layer so we can use the Transform tools to manipulate our elements later. Now merge the hair layer with the model layer.

WORK IN PROGRESS DARKNESS TO LIGHT

Step 1: Pick a subject

Step 7: Arrange elements

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MAKE A BASIC RETOUCH

For this particular image we need to remove the model’s freckles, so we’ll edit using basic retouching techniques by applying the Spot Healing brush. This is the best tool to clear up blemishes fast, but we’ll also use the Patch tool for some of the obstinate areas.

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Step 19: Refine lighting


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04

CREATE YOUR BACKGROUND

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BLEND IN THE LIQUID

We don’t want to make an overly complex backdrop, so instead we’ll add a new layer titled ‘background’. Next, activate a brush with a soft edge, increase the size to around 4,000px and apply once behind the subject using a shade of blue on its own layer. Now we’ll drop the layer’s Opacity to 80%, which is especially useful in the cases when the paint leaves areas far too strong and overpowering for this project. Remember, we’re attempting to complement the piece, not overwhelm it.

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INSERT TEXTURE TO BACKGROUND

Import the supplied ‘waterdrops 3.jpg’ file, place it on top of the blue-brushed layer and set the blending mode to Soft Light. Desaturate the image to make it completely black and white. To improve the contrast in the monochrome layer, apply Brightness/ Contrast and amend the settings until the right effect is achieved. If it still feels weak, duplicate this layer and set its blending mode to Overlay. Merge the background, blue-brushed and ‘waterdrops 3’ layers together and apply a light Gaussian Blur.

Using either your Eraser tool, set with a soft edge, or a layer mask, erase from the bottom of the subject, specifically the feet. The look we’re trying to achieve is one where the model’s feet are submerged in the water. This doesn’t have to be too deep, just up to the ankle so her hand can still be seen over the water level later in the tutorial. Also, make the water look seamless with the rest of the background by erasing the hard edges of the water layer, using a soft Eraser tool or a layer mask.

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APPLY WATER ELEMENTS

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PLACE A SOUSAPHONE

Open and import the supplied ‘waterdrops 2.jpg’ file and transform it using the Free Transform tool. Grab the top-middle anchor point and compress it to give the illusion that the ripple is flat on the ground. This method is all about getting the right perspective. The Transform tool is powerful enough to achieve this, so once you’re happy with your outcome, desaturate your ‘waterdrops 2’ layer (Cmd/Ctrl+U) so it’s a little less vibrant and matches the image’s overall atmosphere.

Open the supplied ‘Sousaphone.psd’ then select, cut, copy and paste it into sections. You can duplicate and place these in your scene as you see fit. Place your sousaphone layers closely around the subject and consider these elements as part of a giant metallic snake moving in and out of the water and around the composition. Feel free to experiment with your own placement to create the movement you want in the piece.

QUICK TIP To make lighting pop out of the image, blending mode layers are your best friends. Experiment with modes like Soft Light and Overlay to intensify exposures. You can tweak the strength of effects using the Opacity slider, or duplicate the layers to boost brightness.

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WorldMags.net CREATE DYNAMIC LIGHTING UNIFY YOUR SCENE

USE HUE/SATURATION AND OTHER ADJUSTMENTS TO SET THE TONE OF THE COMPOSITION

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ADJUST YOUR TONES

First, tone the sousaphone to fit the image using Hue/Saturation>Colorize settings (Cmd/Ctrl+U) and apply a slightly desaturated dark-blue tone. Here we’ve also added a gradient map to our model using a blue-to-light-blue style. Set this gradient map layer’s blending mode to Soft Light and adjust the Opacity until you’re happy with the outcome. 001

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Cut out the model, add her hair back in, then merge the layers

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Add the background behind the model, paint with the soft brush, texture and merge

Using the ‘waterdrops 2’ layer we applied in Step 6, select the ripple area of the image and duplicate this. Slightly manipulate it to look different from the main ripple using Transform tools and place it on the surface of the water under the instruments to create entry points for the sousaphone. Erase the excess areas of the sousaphone to make them seem like they are submerged underwater. Darken the tips of the sousaphones closest to the water so they blend in.

PLACE THE BODY TEXTURE

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TEXTURE THE SOUSAPHONE

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DUPLICATE THE RIPPLES

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Now we’ll add texture over certain parts of the model’s body. Open the supplied ‘Crack Texture’ folder to access seven texture images that will help us achieve the look we want. We’ve placed a ‘cracks 04.jpg’ file over the model’s left shoulder and just over her elbow. Both are blended using a Multiply blending mode. Apply the same effect to the model’s thighs, but using the ‘crack 03.jpg’ file. Finally, change the tonality to match the water.

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Cut up and place the sousaphone where you want it to create a snake-like appearance

TWEAK THE BACKLIGHTING

Select a soft brush and then create a new layer behind the model and the sousaphone. On this layer we’ll create an outer glow to make the centre of the image stand out. With a light shade of blue, brush some lighting strokes behind the model and the instruments. Make sure you apply just beneath the edges, because we’re using a soft brush that will automatically spread beyond the edges. To finish this step, duplicate the layer and set the new layer’s blending mode to Soft Light.

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Apply the supplied ‘cracks 05.jpg’ and ‘cracks 06.jpg’ files to texture the sousaphone layers and give them a rusty look. Take your time when placing these textures to produce the greatest impact and realism. Apply an Overlay blending mode to these texture layers to obtain a stronger effect. If this becomes too strong for you, try dropping the Opacity slider to around 80% or a little lower. You can experiment and set this layer to Soft Light if that’s an effect you’re aiming for.


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WorldMags.net PHOTOMANIPULATION BRING FOCUS TO YOUR IMAGE

BLEND LIGHTING LAYERS AND BRING FOCUS BACK TO THE CENTRE

14

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17

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Duplicate the model layer and brighten this by applying Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast. Create a look that seems a little overexposed, but not too harsh, because we still want to see details in the lit areas. Use a soft-edged Eraser and remove from the centre as in our example. This is done to create more dynamic lighting, which means we have something to work with later in the lit edges.

15

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Make a selection of your model layer by Ctrl-clicking the layer thumbnail. With your selection active, create a new layer and use a soft bright-blue brush, set to Soft Light, to highlight the edges of the hairline. Create another new layer on top of this and repeat the technique using a lighter shade of blue and setting your blending mode to Overlay. Repeat this method on the sousaphone layers.

We’ll simulate motion in the piece further by applying images from the supplied Black Ink folder. We’ll apply them around the sousaphone and exiting the water, to create a splash effect. You can also mix your ink layers with the music notes, adding in the previous set, to evoke a chaotic look. Remember to apply Hue/Saturation>Colorize, which will let you add a shade of purple, matching the tones in the water.

16

2%0,)#!4%Ĉ-/4)/.

To enhance the sense of motion, open the supplied ‘Music Notes’ folder where you’ll find a host of PSD files that we can combine to create the effects we’re looking for. Place these new layers under the sousaphone layer, making it seem as though these elements are being blown out. Change the size of each of these layers to create a sense of perspective and to enhance the detail in the image.

QUICK TIP Use the liquid images supplied to create your own splashes and abstract elements in the image. Don’t be scared to play around with the Motion B option to produce a sense of movement. Strive to make effects your own and let your imagination take over.

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!#()%6%Ĉ,)15)$Ĉ,)'(4).'

Repeat the techniques from Step 15 to insert lighting in your liquid areas, but this time we want these to be a little brighter as they are reflecting from the glow emitting from the model image. To get this effect we’ll add an extra layer, set to Soft Light blending mode. Next, apply a Gaussian Blur filter to this layer, which will result in brighter surroundings, then add motion blur to some of the liquid to inject more movement.

BELIEVE THE UNBELIEVABLE The key to achieving a believable image, even when creating surreal elements, is correct placement. Use the Transform tools to achieve the best angles and perspective. Make sure the image doesn’t get too cluttered, give elements room to breath and display a strong sense of depth. Understanding focal lengths and blur is a core skill to have. Using the right amount of blur will help create an accurate sense of background and foreground. This is more diffused in the backdrop, harder and brighter in the foreground, especially in this image. These dynamic effects are what augment the realism in an unreal scene.

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WorldMags.net CREATE DYNAMIC LIGHTING

19

INCREASE THE SURREALISM

22

INSERT SHADOWS

24

USE A SMOKE TEXTURE

Open and import layers from the files in the supplied Hands folder. Using the techniques of the previous steps, tone the arms to match the colour of the water using Hue/Saturation>Colorize settings (Cmd/Ctrl+U). Add texture to the arms just like in Step 10, duplicate the ripple layers as in Step 11 and continue to mask your arm layers so they look like they are reaching up from the water.

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FOCUS ON EXTRA DETAIL

Repeat Step 10, but add effects to the model’s right leg that sits in the background. Use the Pen Path tool to make a selection around this leg, then duplicate and create a new leg layer. Tone this so the colour matches that of the water and the two arms. Apply crack textures to the knee and use the Eraser to work out some of the coloured leg layer, so it looks like the knee is visible through the cracks.

We’ll now add some directional shadows behind the two arms on the right of the image. This is to enhance the direction and realism of the light, by casting shadows away from our main light source. Create a new layer and with a soft brush paint two black lines away from the direction of the light, making sure these are on top of the arm layers in the corner. After you’re happy with the angle of the brushed lines, drop the layer Opacity to 80% to produce a transparent look.

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LIGHT ELEMENTS INDIVIDUALLY

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REPLICATE A RADIANT LIGHT EFFECT

Now we’ll repeat the same method used in Step 15 to add highlights to the hand layers. Some of the hands in the image are set some distance from the main light source, so when you do apply light, make sure you use separate effects to individual hand layers. This will enable you to have maximum control over the brightness and means you can alter the intensity of light correctly for each element.

Referring back to what we’ve learnt in Step 15, we can now use similar techniques to add highlights under our model’s legs, creating the illusion of light emitting from the water. Doing this will draw the viewer’s eye to the centre of the composition once more. First use the Pen Path tool to target the areas you want to highlight. Also create a new layer set to Color Dodge blending mode before painting in your lights using a light-blue soft brush set to 80% Opacity.

QUICK TIP Adding new colours to the image’s lighting and mixing tonality can create interesting looks. We’ve added a new layer and applied a soft brush over the already vibrant areas of our image. This brush is set to Soft Light blending mode and we’ve inserted pink tones, which produce an eye-catching look.

Import the ‘smoke.psd’ supplied and place it around the image at a very low opacity. This adds that fine detail in the image and brings a dark, misty atmosphere. Feel free to use the smoke.psd to add extra detail to the lighting layers, by blending it using an applied Soft Light or Overlay blending mode and setting a low layer opacity. This will add texture to your lighting. Place similar effects in the lighting under the model, to evoke a sense of movement.

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OUR EXPERT JONO HISLOP AKA KIVEX www.somethingfresh.co.nz

Kivex is a New Zealand-born illustrator living in London. Most of his work is created for colleagues in the music industry and their associate record labels, including Atlantic, Warner, Sony and Tikidub.

SOURCE FILES On the disc you will find a model image that you can use to duplicate this tutorial (‘Heroine_stock.jpg’).

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WorldMags.net MASTER LAYER MASKS

MASTER LAYER MASKS USE BRUSHES, LAYER MASKS AND LIGHTING TECHNIQUES TO CREATE SURREAL LANDSCAPES WITH PHOTOGRAPHY

G

reat art is rarely the product of a complex chain of elaborate techniques. In truth, it is a destination most often reached through a sound understanding and patient use of your basic tools. A great eye for detail develops through perseverance. The following tutorial will teach you how to use simple Photoshop tools in advanced ways, and in doing so perhaps you will come to see them in a new light. In particular, this tutorial focuses on painting with layer masks and developing a colour scheme with adjustment layers and gradient maps.

Perspective and the idea that ‘less is more’ will guide you through the tutorial as a concept that will be continually revisited. You should walk away not just with a new art piece, but a set of skills that will stick with you throughout your career, assisting you in getting ideas onto your Photoshop canvas with less technical frustration. This particular photomanipulation was inspired by a piece of music that has a spacious, ‘lost at sea’ feel. Music that stimulates your imagination and creates a sense of location can help your creative flow and encourage originality.

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WorldMags.net PHOTOMANIPULATION It’s good to get into the habit of non-destructive editing. Try avoiding the Eraser tool at all times

01

SET UP THE CANVAS

Open a new document with dimensions 2,560 x 1,440 and a black background. Press Cmd/ Ctrl+K to open Preferences. Click on Guides, Grid & Slices from the list on the left and change the settings for Grid Section to Gridline every 100 per cent, Subdivisions 3. Pressing Cmd/Ctrl+’ will bring up your new rule of thirds grid, which sets the guide for the sun and the boat. Vertically pull down a ruler (Cmd/Ctrl+R), locking in the middle of the canvas. This is where the sea and the sky will meet.

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CREATE PERSPECTIVE

Now you need the sunray perspective, which is essential in establishing focal direction. Make a new layer and draw a white line across the canvas, starting from the sun. Cmd/right-click the layer and select Duplicate Layer. With the new line, press Cmd/Ctrl+T and move the anchor point to the centre position of the sun. Rotate 15 degrees by holding Shift and repeat the process of duplicating and rotating the line until you have a rising sun type perspective grid.

WORK IN PROGRESS COLLAGE TO PAINTING

Step 1: Build a backdrop

Step 7: Add focal elements

03 Step 19: Lighting effects

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BRING IN PHOTOS

You’re going to build the top half of the canvas first. Drag and drop in photos of skylines that you like the look and feel of. Try to keep the colours similar by choosing photos that were taken around the same time of day. There’s no need to be exact, though, as you can make adjustments later. For every image you bring into your piece, add a layer mask. With the layer selected, at the bottom-right of your screen click on the rectangle with the circle inside it. Layer masks allow us to paint in and out parts of the photo without being destructive.

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04

MERGE PHOTOS

See that white square that has appeared next to your layer? With it selected, your colour palette resets to black and white. Painting with a black brush will act as an eraser, while painting in white will do the opposite. It’s good to get in the habit of non-destructive editing. Try avoiding the Eraser tool at all times. Bring in another layer of the sky. Using a soft brush, set the Opacity to 25% and remove parts of the photo until you have a seamless merge with other images on the canvas.

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MERGE TECHNIQUES

When using the Brush tool, there are two shortcuts that greatly speed up your workflow: X on your keyboard switches between black and white. The square brackets vary the size of your brush. With each new image you drop onto the canvas, experiment with merging them by playing with layer styles. Use Screen and Lighten next. These are good for merging bright elements, while Multiply and Overlay/Soft Light are useful for creating vibrancy and intensity.

06

USE ADJUSTMENT LAYERS

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MIRROR THE IMAGE

When you bring in colours that don’t fit, use an adjustment layer! This is another nondestructive technique. With the layer selected, click on the half circle next to the layer mask and choose Curves. Change RGB to your choice of red/green/ blue to play with individual colour spectrums, and click to create a point. Boost up or down to add intensity or pull out the required colours. In this case, some of the clouds are too blue, so we have boosted the red to match the sunset’s warmth.

QUICK TIP Establish your focal points early on when imagining your art. In the case of this image, the sun’s brightness captures the viewer’s attention first, leading you to the heroine and finally to the islands, sweeping your eyes from left to right across the canvas. Try to avoid cluttered backdrops that can dismantle the flow of the piece.

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CREATE THE SUNSET

Bring in an image of the sun. Using a layer mask and soft brush, paint out the sky around it. Leave a light glow around the outer circumference with a 25% opaque brush. Align with the rule of thirds grid, and using the marquee tool (M), cut off the bottom of the sun and align with the horizon. Make a new layer and using a 200px or larger brush, paint on some blues and pinks with a 10% opaque brush and set the layer to Overlay to bring in some beautiful hues.

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Merge the image with Layer>Merge Visible. Hit Cmd/Ctrl+A and copy the merged canvas. Track back with Edit>Step backwards until your layers return. Paste in the image, and using Transform, flip the layer vertically. Align the image with the centre of the canvas and erase anything that cuts into the top half of the canvas. Use a Motion Blur at 0 degrees and a Distance of 25%. Follow it up with Filter> Distort>Ripple (66%, medium size) on your newly created ocean to add a touch of realism.


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WorldMags.net PHOTOMANIPULATION QUICK TIP If your finished piece is too dark, put a Brightness/ Contrast adjustment layer at the top of the layer chain with +15 Brightness at +5 Contrast. Is the image lacking depth? Use a Levels adjustment, slightly moving the middle slider (midtones) to affect the colours inside the vignette and around the sun.

Stock image

09

VIGNETTES AND OBJECTS

Creat a new layer, paint black around the edges of the canvas and set it to Multiply. Create another new layer and paint with a dark-blue brush (#00192a) on the edges of the vignette towards the centre and set to Color Burn. Mix this layer in at 40-50% Opacity to accentuate the outer colours. Drop in a photo of a boat from dreamstime.com and align and transform it to match your perspective grid. Drop in the female adventurer (available on the disc) and use a layer mask to paint out the background.

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FIT THE BOAT

Repeat Step 10 with the front and back of the boat, shading at 50% Opacity. With Curves, pull down the reds and greens and boost the blues. Using a Levels adjustment layer, boost the contrast by inserting the following numbers into the three boxes: 57, 0.63, 250. On a new layer with 40% Opacity, paint the girl’s casting shadow inside the boat, following the perspective grid. Paint some ripples into the water around and behind the boat. For realism, add Filter>Distort>ZigZag, with Settings at 2 and 14 and Pond Ripples selected.

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10

FIT THE HEROINE

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LIGHTING

For the highlights, make a new layer and Opt/Alt-drag over the heroine’s layer mask to make a copy. With the layer selected, set it to Overlay and paint white highlights on areas of the heroine facing the horizon. For the shading, use a black brush and paint parts facing away from the sun. Leave the layer style on Normal. Mix in her shading layer at 80% Opacity. Using Curves, boost the reds and blues.

With a new layer set to either Overlay or Soft Light, paint white streaks from the sun going outwards, following the perspective grid to create sunrays. Add a soft glow by creating a layer set to Lighten at 80% Opacity. Paint a mix of yellows and oranges around the sun with a large soft brush. Now create a Soft Light layer at 17% Opacity. Fill the canvas with blue #0319f0. Using a layer mask, erase out the centre so you’re only affecting the outer rims of the horizon and the vignette.


13

NIGHT SKY

Find a free NASA photo of a star-filled sky and drop it in. Set the blending mode to Screen to remove the black backdrop. It will almost certainly leave light artefacts, so use Levels (Cmd/Ctrl+L), bringing the far-left slider up a few numbers until black is at #000000, thus becoming 100 per cent transparent. With a layer mask, paint out the stars that have landed in awkward places. Use the Marquee tool (M) to move stars around if needed.

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TYING THE IMAGE TOGETHER

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THE FINISHING TOUCH

Add a Curves adjustment layer. Select blue and raise the ‘output’ +2, to tie the black vignette into the ocean with a subtle dark blue hue. Add a gradient map with these settings from left to right: #ffe89a, #c38f7b, #324a59 and #060c14. At 100% Opacity, the gradient map desaturates and ties the colour scheme together. Bring the opacity down if you want to retain some of the original vibrancy, but don’t oversaturate your work.

To add polish to any finished piece, duplicate a merged version of all your layers and use Filter>Other>High Pass with a low setting (1-2px). This exaggerates the edges. Set the layer to Overlay to sharpen the quality of your art. Areas that don’t require focal attention or sharpness such as the sun and the ocean can be painted out with a layer mask, making the heroine and the stars around her crisper.

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ADVANCED COMPOSITING T

BLEND MULTIPLE ITEMS TO CREATE THIS HIGHENERGY SCENE

his tutorial will show you how to create a complex action scene by combining 3D and photographic elements in Photoshop. We’ve always wanted to flip the story of James Bond on its head – where the woman is the one saving the day. Hence why Jane Bond was born! We sketched out an idea of the villain in his escape car being pursued by Jane Bond and her Bond boy. With all the moving parts we were imagining, Photoshop was the only way to convincingly bring it all together. We enlisted the help of uber-nerds Isaiah Mustafa, Alison Haislip, and Zachary Levi to get just the right casting and look for the piece. Photography was handled via Hasselblad H4D-50 to get super high-resolution assets to pull from for our photomanipulation. After a quick shoot, it was back to the post-production studio to whip out our Cintiq 22HD and get chopping. This image is one in a series of nine images that tell the story of how Jane Bond foiled an international jewel thief from stealing the crown diamond.

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WorldMags.net ADVANCED COMPOSITING

OUR EXPERT WIL WELLS

www.elevendy.com Wil Wells is the creative director and lead artist at Elevendy, a creative support studio based in California. His work has been used on numerous videogames, including Splinter Cell: Blacklist.

SOURCE FILES Textures, particles, 3D renders, as well as the RAW camera files are available for your use on this project. Download them at blog. advancedphotoshop.co.uk/ tutorial-files under Issue 117.

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01

You need to add a motion blur to the background layer to give the artwork a feeling of speed

SET THE STAGE

For the first step, you will create a scene that’s very dynamic with a lot of great lines. Create a new document and size it to 5,000px wide and 3,000px high with a DPI of 300. A city street with the road coming towards the camera is a perfect stage to place the chase. You can download this base image from blog.advancedphotoshop.co.uk/ tutorial-files. This shot is perfect since it has a wide camera angle, and will place the car racing right at the viewer for maximum drama.

WORK IN PROGRESS

02

EXPAND THE BACKGROUND

04

ADD MOTION BLUR

To get that long, dramatic look down the road, you need to expand the background by cloning the building. To do this and not lose the vanishing point perspective, use the Vanishing Point tool found under Filter>Vanishing Point. Once inside the Vanishing Point window, the default tool should be set to Create Grid Plane. Select the four corners of the building on the right and make sure that the lines stay with the perspective of the scene. Ensure that the vanishing point clone is successful.

03

CLONE WITH THE PERSPECTIVE STAMP

You now have a mesh that will keep your background cloning in perspective. Click the midright handle of the mesh and expand it to the edges of the composition. Still within the Vanishing Point window, you can now select the Vanishing Point Stamp tool. Sample the bottom-right of the plain selection with Opt/Alt-click. From here, Ctrl/rightclick to stamp in new buildings cloned in perspective from the original building. Make sure that the different lines of the building align with each other.

FROM CAMERA TO ACTION

Step 1: Set the scene

Step 7: Place the elements

Step 19: Colour and grain

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Click OK to apply the Vanishing Point Clone to your composition. You now need to add motion blur to the background to give the feeling of speed. Since this is a dynamic scene with a car moving towards the viewer, the standard motion blur filter will not give the look you want. This can be done better using Filter>Blur>Radial Blur. Set the Blur Method to Zoom and position its source at the far end of the street. Set the Amount to 5 and click OK.

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05

INSERT THE CAR

It’s now time to add the car to the scene. We prefer using 3D elements in scenes like this because you can choose any combination of camera and lighting angles, as opposed to the limitations of shooting a real car. There are plenty of places to pick up fantastic 3D car models online if you want to add your own getaway car. If not, we’ve modelled, rendered and lit one using CINEMA 4D. This image is supplied in the download pack (‘car. png’). Note we have not yet included the tyres.

06

ADD REALISM TO THE CAR

The render directly out of CINEMA 4D doesn’t look like a very convincing part of the scene. Using some tricks in Photoshop, you can get it looking real in no time. The first step will be to duplicate the car layer (Cmd/Ctrl+J) and then set the top car copy’s blending mode to Overlay. Then go to Filters>Other>High Pass and set the pixel radius to 10.0. This will add some fine detail and contrast to the look of the render, to help it integrate into the scene better.

07

CREATE A CAR GROUP

09

ADD THE TYRES

Select both car layers by selecting one then Opt/Alt-clicking on the other. With both layers now selected, press Cmd/Ctrl+G to put the two layers into a group. Next, expand the group to see the two layers and Cmd/Ctrl-click the layer preview icon of a car layer. This should create a selection around the layer. Finally, select the top group layer and click Add Layer Mask in the bottom of the Layers tab to adhere the selection to a mask that constrains the layers of the group.

QUICK TIP Blur methods are a tricky thing to master, especially when you need to account for objects going in different directions. With its different blurs, Photoshop can handle nearly anything. However, when working in 3D, most applications have the ability to add motion blur. This can increase the quality of the final image exponentially.

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BEAT UP THE CAR

It’s always great to collect textures. In this case, you’ll be using scratched metal textures, available in the tutorial files. To keep the textures organised and make sure they adhere to the constraints of the car body, drop them into the masked group that you created for the car. Set these textures to assorted blend modes such as Overlay, Hard Light and Darker Color. It’s better to experiment with different blending modes to find the best match, but we’ve also provided the modes in the file names of the scratched metal images.

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We’ve rendered out 3D versions of the tyres to get the lighting right (tire.png). You’ll be using the same tyre for both the front-left and back-left, and a rear-facing tyre for the right-hand side. Before dropping the tyres into your composition, go to Filters>Blur>Radial Blur. Set the amount to 6.0, the Blur Method to Spin, and pinpoint the Blur Center to the wheel’s centre, then click OK. Apply this method to both tyres and move them into the composition under the car body group.


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12

PLACE THE VILLAIN IN THE SCENE

Drop and size the villain into the composition. Like you did with the car’s body, create a group folder by selecting the layer and pressing Cmd/Ctrl+G. To add more detail to the photo, duplicate the villain layer and set the blend mode to Overlay. Navigate to Filters>Other>High Pass and set the pixel radius to 5.0. On the top layer of the group, add a new mask to account for the dash. Paint in black along the outline of the dash.

10

ADD SHADOWS

Next, add shadow below the car body and tyres. Set the colour to black and select the Brush tool. We like to work with a bigger brush size to better ensure a smooth shadow. Set the Hardness to 0 to make sure you don’t have hard edges within the shadow. Start directly under the car, painting outwards with smooth, even strokes. Ensure that the darkest shadow is where tyre meets road.

QUICK TIP

11

OPEN THE VILLAIN PHOTO

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THE GUNSHOT

Download ‘Villain.fff’ from the tutorial files and open the image in Photoshop for masking. We prefer to mask using the Pen tool due to its ability to create perfect lines and curves. Note that you only need to mask the upper torso since the car dash will obscure the lower body, and you’ll use a different hand. After you’ve done the outline, select the path and create the villain’s mask.

Download ‘gun-hand.jpg’, mask the hand and gun, then drop it into the scene and size it accordingly. To get a realistic muzzle flash, first insert the ‘MuzzleFlash.jpg’ file and size it to the top of the gun. Set the blending mode to Screen then duplicate it, moving the new copy to the roof of the car where the bullet is exiting. Take the ‘Particles. png’ file and place it at the bullet exit to get the look of paint and metal breaking off the car.

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Sometimes you get lucky and can use contrast to make a perfect hair mask. We were able to use the Screen blend mode because our hero’s hair contrasted the darker background. The same method can be used on dark hair with a light background by using the Multiply blend mode.

14

JANE BOND MASKING

Use the Pen tool to cut out and mask the hero (Hero 1.fff), but don’t cut her hair out on your mask. Drop your masked hero into the composition, size and place her on top of the car. To create a clean mask of her hair, first copy the photo, remove the existing mask and create a new one. With the icon for the new hero copy’s mask selected, press Cmd/ Ctrl+I. This will invert the mask. Set the blending style to Screen and paint in the hair.

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15

HAIR DETAILS

On the hair layer, press Cmd/Ctrl+L to do a Levels adjustment. Bring your low input level to 93 – this will make the darker coloured background disappear and the brighter hair shine through. To make sure the hair and body layers come together naturally, feather the body layer’s mask where it meets the hair using the Paint tool. To account for the light source of the flare, create a new layer and paint a faint orange colour above the flare and hero.


16

ADD THE BOND BOY

You can now mask and add the Bond boy to the composition. Download ‘Hero 2.fff’ from the Advanced Photoshop website and open it in Photoshop. Since there’s some lens distortion on the hand, duplicate the layer. On the top layer, mask out the hand to the sleeve, and on the bottom layer, leave only the hand to bring it down the size. Now create a new layer under the Bond boy and select the Paint tool in black. Create a shadow on the car by painting black to the right of his body.

17

SHADOWS AND SPARKS

Follow the path of the Bond boy’s body, painting in black just to the right of it. Remember that the closer his arm is to the car, the closer the shadow will be to his arm. Paint all the way down the door to the ground, accounting for the shadow of his leg and gun on the ground. Reuse the ‘MuzzleFlash.jpg’ file that you downloaded earlier to create the spark made by the gun hitting the ground. Composite it into the scene and set the blending mode to Screen.

18

HITTING BRICKS

Download the ‘bricks.jpg’ file, place it into the scene and create a new mask. Using the Brush tool, feather the dust cloud to remove the edges of the photo while still maintaining the solidity of the bricks. To add more energy, use ‘Particles.jpg’ to cover the bricks, some of the car, as well as a little on the hero to tie the elements together. Then take ‘windshield.jpg’, size it to the windshield and set the blending mode to Screen to account for the brick hitting the glass.

Create a consistent black level on all the elements. This really comes in handy when your assets are from different sources

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19

LITTLE DETAILS

Now that all of the elements are in place, it’s time to add some smaller details. Place the ‘Smoke.jpg’ file at the base of the tyres and set the blending mode to Lighter Color. Again, use the ‘Particles.png’ file to create small bits of gravel being thrown by the tires. You can also use the particle file behind the car to show the path of debris caused by the collision with the brick wall. Finish off by adding a little more orange to the cabin of the car from the flare.

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COLOUR AND GRAIN

Lastly, it’s time to tie everything together using colour and grain. Create a Curves adjustment layer at the top of the composition. Adjust the darker levels on the blue, green and red channels, creating a consistent black level on all elements of the composition. This really comes in handy when all of your assets come from different sources. On top of the Curves layer, wrap up the composition by placing a grain layer, giving consistent grain to every part of your finished photo.


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SOURCE FILES For those interested in applying the exact stock images used here, make sure you head over to dreamstime.com. Below are the image IDs so you can search for them: 27702508 14257226 14257319 15233790 17285721

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WorldMags.net APPLY LIQUID PAINT EFFECTS

APPLY LIQUID PAINT EFFECTS DISCOVER HOW YOU CAN MANIPULATE PAINT STOCK AND CREATE ENERGY USING LAYER MASKS, SELECTION AND TRANSFORMATION TOOLS

P

aint splash effects can be used in many different ways. One that’s very popular is to replace clothing by using photo stock. That’s what we set out to achieve here, showing how we create our own photomanipulation of a model with paint splash fashion. Once finished we’ll have created enough depth and movement that our effects will look realistic. The Pen tool will be essential for selecting and cutting out our model.

We’ll reveal how to retouch and mask her out, replacing her dress with paint alone. We also explain how the Transform tools can be used to directly paint layers and fit them in place. You will find that isolating and changing the colour and appearance of your paint stock layers will be very easy when you start using the colour adjustment tools and further masking techniques. We use these so that our layers fit seamlessly

together in our composition. We are also going to tackle different blend modes and show how these react with our image in order to create specific lighting effects. All in all, this is a fun tutorial that we can get very creative with. It does offer more than just entertainment, though, because we’ll discover core techniques that can then be easily be applied to any future photomanipulation projects.

SCRUBBING UP THE FACE

USE THE CLONE STAMP TOOL TO REMOVE BLEMISHES

01

PREP OUR IMAGE

Create a Photoshop image document, then open our starting stock photograph by dragging it into the new canvas. Transform it (Cmd/Ctrl+T) so that it fits nicely into our new canvas. Before adding effects, we’ll need to cut the model out. Zoom in and use the Pen tool to do this.

02

ISOLATE THE MODEL

We’ll use the Pen tool to isolate the model from the background. Pick a start point, where her hands meet her dress, and then begin drawing a path around her. The Opt/Alt key will help you to be more accurate with the path, and also when zooming in and out with the mouse.

03

CONTINUE TO CUT OUT

Don’t worry about the hair for now. Make a rough selection and we can fix next. We can be rough around the dress area too, as both these will be replaced with paint. Close the path, then Ctrl/ right-click and choose Make Selection. Duplicate the model layer then activate Quick Mask.

This is a fun tutorial that we can get very creative with. It does offer more than just entertainment, though, because we’ll discover core techniques that can then be easily be applied to any future photomanipulation projects

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WorldMags.net PHOTOMANIPULATION REMOVING OBSTRUCTIONS FROM SCENIC SHOTS

CLONE OUT OBJECTS WITHOUT BEING DETECTED

05

04

BACKGROUND WORK

We can now work on the background. We’ll want to make it lighter, so create a new layer behind our masked model and fill it with a 50% grey. Apply Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal All and apply a soft brush at 11% Flow to paint in some of the original background detail. Press X to switch between black and white brushes and alternate masked areas and effects.

FIX THE MODEL

06

USE COLOR RANGE

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RETOUCH PHASE

Duplicate our masked model layer and hide the original. Create a new layer and merge that with the model layer (Cmd/ Ctrl+E). Continue to fix our model’s hair using the Smudge tool and a small flat brush. Apply a Brightness/Contrast adjustment, setting Brightness at 10 and Contrast at 40. Duplicate this layer and hide it, so we have a backup if needed. Also use the Burn tool at 18% Exposure and the Dodge tool at 14% Exposure, both set to Midtones, to increase the contrast in certain areas.

This option comes in handy when isolating areas of colour. In simple cases we can just use the Magic Wand to select solid colours, but when working with paint images like those in this tutorial, or ones with existing lighting, Color Range becomes a must. Make the most of the black and white preview to see what you’ve selected, and use the plus and minus droppers to specify detailed areas. Once you’ve clicked OK, you can easily remove parts of the selection by holding down Opt/Alt or Shift and then applying the Lasso to add or remove active areas and match selected edges.

When working with paint images or ones with existing lighting, Color Range becomes a must

QUICK TIP When adding the Smudge tool to hair, use a combination of different sized brush strokes with different Flow amounts. Use different colours and parts of the hair for variation. Apply strokes outwards for spiky hair strands, and then curve these to modify the hair and tidy edges.

Click on the model layer and zoom in. Fix areas of the mask that don’t look right, especially around the hair. Select a black flat brush to paint around the black areas of the hair and the parts to hide from our model layer. Lower the brush’s Flow to 12%. If you make a mistake, hit X then paint areas back in with a white brush. Fix areas around the outline that may have been missed during the Pen tool selection.

CHANGE COLOUR

Make a new black layer beneath our model. Choose Select>Color Range and click on a white part of the dress, setting Fuzziness to 200, then use the plus and minus pickers to select tones in the dress. With our selection active, hold Opt/Alt and use the Lasso to remove areas of the dress. Copy Merged then paste into a new layer. Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment, activate Colorize then change Hue to a blue colour and increase Saturation. Rename this layer Dress, duplicate it and delete the black layer.

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MORE DRESS WORK

With the duplicate active, select Layer>Layer Styles>Color Overlay. Make it blue. Move the original dress layer above this duplicate and set it to Overlay. This brings out the dress highlights. We can change the Color Overlay of the duplicate layer and the Hue/Saturation of the original dress to get the perfect natural look. Bring some of the white and light back in by setting a Reveal All layer mask on our dress copy layer, using a black soft brush set at 20% Flow to mask into areas we want highlighted.

WorldMags.net APPLY LIQUID PAINT EFFECTS REMOVING OBSTRUCTIONS FROM SCENIC SHOTS

CLONE OUT OBJECTS WITHOUT BEING DETECTED

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APPLY PAINT SPLASHES Build effects using stock and basic adjustments

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ARRANGE LAYERS

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MORE PLAY WITH PAINT

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MANUAL EFFECTS

Once you’ve brought in and processed all the paint splash layers, you’ll need to arrange these in a way that makes each seem to be a part of our model’s dress. For the ones placed higher up, near the torso, use light blue-coloured layers on top and dark blue layers beneath. Use the original model dress layer as a reference. Also erase parts of the dress that get in the way and sit behind our paint splat layers.

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Open a paint stock image in Photoshop and choose Select>Color Range. Use the dropper tool to select a red colour, set Fuzziness at 200 and use the plus dropper to select a deeper red, so we get all the red tones. Pull Fuzziness back a bit, so the background in the preview is black again rather than grey

Arrange the layers that we’ve introduced over the top of the model’s dress, and then select one of them. Apply Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation. Make the selected paint splash blue to match the woman’s dress. This can just be a rough adjustment before merging the model with both dress layers

Copy and paste the paint layer into our main image. Put it into a new folder called Paint, set at the top of our layer stack. Repeat this process with all the stock images, placing each onto the canvas. Solid colour backgrounds can be removed by using the Magic Wand tool to select them and then hitting X to delete

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CREATE DEPTH

Bring the highlights of the original paint back in and add darker tones to certain areas, producing greater contrast. Duplicate one of the top paint layers, then set the copy to Overlay. Adjust the hue of the original layer to make it deeper. Repeat this with the other paint layers.

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ALTER BRIGHTNESS

Some bottom dress layers would be in shadow. Repeat the previous step, but decrease Lightness in a Hue/Saturation adjustment. You could duplicate a layer, apply these settings and add an inverted layer mask. Edit using this mask and a white soft brush to paint in areas of light.

Select and cut parts off the paint layers to make them fit. Cut some off and add them to the top half of the dress. Make the dress feel like it ruffles using different paint splats and hues. Apply a soft round black brush to attached layer masks and blend areas of the paint realistically. Use Edit>Transform>Warp to enhance the flow.

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Add paint stock to the floor. Add light to areas using a soft white brush and darken others using this brush, with a deep blue colour and set to Overlay. Dodge and Burn, and fix the lighting on the right. Add more paint to the upper dress; blend with the bodice using previous techniques.


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WorldMags.net EXPERT BLENDING

EXPERT BLENDING LEARN HOW TO COMBINE MULTIPLE ASSETS IN PHOTOSHOP TO BUILD THIS UNIQUE SCIFI IMAGE

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hotomanipulation is one step beyond simple image retouching. The two have various techniques in common but for a photomanipulation to have life, it is also necessary to master its lighting, composition and depth of field. This can sometimes feel like piecing together a huge puzzle, but if you are an advanced user of Photoshop, it shouldn’t be a problem. In this tutorial you will learn how to build a surreal scene based on normal photographs. The idea here is to create a utopian floating city, with its composition involving aspects of entertainment, technology, beauty and all the structure that a city needs to have. The Warp, Free Transform,

Content-Aware Scale and Clone tools will be widely used, along with blending modes and clipping masks. It is necessary to cut out and balance each photo before you start bringing them together. Only Photoshop is needed! Fit the elements together to give the scene a harmonious and commercial character. Links to the stock imagery used in the image you see here are provided, but you can create your own or add and remove elements as you wish. The real aim of this tutorial is to teach you about composition, lighting and how to make images as close to the real – or surreal – as possible. Be as creative as you can. Let’s get started!

OUR EXPERT %,4/.Ĉ&%2.!.$%3 www.eltonfernandes.com Elton Fernandes lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He has worked with Photoshop since 2007 and loves to transform simple photographs into impressive surreal images.

SOURCE FILES Files are available online at blog. advancedphotoshop.co.uk/tutorial-files under Issue 115.

FITTING THE ELEMENTS

RETOUCH ALL IMAGES BEFORE GETTING STARTED

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#2%!4%Ĉ4(%Ĉ "!#+'2/5.$

WORK IN PROGRESS

The first step is to create a file 5000 x 7000px at 300dpi. Go to www. shutterstock.com and download image ID 109899800, which is a photo of a seascape with land on the horizon. Copy and paste it into the blank file and use the Free Transform tool (Cmd/Ctrl+T), press Shift and fit it to the bottom, interpolating around 190%.

TRANSFORMING THE REAL INTO THE SURREAL

Step 1: Compile everything

Step 7: Placement

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The seascape on the canvas will act as a background for your sci-fi image. Select part of the sky with the Lasso tool (L). Ctrl/right-click on it and select Layer Via Copy. After this, go to Edit> Content-Aware Scale (Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/Alt+Shift+C) to stretch the sky up to the top. You can also use the Gradient tool (G) if you prefer.

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Download ‘sky.jpg’ from the Advanced Photoshop website. Select all of these layers, flatten them, then apply a Gaussian Blur at 9.0px. Create a new layer, colour it black and go to Filter>Render> Lens Flare. Add a flare at 100% Brightness and 50-300mm Zoom on the right-hand side to create a point of light. Set this layer to Screen at 100%.

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Step 14: Colour changes


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04

FLIP THE LAYER

Once you have prepared the background, you can begin to add in the individual elements that will make up your floating city. First, you will need to download image ID 59083051 from Shutterstock, which is an image of a rocky island. You need to use the Pen tool (P) to make a precise cutout of it. Select Free Transform (Cmd/Ctrl+T), Ctrl/right-click and choose Flip Vertical to turn the island upside down. You now have a base to work your floating city onto. You can modify the image of the island and add new rocks if you wish.

Whatever your choice of technique, you need to have patience. Every detail is important in ensuring that the image is of a high standard

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CREATE A CLIPPING MASK

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FIT THE MONORAIL

CORRECT DISTORTION

Download image 77785429 from Shutterstock and cut out the buildings in the same way that you cut out the island. In the stock image, they have a wide-angle distortion that you will need to fix. Use the Free Transform tool (Cmd/Ctrl+T) to correct the distortion by placing them in line with the straight angle. Download image 74919148 from Shutterstock and place it into the canvas to compose the full set. Lift up the fourth building to help balance the image.

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Now you will need to create a new blank layer with a Soft Light blending mode. Ctrl/right-click on the layer and select Create Clipping Mask. With a white brush, start to paint in highlights on the left of the island, and then repeat for the right side in the dark areas. This will help to acclimate the lighting. It is important that you follow the direction of the light source. You can do this using the Gradient tool with black and white colours, but this will be more generic.

Now it’s time to fit the monorail into the composition. Download image ID 46658332 from the Shutterstock website and fit it into the image so that it snakes around the buildings. You will need to extend the columns for a better result. You can use the Clone Stamp tool (S) to do this, or use the Rectangular Marquee tool (M), Ctrl/right-click and select Layer Via Copy. Extend the columns until they disappear behind the green plants. You can then flatten all of these layers.

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INSERT A ROLLER COASTER

Add more interest to your city by pasting in an image of a roller coaster, available from Shutterstock. Image ID 55522621 works well in this case. You will need to cut out around every detail of the roller coaster for a professional and convincing result. You can use the Eraser tool (E), Polygonal Lasso tool (L) with a layer mask or the Pen tool to do this. Whatever your choice of technique, you need to have patience. Every detail is important in ensuring that the final image is of a high standard.

WorldMags.net EXPERT BLENDING

09

DISGUISE WITH TREES

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APPLY TEXTURES

Cover the missing areas of the roller coaster with trees. Go to www.stockfresh.com and download image ID 1494530. Isolate the trees using Select>Color Range with a Fuzziness of 50 and create a mask. Select it and go to Filter>Blur to improve the edges. Create a layer with a clipping mask and use the Clone Stamp tool (S) to fix the areas where Color Range doesn’t work. The trees are great disguises, so use them! You could even get creative and add some fruit to the trees.

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PLACE THE SATELLITE

Now download an image of a satellite (Shutterstock ID 101799472). Cut it out and place it in a harmonious position on the right-hand side of the city. Always pay attention to the direction of the light source. In this case, you will need to select the layer using the Free Transform tool and apply the Flip Horizontal option. Arrange the satellite according to the lighting of the buildings and rocks. Coherent lighting is essential. Use the Dodge and Burn Tool (O) to correct this.

Now you are going to apply some texture. Go back to the island layer. Open and apply the image of ‘earth_texture.jpg’ (available to download from the Advanced Photoshop website) onto the rocks. Hold down the Cmd/Ctrl button and click on the layer of the cliffs to make the selection. Apply this selection in the texture layer and set the blending mode to Overlay at 100%. Note that the shadows and colours are improved with Overlay blending. You can use this method in other parts if you wish.

FIT WITH WARP

With Step 10 completed, you will now need to download image ID 100612153 from Shutterstock and use the brick edge to better integrate the city with the island rock. Paste it onto your canvas and fit it using the Free Transform tool (Cmd/Ctrl+T), Ctrl/ right-click on it and choose Warp. Pick up the edges and fit it in as best a way possible. Adjust using the Dodge and Burn tool (O) to create shadows and add light effects. Erase the parts that are not needed, for example the pavement.

QUICK TIP Always try to use high-quality images from the same viewpoint and with similar, identical or generic illumination. This way, the photo stock will blend together nicely. To improve the lighting you can (and should) use the Dodge and Burn tool (O) to harmonise the different elements within your photomanipulation.

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13

ISOLATE WITH COLOR RANGE

It’s time to add some roots. Download the bonsai tree image 28329367 from Shutterstock. You can isolate the roots from the tree using Select> Color Range. Place the roots so that they appear to be coming out of the rocks. Cut pieces of texture (you will find a wide selection at http://cgtextures.com) and apply it between the edge of the city and the rock, creating volume with the Dodge and Burn tool (O). That way you’ll be able to give more volume and detail to the rock. In this part you can include your own personal touch!

To improve the composition, you can cut small pieces from the cliffs and simulate earth and rock falling from them PAY ATTENTION TO THE AESTHETICS

COLOURS, DEPTH OF FIELD AND SHARPNESS

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FIX DETAILS

Download an image of recycling bins from Shutterstock (image ID 96735547) and use the Clone Stamp tool (S) to remove the words and create highlights and shadows, then add it to the park. While you’re cloning, go back to the second building in from the left. Remove the reflection with the Clone Stamp tool (S). Be patient! Download ‘fence.png’ from the Advanced Photoshop website and place it in the left-hand corner if you feel necessary. This will help to harmonise the image and give more detail to the photomontage.

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15

THE COMPOSITION CONTINUES

Now add in the flag of your favourite country. In this case, we placed the Brazilian flag at the top of the first building on the left. Download image 28260301 from Shutterstock and desaturate just the white parts of the plane. We scaled it down to make it quite small in the image, but you can use it as you wish! To improve the composition of the scene, download an image of birds from Shutterstock (19079998) and place them around the cliffs. You can also cut small pieces from the cliffs and simulate earth and rock falling from them.

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WorldMags.net EXPERT BLENDING BLURRING TO GIVE REALITY Depth of field is one of the most important features of photography. Putting it into practice in photomanipulations is extremely welcome. Besides the Gaussian Blur suggested in this tutorial, you could also create this effect using the Blur tool, blurring the edges, part or all of the element. Make sure you apply these effects to images aer they have been cut out! When you have applied the blur, flatten everything and apply the Add Noise filter. This makes the image look more natural.

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LIGHTS AND COLOURS

Create a Brightness adjustment layer set to -18. Create another with Color Balance. In the Tone drop-down menu, choose Shadows and set Red to +1 and Blue to +5, then choose Midtones and set Green to +5, Red to +2 and Yellow to -27, then choose Highlights and set Cyan to -16 and Blue to +1. Create a new layer, paint it black using the Paint Bucket tool (G) and create a flare, but this time on the right-hand side. Use a mask with the Gradient tool (G) to minimise the entry of light in front of the city. Set this layer to Screen at 100% as in the third step.

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DEPTH OF FIELD

You should now have a complete composition, so let’s get to work with adding some details! Select all the layers, duplicate and flatten them. Duplicate this flattened layer again. Apply 1.0px of Gaussian Blur. Create a mask, Invert it (Cmd/Ctrl+I) and paint only the parts you want to be blurred. These parts should be the buildings at the back, the plane, some roots of the rocks and the birds. Finally, select the last two layers and apply Flatten again.

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HIGH PASS AND NOISE

Apply an Unsharp Mask with an Amount of 20% and a Radius of 50%, then apply a 70% Fade. Duplicate the last layer and create a mask set to Overlay. Only paint the areas where you can improve the colour and contrast. Duplicate the last two layers and flatten them again. Add a High Pass filter with a 2.0px Radius. Desaturate it and apply an Overlay blending mode at 100% to that layer. To finish, select all the layers from the first flat layer, duplicate and create the last layer. Apply the Add Noise filter at 1%.


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Digital painting Compose stunning portraits and lavish fantasy landscapes with just a swipe of your digital brush 62 Expert matte painting Learn about the techniques experts use to construct amazing worlds

70 Paint a fantasy snowscape Create a digital illustration of a dramatic frozen bay

76 Create a cyborg Work from a simple photograph to build a futuristic cyborg with blending modes and compositing

82 Produce fantasy lighting Sketch, paint and blend to develop advanced fantasy artwork

88 Character design and illustration Develop a character from the conceptual stage to completion

94 Paint a steampunkinspired portrait Construct a compelling portrait with a variety of digital painting

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One of the key elements of digital painting is realism. When creating these imaginary extensions into worlds unknown, the audience must be convinced of their reality; otherwise the illusion – and the viewer’s immersion – is shattered

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DIGITAL PAINTING

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EXPERT MATTE PAINTING INDUSTRY EXPERTS OFFER THEIR TOP TIPS AND TRICKS TO HELP YOU CREATE DRAMATIC AND REALISTIC SCENES

F

rom the famous closing shot of Raiders Of The Lost Ark to the fantastical kingdoms of The Hobbit’s Middle-earth, we have a lot to thank matte painting artists for. Since the early part of the 20th Century, the extremely talented work of incredible illustrators has transported us to amazing worlds that couldn’t otherwise exist. In recent years, however, the discipline of matte painting has changed a great deal, with the growing utilisation of 3D and digital tools changing the approach to the craft. “It’s amazing

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that 15 years ago traditional matte paintings were still being created, but in this short time the craft has evolved into a technique that involves many other disciplines,” says Jaime Jasso, senior digital matte artist at Industrial Light & Magic. “There’s the use of 3D, fast photomanipulation techniques, dynamic effects, compositing; the digital era broke all boundaries for matte painting. There’s no shot or environment that cannot be achieved.” Due to camera moves in film becoming more complex, elaborate and ambitious, 3D software

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now plays a larger part in the process, says Anthony Eftekhari, matte painter at videogame developer Blizzard Entertainment: “Directors are demanding more from their camera moves for matte painting shots. It’s no longer just a push in or a pan; the camera now moves in and out of the environment in an incredibly fluid way. To create a matte painting shot for this kind of camera move requires all of the elements in the shot to be 3D.” As such, 3CG programs such as CINEMA 4D, Maya, 3ds Max and the 3D texturing tool MARI are now heavily used in the DMP process. “It would

WorldMags.net EXPERT MATTE PAINTING David Luong www.davidluong.net A senior cinematic artist at Blizzard Entertainment, Luong also co-wrote the fabulous book d’artiste: Matte Painting 3.

Frederic St-Arnaud www.starno.net St-Arnaud is a visual effects art director, with film credits including Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, Sin City, Silent Hill and more.

Francesco Corvino www.francescocorvino.com Corvino is a concept designer and digital matte painter who has recently worked on such feature films as World War Z and The Hangover Part III.

Jaime Jasso www.jjassodigitalworks.com Lead digital matte painter at Industrial Light & Magic, Jasso has worked on films including Avatar, Iron Man 2, Transformers, and The Avengers.

Harry Wormald www.harrywormald.com Wormald studied 2D animation at The Arts Institute in Bournemouth and has worked at The Mill, LipSync Post and Framestore.

Tim Matney www.timmatney.com

DMP TODAY

Matney began his career as a 3D generalist in games before transitioning to feature films, where he discovered digital matte painting.

© timmatney.com

DMP ARTIST TIM MATNEY DISCUSSES THE CHALLENGES HE FACES “Modern matte painters must be able to work with and within 3D software, as well as have good compositing skills. An understanding of cameras and lighting sure doesn’t hurt either. Also, being able to work and communicate with other people in the production pipeline is very important. You need to be able to work in many Photoshop layers and break your matte paintings out under specific Alpha masks. That way they can be reassembled and manipulated again by others later on.”

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Anthony Eftekhari www.artofae.com

© starno.net

be impossible to accomplish all of the visual effects shots that a modern movie requires without them,” says Francesco Corvino, matte painter at RODEO FX. “There are specific tasks and challenges that Photoshop alone cannot accomplish, and although it’s great software, it needs help from a 3D package.” Frederic St-Arnaud, a DMP artist with 16 years of experience, agrees. “Photoshop is an important part of the process, but it shouldn’t be your only strength,” he says. “You need to be able to create photorealistic environments, but you should also

be able to project and composite the images in software like NUKE.” This isn’t to say that Photoshop doesn’t remain an incredibly important part of the DMP pipeline. Indeed, an expert knowledge of Photoshop, along with a deep understanding of artistic fundamentals, remain two key elements in the DMP artist’s arsenal. “Nothing beats learning about the foundations first as an artist before going into being a DMP artist,” says David Luong, senior cinematic artist at Blizzard Entertainment. “Strong painting and

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Currently working in the videogame industry, Eftekhari creates artwork as well as digital matte paintings for Blizzard Entertainment.

drawing skills, perspective, colour theory, art history, light/shadow studies, photography and real-world exposure understanding are all important. On top of this, knowing how to paint digitally in Photoshop, texturing, hard-surface modelling for landscapes and cityscapes, lighting, rendering and compositing are all important.” A sound knowledge of Photoshop is now an industry standard, and if you want to get into the challenging world of DMP, it really is key. Read on to find out how to use it to move forward with your work.


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DIGITAL PAINTING

WorldMags.net © davidluong.net

CAPTURING REALITY

4(%ď).4%'2!4)/.ď/&ď2%!,˶,)&%ď PHOTOS INTO DMP

Although 3D has grown to play a large part in DMP, Corvino still believes that 2D work – including the use of photo stock – remains an essential element of the craft. “Utilising photographs to make a photoreal image is definitely the backbone of every DMP piece,” he tells us. “Without the constant and extensive use of photographs, it would be impossible to deliver high-level photoreal images, at least not with the short deadlines of the modern VFX industry.” “I’ve often described DMP as ‘advanced photo collage’,” adds Tim Matney, a digital matte painter with experience spanning films, television and videogames. “DMP artists often work from photographs, manipulating them, combining them, and painting over and between them. The overly painted look is not really desired in VFX as photorealism is often our goal.” Eftekhari agrees: “I use photography as often as I can, because no matter how good a painter you are, you can’t beat real life. To use photography in your paintings, you need to have an understanding of colour correction to match your plate or other reference images you’ve used, and alpha extraction to cut out the parts of the reference image you need for your painting.” Although Google offers a gigantic repository of images, and photo stock websites can certainly be useful, Luong believes that using your own camera is usually the best approach. “As I’m travelling, I’m snapping away pictures of buildings in all sorts of angles and lighting scenarios. You can shoot trees, roads, cars, walls; anything that you can use as a texture later that is photoreal already. You can then colour correct, transform and paint on top of it to make it work in your matte painting. It’s essential to know how to manipulate the photo for texture use, as well as know how its perspective, camera lens, lighting and scale would fit into your image. This is about as essential as knowing how to use 3D in DMP these days.” Harry Wormald, digital matte painter at VFX studio Framestore, is often provided with the studio’s desired source imagery, or plates from the shot sequence to work with. “I also personally have a large library of photographs that I keep as reference, but I never use them outright. I only use parts as a base, and change them to extremes. My own personal work is almost entirely based from photographs, which may seem like cheating to some, but hey, even Vermeer used a camera obscura!” For Jaime Jasso, use of photo stock is an integral part of the DMP process, but it doesn’t necessarily make for an easier approach. “I use a lot of photo stock even from the concept art stage. It’s just more efficient to me,” he explains. “However, blending images together is not easy at all. It’s not a case of simply throwing the images together; you need to visualise dozens, sometimes hundreds of images from different sources as one single image. “There’s no software that can tell you if you’re doing a good or bad integration. Your trained eye will be the best judge, but your eye will only know what your experience has taught it. The more you practise and the more you study other artists’ work, the better you will be.”

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BUILDING YOUR COLLECTION

OUR PANEL OF EXPERTS DISCUSS THE IMPORTANCE OF A LARGE LIBRARY OF REFERENCE PHOTOS

© starno.net

Sometimes, when time is of the essence, using photos is the best way to tackle DMP. “If you need to create a realistic artwork in a quick amount of time, you have no choice but to use photos!” says Frederic St-Arnaud. “If you don’t have your own camera or can’t find the reference you need, I would search

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for some on the internet, or if you really have to, buy some stock photography,” says David Luong. Corvino agrees: “Having accounts with stock photo websites can definitely be useful. Also, Google Images offers a gigantic library full of great photographs if you know how to properly search for them. With time, building your own library of images becomes an extremely useful tool.” Wormald has been building up his own personal photo library for several years now. “I try to shoot my own reference whenever possible. That way I can go out and shoot at the right time of day and the angles that I need,” he tells us. “However, there are instances when you can’t physically go out to a certain location and shoot, so that’s when photo stock comes in handy.”

WorldMags.net EXPERT MATTE PAINTING

CREATE A STUNNING SKY

FRANCESCO CORVINO REVEALS HOW HE BUILT THIS COMPLEX SKY FOR THE AARON SIMS TETHERED ISLANDS SERIES

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BUILD A LIBRARY

Even if I can rely on my personal photographic library, sometimes I have to do specific research to find a large number of elements with a very specific lighting or perspective. In this case, I spent quite some time gathering photos of clouds fitting my composition.

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PLACE PHOTOS ON THE CANVAS

Next, I started to rotoscope and carefully place the photos I gathered on the canvas. The challenge here is choosing similar clouds that blend together, and building a sky with coherent lighting and perspective. Before this, you can paint a rough sketch of the sky to guide you.

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INTEGRATE PHOTOGRAPHIC ELEMENTS

When all the main photographic elements were in place, I started calibrating the contrast and colours of each image to reach a seamless integration. I like to use the Curves tool to achieve this. A lens flare placed over the sun was a nice touch to finalise the composition.

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DIGITAL PAINTING

WorldMags.net It’s important to have an idea of where the main light source is. Also consider whether the light is clear and strong or slightly softened

LIGHT FOR REALISM

HOW TO ACHIEVE BELIEVABLE LIGHTING

One of the key elements of DMP is realism. When creating these imaginary extensions into worlds unknown, the audience must be convinced of their reality; otherwise the illusion – and the viewer’s immersion – is shattered. “Lighting is definitely one of the most relevant and fundamental features in creating a great DMP image. It’s what makes an environment believable and deep,” says Corvino. Wormald agrees: “Lighting in a matte painting is key to achieving realism. Before starting any work on a matte painting, it’s important to have a clear idea of where the main light source is in the environment. Also consider whether the light is clear and strong, or whether it’s slightly softened by clouds or something else. Think about how this will affect both the shadows and the highlights.” For Luong, realistic lighting demands a delicate balance of light and dark. “Lighting is a very powerful way to lead the eye in an image,” he explains. “Show too much and your environment or object will become flat, boring and unfocused. If you light too little then it doesn’t showcase what needs to be shown. If you’re going for an ambient approach, highlighting some areas with soft light, and then hitting one or two spots with a hard light and cast shadow, could make for nice, contrasting interest. Remember: shadow quality plays a strong role just as much as light does. They work hand in hand.” When it comes to Photoshop techniques, Matney cites “non-destructive manipulation” as his mantra. “I use many adjustment layers, creating highs and lows with Curves layers, painting within the mask. The Gradient tool can be your best friend here!” He also follows principal photography concepts to ensure he is integrating light into the scene

© harrywormald.com

properly: “Understanding such terms as directional, bound, rim or ambient, among others, can be highly empowering.” Eftekhari asserts that good reference is vital to a quality image. “The most important thing is the ability to look at reference images and understand what the light is doing and what the elements are that make it look real,” he says. “You have to consider the intensity and colour of the light, the fill light from the sky, the amount of atmosphere in the air and so on. These essential lighting cues will bring up other elements such as contrasts of light and dark, and the amount of detail and information we see through atmospheric perspective. “With night scenes, I see a lot of images that are really dark, but in reality when we go outside at night and look around we can see quite a bit,” continues Eftekhari. “This usually causes the viewer to question the believability of the lighting.”

MASTER NOCTURNAL LIGHTING

FRANCESCO CORVINO OFFERS SOME TIPS AND TECHNIQUES FOR THE #2%!4)/.ď/&ď.)'(4˶4)-%ď)-!'%3 © The Aaron Sims Company

“If, during the day, the sun is casting dark shadows on the ground, at night all of those shadows must disappear or be significantly diminished, and be replaced, for example, by the bluish and diffuse lighting of the nocturnal sky dome and by the silver light of the moon. This isn’t to mention that many times some sort of artificial lighting is involved, such as lamps, each one generating light and casting shadows. “The best lighting to start with is definitely the one of an overcast sky that’s casting very soft and diffuse shadows. At that point the transformation to night-time lighting can actually be quite simple, even for complex environments. A quick colour correction of the whole scene can be easily achieved in Photoshop.”

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© starno.net

WorldMags.net EXPERT MATTE PAINTING

CHANGING DAY TO NIGHT

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001

ADJUST CURVES

Create a Curves adjustment layer above the daytime Florence photograph, and then adjust all four curves: first, RGB for brightness, drastically dropping the highlights, then lifting the midtones and shadows. Next, adjust the R, G and B curves individually to make the image more blue and saturated.

002

CREATE LAYER MASKS

Duplicate the Florence layer, desaturate it, and then with Levels crush it to hard black and white forms. Duplicate your Florence layer again, group it and add a mask to the group. Copy your black and white crushed city into the mask, discarding the black and white layer. Adjust as in Step 1.

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ADD LIGHT WITH SOLID COLOURS

Create two yellow Solid Color adjustment layers, one for window lights and another for the streets. Paint your desired lighting within the masks, using a Color Dodge blending mode for the streets. Where needed, mask certain areas with the Lasso tool, and use a Radial Gradient to create glow.


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STORY SETTINGS

MASTERING ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN Matte painting requires a diverse range of skills, thanks to the incredibly varied locations and environments that modern-day films and videogames require. From verdant forest worlds to the towering spires of sci-fi cities, the DMP artist must be capable across a variety of disciplines. For Wormald, even creating a standard city can vary greatly within itself. “If the city is far off in the distance, it can be a relatively simple exercise,” he explains. “If you have buildings in the footage already in the distance, you can use these as a guide for the black levels and colours of shadows and highlights. However, if a city is closer to the foreground, and with no reference in the plate, this can be much more of a lengthy task,” he continues. “In this situation, I would lay out the basic structure in simple 3D geometry to get the correct perspective. Then it’s a matter of working photos and textures into this structure so they follow the perspective, grading each element so it fits and applying correct shadows and lit faces to match the lighting of the scene.”

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Jasso warns of creating too much chaos in urban environments. For him, a sense of order is key: “It’s important to set the architectural style and correct mood,” he explains. “A nice balance and visual composition is key in huge cityscapes. If you don’t have order, you end up with a cluttered image with tons of visual detail but no flow.” In Corvino’s experience, the type of city can drastically alter the pipeline used to tackle it.

From verdant forest worlds to the towering spires of sci-fi cities, the digital matte artist must be capable across a variety of disciplines “When I’m dealing with the destruction of an existing city, my approach is significantly more photograph-orientated. I grab photos of demolished or damaged buildings and other types of debris and I integrate them into the original city plate. Many Photoshop tools are ideal for this. For example, using the Curves tool, you can control

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the contrast, brightness and colours of your photographs and achieve seamless results.” When working on natural environments such as countryside scenes or areas of forest, Wormald feels like he has more scope to be artistic, but there’s still a challenge involved. “Getting a good key from a tree against a sky can be tricky around the edges,” he says. “This often involves a fair amount of clean-up work in the mask. I’ve been using the new Color Decontaminate tool under Layer>Matting, which is helpful for reducing the spill of the sky onto the edges of the tree. This is also under the Refine Mask tool, which has some other useful options for work with edges.” In addition, Matney believes that resolution must be carefully considered when working with scenes of this nature. “There’s a lot of overlapping fine detail in natural environments, and it’s a great deal of work separating and cleanly masking them. One technique I use is to work at twice the output resolution. Once scaled back down to the output size, a lot of small details or loose areas will condense and tighten up. So, if the matte painting was for a TV show at HD 1080p (1920 x 1080), I would work at 3840 x 2160.”

WorldMags.net EXPERT MATTE PAINTING SKYLINE EXTENSION

DAVID LUONG REVEALS HOW TO USE THE VANISHING POINT TOOL TO CLONE TEXTURES WITHIN YOUR DMP

01

AREA TO EXTEND

02

THE VANISHING POINT

03

START CLONE PAINTING

Here, I wanted to fill in the top, unconstructed parts of the middle buildings in the original plate using a similar texture from the bottom of the buildings. This is a perfect case of using the Vanishing Point tool in Photoshop to clone textures.

To use this tool , you will need to go to File Menu> Filter>Vanishing Point. On the far left-hand side there’s an icon with a + sign and a grid next to it. That’s the Create Plane tool. Use it to draw out your perspective lines of the area you want to clone the texture from and follow the guides.

© starno.net

From here, you can extend the guide to the length of the areas that you want to clone and start to clone paint upwards. Hit OK once you’re done and you’ll have a nicely cloned painted patch in the right perspective. You can use this technique to help add photos of other buildings to your scene.

THE FINAL FRONTIER

DAVID LUONG, FRANCESCO CORVINO AND TIM MATNEY TALK US 4(2/5'(ď4(%)2ď!002/!#(ď4/ď30!#%˶"!3%$ď-!44%ď0!).4).'3 “When working on space scenes, I look at NASA imagery for inspiration,” says Luong. “They have tons of high-resolution photos that are free to the public. You can also take stills from sci-fi movies. Use them to build out some of the planets using reference, as well as painting it to enhance the texture, and then spherise that into a planet shape using Photoshop.” “Be aware of where the light from your sun is, and the scale of the planet’s elements,” adds Matney. “Adding clouds, oceans, mountains or craters at the right size can set your overall scale and tell your brain how big the thing is.” For Corvino, it’s all about creating a sense of depth in your image. “Place your camera inside a nebula, where space is not just emptiness. Here, gases and other elements create atmospheric effects, some indirect illumination and significant transition in values.

© The Aaron Sims Company

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OUR EXPERT EDUARDO LOPEZ MUSTAROS Lopez is a profesional matte painter and art director working at Epics FX Studios in Mexico City. He now has two European movies under his belt, plus several TV shows.

SOURCE FILES On the disc you will find a screencapture video of the entire design process from start to finish, plus all of the stock images and the original PSD file. The brushes used in the tutorial are also included.

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WorldMags.net PAINT A FANTASY SNOWSCAPE

PAINT A FANTASY SNOWSCAPE CREATE A DIGITAL MATTE PAINTING OF A FROZEN BAY IN A STRIKING FANTASY ENVIRONMENT

L

et us transport you to the furthest, coldest places with this fantastic matte painting tutorial, which shows you how to create a digital illustration of a frozen bay in a surreal landscape. Manipulate images over a base render to build up your scene using painting techniques, and then use a graphics tablet to paint in the detail on the ice. You will use masks and adjustment layers extensively to blend the different images and achieve photoreal, dramatic results. Different elements will create a foreground presence, which you can then use as a composition tool to build up and add to the base image. You will also learn to detail your piece and refine your painted sections to minute detail. We recommend that you watch the video on the free disc beforehand to catch the action and details as they happen and get a better understanding of what is being done, to clear out any doubts you might have before starting. On the disc you’ll also find stock images, brushes and the original PSD file. You need a strong knowledge of Photoshop in order to complete this tutorial to the standard seen here, but don’t be afraid to try out the techniques whatever your level.

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DIGITAL PAINTING

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WORK IN PROGRESS BASE IMAGE TO RENDER

Step 1: Extract images

Step 5: Screen the lights

Step 14: Create reflections

02

ADJUSTMENT AND BLENDING

A very important step that you need to start doing right away is to blend the images to the environment, both through colour and shading. This allows you to get a good feel of how the different sections are sitting on your image and which areas could do with filling in. This also helps to avoid any distracting inconsistencies. Once you have adjusted each section at least roughly to the plate, it’s much easier to go ahead and find a good composition and keep the creativity flowing.

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01

BUILD UP THE FOREGROUND

03

LAYER MASKS

A brilliant tool at your disposal is the use of the layer masks to quickly cut out sections

First find all the images needed for the scene – we’ve taken care of this for you by supplying them on the disc. These include the mountain JPEGs and ‘bay.jpg’. Extract the sections you need and start placing them roughly on the base image provided to find a good composition. Make sure the different sections are placed in a realistic manner and you don’t have weird mountainsides going nowhere.

A brilliant tool at your disposal is the use of layer masks to quickly cut out sections and make them sit on the image, to give you a sense of the look and composition quickly. However, as these masks are non-destructive, you can edit and refine them as much as you need without worrying about having to go back and extract the same image again, or about little mistakes in the extraction process. Instead, be creative and use the masks without fear of messing anything up.

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04

BLENDING MODES

The use of blending modes, in this case the Overlay mode, allows you to paint in simple layer highlights or shadows as needed, taking you one step further to merging the different pieces with the base plate. Simply sample colour from the highlights in the plate and apply them where needed, to increase the brightness of a surface and make the light direction more apparent in the selected region. This is also a non-destructive process that can be fine-tuned or reduced in opacity as needed.


05

TOWN LIGHTS

Once you have the base of your landscape laid out, you will now use an image of a night city scene to quickly build up the appearance of a town on your bay. Copy the image ‘night_town.jpg’ from the disc into your Photoshop document and then scale it down. You will need to rotate it a bit so that it matches the angle of the surface below. Also make sure that the size of the town corresponds to the image’s perspective.

06

SCREEN AND MASK

08

LIGHT LEVELS

Set the layer mode for your lights to Screen so that all the black is quickly discarded, and then create another layer mask to get rid of what you don’t need, effectively placing your lights across the bay. Make sure there are no lights where it would seem unlikely for a structure to be built, such as on steep hillsides. Mask away until you have all the light following the coast and placed on the land for the base of your town.

QUICK TIP A non-destructive workflow allows you to create your artwork freely without having to worry if the next step will be a problem further down the line. It also means that you can decide later if you need to adjust or readjust any aspect of your image, rather than having to make decisions on the spot. With non-destructive editing, creativity and experimentation are always welcome.

07

EXTEND THE TOWN

Now you want to extend the town beyond what you have already placed, so do this with the help of the Clone tool and a small brush. You can also use the Clone tool to choose interesting, varied sections of the lights and eliminate those that are not very interesting; just be sure to set your Clone tool to Current Layer in the top settings bar. Then clone all around the bay to extend the town out from the main area and into the surrounding land.

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You should now have your city dispersed around the edges of the bay. At this point you can adjust the light levels of the town by using a Levels layer clipped to the main lights. Adjust the Levels to increase the contrast and bring out the highlights, yet at the same time increase the blacks. As you have this layer in Screen mode, it means that the blacks are hidden even further and the bright lights get boosted even more, consistently giving a better look for your town.


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DIGITAL PAINTING

WorldMags.net QUICK TIP Solid colour layers in different overlay modes are a great way to add drama and contrast to a scene, giving you the freedom to mask and reduce the opacity as needed, and even combine them to get interesting results. Don’t hesitate to experiment with them.

09

LIGHT HUE

To fine-tune the city’s lights even further, you can now apply yet another adjustment layer. This time go with the Hue/Saturation adjustment, and reduce the Saturation slightly to get rid of the orange and red excess. You can then use a small amount of blue tint to make the lights appear somewhat colder in order to match the rest of your scene, yet once again keeping control of the non-destructive workflow. This means that you can go back and adjust the lights at any time.

11

INCREASED ICE DETAIL

Once you have the base, you can go in with an increasingly smaller brush to start adding detail, getting rid of all the obvious paint strokes, refining the shapes and making them more solid as you go. You can also start sampling darker shades to add shadow over the ice, taking into consideration where the light is coming from. Add another level of detail to the ice surface by refining what the base has provided for you, eliminating the rough strokes or following them if needed.

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10

ICE BASE

12

ADD TEXTURE

You can now start painting the base for the ice covering the bay. Create a new layer and sample a light blue-white from the image ‘snow.jpg’ on the disc, then start painting in the base structure for what you envision to be the ice covering the bay, painting in the smaller sections that break off as the ice sits further into the water. There is no need to worry about the small details just yet.

Use the ice image on the disc to add extra texture to the frozen bay. Copy ‘ice.jpg’ onto a new layer and scale and distort it into place and perspective over the ice. You can duplicate or clone it several times to cover the entire bay, and use a dirtier texture for the shaded areas. Then just clip it over the ice layer and reduce the Opacity to about 68%. After that you can spend a bit of time refining all of the other layer masks and making sure the edges are clean.


13

MOUNTAIN HIGHLIGHT AND BOAT

You will now use the technique you used earlier to paint some highlights onto the background mountain. Make sure they are in keeping with the direction of the scene’s light source and do them on a layer in Overlay mode. Then extract the image of the boat from ‘boat.jpg’ to add a bit of action to the middle of the bay, and again use a couple of adjustment layers to shade it and adjust the tone to match the image.

14

MOUNTAIN REFLECTION

15

FINAL LOOK

You now need to duplicate all the layers for the background mountains and then flatten those layers to use them as a reflection in the water. Once you have done this, flip it upside down and place it as a mirror image below the mountain range; then when it is in position, once again use a mask to get rid of everything that is not over the water. Reduce the opacity of the layer, and adjust the Color Balance so it has a colder hue.

To finish the matte painting off, add several colour and toning layers on top to add more drama into your image. Cool off the shadows and increase the warmth from the sun so you have a nice contrast of colours and shades to frame your scene. On each layer, use a soft brush and masks so the effect is applied only where you need it. Be sure to take a look at your PSD file and study each layer setting.

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WorldMags.net CREATE A CYBORG

CREATE A CYBORG DEVELOP AN INSPIRING IMAGE USING LITTLE MORE THAN A SINGLE PHOTOGRAPH, PHOTOMANIPULATION AND DIGITAL PAINTING TECHNIQUES

C

yborg effects are increasingly popular, but don’t always have to be utterly frustrating. Photoshop makes this type of project far more accessible by coupling photo editing tools and digital painting equipment under one roof. Mastering Photoshop brushes offers us a head start in all instances. Our goal is to create the ultimate female cyborg, which is achieved by using a single standard brush, a drawing table, core digital painting and photomanipulation techniques. You are supplied with specific Brush Preset settings which will help us to create the shapes and detail needed.

We also explore ways to layer our image, utilise a host of blending modes and composite external assets to create special effects. Experience of painting digitally, or at least a strong enthusiasm to learn, is recommended to get the most out of this tutorial. The inspiration for this artwork comes from several contemporary sources, including the Mass Effect videogame series and the iconic movie Blade Runner, whose visual language shaped a timeless idea of science fiction. A video tutorial that goes into further detail about painting techniques is supplied on the disc.

PREPARING OUR MODEL

RECONSTRUCT THE ORIGINAL STOCK USING PHOTOSHOP BRUSHES

OUR EXPERT OLIVER WETTER www.fantasio.info Oliver Wetter is a German digital artist. He has a background in construction equipment and makes a living as a freelance illustrator and lecturer in digital painting.

SOURCE FILES Supplied on this issue’s disc you will find a low-resolution mechanical sketch to work from, as well as a video documenting our entire conceptual development.

WORK IN PROGRESS

HOW TO CREATE A MACHINE

01

CUT OUT OUR MODEL

First, remove the background. Use the Polygon Lasso tool to make a rough selection around the model. It’s not necessary to refine this, as the silhouette of the model will change throughout our process and hair will be painted later. Fill the background layer with a grey colour (#45434e).

02

PAINT NEW SKIN

Create a new layer. Centralise the model, then define the missing side of her back using the Polygon Lasso tool. Choose a large round brush set at 70% Opacity. Pick existing skin colours with the Eyedropper tool, then paint in rough blocks of colour to define an area to match the existing skin closely.

03

Step 1: Extract the model

CROP OUR IMAGE

Before proceeding, get the best out of the composition through cropping. When pressing C in Photoshop CS6, the default view in the context menu of the cropping tool is Rule-of-thirds, but this must change to the Golden Spiral. You will notice the spiral that appears when the image is moved in cropping mode. Then place the model’s nose in the centre of the golden point as seen in the screenshot.

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Step 7: Blueprint sketch

Step 19: Introduce detail


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DIGITAL PAINTING

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04

BRUSH SETTINGS

07

BACK TO OUR ORIGINAL

Activate the Brush Presets panel and choose a hard mechanical round brush with a 13px size. Also, set Roundness at 56%, Spacing at 20% and Hardness at 65%. Activate Shape Dynamics, setting Size Jitter control to Pen pressure. Activate Shape dynamics, setting Angle Jitter to Initial direction. Make sure both Noise and Smoothing are checked. Set brush Opacity at 85%. Save this brush as a preset. Practise with these brush settings and your tablet device before proceeding.

05

THUMBNAIL VIEW

Clean the edges of the previously cut out model with a soft Eraser tool, between 2px and 10px in size. When finished, select Image>Duplicate, Layers>Flatten, then change image DPI from 300 to 72 (Image>Image Size). The newly sized image acts as a thumbnail sketch. Working at this size allows you to decide many things, including whether the stock photograph is worth purchasing. Basically, if the initial ‘sketch’ looks promising in a smaller version, chances are it will in full resolution.

06

BLUEPRINT SKETCH

08

MOOD LIGHTING

Use the Move tool to drag our 72dpi sketch layer back into our original 300dpi image version. Adjust the size of our pasted layer to fit the model, using the Transformation tool (T). Since you’re going to paint details in there, interpolation is welcome. Set the mood for the following paint work by using the Color Lookup feature in Photoshop CS6, which can be found in the Adjustments panel. Choose RedBlueYellow from the Device Link menu to replicate the effect used in this tutorial.

If it is hard to draw mechanical parts at this new size, cheat by using the draft supplied on the disc. If you take on the challenge to draw a design by yourselves, use a round black brush set to approximately 80% Opacity to draw elements on a new layer. Transparency creates welcome overlapping of edges and allows the underground colour to shine through. The latter is important, as it allows us to pick up a variety of tonal values and build an authentic design.

Since there is no photograph with a different lighting setup to choose from, only make limited changes. To relight the scene, create a new layer and set its blending mode to Overlay. Then, with the use of a drawing tablet, paint on this new layer using the round brush that was created in Step 4, at 50% Hardness and Size set between 50px and 150px. Set brush Opacity at 90%. Pick the #598ab7 colour from the TOYO 94 Color Finder swatch that accompanies your Photoshop copy of the installation.

QUICK TIP Experiment with different shapes in our design process on new layers. However, creating the latter by hitting Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Alt+N is an ungainly keystroke. When using a Wacom tablet, we can assign this shortcut to one button only, which saves a lot of time.

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09 PAINT HAIR

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Before

THE RIGHT SELECTION After

On edges where the hair crosses the skin, loosely use the Polygon Lasso tool to select this area. Painting to this selection makes sure we don’t overly paint unwanted parts of a layer. Press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+I to invert the selection and paint to the edges, adding shadow without painting over the hair.

ADDRESS OUR OUTLINE This model invites us to play with the hair outline. If this is done correctly, it gives the viewer an easy shape to follow. Take a look at the red marked outline for reference. Although this is just a secondary composition element, it’s useful to search for such opportunities in existing imagery and bring it to our attention.

MASTER OUR SCATTER BRUSH Work with a standard round brush, between 3px and 10px. Pick existing hair colours with the Eyedropper tool. Make sure there is a realistic look after the first pass by setting our round brush to around 83% Scattering at a size of 6px, and painting over the existing hair. Additionally, draw in some random strands – black again rather than grey.

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CREATE MECHANICAL PARTS

BUILD A SYNTHETIC LOOK USING LAYERING EFFECTS

10

KEEN OBSERVATION

Being tech-savvy is not a necessity, but having a good understanding of all things technical can be really useful when following the previous steps. In the video recording on the CD, discover how to paint the mechanical parts in real-time. The design process from the thumbnail stage in Step 6 will now be worked into with greater detail, using an 80% black brush on a new layer. This is the most time-consuming application, but one that decides the image’s believability.

11

BUILD UP DETAIL

13

FIX THE EYE AREA

12

CONSTRUCT WITH LAYERS

14

CREATE SYNTHETIC EYES

Still shaping the underlying mechanical parts, there are accurate values to work with in the Sketch layer. Add darker tones to create shadow and brighter values for highlights using the HUD Color Picker (Opt+Shift right click/Cmd+Alt). Study construction equipment to help fashion looks. Books and movies as a reference are also allowed. Start by using big bold shapes, working towards smaller ones, it will be much easier to show what’s under the surface. Imagination is encouraged.

The eyes are the most important part of any portrait, so make sure they are worth looking at. Do this by adding a new layer and painting dark values with an 80% Opacity black brush. From there paint the eyelid darker to create a smoky effect. While we’re in this area, we can also paint over some distracting strands of hair. It appears as if her right eyebrow is missing, but fix this with a small round brush too.

The spine is the trickiest part. While it’s painted exactly the way the other design elements are – using a standard round brush – one applied pattern can be repeated. Select one finished section using the Lasso tool, copy and paste this, and place it below the source. Click Edit>Transform>Warp to transform it. Pick up existing colours with the Eyedropper tool and paint with them, creating variations into the copied part. Shape edges with the Eraser tool, making sure they don’t look too similar.

The pupil deserves special attention as our model lacks direct eye contact. Draw the pupil again using a small round brush, 4px in size. Use the Stamp tool to clone texture from the left eye into the right one, including the specular highlight. Now duplicate the iris and pupil areas with a Lasso tool selection. Copy and paste through all the layers. With a bright blue-white colour, paint texture to make the eyes appear brighter.

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT It isn’t possible to lay down a concrete sketch to fill out. The challenge is that everything has to be painted from imagination, from rough shapes seen in a blurry sketch. Daily drawing practice will help to get better at this. There are some great schools, such as Feng Zhu, which specialises in the training of concept and industrial design (www.fengzhudesign.com/school.htm). Besides mastering the technique, it’s vital to train your imagination daily. Foster a habit of spotting images in the clouds and trees. A great site to help challenge our imagination is Alchemy (www.al.chemy.org).

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QUICK TIP Since this tutorial is done using a standard brush, it’s highly recommended that you familiarise yourself with the brush settings dialog (F5) for the scattering of hair and skin. Another great helper is the HUD-color Picker, which allows you to choose colours on the fly.

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15

BOKEH EFFECT

18

BOOST LIGHT

Turn off the visibility of all layers related to the model. Select the existing background layer and pick the colour TOYO 0469 from the TOYO 94 Color Finder Swatch. Set brush Opacity to 80%, Flow to 40% and blending mode to Color Dodge. The roundness of the brush should be set back to 100%. Now add some random spots with the mouse, ranging from 500px to 2900px size. On some occasions it needs two or more clicks to show the effect. This pseudo-bokeh effect should stay in the background – less is more.

16

IMPROVE OUR BACKGROUND

For the synthetic, edgy-looking background of the final version, use a stock image downloaded for free from Media-Militia (www.mediamilitia. com/3d-renders). Place the 4.PNG file exactly like it is in the screenshot. Rotate it 90 degrees clockwise to match the scene. Set this new layer’s blending mode to Linear Dodge and set Fill to 80% to achieve the same effect seen in the supplied screenshot. The background with the pseudo-bokeh effect should eventually sit with 100% visibility underneath this stock image layer.

17

Viewing the actual pixels up close will show a number of visual discrepancies. These are acceptable in a small, web-sized version of the image, but will not work in a high-res version. We discovered differences in the back, which had been roughly painted in Step 2. We solved this issue by creating a new layer, setting our brush to Scattering at 1000%, then changed Size to 3px. By picking up colours from the back with the Eyedropper tool, it’s possible to apply a bumpy skin texture by hand.

QUICK TIP When revisiting a finished piece, it proves useful to have Layer Groups just for effects such as Photo Filters. Switch the visibility of these groups off when working on underlying layers, which helps to structure our work. If we work on top of these effects, our work becomes useless if we decide to change the colouring of our underlying layers.

For the LED lights, we add a new layer and paint with colour TOYO 0687 from the TOYO Color Finder swatch. Using a round brush, we depict spots that work as additional light sources. To add values and glow, duplicate the finished painted layer, apply a Gaussian blur set to 2.8px, and apply a Color Dodge blending mode to the resulting layer. Add another pass of Gaussian blur, this time set at 8.5px, and a Screen blending mode to a duplicate of the previous layer.

20 19

REVIEW THE PIXELS

SIDE EFFECTS

Create a lens-flare effect in one of our LEDs on the spine by using the 29.PNG from this Media Militia pack (www.mediamilitia.com/custom-lens-flares-pack-50-free-high-resolution-transparent-images). Set this introduced layer’s blending mode to Screen, Opacity at 85% and Fill at 75%. Position the centre of the lens flare over the LED light. Improve synthetic looks by changing the tone of our composition with a Blue Photo Filter set to 45%. For contrast, we add a Gradient Map set with a Platinum style from the Photographic Toning collection in Photoshop CS6. Set this adjustment layer’s blending mode to Soft Light and Fill at 50%.

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FINAL TOUCHES

Repositioning the model, add rim light to the shoulder, play with colour adjustments and clean up the image. Use the Clone Stamp tool and our round brush to do this. Add strands of hair on top when adding room to the composition with the CS6 Crop tool. Change the colouring of the technical parts to a greyer, colder tone. Do this with Image>Adjustments>Replace Color options, by picking up the midtone of the brownish area and changing Saturation to around -15%.


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It’s wise to make sure you have everything defined clearly before moving on. A little spontaneity will prove handy, but not as handy as a solid base 82


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WorldMags.net PRODUCE FANTASY LIGHTING

PRODUCE FANTASY LIGHTING F LEARN ESSENTIAL BRUSH TECHNIQUES TO CREATE DRAMATIC LIGHTING AND VIBRANT COLOUR

antasy paintings are very popular, with many digital artists plying a profitable trade from a range of different styles. With the right skill set and techniques, you too can create concepts for multiple parties within the entertainment industry. This tutorial aims to give you a head start. You’ll begin with the sketch phase, drawing out some rough ideas in Photoshop, then you’ll discover essential ways to add colour, detail and cohesive lighting to your images. Special effects will breathe further life into these designs, mainly through the use of dramatic lighting effects that enhance atmosphere. Of course, this is all made possible using Photoshop tools and options. Custom brushes have been supplied so that you can make the marks seen in this tutorial. You’ll also discover ways to layer these new brushes, using the power of Photoshop’s blending modes to produce exciting lighting effects. Brushes are used to paint texture and detail, with Lock Layer and clipping mask controls letting you shape your final design exactly as you want it. Ways to introduce tonality and colour temperature, again enhancing atmosphere, are also taught. By the end of it all, you’ll be able to tackle your very own distinctive fantasy paintings.

OUR EXPERT MARCO NELOR

marconelor.tumblr.com

Currently living in Chicago, concept artist Marco Nelor spends his time listening to music, drawing and painting. For updates on his process, tips and tricks, be sure to follow him on Twitter.

SOURCE FILES On the CD, you will find all the brushes needed to replicate the effects learnt in this tutorial. Simply upload the advanced photoshop.abr file by double-clicking it.

GETTING STARTED

SKETCH WITHIN PHOTOSHOP

01

START YOUR SKETCH

WORK IN PROGRESS

Begin sketching the figure very loosely inside Photoshop on a new layer. This is so that you can visualise the proportions and composition you need. A three-quarter view of an owl moving towards the viewer has been chosen here. This example is the best design from a set of thumbnails, as it made sure all of the needs of the piece were met early on.

FROM SKETCH TO RENDER

Step 1: Rough sketch

Step 17: Add background

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A CLEAR COURSE OF ACTION

Begin tightening up your line work and organise the shadows and lights. Eliminate scribbled brush strokes, as a good, solid direction early on will dictate the difficulty of a piece. It’s also wise to make sure you have everything defined clearly before moving on. A little spontaneity will prove handy, but not as handy as a solid base.

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SEPARATE THE SKETCH

You’ll want to make sure that your bird is on a separate layer without any loose or extra strokes. Check for such artefacts by creating a layer beneath the sketch layer and fill it with a pink colour. This reveals any stray white and grey brush strokes in and around the sketch. If there are any in your image, you will need to erase these.

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Step 18: Create lighting


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WorldMags.net QUICK TIP The secret to applying textured brushes successfully is to build up gradual details using consistent strokes. Keep your textures and textured brushes from getting too messy, as they may begin to lay down too much texture and overpower the entire effect.

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ADD TEXTURE

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CREATE ATMOSPHERE

Early on in a painting, it’s good to add a little texture to certain areas. Later, these earlier signs of texture may show through and help to pick out subtle shapes, giving the painting a bit more life. Upload the advanced photoshop.abr and select the brush labelled ‘20’. Paint texture near the light areas of the talon. Be careful to not to paint too brightly this early on, however, as increasing the contrast too soon will make areas seem overly bright or blown out later.

It was decided that the head would read better if it were in front of the far wing, so you need to add a little bit of atmosphere. Using the Marquee tool once again, select an area outlining the owl’s face and a portion of the wing behind it. Select a rounded brush with soft edges and begin stroking in the lighting from the top down, as your light will likely be a top-down lighting.

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FORM SHADOW

Getting comfortable with the Selection tool? Good, as you’re about to practise that same technique here by carefully selecting the legs of your owl. Now press Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/Alt+I to invert your selection. This effectively lets you paint behind the selected area. Use another soft brush in order to paint in some shadow behind the legs. Again, take care not to paint your marks too dark.

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COPY AND PASTE

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PAINT FEATHERS

A useful trick when creating similar features like the talons is to use a copy and paste. Since the shapes will be painted over later, you won’t run the risk of each talon looking too similar. Select a talon with the Marquee tool (L), then press and hold the Cmd/Ctrl key as you drag the selected area to another location. Doing this creates a duplicate of the selected item.

It’s time to start painting feathers. To do this, select the brush labelled ‘700’, which closely resembles the hackle you can find in owls. Take care to not add strokes too wildly. Instead, apply in a uniform manner, tracing the existing contour in your owl’s form. This means you’ll create a more authentic appearance. Studying a real-world reference to get the right look isn’t cheating.

WorldMags.net PRODUCE FANTASY LIGHTING DETAILED BLUEPRINT

LAY THE FOUNDATION FOR FOCAL POINTS, TEXTURE AND FORM

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ADD BLACKS

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RENDER FEATHERS

Up until this point, the image will be rather grey. But this is fine, as it has allowed you to make sure that the focal point is yet to be decided. Usually, you’ll want your focal point to be your subject’s face. So it’s here that you’ll apply your first solid black to create the owl’s eyes. Use a Selection tool to draw out a good shape for these, then fill your selection with a solid black. This makes the eyes the darkest point, and point of focus.

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HIDE SELECTIONS

You’ll have made a few of these by now and they can be distracting. With an area of your painting selected, in this case the eyes, press Cmd/ Ctrl+H to hide your selection. Sometimes doing so will help you see what you’re doing more clearly. With your selections hidden, you can begin detailing the eyes, which is done using a soft grey brush on the outer area and a sharper white brush for the reflective highlights.

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BUILD FEATHER TEXTURES

Continue painting your bird and refining your form and shapes. Uniformly paint the wings, slowly building colour until you create solid-looking results. Do this on a new layer (Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/ Alt+Shift+N). The smoother you keep your forms now, the cleaner your painting will be later. It’s not until the very end, when bringing all your painting marks together, that you start to fashion feathers with your strokes.

Begin detailing the eyes, which is done using a soft grey brush on the outer area and a sharper white brush for the reflective highlights

It’s a good idea to layer your painted feathers. Start with smaller feathers near the top of the wing and paint three rows. Begin with the bottom row, painting in loose feathers. Add a layer on top and paint values that create the shadow from the feathers that will be above that. Then paint those feathers in on a new layer above your shadow layer. Working backwards in this way makes the feathers appear to be casting shadows.

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PAINT LONG FEATHERS

Now that you’re done with the smaller feathers, you need to paint a larger one. First, create a new layer (Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/Alt+N), then use the Marquee tool (L) to create a long, feather-like rectangular shape. Use a soft round brush to paint one side dark and another side a bright grey, manually creating a gradual gradient. This gives the illusion of a single feather, which is longer and thicker than the rest you’ve just added.

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RENDER YOUR LOOK

CREATE DRAMATIC LIGHTING, CONTOUR AND DETAIL IN YOUR IMAGE

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COPY AND PASTE FEATHERS

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START THE BACKGROUND

Using what you’ve learnt about the Marquee tool and the duplicate technique, you now implement a combination of the two. Remember the long gradient feather you just painted in the last step? Well, now you’re going to copy and paste this into a new layer and slightly enlarge it. Place it so it overlaps the original large feather layer. Continue to copy, paste and place a few dozen times until you have a long row of feathers.

Since your owl is on its own layer, you can create a layer beneath and begin the background. This image will eventually reveal a bright scene with sparks and cinder flying from a fire. However, to make these effects workable, you need a dark, muted background full of dark purples, dark browns and dark reds. While it seems dark now, adding your effects later will help keep the focus on your owl, rather than spreading the focus around haphazardly.

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BREAK UP REPETITION

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SECONDARY LIGHT

Build upon the last steps by repeating their processes, painting and placing feathers in the owl’s opposite wing. Make sure you follow the right direction for an authentic look. To break up the monotony of some of these feathers, erase parts of the edges in some of your layers. Also elongate some of them slightly and skew the shape of others a bit. This allows you to create the beginnings of a very interesting wing pattern for your owl.

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UNIFORM LIGHTING

Now that you’ve created your feathers, you will need to add larger shadows. First, merge down your owl layers, then make sure that this new layer is locked by clicking on the Lock icon located at the top of the layers tab. Now, apply a large, dark grey, soft round brush and lightly add some shadow to the rounded parts of the top of the wing. This makes sure your wings are being lit by the same light source as the rest of the image.

Since the plan is to have your main light source closer to the viewer, a secondary light source can be established – in this case, the moon. On a separate layer, draw a circular selection with the Elliptical Marquee tool. Set this layer’s blending mode to Color Dodge and paint in the moon with a few large strokes, using a neutral grey colour. This gives the moon its glow effect. Also use the same brush around the moon to give it a halo effect.

MASTERING SPARKS You’ll see that spark effects were added to the final image. You can recreate this effect by using several layers and a very easy technique. Create a new layer, set its blending mode to Color Dodge and scatter in some simple sparks with an orange-coloured brush. Now duplicate this layer. Duplicating a Color Dodge layer into itself will make the sparks glow even brighter than before. Now you must copy, paste and place your sparks around the image by selecting the Move tool, holding Opt/Alt and dragging them to other locations. Create depth of field effects, making some seem close up, others further away.

QUICK TIP When painting to a Color Dodge blending mode layer, using a grey colour will create a very natural and even glow. Painting with a saturated colour gives a glow similar to that colour.

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WorldMags.net PRODUCE FANTASY LIGHTING QUICK TIP Now that your major elements are completed, go over everything you’ve done and detail your brush strokes and lighting. Keep taking a step back to check your progress. This will ultimately help push the piece to final completion.

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CLIP LAYERS

Back with your owl and it’s time to add a little colour. At this stage, it’s best to keep everything simple – and in this case dark. Create another layer above the owl layer and link the two by hovering your mouse between the layers while holding Cmd/ Ctrl. Click and it links the layers. This will ensure that anything painted on this layer will only affect the layer below it, which will be your owl layer and not the background.

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BACK AND FORTH

At this point in your painting, it’s important that you start to flesh out your colouring and continue to tweak your image lighting. You could also add more subtle hints of colour, perhaps some purple or pink hues. Always remember that if you want to add more lighting, then you do this specifically to your Color Dodge blending mode layer. You can take this away by simply erasing it to show the layer beneath.

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REFLECTIVE LIGHTING

Using the same method outlined in the last step, create another layer, except this time set its blending mode to Color Dodge. Link the layer again. Even though it appears to be linked to the last layer, they’re both actually linked to the owl layer. Use this layer to add both blue rims of light in the edges of the wings and yellow lighting that emulates reflection from the fire. You can also erase lighting and reapply until you’re satisfied.

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ADD ARMOUR

Now that the hard part is over, you can begin to make some armour that fits with your image lighting. Use a solid colour that outlines the entire shape of the armour on a new layer, then lock it. This allows you to paint evenly over the entire shape, rather than painting each piece individually. Doing the latter has a higher chance of throwing off the balance of the armour. Do the same for the armour’s trimming.

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BRING IT BACK

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FINAL DETAILS

Since the layer below this new light layer is a dark brown colour, it’s possible to bring back shadows – just erase areas from the Color Dodge light layer above. Create dramatic shadows in the feathers by using the Marquee tool to make selections like in the example shown, then delete from these. This method is much better than painting with more black because the darkest colour has been established at this point.

In the same way as you’ve done in previous steps, create another layer and lock it to the armour layer. Set the new layer’s blending mode to Color Dodge and choose a saturated orange colour. Paint this on the side of the armour that you feel should receive the most light, with the brightest parts nearest the crease. This gives you a balanced exposure, and good shadow and light separation. Repeat the same process for the trimming. Use the Hair brush (brush 125) to zoom in and add more detail to the face, working your way outward from the focal point and detailing as you go.


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CHARACTER DESIGN AND ILLUSTRATION DEVELOP A CHARACTER CONCEPT AND BRING IT TO LIFE USING PHOTOSHOP’S DIGITAL PAINT TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

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his tutorial will teach you how to create an illustration suitable for a children’s storybook. You will be guided through the entire process, from the very first tiny thumbnail sketches, all the way to the final image. Learn how to handle composition, colour schemes, overall readability, effective shortcuts, and other tips and tricks. The main focus will lie in creating an illustration that tells a tale. The painting was made for a spread based on a short story and was commissioned by a Swedish youth magazine. Painting animals and creating

story-driven art that’s geared towards a younger audience can be a lot of fun. Being able to paint cute, expressive and appealing illustrations that really reach out to the viewer has always been an important goal for many artists. If you have a Wacom tablet, we definitely recommend using it from start to finish for more control. The image was also partly painted using some basic brushes, but we did use a few custom brushes from a free brush set created by the talented artist Shaddy Safadi. You can download his brushes at www.shaddyconceptart.com/download.

OUR EXPERT ANDREA FEMERSTRAND noukah.com Andrea is a concept artist and illustrator living and working in Sweden, who specialises in character and story-driven art. She works mainly with games, film, storybooks and editorial illustration.

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WorldMags.net CHARACTER DESIGN AND ILLUSTATION

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CREATE A NEW CANVAS

First, you’ll need a brand new canvas, by going to File>New and create a canvas that is 210mm x 148mm, and at 300dpi. It’s better to keep the canvas small at first so that you can pay attention to the whole image. Fill the background layer with a light-grey tone. It’s often better to work on a darker canvas, since it’s more comfortable for your eyes. Then create a new empty layer on top – that’s the layer you’re going to sketch on next.

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THE VERY FIRST THUMBNAILS

Start by putting down a bunch of thumbnails. Keep them small and pick a mediumsized brush that you feel comfortable with. This is the ‘sandbox’ phase, and any idea is allowed. Focus on experimenting with pose, composition and proportions. The position of the little thumbnails is not that important, just make sure that you get every idea out of your system. Stay very loose and feel free to play around a lot before settling with your idea.

CREATE A ROUGH SKETCH

Pick the thumbnails that are closest to your idea and start arranging them on your canvas. Lower the opacity of that layer and create a new one on top of it. Keep sketching until the entire image works, and keep experimenting. It’s great to constantly ask yourself questions such as: What’s the purpose with the image? How does the story go? Which moment works best for this illustration? What style should it have? Who’s the audience? Does the composition direct the viewer properly?

It’s often better to work on a darker canvas, since it’s more comfortable for your eyes

WORK IN PROGRESS BRINGING IDEAS TO LIFE

Step 3: Rough sketch

Step 8: Block in colour

04 Step 19: Final polish

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REFINE THE CHARACTERS

Now you will need to create another document to implement your final design. Feel free to make it even larger this time and fill the background with a light-grey tone. Select the character sketch with the Lasso tool from the rough sketch, copy the selection and paste it into your new document. After that, scale the characters so that they fill out the whole canvas and lower the opacity of the layer, then create another empty one and start refining the sketch further. To do this, use a brush with hard edges, and with the opacity settings activated.

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LOWER THE OPACITY

When the characters are more refined and you feel happy with them, copy the layer and add it to the previous sketch document. Remove the rough version of the characters and merge the sketch layers together. The sketch should only work as a vague guideline for the painting itself, so lower the Opacity to about 30% and lock that layer. Most of the other layers (except some adjustment layers that affect the entire image) created for this painting will stay underneath the line drawing.

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TRY IT OUT IN GREYSCALE

It’s time to play around a bit with the values. Block everything in with flat tones just to find some suitable values that will work well with the composition and mood. Paint on a new empty layer that’s created underneath the sketch layer. A nice rule to go by is that if things work well in greyscale, then it will definitely work out in colour as well later on. In general, it’s also nice to have several possibilities to choose from before you start to colour a new piece.

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COLOUR TEST

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CREATE CLIPPING MASKS

Before getting too serious with the illustration, it’s a good idea to quickly flatten the greyscale sketch and create and save a new version that will serve as a colour palette later on. On the new document, create a new empty layer and set the layer blending mode to Color. Now you can start painting some colours in without affecting the tones. This one will work well with lots of greens as the dominating hue, with a slight touch of brown, yellow and red.

QUICK TIP This shortcut that can be created through Actions is very handy when painting digitally in Photoshop. Simply create an Action that flips your canvas horizontally when pressing a specific key, perhaps F2. Flipping your canvas often makes you look at the painting with fresh eyes, and you can immediately see and fix any proportions or compositions that may be a bit off.

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BLOCK IN THE BASE COLOURS

After settling on a nice colour scheme, it’s time to block everything in. This will make things so much easier when starting to paint the illustration. The base layers can be created using the Pen tool. Start by drawing the main shape to create a new path, then make that path a selection and fill it with a basic colour. Proceed by creating basic shapes for the different background elements, the wolf and the girl. Lock the transparency of each layer when done.

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This stage really is a true time-saver, and it’s one of my favourite Photoshop shortcuts. Start by creating new layers on top of each ‘blocked’ layer, then press Opt/Alt and hover the cursor in-between the two layers. The lower layer will become the parent of the upper one, and it will then stay within that shape, no matter how messy you paint. It also means that you only need to block in the main parts once. You can then focus on the fun part – the painting itself!


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FLIP YOUR CANVAS REGULARLY

Go to Image>Image Rotation>Flip Horizontally on a regular basis to check the proportions, balance and composition. When you flip the canvas, you’ll see immediately if the nose looks off, or if the position of the eyes is awkward. It’s a lot easier to spot mistakes. The great news is that you get to make the changes in time. If the image is working in both angles, then it’s probably balanced. 001

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When all the base colours are added to the painting and you’re all set, it’s helpful to create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Keep it on top of the entire painting and adjust it so that the painting gets completely desaturated. You can then turn this layer on and off to keep checking the values when painting. Is the painting readable in greyscale at this stage? Good! Then it’s ready to get painted for real.

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Decide on the direction of your light source and paint highlights accordingly. Feel free to stay a bit loose

Now that the image has been flipped, you can check that the composition is still well balanced

Take a step back and think about which parts of the characters need some extra work, like the fur and eyes

Start with slightly rendering the form of the characters and tree trunk, keeping the direction of the light in mind

QUICK TIP

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TIME TO PAINT!

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SECOND PAINTING PASS

Keep blocking in base colours with a large brush. The basic brushes will work perfectly at this stage. Use big, bold strokes in the beginning and switch between hard-edge and soft-edge brushes, keeping the Opacity at 20-50%. Stay loose and always work on the entire painting. To get a better overview, open the document in two separate windows using Window>Arrange>New window.

Keep fleshing out the illustration, working on the entire painting and correcting smaller mistakes that you encountered when mirroring the image. Keep comparing the image in the smaller window as you proceed and make sure that it looks good and readable when it’s smaller as well. Although it’s tempting, don’t dive into the smaller details just yet; just keep painting with a slightly lower opacity and render the forms.

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It’s always a good idea to keep your light sources on a separate layer to your base image. This way, you can turn those layers off when you need to, and you can then focus entirely on rendering form and putting down those basic values in your painting.

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ADD SOME LIGHT

It’s a bit dark here, isn’t it? To solve this, create new layers for the background and the characters, then connect them to the layers underneath as clipping masks. Set the layer mode to Color Dodge and pick an orange midtone to paint with. Use a hard brush without any Opacity settings and paint in highlights, ensuring they are in keeping with the direction of the light. Let those layers stay rough for now, as long as it looks good overall.

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THIRD PAINTING PASS

The image is now ready for some slight detailing and early polishing. Play around with different textured brushes to get that traditional, painterly feel. Safadi’s custom brushes will suit perfectly for this phase. Vary the opacity of the brushes to gain full control while you paint. Create new empty layers on top of the parenting layers if you feel unsure and want to redo, or remove unnecessary changes as you paint.


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Turn on the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer that you placed at the very top and check the values. Is the illustration still readable? This part is really crucial, and as mentioned earlier – if it’s working in greyscale, then it will most likely work in colour as well. So it’s a very good habit to just double-check your illustration on a regular basis while working with colours. We can’t encourage this part enough. Is it still working? If it still reads well, then it’s fine.

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REFINE THE FUR

You can see that the wolf’s fur needs some more details. Keep painting with a medium-sized brush and render the forms a little bit more. After that, pick a brush that feels more like a traditional brush that slightly imitates hair or fur. Having photo references is always a huge benefit; so don’t be afraid to search for some nice photos that clearly show what a wolf’s fur really looks like. References will always be important, even if you paint in a rather cartoon-like style.

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FURTHER DETAILING

Keep adding in smaller details where they are needed. Paint them all in while keeping a careful eye on the entire illustration. Remember: less is more. Another good thing to keep in mind is to spend some extra time on characters’ eyes and faces in general. These features are one of the first things that the viewer looks at, so it’s important that the eyes and expressions read well and show clear emotions. Getting this part right definitely helps to tell a story.

Having photo references is always a huge benefit, even if you paint in a rather cartoonlike style

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FINAL TOUCHES

Finally, you can add the smallest and finest details to the painting. These include the whiskers, hair and sparkles in the eyes. Evaluate the entire painting by flipping the canvas horizontally as in Step 12, turning the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer on to check values once again, and last but not least, make sure that it reveals your story. You can also flatten the entire painting at this stage, so you don’t have to handle all the different layers anymore.

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PREPARE FOR DELIVERY

Since this was made for a magazine, it’s good to make sure that all the settings and modes are correct. To start with, check that the image is scaled or cropped properly. Most publishers handle their images in CMYK, so make sure that it’s converted. You can also sharpen the image a bit. Go to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. Play with the settings and make sure that the image looks nice and crisp, and then you’re done! Hope you found this tutorial helpful. Good luck!


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WorldMags.net PAINT A STEAMPUNKINSPIRED PORTRAIT

PAINT A STEAMPUNK INSPIRED PORTRAIT USE LIGHT, SHADOW, COLOUR AND TEXTURE TO CREATE A CAPTIVATING PORTRAIT BASED ON A STEAMPUNK CONCEPT

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he following tutorial is for those who wish to learn the basics of digital painting and discover tips and tricks to add texture, luminescence and mystery to illustrations with simple Photoshop methods. Learn to sketch non-existent objects using basic perspective and visualise lighting so that you can add any element to your painting regardless of reference. Discover the difference between form shadow and cast shadow and how to effectively render both. Once you understand how light interacts with your subject matter, the possibilities are limitless. Learn how to pick compelling colours to establish mood, to paint different materials such as cloth, metal, and skin, including how to apply textures and patterns realistically using filters. Finally, discover the secret to creating glow effects and glares using various layer blending modes. From start to finish, you will learn how to employ Photoshop effectively to create a compelling painting.

DECIDE THE AIM OF THE PIECE AND CHOOSE YOUR REFERENCE VISUALISE YOUR IMAGE

Before starting, visualise what you want to accomplish. In this case, the goal is to paint a Steampunk piece which integrates portraiture with mechanical elements. It’s meant to be a dark, atmospheric image with lush colours to invoke mystery and interest. Remember to download the resources before you start.

www.ashleywalters.net Ashley Walters is an illustrator with a love of all things fantasy and sci-fi. She spends her spare time being a mum to three kids and watching Doctor Who.

SOURCE FILES

BACK TO BASICS

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OUR EXPERT ASHLEY WALTERS

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GATHER REFERENCE

Paintings should be unrecognisable from reference unless the material belongs to you, so take liberties in deviating from online sources. The easiest way to obtain reference is to take photos yourself, but be sure that all of your images have the same light source or be prepared to paint them differently to how they appear.

Included on the disc, you will find the Photoshop file of the illustration as well as corresponding texture and pattern files to help you replicate the steps listed in the tutorial.

WORK IN PROGRESS FROM START TO FINISH

Step 4: Sketch the outline

Step 9: Paint the image

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START A NEW DOCUMENT

Begin by creating a new document (Cmd/ Ctrl+N). Set the image dimensions to 4800px by 6400px at 300ppi. Decide between RGB or CMYK for your colour mode (RGB can achieve richer colours while CMYK is useful for printing). Fill it with a warm green tone in the middle-range of value (not too light and not too dark).

Once you understand how light interacts with your subject matter, the possibilities are limitless WorldMags.net

Step 13: Add effects


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PICK COLOURS

Colour defines the mood of a piece. The key to having lush colours is finding a balance between rich and dull. Too bright and your image looks contrived and over-the-top. Too dull and your image looks washed out. Lighter colours should be less saturated and darker colours more saturated. On a new layer, pick a basic flesh colour, scribble and repeat, increasing the saturation as you go darker. To help the image pop, add subtle oranges and warm pinks for the eyes and cheeks. Pale cyan works as a highlight colour to contrast against warm shadows.

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SKETCH THE OUTLINE

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UNDERSTANDING LIGHT

Create a new layer named ‘Sketch’ (Layer>New>Layer). When sketching, think about the focal point to keep the eye moving within the image. Use your reference as a rough guide as you freehand the sketch in a dark burgundy colour. Keep in mind perspective as you draw objects without reference, like the dragon and goggles. It helps to sometimes draw boxes in perspective with the rest of the piece and then chisel away at the objects inside to create angular shapes before finally rounding off the details.

Form shadow (or core shadow) creates the illusion of form and gives objects depth. It occurs when light fails to completely wrap around the form of something and is a gradual transition from light to shadow, with softer edges (like the cheekbone, which at first catches the light and then curves downward into shadow). Cast shadow occurs when something (like the nose, for example), blocks the light, throwing areas below into darkness. It tends to have sharper edges.

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VISUALISE WHERE LIGHT FALLS

When creating an object without reference, it is vital to be able to picture in your mind where the shadow would fall if you could see it. Sometimes it helps to picture the subject matter as if it were made up of several small geometric polygons. Look at each surface plane and ask yourself if the angle would catch the light or not, then translate that into your painting. Don’t forget to add in cast shadows of made-up elements to ground the work and give it a cohesive feel.

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QUICK TIP Paint separate elements on their own layers so that you can lock the transparency and paint each one without going over the edges. To do this, choose the corresponding layer in the Layers palette and click the checkered square icon at the top next to the word ‘Lock’.

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CREATE THE BACKGROUND

Create the illusion of a light source just off canvas using a hard round brush in a pale yellow hue. Sweep the brush downward to emulate the glowing effect of light on a wall. Picking a dark green, sweep the same brush along the edges of the canvas to push the corners into darkness. Blend the colours with a soft round brush as necessary. Note that the light will be brighter and the change between values will be more drastic near the top where the light is closest to the wall.

WorldMags.net PAINT A STEAMPUNKINSPIRED PORTRAIT DOWN TO DETAIL

APPLY PAINT, ADD TEXTURE AND CREATE ATMOSPHERIC EFFECTS

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START PAINTING

On a layer beneath the sketch, paint the skin using a default round brush. Keep your Opacity and Flow at 100%, and rely on the sensitivity of your tablet to blend the colours. Make a clear delineation between light and shadow. As you continue to refine, add the transitions between the two values using a soft brush when needed. Use your highlights sparingly for the greatest effect. Merge your Sketch layer and your painting layer and gently paint out the sketch until all the lines are gone.

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SHINY VERSUS DULL

When painting matte surfaces like the cotton vest, do not paint highlights. Only two values are needed for these – mid-tone and shadow – with gradual transitions between the two on occasion. When painting reflective surfaces like silk or brass, however, exaggerate the drastic change in value by using sharp specular highlights in areas where the light would logically fall and by using contrasting strokes. Remember to incorporate surrounding colours, as metal is highly reflective.

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PAINTING SKIN AND HAIR

When painting skin, find a balance between matte and shiny. The skin will have sharper and brighter highlights if the face is wet (like around the eyes) or where oils of the skin reflect light (like on the nose and inner tear duct). If you haven’t already, add these highlights to create luminescence. When painting hair, start by putting in the darkest values first, and then add the midtones using a chunky round brush. Gradually reduce the size of the brush until you are painting individual strands.

TRAIN YOUR TABLET SKILLS AND SPEED PAINT

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ADD TEXTURE AND PATTERN

Texture and pattern add realism to your work when done correctly. To create the illusion of wallpaper, paste a damask pattern on a new layer and set the layer Blend Mode to Overlay from the drop-down menu on the Layers palette. Reduce the opacity of the layer so that the pattern is not overbearing but still present. You don’t want your image to be too busy or distract viewers from the figure in the foreground.

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ADD ATMOSPHERIC EFFECTS

The last step is to add subtle atmospheric effects. Create a glare on the highlight of the goggles using a soft round brush in a pale yellow colour on low opacity. For the blur on the dragon wings, copy the wings onto a new layer underneath and use the Motion Blur filter. Set the angle to 40 degrees and the distance to 200px. Use a smoke brush for the dragon steam. To make it glow, on a new layer use a soft green brush set to Hard Light.

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If you’re new to digital painting, this tutorial can be challenging. Our tip is to try speed-painting exercises to get better each day. There are great videos and schools out there to learn that particular skill. We recommend Advanced Photoshop contributor Feng Zhu’s website at www.fengzhudesign.com. Also www.schoolism.com from Bobby Chiu. There are also a lot of free tutorials on YouTube regarding this method, so it’s definitely worth a look. In the end there is no shortcut for making the tablet do what you want it to. No stock images or filters will unleash that potential.


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Photo editing Improve ordinary photos with a variety of Photoshop techniques, from retouching to colour adjustments and compositing

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100 Photo-editing techniques Learn about the disciplines used by top professionals in their photo-editing projects

108 Retouching in Photoshop CC Get to grips with CC’s host of image-enhancement features

114 Stylise architectural images Discover techniques used to edit photos of buildings in a commercial environment

120 Expert automotive retouching Edit vehicle images and add excitement to RAW photos

126 Cra atmospheric landscapes Combine daylight and night-time photography in this stunning fantasy-style tutorial

Photoshop has forever changed the way we view photography 98


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© Photography rights © JD Sports fashion plc ltd

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WorldMags.net PHOTOEDITING TECHNIQUES

PHOTOEDITING TECHNIQUES

TOP INDUSTRY EXPERTS OFFER THEIR VIEWS ON ADVANCED PHOTOEDITING DISCIPLINES

PROFESSIONAL RETOUCHING

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hotoshop has forever changed the way we view photography. Whether you consider retouched images false advertising, or beautifully manipulated photos a work of art, few could deny the impact that Photoshop has had on our culture. Monica Chamorro (www.monicachamorro. com) is a high-end beauty retoucher who has worked for the likes of Vogue, Dior and Marie Claire. “For me, retouching people is all about enhancing their natural beauty and bringing the skin and colours as close to perfection as possible without looking fake,” she tells us. “It’s very important to do all of this in a nondestructive way, always making sure you can undo or modify anything you’ve done.” “The Healing Brush is a great tool to remove blemishes, as it gives you more control with the texture,” she continues. “Curves and masks along with the Brush to dodge and burn are important, and the Clone Stamp is also good when working on tasks like filling in hair. When using the Brush or Clone Stamp, it’s important to adjust the Size and Hardness to match what you’re trying to replicate so that it blends in well. Liquify is also useful, but needs to be used in moderation. I would recommend always saving the Liquify mesh so that you can redo or modify it if needed.” Freelance retoucher Katie Nattrass (www. katienattrass.com), meanwhile, suggests: “If you know where the final artwork will be getting sent, contact the printer and check what print profile they use. It’s worth your time to learn about colour profiling and ink density. I always create a simple document in InDesign and drop my final JPEGs in with the Ink Density panel open and set to 280% (300% is the usual ink density for all printers). This way I can make sure my blacks are not too dense.”

CONTRIBUTORS Tom Fairfax – @mrtomfairfax www.tomfairfax.co.uk

Monica Chamorro www.monicachamorro.com

Jordan Lloyd – @dynamichrome http://dynamichrome.com/

Katie Nattrass – @katienattrass http://katienattrass.com/

Jonny Allen – @NeoscapeInc www.neoscape.com

Plankton Group www.planktongroup.com

© Plankton Group

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© Katie Nattrass

COLOUR GRADING AND LIGHTING

OUR PANEL OF EXPERT ARTISTS DISCUSS THE BEST APPROACHES TO COLOUR GRADING AND LIGHTING WHEN WORKING WITH PHOTOGRAPHY

WORKING IN RAW

OUR INDUSTRY PANEL DISCUSS THEIR TOP TIPS FOR WORKING IN RAW

Plankton Group: Sometimes we are asked to place a rendered building onto a photograph. In this case, RAW photography is very useful. When opening with Camera Raw, we try to take out as much contrast as possible from the original photo. We bring the highlights down, take the shadows up and take out some saturation from the colours that we don’t want to stand out. This flat look allows us to apply contrast selectively where needed. Katie Nattrass: I always work with RAW images. If a client or photographer can’t supply me with them, I will add a disclaimer in there and then. The benefits of working with RAW images are that you have more shoot information to use; details in the highlights and shadows can be utilised and pushed forth from the RAW shot. Many top photographers will shoot feathers using programs like Capture and Phocus. I have both of these, so when I have images supplied as file libraries, it means I have all the information from the shoot.

When it comes to photo editing, two of the most important elements are lighting and colour. “Most of the time we will respect and maybe enhance the original lighting, unless the photographer specifically wants us to change it, or it is very obvious that there is an unwanted shadow or flash reflection,” says Chamorro of the lighting process. “If we’re adding volumes or elements onto the image, we need to make sure that they follow the original light. I usually start with a RAW file, so I can already correct exposure or colour balance there. “However, if the image has not been lit properly, sometimes we will have image areas that will be very bright or very dark (or both), to the point that the photo loses detail in those areas. In that case, I develop the image with different exposures, so I will have all the texture and details in those areas if I need them later. Alternatively, if the light correction required is very subtle, we could also use adjustment brushes just to correct those areas in the RAW converter of our choice.” Graphic designer Tom Fairfax (www.tomfairfax. co.uk) also believes that when it comes to working with faces in particular, light manipulation should be kept to a minimum. “Exaggerating or enhancing lighting characteristics, such as exposure and so forth, is of course fine and dandy, but trying to adjust primary lighting directions will usually lead to problems,” he says. “Light defines form, and human beings are wonderfully predisposed to be ultrasensitive to the tiniest changes in others’ faces. “If you’re retouching an image in its own setting or creating one, work with the lighting you have. If you start doing more, photorealistic compromise will almost certainly creep in. If you’re compositing from

different sources, make sure the images you combine share the same or very similar lighting directions. Inanimate objects are thankfully far more forgiving. You might confidently flatten and relight a tin of beans, but doing the same to someone’s face is a completely different proposition.” When it comes to colour grading, Chamorro sees it as a way of bringing an extra element of emotion to an image. “A simple way of doing this would be adding some tones into the shadows, midtones and highlights,” she says. “There are many ways in Photoshop to achieve that; one of them would be using the Selective Color adjustment layer where you select the blacks and bring the yellows down just a little bit if you want a faint blue in the shadows.” Fairfax believes that colours should remain natural throughout the process, with intense colour grading only playing a part in the process at the end. “Don’t use colour grading as a crutch or a shortcut when compositing images. I choose the primary elements in my pictures and bring the colours of all the other elements to match their natural tones and saturation,” he explains. “Only when everything has been brought together do I start thinking about the tones of the final image overall. It’s tempting to think that because you might end up with an image that has a distinct and narrow palette, it’s easier to do colour grading as you go, but I firmly believe that sticking to what’s natural until the last moment leaves you far more options and protects tonal nuances that are all too easy to loose. Retaining the freedom to take the colour in any direction follows the same logic that has us using masks, adjustment layers and Smart Objects. Working yourself into a corner is never good.”

© Aitor Santome

Jordan Lloyd: Something I came up with when colourising photos that is really handy is using RAW to compensate for different film stocks and how they affect colours in the original monochrome plate. In order to do this, you would need to add colour to the image first, before doing last minute global luminance channel corrections in RAW. So, the second to last step of my process is to open up the flattened colourised image in RAW, and head over to the HSL/Greyscale option. I will then make the channel corrections using the Luminance sliders.

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Images © Katie Nattrass

WorldMags.net PHOTOEDITING TECHNIQUES ■ 4 Colour grading: We wanted to achieve a dark, warm and dramatic look. To achieve the overall colour, we used a Hue/Saturation layer in Colorize mode on Overlay blend mode. We also used some Curves layers to add contrast and a glow layer on Screen blend mode.

COMPOSITING TIPS

PLANKTON SHOWCASES ITS WORKFLOW FOR COMPOSITING A CONCEPT TOWER INTO A PHOTO All images © Plankton Group

■ 1 The render: For this conceptual project, the client wanted to show the volume of the building in the nearest surrounding. We were only told that it would be a glass office tower. We had creative freedom when choosing the mood of the image.

■ 2 Cleaning up: Since almost all of the surrounding buildings were originally covered with giant ad posters, we had to re-create almost all of them in a clean version. Some of the textures were taken from the original photo and stamped in using Photoshop.

■ 3 Matching textures: Once the mood of the image was decided upon, we started to simulate the sunlight on all the textured buildings using warm, yellowish colours with the Color Dodge blend mode.

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PHOTO COLOURISATION

© Plankton Group

EXPERT JORDAN LLOYD ON INJECTING LIFE

One element of photo editing that has received a larger degree of attention as of late is that of restoration and colourisation – the process of taking historical black and white photos and returning them to the vibrant hues that they would have displayed at the time. Jordan Lloyd is something of an expert in the field, rising to prominence on the subreddit ColorizedHistory and offering his talents via high fidelity restoration service Dynamichrome (www. dynamichrome.com). “The most basic common process for a good result involves layering a number of Solid Color layers using the Color blend mode. A face, for example, may contain as many as 14 separate colour fills or more. Using a layer mask and a soft brush, you simply paint in the areas you want to have colour. The reason why Color blend mode is used is so that the luminosity (the black and white information) isn’t affected by the application of colour. The difference between an average and an excellent colourised piece is determined by the number of layers you use to build depth. “I start from the bottom layer – an underlying red layer set at 15% Opacity – and keep adding from there: the main skin tone, hair, eyes, rouging, blood vessels, fat, veins carrying deoxygenated blood and so on. If it doesn’t look right, I can double-click on the Solid Color Fill and simply pick a different colour. I tend to do solid skin layers at 50-57% Opacity (Brush Opacity 100%) then bring it right down to 5% Brush Opacity when doing the rouging and blood vessels. The goal is a realistic finish, not Pennywise the Dancing Clown.” When it comes to colour grading, Lloyd considers the process an aesthetic choice once you’ve moved beyond adjusting temperature for white balance. “Colour grading can be used effectively to emulate old colour film stock, like Kodachrome K12, for example,” he tells us. “At this point I’m going to plug the master Dan Margulis. His understanding of the Lab Color mode is extraordinary. When I’m working on colour grading, I do a merged copy of the entire image, then bring that it into Lab Color space. “A simple way to add stunning saturation to your image, which gives you a lot more control and less aberrations than the Hue/Saturation slider in RGB, is to steepen the A and B channels in a Curves adjustment layer. Take the flattened Lab saturated version back into your original RGB document, and then blend it in using something like an Apply Image on Darken (50%). The whole thing gives you a realistic saturation boost to which you can apply any colour grades you wish.”

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RESTORATION TOOLS

JORDAN LLOYD DISCUSSES THE BEST TOOLS FOR RESTORING DAMAGED PHOTOGRAPHS

“I’m a huge fan of the Spot Healing brush and Clone Stamp as my main tools, along with a lot of patience. Depending on the image, sometimes I’ll deploy a Content Aware Fill, but really the idea is to restore physical damage like scratches or burns, rather than replace whole areas. “When there is a large plate to process, I also find it helpful to divide the image into squares. For this, I set Photoshop’s Crop tool to Grid view and use the crop grid to then set out where I’m putting my guidelines. I then cancel the Crop tool and tackle one square at a time. It’s a great way of helping you break down an image into chunks.”

All other images © Jordan Lloyd

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Civil Rights Movement: The March, Washington, 1963: Lloyd believes that large outdoor crowd shots often present the most difficult challenges for any colouriser.

The Great Depression: Old Gold Country Store, 1939: Lloyd often finds that obtaining good colour references is the hardest part of the process. Here he tried to find originals of every single sign, where possible, from auction sites, collectibles, and in one case a specialist soda pop retailer.

BASIC COLOURISING

LLOYD GIVES HIS TIPS ON BUILDING LAYERS TO OFFER THE ILLUSION OF REALITY

■ Skin base layers : This restored image has two base layers: a red Solid Fill layer is set at 15%, painted in using a layer mask applied with a soft brush at 100% Opacity, followed by a main flesh layer at 70%. Set the layer blend mode to Color.

■ Blend with the atmosphere : Colour physics plays a role in achieving a realistic result, so be sure to blend in things like the sky and lighting. Global changes can be achieved in postprocessing or by opening the image in RAW.

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EDITING ARCHITECTURAL IMAGERY

VISUALISATION FIRMS NEOSCAPE AND PLANKTON DISCUSS THEIR APPROACHES TO ARCHITECTURAL IMAGE EDITING AND COMPOSITING CG The Plankton Group (www.planktongroup.com) is a visualisation firm based in Poland, with a great deal of experience when it comes to editing images of architecture. “The main goal is very simple: to make the building look good,” says the company. “We always try to work in a non-destructive manner, using a lot of adjustment layers with various blending modes. There is a serious amount of experimentation involved in the process. The first result that we achieve usually isn’t the best. If that happens, we take a snapshot and try again. When reviewing snapshots, we try to compare different parts of the image, which is a great way of deciding on the final outcome.” When working with architectural imagery, Jonny Allen of creative studio Neoscape (www.neoscape. com) operates using a very similar workflow to that described by the Plankton Group. “When lighting architectural imagery, I usually approach lighting with the Curves adjustment layer and use masks,” he explains. “I then punch the lighting where it’s needed, or tone it down. One of my favourite techniques is to use Curves with gradients on large, flat surfaces to make them more dynamic. This allows me to add more depth to otherwise flat parts of the image, while also guiding the viewer’s eye towards the focal points.” When it comes to colour grading and creating a sensation of mood, Color Balance and Gradient Map adjustment layers come in most useful for Allen. “I believe one of the most underrated tools for colour grading is the Gradient Map adjustment layer used with different blending modes (usually Soft Light or Overlay). Curves is another of the most vital and versatile tools. Once you wrap your head around using the individual RGB controls, then start using blend modes with it, you can really work at the speed of thought.”

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For Plankton, the team tries not to separate colour grading too greatly from the lighting process. “Colour grading is in our opinion the most important part of editing an image, and usually the most fun. There are endless options, so we don’t usually decide on the colour grade straight away. First, we consider the mood that we want to achieve. Cold and warm tones evoke different feelings. We prefer cold, dark moods, so usually there is some discussion required when a client is looking for something sunnier and happier.” Architectural photo editing often also involves the composition of CG elements into a real-life scene – a complicated task made much easier if you take things one step at a time, according to Allen. “I generally like to get the values correct first, then move onto colour,” he tells us. “I do this by adding a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer with 0 Saturation to the top and use Curves/Levels on the CG subject to make sure they fit the value of the image. If you want to get hardcore about the colour correction, you can drop a grey layer on top and set it to Luminosity, and all you will get is the colour of the image. From there you can adjust as needed with individual RGB control in a Curves adjustment layer. It gets pretty easy with experience.” For Plankton, the first and most important factor in CG compositing is lighting. “We look at things such as highlights, shadows and the colour of lights. It is crucial that we match the CG lighting as closely as possible to the photo we’re compositing the object into. The more time we spend in the 3D environment, the less time we spend figuring out how to composite the CG image into a photo background. The process takes time, but it’s worth being patient. Of course, there are some things that you can only do in post-production, such as matching the noise and grain of the original image, softening the edges and applying the final colour grade.”

© Neoscape

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© Plankton Group

© Neoscape

© Tom Fairfax

WorldMags.net PHOTOEDITING TECHNIQUES ENHANCING 3D VEGETATION

JONNY ALLEN OF NEOSCAPE REVEALS HOW TO GIVE CG VEGETATION A PHOTOGRAPHIC LOOK All images © Plankton Group

©Neoscape

COMPOSITING TIPS

GRAPHIC DESIGNER TOM FAIRFAX OFFERS HIS TIPS FOR COMPOSITING IMAGERY AND SELECTING SOURCES THAT WORK “The real secret to seamless compositing is to use the right sources. The sources have to share the same or very similar light sources of course, but also be of a suitable quality. I believe that generally speaking, the more you have to work on an element to integrate it, the lower in quality the achievable result gets. “The greatest position to be in is to be able to produce your own sources and control the lighting conditions, but failing that, it’s well worth being open-minded with a creative approach to sources. For example: if I want a WWI British soldier’s helmet lying upside down on the floor – maybe I can’t find a helmet lit that way. However, a food colander is a similar shape and material, and usually photographed the way up I need. It’s no bother to heal out a few holes and manipulate more of a rim – almost certainly less effort than completely reworking the lighting on an actual helmet in a satisfactory way.”

■ 1 Set up your CG grass: Buildings look so much more appealing when they are surrounded by lush, green grass. To add your own, start by finding yourself some decent-looking 3D grass. Make sure you have a nice, translucent-feeling material. Then apply some interesting variation to the grass, and add extra things to it like clovers and weeds. ■ 2 Increase reflectivity: One of the problems with fake translucency materials is that they detract from the reflection layer. Vegetation is naturally very reflective, so we need to add that back in. Here, I’ve taken the reflection and specular render passes and screened them on top of the grass, painting the mask with large strokes to really punch it into the foreground. ■ 3 Enhance the lighting: As vegetation is translucent, when light hits it, it tends to be very bright in photos. Punch the lighting hard, but keep it in a pleasing value and colour range. For this image, I used a mask so only the vegetation was affected and set the Raw Total Lighting pass to 100% Soft Light. I also desaturated the pass entirely so that the colour did not get blown out. ■ 4 Adjust colour: One of my favourite methods of adjusting natural colour is to use the Gradient Map adjustment layer with blend modes like Soft Light, Overlay and Linear Dodge. Here, I’ve taken the stock Purple to Orange gradient and set it to 15% Linear Dodge on the vegetation. This adds warmth to the highlights and subtle warmth to the dark areas.

© Tom Fairfax

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WorldMags.net RETOUCHING IN PHOTOSHOP CC

RETOUCHING IN PHOTOSHOP CC LEARN HOW TO USE THE NEW FEATURES IN PHOTOSHOP CC TO EDIT PORTRAIT AND FASHION PHOTOS

A

long with enhanced performance gains, Adobe’s latest version of Photoshop presents several exciting new options to users in every field. These range from groundbreaking technology, like the new Camera Shake Reduction filter, to subtle improvements, such as the now-accessible brush rotation widget. This tutorial will focus on a handful that will be of particular interest to photographers and retouchers. Working from a starting portrait, we will put into action some of the latest features found in Adobe

Camera Raw 8.0, including the new Spot Removal brush capabilities. Moving into Photoshop CC, the tutorial will highlight a few major improvements and use them to further fix the image. The Smart Sharpen filter and the Preserve Details option are also explored, demonstrating how these are combined to perfect photo enlargement. In addition to the updated tools, the tutorial will touch on a long-awaited feature for working with paths and rounded rectangles. Follow these steps to see what Photoshop CC really has in store.

OUR EXPERT KIRK NELSON www.thepixelpro.com Our friendly neighbourhood graphic geek is an Adobe Certified Expert and has over 15 years of experience in Graphic Design. Nelson is a frequent contributor to Advanced Photoshop magazine.

SOURCE FILES The portrait used and edited in this Photoshop CC-based tutorial is available on the disc. Experiment with this file while using Photoshop CC’s latest tool sets.

SMARTER IMAGE EDITING IN PHOTOSHOP CC

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CAMERA RAW 8.0

Photoshop CC is paired with Adobe Camera Raw 8.0, which boasts several useful new features. Begin by opening the supplied disc file DSC_5385.NEF. This is a RAW file that cannot be opened directly in Photoshop. Opening it will launch Camera RAW 8.0 instead.

WORK IN PROGRESS

3-!24%2ď%$)4).'ď).ď PHOTOSHOP CC

Step 4: Spot Removal

Step 7: Smart Sharpen

02

WHITE BALANCE

The model is decently lit against the solid white backdrop, but there is still some room for improvement. There’s a slightly warm colour cast to the photo that can be removed using the White Balance Tool. It’s a grey-filled eyedropper found in the top tool bar. Use it to sample a mid-grey area of her dress.

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COLOUR CORRECTION

Use the sliders in the Basic tab of the RAW interface to adjust colour and exposure, making these look how you want them to in the image. Alleviate shadow areas by adjusting the Shadows and the Blacks sliders, then increasing the Clarity and the Vibrance settings, which helps to enhance the image’s tone and detail.

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Step 12: Radial filter


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WorldMags.net You can stroke over areas, creating irregular shapes that are healed by the program

QUICK TIP The new Spot Removal tool in Camera RAW 8.0 is a great way to deal with dust spots from the camera lens. Brush strokes and settings are saved as part of the Develop Settings. Use Adobe Bridge to apply those settings to multiple photos all at once.

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NEW SPOT REMOVAL TOOL

The Spot Removal tool is a well-loved feature from previous versions of Camera RAW. The significant change in ACR 8.0 and Photoshop CC is that you no longer need to apply it through circular areas. Now you can stroke over areas, creating irregular shapes that are then healed by the program as it finds similar pixels to merge with the selected area. This is done non-destructively, as source and target pins can be moved and readjusted to define fixes. The new Visualize Spots slider uses a black-and-white translation to assist in finding irregularities in the image that are candidates for healing.

06 05

SPOT REMOVAL OPACITY

The Spot Removal tool increases its usefulness by providing an Opacity slider to fade the healing effect into the original pixels. Use the Spot Healing Brush to outline the pronounced tendon in the model’s neck. The default operation of the tool completely replaces the area with smooth skin. A more natural correction isn’t to remove the tendon entirely, but to make it less pronounced. By decreasing the Opacity slider to a value of around 55, we can still apply and show through some original pixels, but blend it in with the smooth skin.

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BACKGROUND CLEANUP

Click Open Image to apply the Camera RAW adjustments and send the file to Photoshop CC. Notice the area near her waist where there’s visible damage to the background material. Select a small portion of the damaged area using one of the Marquee tools, then use Edit>Fill>Content Aware Fill to remove the imperfections. If the Content Aware Fill pulls pixel information from the dress instead of the background, use the Spot Healing brush tool or a tighter selection.


PHOTOSHOP CC INTEGRATES CS6’S 35"3#2)"%2˶/.,9ď&%!452%3 ď ).#,5$).'ď4(%ď!"),)49ď4/ď53%ď ,)15)&9ď!3ď!ď3-!24ď&),4%2

SNUB NOSE Sharpen the model’s nose by switching to the Pucker Tool, and apply in a similar way to the eyes. Set the brush size slightly larger than the tip of her nose, at a value of around 150. Gently click until it shrinks slightly. Be sure to use single, controlled clicks, otherwise it’s easy to get carried away.

EYE POPPING A very common beauty retouching technique is to increase eye size and shape. To do this, select the Bloat tool and increase the brush size to completely cover the whites of the eyes. Carefully click directly on the pupil, making the eyes wider.

FULLER FIGURE Switch back to the Bloat Tool and reduce the brush size to around 70. Then give the lower lip area a bit more volume with just a few clicks, but be careful not to distort the teeth. Increase the brush size to around 450 and add some fullness to other body areas.

PRESERVE DETAILS One of the long-standing rules with photomanipulation is to avoid resampling upwards. If an image is enlarged too much, the pixel information breaks down and detail is lost. Photoshop CC reduces this restriction with a new Preserve Details option when resampling. Go to Image>Image Size, check the Resample box and choose Preserve Details from the drop-down menu.

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SMART SHARPEN

Another welcome improvement in Photoshop CC is the revamped Smart Sharpen filter. This now does an extremely impressive job of recovering details from fuzzy images. One of the best new aspects of this filter is the way the Amount can be boosted to extreme levels without the image suffering from edge halos, as in previous versions. For the image here, set the Amount to 266%, Radius to 1.5px and the Reduce Noise slider to 81% to get the necessary detail.

08

CS6 CC UPDATE FEATURES

Adobe has integrated a handful of features that were previously only available to Creative Cloud subscribers into Photoshop CC. Among them is Smart Object support for filters, which before was restricted to standard layers. The new Blur Gallery filters are included, as well as the Liquify filter. A favourite of pro retouchers everywhere, this is now available non-destructively as a Smart Filter. Convert the layer to a Smart Object with the Image>Smart Object menu before adding these.

MORE FLEXIBLE WORKFLOW

PHOTOSHOP CC’S SUPPORT FOR SMART FILTERS ALLOWS GREATER FLEXIBILITY AND CREATIVITY WHEN RETOUCHING

09

SMART SKIN SMOOTHING

Double-click the Smart Object to edit contents. Notice that these are in their pre-Liquify form. Duplicate the image layer and invert, pressing Ctrl/Cmd+I. Set this new layer’s blending mode to Vivid Light. Select Filter>Other>High Pass and set a radius of 2. Then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and use a radius of 5. The result should be a smooth skin layer. Hold Opt/Alt and add an inverted layer mask. Use a white soft brush at 40% Opacity to apply the softening effect to the skin alone.

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COLOUR BOOST

Use a Vibrance Adjustment layer, with Vibrance set to +36 to boost the colour of the dress. Then add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer set to Colorize. Set Hue at 229, Saturation at 26, and Lightness at +7, enhancing the eye colour. Apply a layer mask to target the effect to the irises. Use another Hue/Saturation Colorize adjustment layer to add tint to the lips, setting Hue at 0, Saturation at 34 and Lightness at -17. Change the layer blending mode to Soft Light, reducing Opacity to 59%.

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11

SMARTER BLUR GALLERY

One of the most celebrated features from CS6, the Blur Gallery, just got even better in Photoshop CC. Now it can be applied as a Smart Object. The actual menu item is shuffled slightly, but can be found under Filter>Blur>Iris Blur. Rotate the on-screen widget to match the angle of the model’s head, then position the focal point directly over her face. Be sure the falloff markers sit well outside of her head so that her face isn’t blurred. Set blur Amount to 15px.


13

NEW SHAPE CONTROLS

Draw out a frame using the Rounded Rectangular Tool. Set the Fill to white and the Opacity to 58%. Open the Properties Panel and use the icons along the bottom to set the shape to Subtract. Enter 216 into one of the corner definitions, and all the corners should adjust accordingly. Transform the shape to the size you want for the frame, and the corners will retain their curve settings. To control the corners separately, unlock the central chain link first.

USE COLOR RANGE This option comes in handy when isolating areas of colour. In simple cases, we can just use the Magic Wand to select solid colours, but when working with paint images like those in this tutorial, or ones with existing lighting, Color Range becomes a must. Make the most of the black-and-white preview to see what you’ve selected and use the plus and minus droppers to specify detailed areas. Once you’ve clicked OK, you can easily remove parts of the selection by holding down Opt/Alt or Shi and then applying the Lasso to add or remove active areas and match selected edges.

12

BACK TO CAMERA RAW

Camera RAW can also be applied as a Smart Filter. Go to Filter>Camera RAW Filter and launch the application. Select the new Radial Filter from the tool bar, which is the last icon in the menu. Drag out an ellipse and pull the exposure setting down to -1.35, and reduce the saturation to -6 and the clarity to -35. This new Radial Filter tool lets you specify a type of custom vignette to direct focal points in the image.

Be prepared to warm up your tablet, fasten your seat belts and get the creative juices flowing

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STYLISE ARCHITECTURAL IMAGES A FIND OUT HOW TO EDIT IMAGES OF BUILDINGS USING COMMERCIAL TECHNIQUES IN RAW AND PHOTOSHOP

rchitectural retouching is an art of precision, and you will need to blow the socks off a client if you want to meet their expectations. For this tutorial, we’ve imagined a client who is trying to sell apartments in a high-rise block of flats. They want a dynamic evening shot, showcasing their building, emphasising a central location and ‘selling the dream’ through our retouched image. We begin perfecting our image by opening it in Camera RAW and bringing out all the hidden detail, and then move into Photoshop, where the hard graft really begins. We’ll clone, heal, colour correct, colour balance, create masks, correct lens distortion and use almost every tool in between in order to achieve an inspirational image. The Vanishing Point filter will become integral to our compositing process, and breathe new life into a tool that normally gets overlooked and forgotten. We’ll also discover how channel calculations can help create great mask selections. Filters, however, can only do so much, and there are no quick fixes for professional effects. Patience, hard work and copious amounts of cloning are the key to commercial-looking architecture.

BUILD BASE EFFECTS

ESTABLISH EXPOSURE IN RAW AND PERSPECTIVE IN PHOTOSHOP

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WORKING IN RAW

Open ‘Original.CR2’ from your resources in Camera RAW. Increase Contrast to 18, Shadows to 61, Clarity to 32 and Vibrance to 24. Save this image as a PSD file. Next, create exposure emphasising the orange glow of the building’s lights, saving as another PSD file. Finally, increase the contrast of the street’s lights and save as a third PSD.

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OUR EXPERT NICHOLAS EDMONDS www.nickedmonds.com

Nicholas Edmonds has worked in the industry as a retoucher for over five years. He first started out working in fashion before he moved on to creative projects and subsequently, architecture.

SOURCE FILES On the disc you will find all the images that were used to create the effects seen here. These include the start image, skyline stock and a light effects image.

WORK IN PROGRESS FROM DULL TO INSPIRATIONAL

CREATE A ROAD MAP

Open the three PSD files and layer them above one another in Photoshop. Duplicate your base image and place it at the top, renaming it ‘Roadmap’. With the Brush tool and a bright colour, mark everything that needs to change; sections to get rid of, areas to enhance and elements to include. This will be our constant reference.

Step 1: RAW conversion

Step 4: Lens correction

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COMPOSITING THE CONVERSIONS

Opt/Alt-click the ‘Add layer mask’ icon, adding an inverted layer mask to each layer above your base image. On your building lights layer, paint to the layer mask over balconies and windows. This lets glow effects show. On the street lights layer, apply a soft brush and the drop layer’s Opacity until you like the result. Flatten your image.

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Step 13: Refine the mask

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START IMAGE

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LENS CORRECTION

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CLONED PERSPECTIVE

Due to the size of the building and the angle at which the shot was taken, it looks wider at the base than it does at the top. Let’s rectify this perspective by selecting Filter>Lens Correction. You can amend by eye, but be aware that if you get this wrong now then cloning later will become very complicated. Use the grid feature to highlight distortion instead. We want the upright edges of the building to be parallel with the grid lines, so increase Vertical Perspective to 29 and click OK.

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ADD THE VANISHING POINT

The Vanishing Point tool is an architectural retoucher’s best friend. It lets you clone in perspective. Select Filter>Vanishing Point, zoom in to the top of the building and press C to select the Create Plane tool. Click on a pointed edge of a balcony, then move down a few balconies and click to create a straight line. Follow the line of the balcony along to where it begins and click again. Move up to the balcony you started with and find a corresponding place to click and complete the plane.

In the Vanishing Point filter, activate the Stamp tool by hitting S. Now we need to remove the marketing banners at the top of the building. Choose a sampling point by holding down Opt/Alt and then clicking just a few balconies down, at a corresponding position somewhere just below the banners. Once you’ve hit that sweet spot, you can start cloning up. You will find that the top balcony cannot be cloned because it is different to the rest of them, so stop there.

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EXTEND PERSPECTIVE PLANE

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TURNING ON THE LIGHTS

Now that we have our perspective plane, we must extend it downwards, covering the whole right side of the building. Refine the points by zooming in and adjusting their positions, mapping the building’s edges. Press C then click and drag the middle control point on the left of the perspective plane, creating a new perspective plane for the building’s left-hand side. Let go and refine the control points. Extend this perspective plane like the other one, so the entire building is covered in a 3D plane.

Still inside the Vanishing Point filter, we need to turn on all of the lights in the building. Choose a sample point (Opt/Alt-click) and clone the lights in; try to find an illuminated window of the same style and as close as possible to your cloning location, as this will improve results. Keep the brush size relatively small and be precise when applying. Once all of your cloning is complete, click Done. Add a layer mask to your cloned layer and paint out what you don’t want to keep.

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DETAILED CLONING

WORK CLOSE UP AND APPLY THOROUGH TECHNIQUES

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CLONE SOME MORE

The balcony doors disrupt perspective noticeably. They are too flat, so activate Vanishing Point and create a new perspective plane for them. Replace all the lights that are switched off with ones that are turned on, using Vanishing Point filter cloning and by copying and pasting balconies with the lights on over the top of those with the lights off.

VANISHING POINT

CUT OUT AND DISTORT

FLIP AND MASK

Use a perspective plane to clone light balconies over dark ones in the Vanishing Point filter, then a white brush on an inverted layer mask to show them.

The Lasso tool can help you cut out well-lit balconies. Copy and paste over a balcony with no light and then apply Edit>Transform>Distort to fit it.

You can even copy and flip balconies, if you really need to. Following that, add an inverted layer mask and then just paint in only what you need.

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CLEAN THE PILLARS

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IMPROVE THE MASK

As you can see, the balcony pillars are covered in some kind of see-through material, which we don’t want. Use the Pen tool to draw around a clean pillar. Open your Path palette and Ctrl/rightclick your path to create a selection. Now hit Select> Modify>Feather and add a 0.5 pixel radius. Copy and paste the selected pillar, placing it over a textured pillar, and use Free Transform to map the shape of the covered pillar. Repeat this technique for every pillar and then merge all of these layers together.

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CLONE UNDER THE PILLARS

Create a new layer underneath the pillars layer. We need to clone out the remaining seethrough material from the rest of the balcony. Having the pillars on a separate layer above means we don’t have to be as precise with our cloning. Sample an area close to where you are cloning, preserving the tonality. Follow the lines of the existing structure. Be careful when cloning not to create repeating patterns, as these are tell-tale signs of poor retouching. Merge all layers to the top of your stack.

Paint in black over all the foreground areas that were not blackened during the Levels and channel calculations. Select the Magic Wand tool and click anywhere in the black area. Press Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+I to invert the selection then paint the sky white. Use the Pen tool to draw around balcony windows that are currently white. Make a selection from your paths, like we did in step 10, and paint to it with a 50% black brush. Press Cmd/Ctrl+D to deselect and then press Cmd/Ctrl+I to invert the channel mask.

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PREPARING FOR A NEW SKY

We are going to use channel calculations to help us create a great mask of our sky. This allows us to blend channels together using blend modes. Select Image>Calculations and then set Source 1 and Source 2 to the blue channel; this one has the highest contrast between the sky and the foreground. Set Result to New Channel and click OK. Press Cmd/Ctrl+L to activate and adjust Levels, and then exaggerate this contrast further by moving the black and white sliders towards the middle.

WorldMags.net STYLISE ARCHITECTURAL IMAGES SPECIAL EFFECTS

ADD NEW LIGHT SOURCES AND A SKYLINE TO ADD BEAUTY

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ADD A NEW SKY

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EMBELLISHMENTS

Cmd/Ctrl-click the Alpha 1 channel to load your mask selection. Click on your image in the Layers palette and add a layer mask. Import the supplied ‘Sunset1.psd’ and place this beneath your masked layer. Resize it and move it behind the building, then use a Curves layer to darken the image slightly, changing its Opacity to 65%. Import the supplied ‘Sunset 2.psd’, place it above this layer and move the sunset behind the building. Change this layer’s blend mode to Hard Light.

Merge all layers to the top (Cmd/Ctrl +Opt/ Alt+Shift+E). Using the techniques you’ve learned, remove anything that catches your eye and distracts from the scene. We removed and cleaned walls, cloned out cracks in tarmac, cloned in paving and cloned out road signs. This is where your image starts to shine. We also added embellishments, like a lit-up street lamp. We applied Motion Blur to blur out pedestrians and used a soft yellow brush set to Hard Light to add a flare above the trees.

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COLOUR CORRECTION

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SHARPEN FOR OUTPUT

Add a Color Balance adjustment layer and clip this to the foreground layer. Set Tone to Highlights, then set Red at 0, Green at -13 and Blue at -25. For Midtones, Red: 29, Green: 0, Blue: -26. Shadows are last with Red: -12, Green: -8, Blue: -2. Make a new layer above and using a bright yellow brush (colour pick from the sunset), paint where the sky meets the foreground. Select Filter>Blur> Gaussian Blur and set it to 80. Change the blend mode to Soft Light and drop Opacity to 30%.

Merge all your layers to the top as in step 17. Duplicate this layer twice, leaving you with three layers. Choose the middle layer and select Filter> Gaussian Blur, setting a value of 5. Click OK, activate the top layer and select Image>Apply Image. From the Layer drop-down options, set your middle layer. Under blending, choose Subtract. Set Scale at 2, Offset at 128 and then click OK. Finally, delete the middle blurred layer then change the blend mode of the top layer to Linear Light, setting Opacity to 35%.

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SIMULATE TRAFFIC

Open ‘BlurredCarLights.psd’ and draw around the red strobe lights. Copy and paste these into our image. Press Cmd/Ctrl+T then select the Warp tool. Use the controls to adjust the lights so that they follow the curve of the road. Use Levels to enhance highlights and shadows, tweaking the options sliders until you get the right look. We set the Shadow slider at 60 and Highlight at 197. Change this layer’s blend mode to Screen. Add a mask and paint with black, leaving only the light streaks on the road.

CREATING LENS FLARE We can make a convincing lens flare of ‘Sunset2.psd’. Import and place it so the sun is just above the trees and over the building to the right of the high-rise. Apply Motion Blur with Distance: 250 and Angle: 0, and then Gaussian Blur with a value of 20. Change this layer’s blend mode to Hard Light to see the effect take place. Add an inverted layer mask (Opt/Alt-click on ‘New layer mask’) and paint in the effect above and to the side of the trees, leaking over the side of the high-rise.


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EXPERT AUTOMOTIVE RETOUCHING W ENHANCE A COMMERCIAL PHOTO USING CREATIVE AND TECHNICAL TIPS FROM A PROFESSIONAL hen retouching you’ll find yourself in a much better place if you have multiple files to pull from, especially when each and every one combines into one final image. Everything from camera angle and height to the direction of the light needs to be consistent if we’re to achieve realistic results in our retouching. Unfortunately this isn’t the case most of the time. Whether there are constraints while shooting, or the retouching of a specific image turns out to be an afterthought, we can find ourselves at the mercy of one lonely file. This means we could be left with

having to make a whole lot of something from a whole lot of nothing. Here we’ll be exploring the creative and technical possibilities of retouching a photograph of a vehicle, starting from a single RAW base file, then wielding Photoshop to finalise the results. From the foreground to the background we’ll go over everything you need to complete the retouch, including the processing of the RAW file, digitally painting the cars and creating a dust-kicking burnout effect. All this will be completed in Photoshop without any additional applications or plug-ins.

OUR EXPERT SCOTT DUKES

www.dukesphotography.com Scott is a commercial and editorial photographer born, raised and living in Los Angeles, California. His client list includes Lexus, Scion, Toyota, Harley Davidson, Vitamin Water, Automobile Magazine, Playboy and RIDES Magazine.

START WITH THE BASICS

BREAK DOWN THE IMAGE INTO MULTIPLE SECTIONS TO GIVE YOURSELF THE UTMOST CONTROL

WORK IN PROGRESS

RETOUCHING FROM RAW FILE TO SHARP RESULT

Step 1: Open your shot

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PROCESS THE RAW FILE

Start with a RAW file or files that offer the most flexibility for retouching. Utilising the Dynamic Range option is key, because if you’re stuck with only one file you can process it multiple times for various elements. It’s fortunate we have soft, even lighting in this image, so we only need to process once to get a good starting file.

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BREAK DOWN THE IMAGE

It’s always best to divide your elements, then package each in a Group folder. Make a selection of the elements in each folder then apply a layer mask to the folder itself. This enables you to include effects but isolate them to individual areas. Here a good starting point for us is the background, the Dodge Viper and the Mercedes SLS.

ADDITION BY SUBTRACTION

The saying ‘work before play’ holds a lot of weight here. In general it’s a good idea to start off by doing the bulk of any retouching before moving into the creative work. This is where we’d want to complete any obvious work with the Clone Stamp or Healing Brush tools, which usually means the removal of all distracting artefacts.

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Step 7: New background


Step 13: Burnout smoke

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START IMAGE

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SET THE TONE

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ADD LAYER MASKS

With the layer masks in place and the bulk of the work on the pixels done, we can move to the fun stuff. Starting with overall adjustments, we create a Global folder to keep everything in place. To avoid committing to anything, it’s best to work in a non-destructive manner by using adjustment layers. By applying Selective Color, for example, we can increase the contrast in the sky by adding blacks to cyans and blues but removing them from whites.

As we’re breaking down the image more and more, we’ll come across situations where certain tools work better than others. As we isolate the rest of the background from the road surface, the Polygonal Lasso tool works best. As there isn’t a clear-cut line in the pixels, we can quickly add a feathered selection along the outside of the road then apply the mask. This can be controlled manually using soft-edged black and white brushes.

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EMPHASISE THE SUBJECT

To pull more texture and contrast out of the road, we can use a Channel Mixer adjustment layer – with Monochrome checked and a Blue Channel – set to either an Overlay or Soft Light blending mode. To add a quick vignette, make a heavily feathered selection where the vignette will be and apply a Levels adjustment layer to control the effect. While enhancing the feel of the road surface, we can also help direct more attention to our subjects.

REPLACE THE SKY

As we started off with only one RAW file, this is where having a library of random images, such as skies, comes in handy. Picking a specific sky image will minimise any distractions, as well as alleviate the tension from the horizon line cutting through the roof of the SLS. This new sky works great, as the direction of the light is close enough and the mountains nicely frame the cars. We can integrate the skyline by applying to a layer mask manually. Plant the back plate farther into the distance by applying a slight Motion Blur filter to it.

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WorldMags.net EXPERT AUTOMOTIVE RETOUCHING START WITH THE BASICS

USE FOCUSED EFFECTS TO ACHIEVE A DYNAMIC RESULT

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APPLY SELECTIVE COLOR

With the background set for now, we can move our focus towards the cars. As the Dodge Viper has three dominant colours in its paint, the Selective Color tool can provide great control when we start to dial in the colour and tonality. The CMYK sliders for every tone enable us to adjust contrast, saturation, hue, colour balance and more in the whites, blacks and reds of the car.

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TIE UP THE LOOSE ENDS

Starting with the background enables us to set the stage first, then clean things up as we move forward. Not much work is needed for the Mercedes SLS at this point, so with a few global and specific adjustment layers we’re able to fine-tune the overall tonality of the vehicle to match the rest of the image. 001

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Completing colour and tonal work with the background first helps direct us where to go with the vehicles

Using various Selection tools for layer masking, we are able to independently work on elements of the image

We’ll create various realistic-looking lighting and motion effects to enhance the overall dynamics of the image

QUICK TIP Use adjustment layers such as Levels, Curves and Hue/ Saturation, as they offer endless flexibility. Everything is noncommittal and non-destructive to pixels. As with any other layer, these can be toggled on and off as needed and can be set to any desired blending mode.

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APPLY WINDOW REFLECTIONS

With the basic retouching finished, we can now sit back and survey the creative potential of the image. At a quick glance the windows of both vehicles could use a little more detail. Use the Pen tool to apply precise selections of the windows, then create duplicate layers for each so as not to affect the pixels below. Cmd/Ctrl-click the layer thumbnail, make a selection of your copy layer and apply the Gradient tool to this window layer. Set a white-totransparent Gradient Style at 60% Opacity to achieve a reflective effect.

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BOOST THE ENVIRONMENTAL LIGHTING

USE LARGE BRUSHSTROKES AND THE FREE TRANSFORM TOOL

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ADD HEADLIGHT REFLECTIONS

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REPLICATE BURNOUT DUST

Make a feathered selection of the headlights and add a Hue/Saturation layer. Activate the Colorize option, set Saturation at 40 and Lightness at 20. The Hue settings depend on the vehicle. From here you can double-click the layer to open the Layer Styles options. Applying both Outer and Inner Glow, we can create the desired radiance with the slider options. To create the flare, apply with a star-shaped brush and apply a slight Blur filter to soften the edges.

Looking to add a bit more action to the image, we can create the effect of burnout dust in a few quick steps. This is where our second additional file comes into play. With a photo of smoke against a black background, drag the file into the correct position and change the blending mode to Screen to leave only the smoke. Apply a mask to the layer and manually brush out any unnecessary smoke to achieve the desired look.

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THE DIGITAL PAINT BOOTH

As the SLS’s paint is a silver we can easily change it. First we need to create a new selection with the paint isolated. Use the correct Group mask to make your selection and edit out anything that isn’t going to change colour – namely the windscreen and lights. Add a layer and fill it with the new colour, in this case a sample of the factory red. Change this layer’s blending mode to Color and apply any adjustments needed to alter the settings.

BLEED THE LIGHT

Now that we’ve created the dusty smoke trail coming from the vehicles, we can add some more light play towards the front of the image to bring balance. Revisiting the background folder, create a new layer at the top of the Group layer stack to ensure your light will only affect the background elements. Using a large soft-edged brush, apply a single white brushstroke. We can adjust the light flare as needed with the Free Transform tool.

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QUICK TIP When using layer masks, look at the surrounding pixels to help decide which tools to use. The precision of the Pen tool is great for clipping things out such as a car, while a large soft-edged brush or heavily feathered selection is perfect for creating vignettes.

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LIGHT THE VEHICLE EDGES

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MAKE GLOBAL ADJUSTMENTS

With the light flare added, we now have to create the bleeding-light effect on both the vehicles to tie things together. We’ll create two new layers for painting in each car group, again ensuring we only affect specific layers. Using a soft-edged white brush, we’ll apply along the edges of both vehicles to create the effect. We can transform and warp the paint, then tweak the opacity or change the blending mode to either Overlay or Soft Light for increased contrast.

Now we’ve come full circle and will once again complete a round of global adjustments. As we’re looking to finish the entire image, ensure these are made on top of all the other layers and groups. We can use Selective Color to complete the bulk of the work. Add contrast in the sky by applying black to the blues and cyans. Removing black from white is a good method for pulling out textures, such as the road surface or clouds.

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ADD LENS FLARES

Lens flaring will often occur when light bleeds into a lens directly from a light source. With the added light flare in the upper-right of the image, we can easily use the Lens Flare filter to add this effect. Making a Group at the top of everything, add a new layer filled with 50% grey (Shift+F5) and change the blending mode to Overlay. This gives us an invisible layer that we can apply the Lens Filter to without altering any pixels below.

SHARPEN THE RESULT

To finish we want to sharpen the flattened and cropped image before saving. In addition to the Unsharp Mask filter, we can run a High Pass filter. Duplicate the final flattened layer and go to Filter>Other>High Pass. The Radius used is relative to the file size, or simply the desired effect. Change this layer’s blending mode to either Soft Light, Hard Light, or Vivid Light. All three slightly vary, so test them out to see which suits best. We can also reduce the opacity of the layer to soften the image if necessary.

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WorldMags.net CRAFT ATMOSPHERIC LANDSCAPES

CRAFT ATMOSPHERIC LANDSCAPES CREATE A DREAMY LANDSCAPE USING A SELECTION OF HIGHRES IMAGES AND CUSTOM BRUSHES

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n this tutorial we are going to learn to seamlessly combine night-time photography with day-time photography in order to create a dream-like fantasy photo. We will be using Photoshop’s powerful techniques and tool presets, such as layer masks and styles, custom brushes and adjustments. Using layers and masks will enable us to work in a non-destructive manner, in turn giving us flexibility and more ways to edit the image without losing the original data. We also will create a brush preset from the base image to help match the elements together, and use one of Photoshop CS6’s new adjustment

WORK IN PROGRESS BUILDING THE DREAM

layers – Color Lookup – to edit the overall contrast, lightness and different colours with a simple step. Finally, we will use the rule of thirds to help us. These are guidelines proposing that an image should be imagined as being divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines – like in noughts and crosses – and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections. This technique creates more tension, energy and interest in a composition than simply centring the subject in the image.

OUR EXPERT MIKKO LAGERSTEDT mikkolagerstedt.com Mikko Lagerstedt is a fine art photographer hailing from Finland. He makes it his artistic mission to create atmospheric photography, and he continues to refine his artwork in Photoshop.

SOURCE FILES

If you load up the free CD then you will find all of the images necessary to follow this tutorial as well as some custom brushes created by Mikko Lagerstedt.

CREATE A SIMPLE BACKGROUND

ADD ADJUSTMENT LAYERS TO BEGIN CLEANING THE BACKGROUND IMAGE

Step 1: Remove distractions

Step 8: Brush clouds

Step 18: Final adjustments

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CLEAN THE BACKGROUND

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EXTRACT ELEMENTS

Open ‘background.jpg’ and duplicate it. Add a Curves adjustment to darken the image, then add a Hue/Saturation layer and set Saturation to 0. Use the Patch tool on the duplicate to remove grass. Add another layer and use the Clone Stamp, set to Current & Below with 20% Opacity and a big soft brush, to smooth the Patch’s transitions.

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REMOVE THE PIER

Hide the Curves and Hue/Saturation layers. Create a Stamp Visible layer by hitting Cmd/Ctrl+ Opt/Alt+Shift+E. Use Cmd/Ctrl+T to Free Transform the layer and flip it horizontally. Add an inverted mask by Opt/Alt-clicking the ‘Add layer mask’ icon. Brush with soft white to reveal the background until we have a smooth transition and the pier is hidden.

Select the background and then use the Rectangular Marquee to select the person and their reflection. Hit Cmd/Ctrl+J to copy that to a new layer and move it into a new group. Now select and cut the reflection, then use Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+V to paste as a new layer. Create a path in the Paths menu and, with the Pen tool, draw a path around the person.

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NEW DOCUMENT

Put the background layers together into a new group by using the shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+G. Set the group’s name to Background. Now group the person and their reflection together too and name that one Person. Save the file as ‘water.psd’. Create a new document by hitting Cmd/Ctrl+N and name it Dream. Apply Width: 235 mm and Height: 302 mm, with Resolution: 72. Set the Color Profile to Adobe RGB and Background Contents to Transparent, and then click OK to open the new canvas.

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MASK

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PLACING THE ELEMENTS

Select the path then Ctrl/right-click on it. Choose Make Selection, setting Feather Radius to 0,2 pixels. Add a mask to the person layer and invert it with Cmd/Ctrl+I. Select the reflection layer and add a layer mask to it. Start masking the reflection using a medium-sized standard black brush, with a Hardness of 60%, to hide the reflection. Once it’s completely hidden, hit Cmd/Ctrl+I to invert the mask and your reflection should now be visible. Use Free Transform to straighten the reflection and set the blend mode to Multiply.

Select the Water file by tabbing with Cmd/ Ctrl+Tab, then Ctrl/right-click on the Background group and select Duplicate Group. Set the Destination to Dream and click OK. Repeat the step with the Person group. We can now finally close the Water file. Now select the Crop tool with View: Rule of Thirds and create guides according to the lines, then press the Escape key. Select both of the groups and reposition them so that the person and the reflection are near the lower third.

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IMPORT NIGHT SKY

Open ‘stars.jpg’ and place it into the Background group. Add another group, named Sky. Create a new layer above the Stars layer and add a clipping mask by Opt/Alt-clicking between them. Use the Brush tool with Size: 540 px and Hardness: 0%, and sample a colour from the bottom of the Stars image – paint with 10% Opacity until the brightest stars are slightly visible in the bottom half of the Stars layer. Add a Curves layer with Input: 43 and Output: 117, and a clipping mask attached.

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QUICK TIP By using one of the provided cloud/fog brush presets, or one of your own, with Opacity: 100% and Flow: 25% you can mask out certain areas to create more variations in the transition layer, and when you’re smoothing the edges use a big soft brush with 10% Opacity and 100% Flow.

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ADD CLOUDS

Create a new layer. Grab the Brush and select one of the cloud/fog presets, giving it a relatively large size. Start brushing by first sampling the background fog layer with Opt/Alt. Brush with a Flow of 20% and resample the colours to create variation within the layer. Brush until you have covered the point where the Stars layer and the Background image collide. Use a layer mask to mask out if you have gone too far, and also to smooth the transition from the fog into the sky.


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TRANSITION EFFECTS

USE LAYER STYLES TO HELP CREATE LIGHT EFFECTS

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CLOUD TRANSITION ADJUSTMENTS

Import the cloud image and place it in the middle of the frame. Add a layer mask to it and start masking out with the cloud/fog brush preset. Use 100% Opacity and 25% Flow to start revealing the background with black, using the X key to switch between black and white to reveal and mask out. 002

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Double-click on the cloud layer from inside the Layer palette to open up the Layer Style dialog

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Select Inner Glow, then set Opacity to 64%, Color to #ECFCFF, Elements Size to 111 px and Quality Range to 44%

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Create a duplicate layer with Cmd/Ctrl+J. Disable the Layer Style and smooth the transition with a big soft black brush

MAKE A CUSTOM BRUSH

On the background layer, select part of the pier’s reflection with the Polygonal Lasso. Copy it to the clipboard and make another document, naming it Water, then paste the reflection into it. Hit Cmd/ Ctrl+L to bring up a Levels adjustment and apply Input Levels: 91, 042 and 177. Duplicate the layer and flip it horizontally, then use a big soft Eraser to remove and smooth the left side of the new layer. Flatten the image and remove the colours with Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+U. Go to Edit>Define Brush Preset and name it Water.

Add a Color Lookup adjustment layer to balance the lightness of the image

ADDING THE BOAT

Open the boat picture and import it to a new group. Name the group Boat. Resize the picture, lower the Opacity to 62% and use Free Transform to match its size with the underlying person. Copy the reflection to another layer by selecting it with a Lasso then using Cmd/Ctrl+X and Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+V. Now select the boat layer – create a new path around it and make a selection with the setting Feather Radius: 0,2 pixels. Add a layer mask to the layer and hit Cmd/Ctrl+I to invert.

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DETAIL ADJUSTMENTS

Select the boat reflection layer and give it a layer mask. Use a 50% Soft small-sized brush and paint in black onto the layer mask where the reflection is. Invert the mask with Cmd/Ctrl+I. Now select the Water brush that we just created. Brush with 40% black around the sides of the reflection layer to hide some of the boat’s reflection with ripples. Double-click the layer to open the Layer Style dialog. Adjust Underlying Layer from white to 204/255 by holding Opt/Alt and sliding the right-hand pointer to the left.

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WorldMags.net QUICK TIP When using the Blend adjustments in the Layer Style dialog, you can easily choose to either show or not show whether the underlying layer is darker or lighter. This is a quick and easy way to hide any unnecessary elements, shadows or lights in your image.

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BALANCING LIGHT

In the Background group, above the Sky and Water groups, add a Color Lookup adjustment layer to balance the lightness of the image. Select the FoggyNight.3DL preset from the 3DLUT menu and then set Layer Opacity to 64%. Use the Gradient tool on the layer mask with a grey colour to adjust the visibility of the effect. After that, select the person layer in the Person group and add a Curves adjustment to darken it, using a clipping mask to restrict the effect to just that layer. Make the same adjustments to the reflection layer.

FINAL ADJUSTMENTS

CREATE COLOUR CORRECTIONS WITH CURVES ADJUSTMENT LAYERS

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COLOUR CORRECTIONS

Create a new group above all the others and name it Reflection & Colour. Add a new Curves adjustment layer and name it Colour. Select the Blue channel from the drop-down menu. Adjust the curve upwards slightly and then move to the Green channel and pull the middle down slightly, then do the same with the Red channel. Go back to RGB mode and pull the midtones down. Now use the Gradient tool with a grey colour on the mask so as to not affect the night sky too much.

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REFLECTION

Create a Stamp Visible layer with Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/Alt+Shift+E, then hit Cmd/Ctrl+T to Free Transform. Flip it vertically and move it down so that the edge of the cloud is hitting the bottom of the image. Add an inverted mask by Opt/Alt-clicking on the ‘Add layer’ icon. Set the blend mode to Multiply and the Opacity to 86%. Reveal the mask from the bottom. Double-click the layer and, in the Blend If options, hold down Opt/Alt and drag the Underlying Layers’ black pointer right to 0/85.

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ADD BIRDS

Open the birds image and import it to a new group called Birds, setting the blend mode to Multiply. Use Cmd/Ctrl+T to control the angle and size of the flock. Duplicate the layer with Cmd/ Ctrl+J and, again, hit Cmd/Ctrl+T to Free Transform. Flip the flock vertically then Ctrl/right-click the transform box and select Warp. Warp the bottom bird up slightly and hit Return. Now add a layer mask and use the Water brush to hide some of the reflected birds, setting the layer’s Opacity to 59%.

Add a Color Lookup adjustment layer to balance the lightness of the image

FINAL ADJUSTMENTS FOR PHOTOMANIPULATION When you’re using layers and blur effects in manipulations, it’s important to add noise/grain at the final stages of the piece. Adjusting as necessary according to the base images’ grain and detail, create a new layer filled with 50% grey then set it to Overlay and apply the Add Noise filter. Set the amount in a preview mode, so you can see how much is really needed to match all the elements. This helps you to blend the blurred elements together with the base image to make it look much more authentic.

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ADD FOG

Create a group called Final Adjustments and then make another new layer. Start by using your cloud/fog brush to select light areas of the clouds and then brush on top of the clouds, birds and person. Set the layer’s Opacity to 30% and bring up the Layer Style dialog. Under the Blend If section, drag the Underlying Layer’s white pointer to 111/255 using the Opt/Alt key. Now create a Hue/Saturation layer. Set the Saturation to 15 and then brush with a mask in the cloud part of the image.

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FINAL ADJUSTMENTS

Add a Hue/Saturation layer with Saturation: 12. Hold Opt/Alt and drag the first layer mask onto the second, then invert. Create a Levels adjustment, set to 8,0,97,253. Lighten the image with a Curves layer, pulling the Blue highlights up. Add another Curves layer to lighten the image and invert the mask to reveal dark parts of the clouds. Add a new blank layer by holding Opt/Alt, set it to Overlay at 60% Opacity and check the Fill with Overlay box. Apply Filter>Noise>Add Noise with Amount: 1,8% and set to Gaussian, monochromatic to finish.

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Typography Incorporate typography into your Photoshop projects 134 20 type secrets Discover a host of inspiring type projects and the secrets behind their creation

142 Design illustrative type Learn to build your own typeface using stock imagery

152 Create stylish vintage type Replicate retro type styles using Photoshop and Illustrator

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156 3D type projects Create a futuristic cityscape by merging urban photo textures and typography

146 Design 3D Type Combine multiple tools and software to produce exciting 3D type

Typography is a fundamental part of day-to-day life. It’s everywhere we look 132


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TYPE SECRETS

WE BRING YOU AN INSPIRING COLLECTION OF TYPE PROJECTS ALONG WITH INSIDE INFO AND PRACTICAL TIPS FROM THE ARTISTS WHO CREATED THEM © Jordan Metcalf

1. VINTAGE SHADOWS JORDAN METCALF www.jordan-metcalf.com

To create a toolkit for Boston Magazine, artist Jordan Metcalf decided to go for a clean bespoke type that he refined and completed in Photoshop. ■ The brief I was tasked with building a visually striking typographic treatment that would work across a contents page, DPS and various sub-section headers of the magazine. ■ The inspiration The style is a play on vintage signage that pays tribute to the rich history of the city. It was important that this wouldn’t be specific to one place in Boston or preferential to any particular sub-section of the feature. ■ Custom type All the type was completely drawn from scratch and no fonts were used. ■ Creating shadows The shadows cast by the lettering were all done in vector with a combination of a few techniques. ■ Getting grainy Photoshop was used for the final grain and highlight effects on the type. ■ Gradient Map I used a Gradient Map adjustment layer in Photoshop to get the subtle muted colours consistent throughout the entire toolkit.

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WorldMags.net 20 TYPE SECRETS 2. BUILDING LETTERS TODD FOOSHEE

www.toddfooshee.com With a bold font from the Avant Garde family as a base, Todd Fooshee set about building up a graphic type by adding hundreds of very small birds to his project. “The font is clean, easily readable and has a really thick, sturdy look to it [that’s perfect for rebuilding] the forms with birds. I did some adjusting to the kerning and from there began to place birds all around the letters. [I kept] balance in mind, but really just placed them at random to build the words. In terms of the specific tools for this project, I used a pen and paper, a scanner and some basic features inside Photoshop. Without the Invert adjustment I would have probably had to go a different route… The layer groups were what really helped me out the most, just to stay organised and keep things in order… After I finished the letters, it came down to building a background texture, which I did by combining a few images using different blending modes then erasing [areas] and using some texture brushes. I applied some of the bristle brushes with my Wacom tablet to add the slight vignetting around the top edges and then toned it down a bit with some blending modes. There is also a lot of copy-andpasting work at the heart of this piece.”

4. LEATHER AND TREAD MARCELO SCHULTZ

www.behance.net/marceloschultz When he was commissioned to create a T-shirt design for Nike that would fuse trainers with a slogan, Marcelo Schultz immediately reached for the textures.

■ Create a mask to apply the texture you're using. Select the type that you would like to apply the texture to by holding Cmd/Ctrl and clicking over the tiny image of the shape on the Layers panel. Keeping the selection active, create a layer folder and select Add Layer Mask, located at the bottom of the Layers panel. © Todd Fooshee

3. COMMERCIAL PACKAGING HERE DESIGN

© Here Design

www.heredesign.co.uk The multi-disciplinary team at Here Design decided to let their type do the talking when creating the packaging for the Hairy Bikers crisps brand. Coming up with a concept to sell snacks on behalf of two unorthodox TV chefs was a unique challenge. The team started by developing copy lines for each unusual flavour and sensation, as director Caz Hildebrand explains: “Once we started looking at using just type, it quickly became obvious that this would work well and help the packs stand out against the competition. We were inspired by the sort of graphic style associated with packaging that has to travel, like cardboard boxes containing fragile items reading ‘This Way Up’ or food packaging date stamps that read ‘Best Before’ and so on. The colours were derived from the flavours, for example the Keralan King Prawns pack is pink both for the colour of the prawns and the Indian feel. The logo for the Hairy Bikers combines a spanner, a pepper pot and a fork inside a wheel to evoke both the motorbikes and the cooking of the duo. Each pack has relevant language for the flavour as well as Si and Dave’s seal of approval and signatures. We used Photoshop to create the impression… of old letterpress-printed type that’s a bit battered and careworn… We mixed some of the Effects Gallery styles with scanned textures we found to create a unique set of textures to be used with the type.”

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■ Next place the texture inside the mask, which should fit to the exact shape. Inside that mask you can add some shadows and create a 3D depth effect, as you can see marked in green, to achieve the final effect.

■ This image uses different textures, such as leather and tread. Textures can improve and lend a realistic effect to your artwork, as long as they are of a good quality.


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5. 3D TYPE ANTHONY GIACOMINO

www.agiaco.net Anthony Giacomino teamed up with Richard Roberts (www.richardroberts.com) to create an other-worldly type project for the Intrinsic Nature art collective. Bold 3D lettering takes centre-stage, enhanced by light effects and futuristic elements, as the team explains: “For this piece we started with a base in CINEMA 4D to make the 3D type, lighting and also an assortment of geometric shapes. After importing this into Photoshop, we added more atmosphere and light emitting from the top, in addition to some light effects. “The piece needed some more colour, so we sampled pinks and oranges to complement the cool blue and navy tones. For the final details we added a few other points of interest, such as the figure on the right and some foreground shapes to add depth and dimension. We utilised blending modes such as Screen and Overlay when playing with stocks and other elements to create some unique effects.”

6. ILLIUMINATE IT MARCUS BYRNE

www.behance.net/mobdesign Marcus Byrne created this striking lighting typography for Cricket Australia/George Patterson Y&R in Melbourne. The illuminated fluorescent design includes detailed light effects and bright colours and was reproduced in all hues across the colour palette. The type was used in extensive applications across the range of marketing materials for T20 cricket. Here you can see some of the stages in Byrne’s process.

© Anthony Giacomino and Richard Roberts

7. FLOWING EFFECTS NIK AINLEY

www.shinybinary.com Drinks giant Diageo enlisted Nik Ainley to give a typographic treatment to promote a line of cocktail drinks. “They wanted something with plenty of abstract and photographic items related to each drink and centred around 3D typography. The final design went through many iterations, almost 40 for the first image I seem to remember. The smooth flow from the pump to the glass was an important part of the concept and helped to give each illustration a shape. The first elements to frame each piece were the pumps and drinks, which came from specially taken photos. After this I discussed with the art director what sort of typography would work. From experience I knew that a fairly simple font was needed, as when you extrude a font you introduce a lot of new surfaces that can confuse the eye. In the middle of complex © Nik Ainley illustrations like these you need to keep things as legible as possible. Using a simple chunky font minimises the confusing effect, so that’s what I went for. The 3D letters were then built in 3ds Max and positioned. An excellent 3D artist and friend, Marcelo Jr, was involved heavily in this part of the process. Even after the 3D elements were brought into Photoshop, the piece consisted of many layers that enabled me to continue tweaking it as I went. From there it was a case of creating all the other aspects that consisted of stock photos, images captured for the project, decorative 3D elements and sections built in Photoshop. I brought all of these together with a heavy dose of retouching and editing.”

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WorldMags.net 20 TYPE SECRETS 8. GRAPHICAL HAIR LUKE LUCAS www.lukelucas.com

The team at Esquire magazine required an innovative and stylish headline treatment for a grooming section of the publication. Here Luke Lucas runs through how he approached this task. ■ Initial brief I was asked to create a type illustration and some hairy graphical elements. ■ Base text The client wanted to evolve the illustration from their standard condensed sans serif, into something that was more dynamic and relative to the theme. ■ Creating hair I next built up all the hair elements using very fine strokes drawn with the Pen Path tool in Illustrator. ■ Making hair brushes I created several hair brushes and applied them to paths in the shapes that I felt would work the best on the different letters. I then made some slight distortions using the Mesh Warp tool. ■ Copy layers I added in some hair highlight layers using fine paths. I then copied both the base hair and highlights into Photoshop in separate layers. ■ Add highlights I hid and made a selection of the highlight layers and brushed them within the selected shape on a separate layer. This brought more variation to overall design.

10. PLAY WITH TYPE ANDRÉ BEATO

www.eugenelvovsky.com If you’ve ever thought that standard type options are incredibly boring – and if you’re reading this I bet you have – try looking at them through Eugene Lvovsky’s eyes. Instead of seeing letters, he sees shapes, and has used this approach to create his series of ‘Type Is’ posters. You can see the full series here www.eugenelvovsky.com/ typeis. “The inspiration for the series is the immense beauty of typographic forms. Simply spotting a beautiful descender on a typographic character could easily grow into the question, ‘Can I make this into a flower?’ I take this step further by creating a visually pleasing © Eugene Lvovsky relationship between every single character, respecting and being true to its unique shape. Everything is thoughtfully interconnected, every character, every shoulder, stem and serif. There are no letters accidentally placed together in my images and the accessibility of Photoshop helps enormously when working on made-to-order prints. Everything from a Gradient Map to Hue/ Saturation adjustment layers save time when I’m perfecting a bespoke colour combination for a client.”

www.andrebeato.com André Beato created a playful type for easyJet, merging bold letters with different elements. “The brief behind this project was to create a main type header for an article called ‘The Next Big Thing’. The idea was to play (bastardise, overlap or italicise) with the header title text, combining the four stories related to the article, namely Northern Lights, Cycle like the Pros, Ice Climbing and Sleep-Inducing Machines. I started the illustration process in the vector program FreeHand MX and tried to find the best way to combine the text block – I used the magazine house font called Benton – then drew the elements to adapt and join them with the text. I always try to create something legible but appealing at the same time. The process concluded in Photoshop, where I added all the little details like shadows, glows, brush-star effects and colour adjustments.” © Andre Beato, Ryan McCabe

9. USE A NEW PERSPECTIVE EUGENE LVOVSKY

© Luke Lucas

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11. REALWORLD ELEMENTS LINDA ZACKS

www.extra-oomph.com Linda Zacks usually originates her elements with real-world media, but here shares her tips on how to marry these perfectly in Photoshop. “RPA in Santa Monica asked me to create an artful interpretation of the Newport Beach Film Festival name. This typographic collage was born from a stack of city shots taken while zooming around at night… I went through heaps of photos, picking out awesome shapes and colours. In Photoshop I had a zillion windows open simultaneously and pasted stuff into a giant master file with a billion layers. Slowly but surely the letters came to life from several bits and pieces of photos as I sized, resized and transformed them. I also added some watercolour textures over the top that I had scanned in one rainy day. Nothing originated in Photoshop, but I used it as a virtual gluestick. For this project I used lots of layer functions as well as Multiply, Screen and Overlay blending modes. To finish I punched up the colour to add the last burst of zing.”

© Linda Zacks

12. DIGITAL HAND LETTERING LINZIE HUNTER

www.linziehunter.co.uk Skinny Cow and JWT New York were in need of a fresh interpretation of their campaign copy, so they got illustrator Linzie Hunter to apply her unique style. “Sometimes I’ll create my lettering on paper, while other times I play about with colours and styles directly in Photoshop. For this series of ads I worked fully in Photoshop using a Wacom tablet and pen. I concentrated on creating lettering that looked and felt hand-rendered and more in-keeping with my personal style. I like to mix and match typefaces with upper- and lower-case characters, as I feel this lends energy to my work and I prefer everything to not feel too neat or perfect. Sometimes it’s obvious which words need greater emphasis, but for me it’s usually just more of a hunch when it comes to developing or picking lettering styles… I used a variety of custom brushes in order to achieve a more painterly or hand-rendered effect and also used my own textures, either scanned, photographed or hand-drawn. I also tend to have a lot of layers set to Multiply or Overlay in order to create textural effects and backgrounds. Sometimes with these hand-lettering assignments, the arrangement of words and letters just don’t fit the space you’ve got in the way you’d like.”

All images © Lizzie Hunter/JWT New York

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WorldMags.net 20 TYPE SECRETS 13. POPLAR IN A GLASS LUKE LUCAS

www.lukelucas.com Freelance creative Luke Lucas was asked to design this sweet and savoury graphic for the dining section of The New York Times, using Poplar as a secondary typeface. “This illustration began with defining the main glass shape and the stylised wine pouring inside it in loose vector shapes. The main type was then created using Vector Paths in Illustrator, while the secondary type was set in the Poplar typeface and distorted to fit using the Mesh Warp tool. In terms of the creative process, the wine shapes were brought into Photoshop as separate objects and colour, highlights and shadows were applied to enhance the depth of tone. The main type was then filled with colour and the shadow details within the letters were masked and brushed to define overlapping elements. The warped secondary type objects were overlayed using layer effects, then it came to building the glass. The background of the image was to be white, so in order to define highlights on a white background I first needed to add a slight grey tint to the whole glass shape. This was placed on the bottom layer so as not to tint the actual wine itself. Next I brushed in the highlights and shadows in separate layers above the wine and type shape layers. Some faint reflection shapes were also masked and brushed in. Once the main type and glass objects were rendered to a fairly polished level I placed all of the wine and type elements into a layer group. To finish, I duplicated and applied masks to the groups, separating the objects between those inside and those outside the glass.”

© Luke Lucas

■ Refracted effect By separating and shifting elements in the glass, Lucas could imitate a slightly refracted distortion to create a realistic finish.

■ Two typefaces Lucas mixed two typefaces, placing one centre-stage as Sweet and Savoury and the other to spell out associated words in the glass.

■ Main idea The brief was to incorporate various flavours and descriptors associated with wine in an artistic way.

■ Highlights and Shadows Painted highlights and shadows gave definition to the type and the wine background, adding depth and interest.

14. VINTAGE 3D STEVE GOODIN

All images © Steve Goodin

www.behance.net/demen1 Steve Goodin gave a funky yet classy edge to this piece of marketing material for a Reno electronic music event. “The initial idea stemmed from the title of the event. I was given creative control over the theme and style of the poster so I really wanted to set the tone and the vibe based on that title. This poster was created using some 3D type elements as well as some other stock photography and illustrated graphics. For example, the lightbulb images and vintage flowery wallpaper pattern came from a deviantART member.”

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15. FROM HANDDRAWN TO 3D JURI ZAECH

www.juri-zaech.com Starting with an initially rough sketch, Juri Zaech gave these quirky personalised bicycles all their touching character using Photoshop’s toolset.

■The ‘Write a Bike’ series started with my own wish to create a personalised bicycle, so using the name of the owner seemed a logical and interesting way to demonstrate this. The process started with sketching up a rough shape of the bike and the name, to see how tight the letters needed to be spaced to maintain a somewhat natural proportion.

■ I drew the bike in Illustrator, starting with the basic elements and the lettering of the chosen name. It took a lot of adjustments to get to the even structure of the bike’s frame. Once all the vector work was finished, I took the different elements to Photoshop to render the 3D effect.

■ I mainly used simple Bevel and Emboss layer effects. It was important to pay attention to the details like the colour of the shades and obviously the amount of embossing. The reflection elements needed to be blurred, have their opacity reduced and other partial adjustments. The background, shadows, reflections and textures were all finishing touches.

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16. TYPE FOR TALL BUILDINGS SI SCOTT

www.siscottstudio.com Working to a brief for Nike, full-time artist, designer and creative consultant Si Scott built a unique typography-lead image. The design fuses the kit of a well-known football team with the words its fans sing at matches. “The brief was to make the footballers from famous chants that the Paris Saint-Germain fans sing at their beloved team’s games. The piece was used as three-storey-high banners on the side of the Nike store in Paris for the launch of that season’s kit,” he says. The result © Nike/ Simon Scott shows the famous kit, complete with Nike swoosh, worn by a man built purely from type. To create the image, Scott fused his well-known style of hand-crafted work with his Photoshop expertise. “The image was drawn by hand in separate parts, scanned into Photoshop and pieced together in the program. The Magic Wand tool was used as a selection tool to get rid of the negative space. It was also helpful to remove marks left on the paper from the drawing process, which can’t be seen by the naked eye. From there a mask layer was added to the type so the colour could be added.”

17. EXPERIMENT WITH TONES JOEY CAMACHO

www.joeycamacho.com Inspired by a period of his life when he wanted to slow down and appreciate the simpler things, Joey Camacho created a typographic poster series to echo his ideas. “My process with this project, as with all my typographic work, started with word-pairing or putting together the concept for a series of images. I used Burgues Script for this as it has thousands of glyphs and alternative characters. Balancing out the words and using the flourishes sparingly was important. Some people don’t spend the time required to understand the entire font, which I think is really important. When I get the images into Photoshop I use the Alpha channels and layer masks to tweak the colours, enhance the lighting and give them a tactile feel. The textured background is made up of quite a few different layers, reduced in opacity and overlaid. This often gives more depth than just one texture layer. I use custom dust and scratch brushes, while also using the Dual Brush feature to add some randomness and inconsistencies to the final result. I spend quite a bit of time dodging and burning the reflections and shadows, which helps make them pop. I also often use Color Balance and Curves adjustments to finesse the final product.”

© Joey Camacho

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WorldMags.net 20 TYPE SECRETS 18. REPLICATE CRACKED CONCRETE BEN DOWNARD

www.cargocollective.com/downard Ben Downard created a concrete type graphic to raise awareness of the events in Haiti. He worked across CINEMA 4D, Illustrator and of course Photoshop to add texture and bring together the final effect. The result is a solid graphic that portrays the destruction. “For the aesthetic of the project I wanted something stark, sterile and in a duo tone to illustrate the idea of devastation and its impact on a clean environment. For the concrete effect I used two photographs: a macro shot of basic concrete for the texture and a macro shot of dry, cracked, muddy earth. From that point on I applied with masks and lighting effects used as layer styles. This achieved a painterly and illustrative effect for the remnants of a building left standing after the earthquake.”

© Ben Downard

19. TWIST VECTORS CHARLES WILLIAMS

www.madeup.org The Church of London commissioned different artists to depict various Olympic athletes for the cover of the Metro newspaper during the games. The brief specified that only the portrait had to be recognisable and include the athletes’ names. Charles Williams depicted Louis Smith with a combination of hard-edged and soft flowing shapes, in reference to the strength and graceful movement required of gymnasts. “Once I’d put together a rough layout I started building the vector design in Illustrator, then added detail in Photoshop. I based the type on the shapes I used to build the portrait – flowing organic shapes – then gave it a bit of a circus feel, as this sat well with the gymnast figures above. I built the type in Illustrator then added depth and a soft 3D feel in Photoshop using Bevel and Emboss. To get this effect I set the Bevel and Emboss adjustment’s Highlight Mode to Overlay and created individual layers for each letter’s bevel. This prevented the bevels from bleeding into one another and distorting.” © Charles Williams

© Stefan Chinof

20. RETHINK HELVETICA STEFAN CHINOF

www.behance.net/chin2off Inspired by horror films and a love of candy, Stefan Chinof turned the Helvetica typeface into a fun take on a terrifying texture. “I was inspired by a poster for a horror movie that had a very organic, bloody and sort of raw-meat-looking texture! Since I’m a big comedy junkie and not at all a horror fan, I thought of how I could make this effect a bit more fun and juicy. Helvetica isn’t a font that’s usually seen in such an abstraction, so it was an interesting challenge on top of using the negative space around the font. Using negative space always has great power but is rarely used in this way. The tools I applied the most for this project were the blending options as well as the Bevel and Emboss adjustment. Shapes were quite useful too and a great addition, but drawing the idea out to start was the base of it all.”

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DESIGN ILLUSTRATIVE TYPE DISCOVER HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN TYPEFACE USING STOCK IMAGERY AND PHOTOSHOP COLOUR ADJUSTMENTS

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oth illustrative and collage type are a growing trend among digital artists, combating the saturation of 3D styles and breathing life back into a stale genre. As collage type is experimental, it provides a lure of invention that sparks the imagination. A solid sense of composition goes a long way when producing a successful image like this, enabling you to understand how one element relates to others around it. As always patience is a virtue, as it can take a long time to construct the forms of all the various elements and ordering them. By being meticulous you can appreciate the

WORK IN PROGRESS BUILD YOUR COLLAGE TYPE

joy of this style; all you need to do is play with your elements and keep working until they strike you. A bucket-load of stock imagery that corresponds to your theme is essential. Arm yourself with as many examples as possible that display numerous positions, perspectives and orientations. These are needed to match and signify your font shapes. As always, Photoshop ties your designs together, with colour adjustments letting you control the vibrancy of your elements and Levels paving the way to balanced lighting. Gradients can boost colour and custom brushes will bring your mixed-media and collage looks to life.

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JUSTIFY YOUR TYPE

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SPLIT UP VARIED BACKGROUNDS

Start by creating a font sheet in Photoshop. Apply as many styles as possible, considering the correlation between these and your theme, which in this case is tourist photography. A blocky typeface is suited to such mechanical and structured forms, so we’ve chosen Chaparral Pro as our base.

Step 5: Place your elements

Step 8: Amend colours

Step 12: Apply brushes

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Sadly, separating your elements from the existing background won’t always be easy. For less-routine backdrops, apply Selections using the Pen Path tool, then perfect selection edges using the Refine Edge object and apply a layer mask to isolate your option. Layer masks will come in handy when editing later in the workflow.

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OUR EXPERT ADAM SMITH www.advancedphotoshop.co.uk Adam is an enthusiast ready to pit his design skills against any style. Here he shows you how to tackle type made from photo stock.

SOURCE FILES Numerous JPEG stock images have been supplied, which you can use to experiment with your own styles. Also supplied are sets of mixed-media brushes, which will help you to create the exact looks in this tutorial.

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SEPARATE SOLID BACKGROUNDS

A large chunk of your time will be taken up cutting out image elements from existing backdrops. For a solid-colour background, simply apply the Magic Wand at a Tolerance of 25, add a layer mask and invert this before saving. Automate this technique by saving it as an Action.

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DRAG, DROP AND CONVERT ELEMENTS

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MAKE CAREFUL PLACEMENT

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ALTER THE COLOUR

QUICK TIP Want to get rid of product branding, logos and type? This is easy using Content-Aware Fill. Simply pick the affected area, press Shift+F5 and select this option, which will fill in the selected area with surrounding tones. More often than not this creates a seamless fill.

With all images removed from their backgrounds, it’s time to drag and drop them into your main image, which also ensures your layer masks stay attached. Convert all your newly imported image layers to Smart Objects, de-scale and arrange them away from your type. By making these Smart Objects you will be able to alter the image size without causing distortion and keep options open when compositing. Placing away from your text lets you easily organise things.

Now you can start to create the building blocks for your letterforms using your Smart Objects. It’s important that you scrutinise the placement of your elements, so they initiate and accentuate the shapes of your fonts. For example, we’ve used the image of an arm holding a camera to mimic the curvature of our letter S. We admit to using the Transform>Warp tool to fit our element to the typeface, which we get away with as we’re using an organic image (a human arm).

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BUILD UP LETTERFORMS

Don’t be afraid to edit the images. That’s why we have applied layer masks so you can work out elements at any time. For example, try using an angled camera lens to again re-create the curve in your letter S. Continue to look for elements that will fit a specific space in the letter, pay attention to the layering and shapes of the images and also notice the relation of their different sizes. As we have more letters to create, we’ve increased the size of our stock to combat any repetition.

Changing tones in the scene isn’t always a concern, but random splashes of colour from various objects can really help your final effect. However, there is nothing wrong with boosting the vibrancy of existing colours. While this technique is relatively easy, it will still require focus. Apply a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and set appropriate values in your Saturation and Brightness sliders for the relevant colour options. You can also use your attached layer mask and a low-opacity black soft brush to work original colours back in where you feel they are needed.

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EDIT THE LIGHTING

This can be a painstaking procedure, but it’s essential to maintain uniformity in your elements. You may find that some of them actually have a similar level of exposure, but some may seem darker or lighter. Target where these images are, then apply Levels to correct the exposure. Also use your new adjustment layer’s layer mask to target lighting with a paintbrush. Make sure that your Levels adjustment layer only affects the layer in question by clipping this layer to it.

WorldMags.net DESIGN ILLUSTRATIVE TYPE ENHANCE YOUR PIECE

WIELD PHOTOSHOP ADJUSTMENT OPTIONS TO ENHANCE TONALITY AND LIGHTING

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ADD GRADIENT SHAPES

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MAKE A BACKGROUND

THE IMAGE SO FAR

As we have used a lot of camera and lens stock, the image has been saturated with dark tones, affecting the splashes of colour, which now seem minimal. We’ve combated this by increasing the vibrancy of our image and applying gradient shapes.

We’ve introduced more colours to our image with the use of gradient shapes. They have been added using the Elliptical Shape tool, applied specifically to the camera lenses. This is a lot easier with the new CS6 Shape tool Fill options. You can layer your shapes, combining Screen, Overlay and Vivid Light to affect detail. Make sure you do this inside your Smart Objects, which will automatically update effects in all duplicate layers and enable you to resize non-destructively.

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We increased the vibrancy of the red, blue, yellow, green and magenta tones in our image by targeting them with the useful Hue/Saturation adjustment option

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We’ve used CS6 Vector Shape with Gradient Fill settings to create gradient lenses in our cameras. These have been modified using various blending modes

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We will improve the contours of our photo elements by applying dodging and burning techniques. This clearly defines form and will improve your texturing later on

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DODGE AND BURN CONTOUR

If you plan to resize your elements, dodge and burn them separately by opening each Smart Object and then Opt/Alt-clicking the Create New Layer icon. In the New Layer dialog box we’ve set Mode to Overlay and activated the Fill with the Overlay-neutral colour option. This will create a 50% greyscale image that you can paint with low-opacity brushes. White will add highlights and black will create shadow. Add this to the top of your layer stack if you aren’t resizing any letter layers.

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MORE GRADIENTS

Bring better depth by adding black-totransparent gradients to our image elements that fall behind others. Opacity, scale and positioning will vary and we’ve also emphasised our collage effect using mixed-media textures. You can do this by loading ‘brushfx-paint-splatters-set-1’ brush set supplied and applying black ink splats to a new layer set behind all the image elements. Use different styles, sizes and Brush Tip>Angles to vary effects, matching the direction and edges of your layers.

We’ve completed our effect by creating more painted layers throughout our layer stacks. We’ve painted to a Screen blending mode layer using a 50% grey soft brush. Make sure you clip these new paint layers to stop noticeable overlapping. We’ve also complemented our background by scattering photo elements then applying Gaussian Blur to simulate a depth-of-field effect. Finally we’ve merged all our layers, sharpened and applied Add Noise at 2%.

ADDING SOME FLARE The smallest details can really improve the whole feel of your collage type. Here we’ve added a bit of surrealism by including camera flashes. These have been created by making a black square and applying a Filter>Render>105mm Prime Lens Flare. Pull your light streaks using the Smudge tool and set a Screen blending mode to layer the effect. Larger details are also important, as your backdrop must be suitable and it must enable your type to jump off the page. Sometimes a solid white or black will suffice. We’ve experimented with this expressive style and alternatively applied a landscape photo that has then been heavily blurred. This creates a so yet vibrant backdrop that lets your detailed type shine.

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DESIGN 3D TYPE COMBINE CINEMA 4D, PHOTOSHOP AND ILLUSTRATOR TO CREATE 3D GOLD TYPOGRAPHY

OUR EXPERT MOE PIKE SOE www.thebeaststudio.com Moe is a 20-year-old, self-taught freelance digital artist and designer from Yangon, Myanmar. He is currently studying in New York at Parsons The New School for Design.

SOURCE FILES On the disc you will find the material shader, PSD file and wallpapers that were used in this tutorial.

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n Greek mythology there’s a king called Midas who, as the story goes, had the power to turn anything that he touched into pure gold. Inspired by that tale, we will turn a simple vector line into a 3D, minimalistic gold typography using Illustrator, CINEMA 4D (C4D) and Photoshop. Over the next few steps you will learn how different tools and software can come together to produce a richly designed artwork with killer execution. The project will take, at most, four or five hours to create, including render time. You will be spending that time perfecting the curves in Illustrator, as well as getting the perfect lighting and shaders in CINEMA 4D. To complete the tutorial you will need to use the V-Ray plug-in and the GreyScaleGorilla HDRI Light Kit in CINEMA 4D (http://tinyurl.com/ GorillaPlug). These are not strictly necessary, but are recommended for getting the best results. Once we’ve rendered the objects in C4D we’ll move to Photoshop for post work. You’ll learn how to adjust lights and shadows by applying different adjustment layers and filters. After completing this tutorial you will have all the skills for creating 3D typography using your own handwriting.

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WorldMags.netDESIGN 3D TYPE

BEGIN WITH ILLUSTRATOR

PREPARE VECTORS BEFORE TURNING THEM INTO GOLD

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SET UP YOUR DOCUMENT

Create a new document in Illustrator at the size of 7 x 7 inches. Select the Pencil tool (N) and make sure that the Stroke Size is 1pt. It’s very important to write in cursive, because when we have to transfer the vector into C4D, we will use the overlapping of the strokes to create more depth.

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ADD YOUR WRITING

Don’t fill up the canvas, just keep writing in order to actually see how the letters flow to form into cursive. It’s also important to remember to keep the lines connected as one stroke, because if there is more than one path, the stroke won’t be connected and it won’t be smooth in C4D.

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SMOOTH LINES

After writing ‘gold’ many times in cursive, pick the smoothest one and delete the rest. Now switch to the Smooth tool (Opt/Alt) and stroke around the writing to make it perfectly clean. Smooth performs similarly to Smudge or the Liquify tool, but in Illustrator it’s used to change the curves of a path.


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FINISH IN ILLUSTRATOR

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2D WRITING INTO 3D

It’s almost impossible to get the smoothest curve with one stroke of the Smooth tool, so keep brushing along the path to get the best you can. Once you’re satisfied, you’ll have to export the path to C4D. Exporting the file in Illustrator is an important step because if you save the Illustrator file in the wrong format, you won’t be able to import the strokes into C4D. Name the file ‘Gold.ai’ and save it in the Illustrator 3 format.

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STEP INTO CINEMA 4D

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INSERT NURBS AND A CIRCLE

Open your Gold.ai file in C4D and see if the lines need smoothing. If so, you can modify them in C4D using Point Mode. Select the point that needs fixing and use it like the Anchor tool in Illustrator and Photoshop. Fix the curve by moving the two sides of the point and ensure that your path doesn’t include any small dots. If you see any dots lying around the path, delete them. After cleaning up the path, you can move to turning the path into 3D.

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WORK IN POINT MODE

Remember that when you’re in C4D you’re working in three dimensions, which means that there’s an extra variable to consider. You will see in the following screenshots that the stroke isn’t flat, but more like a piece of string, because it has depth. This can be achieved by using Point Mode to move the points on the Z-axis in order to create another dimension for the word. We’ll explain this further in the later steps.

As we have discussed before, we have to move the path along the Z-axis too. Think of your handwriting as a pipeline. It has a start point, where water flows from, then curves and loops like a rollercoaster and then, finally, there is an end point where the pipeline thins out. So, if you take a look at your handwriting from the Perspective view, it should have smooth loops and curves just like an everyday rollercoaster.

Before moving to the next stage, take a look at your writing and check to make sure that you now have the smoothest path possible. If you’re happy, create a new Sweep NURBS and drop the path onto that NURBS. You won’t notice any change because at this point the NURBS doesn’t have an object that it can rely on to make it into a pipe. In this case it’s a circle, so get the circle and drop it onto the NURBS again.

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WorldMags.netDESIGN 3D TYPE DEVELOP YOUR 3D

APPLY MATERIALS TO TAKE YOUR CREATION TO THE NEXT DIMENSION

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GET THE SMOOTHEST GOLD

Working in 3D is just like using your hands to sculpt. You have to consider the material, the lighting on the model and most importantly the additional Z-axis. You’ll also have to look at the writing as a pipe that has a defined beginning and end. 001

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Select the circle and set Radius to 5cm. The goal is to get the smoothest pipe without overlapping other parts

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Select NURBS and set End Scale to 62%. Use Fillet Cap for the start, set Radius to 5cm and use Cap for the end

SET UP SPECULAR LAYERS

The next layers to edit are the Specular layers 1&2. Select Specular Layer 1 and set its Color to a light yellow at: R:255, G:228 and B:172. Set the Brightness to 100% and the Texture Mode to Fresnel, with the Gradient Shader of R:214, G:219 and B:179 to R:216, G:179, B:136. Set Reflection Glossiness to 0.5, Anisotropy to -0.5, Glossiness Subdivision to 18 and Trace Depth to 10. For Specular 2 guidance see the screenshot above.

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VɎRAY SHADER

We’ll now enter different values to produce the material, so create a new Advanced V-Ray Material. Make sure you check the boxes for Luminosity and Specular Layer 1 and 2. We’ll be using these three layers in the shader to get the gold material. The eponymous Luminosity layer is used to add the brightness of the material. Set the Color to white with an Amount of 5%. For the Transparency, set the Color to white and the Amount to 100%.

Remember that when you’re in C4D you’re working in three dimensions, which means that there’s an extra variable

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If there are sharp corners or distortion to be fixed, hide the NURBS and circle then edit the path in Point Mode

ADJUST THE LIGHTING

Here we’ll be using GreyScaleGorilla HDRI Light Kit. Use the overhead soft box, but instead of just placing the light over the word, place one light on top and two on the sides. Set the top and left soft boxes to have higher brightness settings. This will make the light source enter from the left when rendered. You can also add a floor with a generic light-grey material. Select the NURBS and move the text just above the floor to produce shadow.

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BEGIN RENDERING

Ensure you drop the material shader onto the Sweep NURBS. We’re going to render using VRayBridge with Global Illumination. No settings are changed in GI, but the result should be your writing in 3D with the gold material and a little noise texture. You can add more objects to make the piece more interesting, but remember to drop the shader on top of the objects to keep the artwork uniform. When happy, render at 2,560 x 1,600px in TIFF format.


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POSTPRODUCTION

POLISH UP YOUR RESULTS AND PERFECT YOUR RENDER

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MOVE TO PHOTOSHOP

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TWEAK THE SHADOWS

Now it’s time to boot up Photoshop. Create a new document at a size of 3,500 x 2,800px, fill the Background with a light grey and File>Place your rendered image into your canvas. Create a Quick Mask, then cut out the letter and its shadow. Make a new layer underneath the text and paint with a large white soft brush in at the side of the light source in order to create gradient behind the text.

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ADJUST THE EXPOSURE

Currently the lighting on the word is dull, so you can improve this by painting in light using blend modes. Grab a soft brush set to a light grey and paint over the word, using Overlay as the blend mode. Also reduce the Opacity of the brush to 50% and create a clipping mask over the word’s layer. This is a quick way to brighten certain areas of an artwork without using any adjustment layers. The word has now been brightened up, but we’ll also need to make the shadows darker.

This method is different from using just one adjustment layer and we’ll specifically select dark areas and enhance them. Use the Eyedropper to select the darkest area, go to Select>Color Range, then select all the shadows. Ensure you have selected the 3D type layer and then hit Cmd/Ctrl+J to create a new layer from it. Use Levels to lower the brightness and tweak the opacity to get the best balance.

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QUICK TIP When retouching a photo or an object, pay more attention to the shadows and highlights. By simply adjusting the light and shadows of an object, you can make it more dynamic. Also use adjustment layers to quickly edit the artwork’s brightness, saturation and colours.

WorldMags.netDESIGN 3D TYPE

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ADJUSTMENT LAYERS

We’ll now use adjustment layers to enhance the colour and contrast of the image as a whole. Add a new Vibrance adjustment layer, then set the Vibrance value to 97 and Saturation to -6. There are many different shades of gold, but we’ll lean more towards a white than a regular gold. Feel free to increase the saturation to get a more yellow finish and add a Levels layer to modify the light and shadows.

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FINAL EDITS

Create a new layer at the top, select Image> Apply Image, then select OK to flatten the image into one layer. Another way to do this is to create a new layer and hit Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/Alt+Shift+E. Select the merged layer and apply Filter>Sharpen>Smart-sharpen, setting the value to 190%. If you want a more pronounced effect, create another merged layer and apply the Oil Paint filter with Shine at 0% and Smart Sharpen on. Add some text and symbols for the finishing touch and you’ve turned a vector line into golden 3D handwriting.

GOLDEN RESULT We have turned a simple vector line from Illustrator into a full-3D golden type render using three different programs. Combining different soware to create artwork gives you more freedom and it opens up the doors to make works that can’t be finished in one application. With the knowledge gained from the different applications, you will have many more options and techniques, as well as ways to approach your work.

Working in 3D is like using your hands to sculpt. You have to consider the material, the lighting and most importantly the additional Z-axis

QUICK TIP The Smooth tool is handy when you need to smoothen the corners and curves of a path. It’s quicker than using the Anchor Point and Pen tools, but the outcomes can be very random. To get a perfect curve you might have to apply it more than once.

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WorldMags.net CREATE STYLISH VINTAGE TYPE

CREATE STYLISH VINTAGE TYPE T USING BOTH PHOTOSHOP AND ILLUSTRATOR, WE SHOW YOU HOW TO REPLICATE EFFECTIVE RETRO TYPOGRAPHY ypography is a fundamental part of day-to-day life. It’s everywhere we look, but so much of today’s typography lacks any creative flair. Typography in the past, particularly in signs, tended to be more visually pleasing. Inspired by hand-painted enamel signs and old typographic posters, here we’ll show you how to replicate classic vintage typography.

A lot of time will be spent creating the type in Illustrator. This is where we’ll add detail to the type using options, such as the Offset Path, blends and the Pen tool. In Photoshop we’ll apply texture using various blending modes and use brush techniques to mimic cracks and creases. We’ll also explore tweaking hue and saturation, as well as Curves layers, to enhance tones. Some textures and details in Photoshop will complete the piece.

BEGIN APPLYING TEXTURE

BUILD UP MATERIAL EFFECTS IN PHOTOSHOP BEFORE ADDING TEXT

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PICK A DOCUMENT SIZE

First you will need to decide on the size of your document. Take into account whether the finished image will be printed or solely used on the web. In this case it will be printed, so we’ll open a new 235 x 303mm portrait document in Photoshop, making sure it has a white background.

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OUR EXPERT LOGS MATTHEWS www.logsmatthews.co.uk

Logs Matthews is a 23-year-old, self-taught, freelance graphic designer from the north-west of England. Here he shows you how to create stylish vintage typography using both Photoshop and Illustrator.

BORDER AND GRADIENT

We want to give this piece a border, so create a new layer, fill it with a solid colour and then drag each edge in by 10mm. Next apply a Gradient Overlay within the Layer Style dialog, selecting the Foreground to Background gradient. Set the Style as Radial, the Angle at 60 degrees and the Scale at 150%, making sure the Reverse box is ticked. Put the Opacity of this layer to 25%.

WORK IN PROGRESS FROM SIMPLE TYPE TO DYNAMIC RESULTS

Step 3: Apply texture

Step 4: Make the type

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ADDING TEXTURE

Now apply some texture. Open up a dark grunge texture in Photoshop and invert it by going to Image>Adjustments>Invert. Once this is done, drag the JPEG into your document and set the blending mode to Overlay. To make the grunge texture more intense, go to Image>Adjustments>Levels and increase the black to darken the texture.

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Step 14: Add final details


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INPUT THE TEXT

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CLIPPING THE LINES

In Illustrator, open a new 235 x 303mm portrait document and lay out the phrase ‘work hard and be nice to people’. We’re aiming to produce a vintage typography feel by applying a bold sans serif font to the words ‘work’ and ‘nice’, as well as a bold serif font to the words ‘and be’. Now apply a Script font to the words ‘hard’ and ‘to people’, for a softer contrasting effect between the texts. Outline all of the text by going to Type>Create Outlines.

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OFFSET THE SANS SERIF TEXT

In preparation for detailing the sans serif text, we need to offset it. Begin with the word ‘work’ and go to Object>Path>Offset Path, then set the Offset to 2mm. Once you’ve offset the path, reselect the word and go to Object>Ungroup. While holding the Shift key down, select the inner parts of the word and go to Object>Group. The inner parts of the sans serif words will be used as a clipping mask for some of the line details.

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Now grab the Line Segment tool to draw a line above and below the sans serif words, giving them a 1pt Stroke. Set these lines to a beige tone (#C2B59B). To multiply the lines, double-click the Blend tool and a Blend Options box will appear. Select Specified Steps from the dropdown menu and type the number of steps you would like. Click the end point of the top line and then the parallel point of the bottom line to multiply the lines evenly.

We’re aiming to produce a vintage typography feel by applying a bold sans serif font to the words ‘work’ and ‘nice’

Now send the lines to the back. Copy and paste the inner text, give it a beige Stroke of 1pt and put it to one side. Select the inner text you grouped in Step 5 and go to Object> Compound Path>Make. With the inner text still selected, hold Shift, select the lines, then go to Object> Clipping Mask>Make. Doing this will clip the lines into the inner text. Now drag the beige outlined text that you put aside over the clipped lines, then fill the black letters with a dark-red tone that’s suitable.

QUICK TIP Try to add layers as you create your type. You can do this by using the Offset Path tool multiple times, giving your type very thin borders. Once you have a few borders, apply gold gradients to some and fill others with white. This will help embellish your type further.

APPLY SOME MORE DEPTH

GIVE A 3D LOOK TO YOUR TEXT USING THE PEN TOOL

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INTRODUCE DEPTH TO SANS SERIF TEXT

Copy and paste the word ‘work’ into a new layer and place it underneath your original layer. Position the word down and right to use as a guide. Back with the original layer, use the Pen tool to draw in the 3D shapes. Apply a gold gradient, copy and paste these, fill them red, then send them to the back to add even more depth. Do this once more and fill them with grey to replicate a shadow.

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DETAIL THE SANS SERIF TEXT

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MOVE BACK TO PHOTOSHOP

Now the type is done, copy and paste it into your Photoshop document as a Smart Object. This enables you to make changes to the type if necessary, without opening the original Illustrator file. Just double-click the Smart Object thumbnail on the type layer to open it in Illustrator. When changes have been made, hit Save and it will automatically amend the type in Photoshop.

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GIVE THE TYPE TEXTURE

Now we need to copy the grunge layer and place it above the type layer. Set the blending mode to Multiply and the Opacity to 60%. We only want this texture layer to affect the type, so hit Cmd/ Ctrl+Opt/Alt+G to clip the texture into the type layer. By adding a mask to this layer, and using a small soft brush with an Opacity of 60%, you can roughly mask out some of the areas where there is too much texture.

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WorldMags.net CREATE STYLISH VINTAGE TYPE ADD THE FINAL TOUCHES

SMALL DETAILS Adding small details can take a lot of time, but they really add quality to a piece of work. Starting with the banner, make a thin triangle shape and place it horizontally at one end of the main rectangle. Copy and paste this underneath and use the same blending technique as used in Step 6. The number of steps will vary on the size of your banner. Repeat this on the other side of the rectangle and the inside of the banner. Once positioned, set the blending mode to Multiply and set the Opacity at 25%.

USE HUE/SATURATION AND CURVES LAYERS

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ADJUST YOUR TONES

To enhance the colours we’ll need to add a new Hue/Saturation layer above the type layer, increasing the Saturation to make the colours more vibrant. If there’s a specific colour that you want to target, you can select it from the Hue/Saturation dropdown. Also, add a new Curves layer above the type layer, setting the Output at 125 and the Input at 137, to make the colours even richer.

Adding cracks is a great way to age an image. It’s easier with a tablet and pen but can be achieved with a mouse

QUICK TIP Adding noise is great for making a piece of work look less digitally made. When adding noise to a piece of work, make sure you decide whether the piece warrants it. Sometimes adding noise can make what was a bright glossy image look dull and washed out.

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MASK EDGES AND DODGE/BURN

To re-create faded edges, start by adding a layer mask to the gradient layer. Using a 400px soft brush with 60% Opacity, begin masking out small areas towards the edges. Now target individual areas of the grunge layer, use the Burn tool with the Range set to Midtones, brush Size set at 300px and the Opacity set at 45%, then begin to darken them. On the other hand, if any areas need lightening, use the Dodge tool with the same brush settings.

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DRAW IN CRACKS

Adding cracks is a great way to age an image. This technique is easier with a graphics tablet and pen but can still be achieved with a mouse. First insert a new layer, select a hard round brush – with the Size set at around 6px and the Opacity at 100% – and start drawing in some cracks. Once you’re happy, go to Layer>Smart Object>Create Smart Object. Set the layer’s blending mode to Multiply and set the Opacity to 20%.

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FINISHING TOUCH

Now that the image is complete, we want to add one final effect to bring it all together. Save a copy of your PSD, flatten it, then go to Filter>Noise> Add Noise. Use an Amount of 10% to give your image a subtle grain texture, making your piece look less digital and more vintage.

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OUR EXPERT ANDY HAU www.andyhau.com Andy is an architect exploring the unexpected results created from the interface between architecture and graphic design. His work is often extravagant but never insincere. The tangibility of the work he does in architecture serves to fuel his appetite for unadulterated escapism in his graphic design work.

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WorldMags.net 3D TYPE PROJECTS

3D TYPE PROJECTS LEARN HOW TO MERGE URBANISM AND TYPOGRAPHY TO CAPTURE THE EUPHORIA OF BEING IN A CITY

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f it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck – the chances are it’s probably a duck. But one of the many things you learn in architecture is to avoid designing duck buildings, or buildings that look like the object they relate to. For example, if your client were a drinks manufacturer, a giant bottle-shaped building would be pretty lame. Andy Lau’s research explores the synergy between architecture and graphic design and the points where they blur, for example in electrographic architecture where built surfaces become subservient to the advertising billboards they display. If buildings can become

billboards for words, couldn’t words become pieces of architecture? An even more interesting path would be to consider whether these building blocks of graphic design could be manipulated again to form electrographic architecture. With cyberspace fast becoming the new reality and e-commerce the new architecture, could we reach a point where marketing is so critical that even the words themselves are used for advertising space? This is the inspiration for this image and the context for its abstract motifs. Using photo textures, we aimed to dynamically illustrate how such a future cityscape might look.

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LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS

Begin by finding a font in Illustrator with qualities that will lend themselves to becoming the physical form of a building. We tend to use sans serif fonts such as Helvetica, useful because of its bulk and clean lines. For the letters formed from windows, use a font such as BDBrick or draw squares to form the shape of the letter. Kern the letters tightly to form the illusion of a dense and bustling city.

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ARCHITECTURAL ANATOMY

Fill some of the letters with a solid colour. These will become your expanses of solid façade for advertisement. Keep the other letters as outlines, which will form areas of active frontage for variety. Highlight all the letters and group them together (Object>Group). Using the Extrude & Bevel tool in Illustrator (Effect>3D> Extrude & Bevel) set the parameters for the shading and extrude depth. Set the perspective angle according to your design.

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FAÇADES

Open a new file in Photoshop and drag the 3D lettering into it. Using their outlines as a template, overlay photo textures of real architectural materials such as concrete and metal, and cut out the shapes using the Pen tool. Using the 3D lettering as an indicator, highlight areas of the photo texture using the Polygonal Lasso tool and turn down the Brightness levels (Image>Adjustment>Brightness/ Contrast) to create a sense of three-dimensionality.

WORK IN PROGRESS HARNESS VISUAL POWER

Step 1: Begin the layout

Step 7: Create advertising

04 Step 16: Complete the artwork

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STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING

Although the image is abstract, there need to be tokens of realism that people will associate with buildings to make the image convincing. Using the Line tool, create columns where you think the buildings may need support, but be sure not to go overboard. There needs to be an element of joy and wonderment – we are designers after all, not engineers. Heaven forfend.

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INTERIOR DESIGN

Using the Rectangular Marquee tool, draw rectangles approximately the same thickness as the walls and fill them in with a dark colour to create the floor slabs. Now draw dark, rectangular shapes in varying sizes and shades of grey to denote furniture and doors inside the buildings and apply a Gaussian Blur (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur) to keep the objects ambiguous. Committing to too much detail will confuse the image, especially when you start adding the advertisements.

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GLAZING

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ENVIRONMENT

Glazing is notoriously difficult to emulate in Photoshop. The easiest way to deal with it, especially in a night-time image, is to draw everything behind the window and create a light grey fill over the areas of glazing, use the Bevel and Emboss layer style and set the blending mode to Multiply. Play with the opacity settings to achieve the desired effect.

QUICK TIP Though cutting out and manipulating photo textures sounds like a Herculean task, especially when you could bypass the whole ordeal and model it in 3D, trust us, it really is a lot faster and less infuriating to do it this way. And anyway, there’s something incredibly reassuring about mindless repetitive labour.

We’ve chosen to create a night-time scene for various reasons. First, the darkness will make the neon signs and the lighting shine more brightly and will capture the sense of rapture of being in the city. Second, and more importantly, night-time scenes are more forgiving, providing a veil of darkness for edges to disappear and fade into the background.

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LUMINARIES

One of the most important aspects of creating a successful cityscape is realistic lighting. Draw long, rectangular, white boxes with the Rectangular Marquee tool and locate the positions for the lighting to be placed. Double-click on the layer you are working on and apply a light yellow Outer Glow layer style.

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ADVERTISING

In Illustrator, create a swarm of neon signs in every garish colour you can think of. You can base them on real logos or come up with your own. Drag the neon signs that you have created from Illustrator into Photoshop one by one and place them onto the façade of the buildings. Try to retain the legibility of the text as you are layering the neon signs.

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Night-time scenes are more forgiving, providing a veil of darkness for edges to disappear into the background Advanced Photoshop Premium Collection

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WorldMags.net Keep the silhouettes dark and ethereal by turning down the opacity; they should not compete for the viewer’s attention

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SITE CONTEXT

Create the cityscape behind your buildings by piecing together elements from various cities. Keep the silhouettes dark and ethereal by turning down the opacity; they are only there for context and should not compete with the buildings in front for the viewer’s attention.

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TOWER CRANE

Place the crane in the water in front of the buildings to create a sense of perspective and depth. Select the crane’s layer and make a copy of it. Flip the layer vertically (Edit>Transform>Flip Vertical) and apply a Motion Blur (Filter>Blur> Motion Blur). Do not set the distance of the blur too high. Turn down the opacity until the blurred object looks like a reflection of the second tower crane.

AIRSHIP

Place the airship at a height that is above the billboard so that the eye is immediately drawn to the first word in the sentence. Horizontally, the position of the airship should relate to the billboard so that the eye picks up the next words. Using the Warp tool (Edit>Transform>Warp), curve the text to align with the surface of the airship for naturalism.

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BILLBOARD

Draw a rectangle, fill it in using a dark colour and start designing your billboard. Play with the perspective to create depth by using the Transform option (Edit>Transform>Perspective). Even though the words on the billboard will form part of a greater sentence in the composition, try to make them relate to the product that it is promoting.

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ADD THE BOATS

QUICK TIP

Locate the boats in a darker area of water. This will help with the illusion that they are sitting in the water. Delete the bottom section of the boats with the Rectangular Marquee tool, having adjusted the Feather to a low setting. Choose a font that looks like it has been handmade with a paintbrush or something similar, and flip the text vertically. Make a copy of the boats and the text and flip them vertically. Apply a Motion Blur onto the boat layer and give the text layer a small Gaussian Blur. Lower the opacity on both.

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The eye just does not view in perfect perspectives. Even if the perspective is wrong theoretically, if it looks right visually then stick with it

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One of the reasons that computer-generated images end up looking sterile is that the computer works out perspectives mathematically and the eye just does not view in perfect perspectives. Next time, even if theoretically the perspective is wrong, if it looks right visually then stick with it.

PRACTICAL COMPLETION

Finish the artwork by adding a few more images of trees to the background and adjust the lighting and shading so that the whole image looks balanced as a composition. Zoom out, sit back and enjoy the view.

LIGHT POLLUTION

To intensify the atmosphere, exaggerate the light pollution behind the buildings. Draw a long, elliptical shape with the Elliptical Marquee tool and adjust the Feather to a high setting. Fill this shape in white and apply an orange Outer Glow layer style. Separate the layer style (Layer>Layer Styles>Create Layer) and delete the bottom half of the glow.

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Graphics Add impact and depth to your work with creative, dynamic graphics built using a host of advanced Photoshop techniques 164 15 ways to master infographics Get top advice on creating infographics from leading industry experts

172 Master portrait illustration Combine Photoshop and Illustrator to create an exciting and colourful portrait

178 Blend graphics and type Design a typographic illustration with elements and shapes

182 Master polygons Use geometric shapes to produce creative portraits

188 Metro-style websites Get to grips with Metro web design layout styles

Working crossplatform can create some of the most interesting and unique results 162


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15 WAYS TO MASTER INFOGRAPHICS PROFESSIONAL DESIGNERS SHARE THEIR TOP TIPS FOR CREATING INFORMATIVE AND VISUALLY APPEALING GRAPHICS THAT WORK HARD TO REPRESENT THE GIVEN DATA HOW TO PLAN AN INFOGRAPHIC SABRINA SMELKO www.sabrinasmelko.com

© Sabrina Smelko, created for Bright Almond

Sabrina Smelko, illustrator and designer, shares her top tips for planning an infographic: “The first step to creating a great infographic is gathering information – be that from a client or not. You need to ask: What’s the mood of the infographic? What are the dimensions of the piece? What is the style? What medium is it being created for? But most importantly, you need the statistics. They are the bones that all great infographics are based on. The right kind of stats are also important: the more direct, the better. Any time you can use concrete numbers or percentages, the more hard-hitting the graphics.”

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CLIENT REQUIREMENTS

© STUDIOJQ

I met with the great people at Bright Almond over dinner. We chatted about their needs and I gathered as much information about the project as possible. At this stage, they also supplied me with their brand guidelines that specified the colours and fonts I had to use, so I could think about a look and style to execute in.

INFOGRAPHICS IN A DIGITAL AGE JONATHAN QUINTIN

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EXPERIMENTATION

As Bright Almond spent some time fishing for statistics, I started playing with styles, shapes and the overall look of pieces in Illustrator before diving into anything too specific. After this, I was supplied with a long list of statistics from which I could pick and choose the best nuggets of information.

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PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Once I established a look, I laid out the boxes of soon-to-be text and graphics using a grid to ensure the infographic would be visually balanced. By this point, I had established a look and a layout, gained knowledge of the dimensions, purpose and usage of the infographic and was supplied with colours and fonts, so it was a matter of filling in the blanks. The only task left to do was to translate the statistics into icons and illustrations in a visually pleasing and educational way.

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www.dribbble.com/STUDIOJQ Jonathan Quintin, founder and creative director of STUDIOJQ, created this screen printed wedding invitation infographic to celebrate the lives of a couple getting married. He says that you need to consider how people will view your infographics: “It’s extremely important to consider all media types and where the viewer will see your infographics. When the big rave for infographics started, most designed for a standard web format, but these days you need to consider animated elements and better ways to tell a story. This helps to deliver [the data] in a much more visual and interesting way.”

WorldMags.net 15 WAYS TO MASTER INFOGRAPHICS

■ 3D beginnings At first, I rendered a simple 3D model of the pie using a plain grey material, so I didn’t worry about perspective and shadows

■ Add textures I mixed some textures and photos in masked groups and used them in Multiply mode above the 3D shot

■ Add details Some of the small details were drawn with my tablet pen

■ Further details Other details are simple, free 3D models rendered in grey and coloured with Photoshop

■ Smoke effects The black-and-white photo of the smoke was used in Screen mode

© Anton Egorov Client: Japan Tobacco International. Agency: re:point - Kazakhstan

■ Landmarks For famous sights, I made plain 3D models and textured them in Photoshop using photos

BUILD INFOGRAPHICS WITH A THEME ANTON EGOROV

www.behance.net/egorov Anton Egorov is a freelance CG artist who has worked for clients including Toyota, Japan Tobacco International and Saatchi & Saatchi LA. He created this infographic on the area and population of Central Asia and Mongolia

for a client. He explains how to create a theme with data: “Usually, after collecting the information, it’s just a bunch of facts, some pages of text and a couple of fearful tables into the bargain. From this junk, we should carefully extract nice and pretty data that we

want show to our viewer. Ideally, you can describe your purpose with one word. But usually it’s several ones. In my case, it’s something + something + entertainment. Despite that, I still respect fully utilitarian infographics.”

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■ Project focus This image is a single screen from an interactive infographic called Notorious James Bond, created by Alexis Cuddyre, Christina Winkless (www.christinawinkless.com) and David Paul Rosser (www.davidpaulrosser.co.uk)

■ Focal design Each actor was labelled ‘Notorious for…’, which influenced the design of the hero image

■ Create balance We included the same amount of supporting data on the right-hand side as a secondary way of comparing across all the actors

© Alexis Cuddyre, Christina Winkless and David Paul Rosser

© Marianne Taylor

■ Add context Last, we added a third level of data along the left-hand side in the format of a timeline, where all the movies were listed with their respective ratings in order to provide additional context

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USE INFOGRAPHICS TO TELL A STORY ALEXIS CUDDYRE

www.alexiscuddyre.com Graphic designer Alexis Cuddyre has worked on data visualisation projects for a range of clients through her current employer, Digit. She tells us: “If the aim of your


■ Pick an angle This was based on data released by Information is Beautiful. We looked at the data and decided our story was going to be on what each actor was notorious for, be it the highest number of kills, or the number of times the actor was presumed dead

infographic is to tell a story, it’s very important that you don’t just include absolutely every single data point that you’ve captured. It is the responsibility of the team, not just the designer, to make sure the visualisation has a carefully curated point of view. On the other hand, there are really beautiful infographics, especially in the interactive world, where the point of the piece is less about explaining a single story and

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more about encouraging the user to explore and play with the data.” She collaborated with two other designers to produce this ‘Notorious James Bond’ piece, which was entered into the Information is Beautiful awards run by David McCandless, a London-based author, writer and designer. The full interactive piece is available to view at http://notoriousbond.info.

© Anny Truong

WorldMags.net 15 WAYS TO MASTER INFOGRAPHICS

CREATE AN INFOGRAPHIC CV ANNY TRUONG

www.behance.net/anniitron Anny Truong, a graphic designer for April Gold Bags, is one of a growing number of designers who have applied infographics to their CV as a unique way of presenting information about themselves. Truong advises to keep things simple: “Infographics are meant to present complex information quickly and clearly. The last thing you want is to confuse the viewer with something that was meant to be simple. Keep it clean, concise and visually appealing. A little bit of humour or personality doesn’t hurt either.”

LAWRENCE WHITELEY

© Jaymie McAmmond

CREATE MIXED MEDIA INFOGRAPHICS JAYMIE MCAMMOND

www.jaymiemcammond.com Since Photoshop brushes don’t work Designer, illustrator at this scale, all of my textures are hand and letterer Jaymie crafted, scanned and imported as McAmmond has separate layers. Although the industry worked for a huge number of wellstandard for printing murals is known clients. This amazing infographic 100-150dpi at full scale, I work at 250dpi artwork was created as a site-specific to retain maximum detail in my textures. mural for Starbucks, Toronto, and the At the end of a project, my files can be actual mural stands at 10 x 20ft. It was upwards of 20GB per image before created using mixed media tools flattening – a speedy processor and extra including pencil, paper, chalk, charcoal, RAM can really help with this.” Illustrator and Photoshop. One key element of McAmmond’s “When designing this type of mural, I work is the typography: “Not all begin with sketches to determine infographics need typography to be content, hierarchy of information, successful. There are lots of beautiful composition and typography. During this infographics out there that have no phase, I also draw any spot illustrations I typography at all. However, I always get want to include. Although it might be really excited working with type. quicker to draw these digitally, I find I get Choosing the right typefaces is like more control and accuracy on paper. choosing the right cast for a film. The Next, I redraw the illustrations and information is like a script and the assemble the final composition in typography are the actors that give it Illustrator. Lastly, I add texture and depth meaning and bring it to life.” in Photoshop.

www.wond.co.uk Lawrence Whiteley is a designer and director at Wond. He explains that creating an infographic that is easy to understand in a glance is “not as crucial as designing something people feel is worthy of a glance. A captivating design whets the appetite for soaking up the information. If you give the viewer curiosity then you have a hook, opening us up to learn.” In order to achieve this, he advises: “A hierarchy of design helping the viewer to navigate and a nice amount of breathing room are a solid foundation, but it would be nothing without a seductive colour palette and some graphic flair. Overcrowding will put people off.”

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WorldMags.net INJECT HUMOUR INTO INFOGRAPHICS INFOGR8 www.infogr8.com

infogr8 designed this quirky infographic based on a survey by online contact lens retailer GetLenses. The agency was tasked with creating a visual story reflecting the frustrating problems glasses wearers suffered in 2013. The design proves that infographics can be fun: “The data doesn’t have to always be serious, but it must be accurate in order to hold integrity. Each project has different objectives, audiences and formats to consider. The way we approach the data needs to reflect that each time, with open, fresh and innovative thinking.”

The company has some essential advice when it comes to introducing humour: “It’s crucial that the data never gets lost in the design, regardless of the angle you’re taking. Without being able to grasp the subject at hand straight away or at least have a basic understanding of it, you’ve just created an attractive piece of graphic design. However, with this specific infographic we were given a bit more freedom by the client and therefore decided to go with a more playful, humorous direction that fitted the target audience and the message we were trying to convey.”

© 2010 InfoNewt, LLC, Design by Randy Krum

DON’T FORGET THE DATA RANDY KRUM

www.infonewt.com Randy Krum is a well-known name in the world of infographics, as the man behind the website www.coolinfographics.com, a collection of the best infographics around. He is also the president of InfoNewt, an infographic design and visual consulting company. He explains why infographics are so appealing: “The science behind why infographics work is very compelling. The Picture Superiority Effect states that audiences are likely to remember 65 per cent of the content presented if the text is combined with visuals to assist in conveying the message. Compare that number to only ten per cent remembered by audiences from text alone, and it’s clear that this is a huge advantage to anyone that uses information design to tell a story in an infographic.” Krum offers an explanation as to how a designer should approach data if they are looking to create an infographic for the very first time: “Design infographics should be used to to communicate a story really well. Most readers will only look at one for five to ten seconds, and not at the whole thing. An infographic designer needs to focus on communicating the main message of the design in that very short window of opportunity in order to successfully reach most of the audience. Don’t include extra data just because it’s available, as that will confuse and clutter the design and reduce its effect.”

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© Produced by infogr8, illustrated by infogr8’s Stavros Siamptanis

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WorldMags.net 15 WAYS TO MASTER INFOGRAPHICS STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD GARY CORR www.garycorr.co.uk

One difficult thing to achieve with infographics is balancing lots of information in one artwork. This is something that Gary Corr has achieved in his CV project. The majority of the work is based on typography, so it was important to get all the elements weighted correctly for it to work. “Typography played a huge part in my CV. This was like a sort of cover letter for me, but using nice typography. I also made it into a nice piece of visual art. I wanted to create something that was bold and stood out, creating a memorable style that communicates quite strongly. A fair bit of planning was involved: first, you need to decide which information is going into the CV. As well as the usual CV info, I wanted to include some lighthearted facts that would paint a picture of my personality. Also, I spent time researching others that had been already done. I wanted to create an original layout that I hadn’t seen before which would stand out. I used an unusual shape and fold to achieve this.”

Gary’s infographic CV has an original layout that folds down small so that it is easy to carry around for networking purposes

Thinking outside of the box will make Corr stand out from the many other CVs received by design agencies every day – a definite edge as a recent graduate

© Gary Corr 2013

© Kimberley Glazebrook and NHS 5 Boroughs Partnership

ALWAYS CHECK YOUR FACTS KIM GLAZEBROOK

www.kimberleyglazebrook.co.uk

Kim Glazebrook is a graphic and web designer, and she created this infographic for NHS 5 Boroughs to help young people deal with depression. When working for clients like the NHS, it is important to make sure that your facts are correct when creating your design: “With an infographic, and especially this one, it is vitally important to check the data is correct, as providing incorrect advice could be very harmful.”

© Gary Corr 2013

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WorldMags.net MAKE YOUR INFOGRAPHIC EASY TO SHARE JOHN PRING

www.designbysoap.co.uk John Pring is the director of Inbound Marketing and Content Creation at Designbysoap. He explains the importance of making an infographic easy to share so that it has the widest reach: “Ensure the page you publish the infographic on has social media sharing buttons, making it easy for the reader to share the content. You can include any number of social platforms for a user to engage with, but I would certainly recommend including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, StumbleUpon and Google+. Include a HTML embed code with your infographic, to allow people to copy and paste the code to embed the infographic on their own site. An added benefit of this is that you can include a credit link back to your own site in the embed code, sending in more traffic. In order to encourage sharing, you need to think about three main elements; the data, the design and the subsequent promotion of the artwork. The data is integral to the success of your infographic, as it is the angle from

which you decide to approach the information. The data should be at least one of three things: informative, educational or entertaining. Similarly, the story is hugely important – much like a journalist does, it’s better to approach and visualise the data with a story in mind. The design is a crucial part of encouraging sharing – you can have the most interesting data in the world and a great angle to approach, but if the design is poor then you’ll struggle to effectively promote the infographic and will be unlikely to see much engagement in the way of social media sharing. Lastly, the way in which you promote and spread your infographic will dramatically affect how it’s shared across social media platforms. Publishing an infographic on your site and submitting it to a few infographic submission sites will likely result in only a handful of social shares, whereas approaching an influencer such as Mashable and getting your design published on their site will almost certainly give you hundreds (if not thousands) of social shares.”

© Official Charts Company and Designbysoap Ltd, 2013

PICK THE RIGHT COLOUR PALETTE MICHELLE HYEMIN LEE www.milee.co

Michelle Hyemin Lee created One Beverage, an infographic that visualises the process of making a drink using an espresso machine. Information is delivered in a circular graph to resemble both a cup and a clock, and is based on Starbucks Coffee Company’s Masterna espresso. An important part in the creation of this graphic was a relevant and simple colour palette: “When designing One Beverage, I selected colours in a subtle range of browns and warm greys to visually suggest the topic and contribute in efficiently organising and delivering the information. Subtle and neutral colours are chosen not only to visualise, but also help the viewer to easily read and understand the information. I believe that choosing a relevant and effective colour palette is one of the most crucial tasks when designing an information graphic, because it is a dominant communication tool. It can effectively suggest the content at glance. An irrelevant or eyesore colour palette can repel the viewer from reading the information.” © Michelle Hyemin Lee

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WorldMags.net 15 WAYS TO MASTER INFOGRAPHICS PRIORITISE THE INFORMATION PAUL BUTT

www.sectiondesign.co.uk Paul Butt is a freelance designer and has worked with clients including the BBC, Wired, Which?, GQ, the Financial Times and Ubuntu. When creating an infographic, he explains that: “For me, information has the central priority, with graphic design playing the supporting role in presenting it. I try to approach projects with a rational process and everything has to have a reason for being on the page. With that said, there are often little design tweaks and flourishes that can be quite subtle, yet can really add character to a piece. However, they should not obscure the main point of the graphic.” Butt has a set procedure for ensuring that the information doesn’t get lost in the design: “I try to work to a defined grid where I’ll lay out a wire frame of the information, and then work out how to go about the aesthetics. Always question what you are doing and think how other people might interpret the work. Getting other people’s opinions can be very valuable, as the design should be as accessible as possible.”

An earlier prototype for laying out the cyclists and the labels. In the end, I had much less space than I thought, so had to simplify these a lot more to fit in

© Section Design

FIND GOOD DATA TO ILLUSTRATE TIFFANY FARRANTGONZALEZ

www.tiffanyfarrant.co.uk Freelance information designer Tiffany Farrant-Gonzalez has a lot of experience when it comes to working with data. Having worked for companies including Google and American Express, she says: “The Open Data movement has recently seen both countries and large organisations release previously hidden data out into the world. This now means that there is a fantastic array of sources out there to visualise: from the economy and healthcare to the extinction rate and environmental data. The Guardian Datablog (www.guardian.co.uk/ news/datablog) keeps an A-Z list of open data sources and Andy Kirk, who runs www.visualisingdata.com, has also compiled a fantastic list of open data sources as well as services that work with or curate social, map-based, weather and travel data.”

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© Tiffany Farrant-Gonzalez


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WorldMags.net MASTER PORTRAIT ILLUSTRATION

MASTER PORTRAIT ILLUSTRATION CREATE THIS COLOURFUL AND DYNAMIC PORTRAIT BY TEAMING UP PHOTOSHOP WITH ILLUSTRATOR

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orking cross-platform can often create some of the most interesting and unique results. Combining programs means you can get the best from each of them, mixing and matching tools and techniques to create some really unusual mixed-media styles. This tutorial will show you how to create a bright and colourful portrait image, working from a photograph to first create a sketch in Illustrator, and then moving onto Photoshop to add splashes of colour.

Before you start, have fun sketching lots of different portraits on paper. It’s important to understand shading and colour, and which details have the biggest impact on your portrait. As you progress, you will see that the eyes are often the trickiest part to get right, yet they are also the most important aspect of a portrait. Study plenty of photo stock to ensure that you master their shape and shading, for a more engaging and convincing design. Don’t be put out if this takes you some time, though, as you’ll learn from each mistake.

ILLUSTRATE THE PORTRAIT

OUR EXPERT BRAM VANHAEREN bramvanhaeren.com Bram Vanhaeren is a digital artist from Belgium. He’s been developing his style since his first Pen tool experiments in Illustrator about eight years ago. His work ranges from simple illustrations and typography to mixed-media artwork.

SOURCE FILES Download the start image from blog.advancedphotoshop.co.uk/ tutorial-files/ under Issue 115.

SKETCH THE PORTRAIT SHADE BY SHADE

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CREATE A NEW DOCUMENT

WORK IN PROGRESS

Start up Illustrator and create a new A3 document with Color Mode set to CMYK. If you prefer using different settings or sizes, feel free to do so. Here you will need a portrait orientation. Make sure you don’t change the raster effects and keep it at 300dpi.

BLACK AND WHITE TO DYNAMIC COLOUR

Step 4: Draw in Illustrator

Step 13: Gradient effects

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FIND YOUR PHOTOGRAPH

Use a photo as a base for your illustration. To spot a good picture from the rest, you need to check a few important details. First, you must make sure that the size is okay; the bigger, the better. It’s also important that there is enough contrast, as this helps a lot when you are sketching the image.

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LAYER ORGANISATION

If there is something that will always help you in the future working as a designer, it’s a nice and clean layer organisation habit. Start your document by naming your layers. In this tutorial you will only need a few, depending on how many colours you wish to use.

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WorldMags.net QUICK TIP There is no tutorial that can teach you how to draw. It’s essential for you to sketch on a daily basis to get better at it. Challenge yourself and try something new every day. You will train your eye to recognise shapes very quickly and learn how to build your illustrations.

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START WITH BLACK

To create this portrait, always start with the darkest colour to draw the most important elements of your portrait (these are the eyes, nose, hair etc). It’s important to use your fresh energy in the beginning to make sure that these features are just perfect! Use your Wacom or mouse with the Pencil tool if you have some experience of drawing in Illustrator, or use the Pen tool and create your paths point-by-point if you are a beginner.

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DRAW WITH WAVES

After you have finished the most important details in black, continue drawing with a dark grey. Select ‘Only web colors’ in your Fill(x) menu to work with the six shades of grey. Now you can draw in the darker areas and build your portrait. To create paths, we like to draw with a ‘wave’ technique, where we try to draw in waves and curves. This way we can create some experimental colour paths – perfect for lips and shadow from the hair and chin.

CONTINUE THE PROCESS

When you are shading your portrait, you will see how important it is to start with the darkest colours first and then the lighter colours in the layers below. Make sure you look at the whole image, to keep your focus and not get lost in one single detail. After a few hours of drawing portraits, you will pick up your own ways to recognise and handle different shapes on a face; for example, how you like to draw a mouth or an eyebrow.

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MAKE IT DIRTY

You should now be almost finished with your black and white illustration. The next step is to add a dirty paint effect to your portrait. Create a new layer on top and call it ‘Dirt’. Then imagine you have a dirty, rough brush in your hands and wipe black and white paint over the portrait, in particular coming from the highlights. Take the Pencil tool and draw your dirty paint strokes and place them around so they still fit and add value to your portrait.

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WorldMags.net MASTER PORTRAIT ILLUSTRATION

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OPEN PHOTOSHOP

Time to start working in Photoshop. Copy all the paths from your Illustrator document by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+C. Open a new A3-sized document in Photoshop and place your illustration. Photoshop will then ask you how you want to paste it. Pick Smart Object to allow easy updates to your drawing later. 001

003

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ADD SOME LINEWORK

Before you are completely finished in Illustrator, create a new layer group called ‘Linework’ and take the Paintbrush tool (B) with Stroke on. Set the Stroke up with a Size of 0.25pt (depending on your image size), a Brush Definition of 3pt Oval and a Uniform variable brush width profile with Opacity of 100%. Now draw lines to emphasise the curves of your portrait and add flow to your model’s face. It’s also a perfect tool to add details and outlines.

001 DETAILS

002 DIRTY PAINT EFFECT

003 OUTLINES

Draw all the important details in black and make sure it’s perfect so that people easily recognise your model

Create dirty brush strokes on the face in black or white to add a gritty and realistic paint effect

Thanks to the useful Brush tool, you can add more details to your portrait with simple curly lines

FINAL ADJUSTMENTS

USE LAYER MASKS, ADJUSTMENT LAYERS AND FILTERS TO COMPLETE YOUR ILLUSTRATION

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ADD HAZE

For the next step, you need to search for high-resolution images of dark clouds with lots of details in them. Once you have found some, paste them into your Photoshop document, desaturate your layer (Cmd/Ctrl+U) and adjust the brightness using Curves (Image>Adjustments>Curves or Cmd/Ctrl+M) until you have a high-contrast black and white image. Now change the layer’s blend mode to Multiply and place it over the shoulders and hair to add a foggy feeling to your portrait.

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CREATE YOUR OWN GRADIENT BRUSH

You will now create different coloured gradient brushes. Use a soft round brush with Opacity of 70% and Flow of 100% and start by brushing one circle of 2500px in a pinky-red colour. Then create another at 2000px with dark orange, 1500px with orange and 1000px with yellow. Then transform your brushes with the Warp tool (Edit> Transform>Warp tool and pull around) and set the blending mode to Screen to place it over the portrait.

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13

CONTINUE TO ADD ENERGY

By placing the correct warped brushes, you will experience a special effect where it feels as though your portrait has gained some energy. This result can come from the movement your brushes suggest and the colour. In this tutorial, you should try and stick with warm colours and pull your round soft brushes to one specific side with the Warp tool. This will give the impression that your model has stopped in time, but her surroundings are still moving.

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WARP YOUR BRUSHES

You can warp the gradient brushes around specific parts of your portrait; for example, around the shape of your model’s hairline or neckline. Play around and see what looks best. Make sure you try and adjust the colours as well with the Hue/ Saturation option (Image>Adjustments>Hue/ Saturation) after you have brushed your own gradients. This way you can come up with unique colourways you would never have imagined before.

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IT’S IN THE DETAILS

Your image is almost complete, but before you finish, search for images that will create textures to add to your portrait. For example, in this tutorial we used a waving American flag with the red stripes and white stars to add details that matter to the model, in order to create a story behind the artwork. Then blend the texture with the illustration by changing the contrast (Image>Adjustments>Curves) and change the blending mode to Screen again to place it in the darker areas.

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CHANGING THE OVERALL COLOUR

Create a new layer on top of your whole document and fill the layer with color #2a59ef, for example, then change the blending mode to Difference and the Opacity to 10-15%. You will find that you discover a fantastic colouring effect with this single step. You can also duplicate this layer and change the colour for another effect. When you do this, place white lines on top of this layer to emphasise specific details in your portrait – for example, below the eyes.

WorldMags.net MASTER PORTRAIT ILLUSTRATION QUICK TIP Make sure you keep all your files organised. It will help yourself and the other people who may need to use your files later. It will also speed up your work time by far and helps you focus on other important things. Try and make it a positive working habit as quickly as possible.

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ADD A GRAIN

You may have noticed that recently a lot of digital art has a cool grainy effect in the colour shading. Ever wondered how this is done? Well, it’s easy. Search for ‘grain texture’ in Google with the search option on large images and you will find a high-resolution grain texture image (grey and white dots like on an old TV). Paste this image on top of your work and change the blending mode to Overlay and the Opacity to 30-50%. This works just fine with the dirt brushes you created earlier.

MOVING IN TIME

Earlier in this tutorial we explained how to add energy and movement to your portrait, to give the impression that the model is in a dynamic environment. To create a very obvious feeling of movement, you can add an extra group of layers with white lines on top of all your layers in a specific direction to create this really awesome movement effect. It’s an easy step that has a very big impact on your portrait.

To create a very obvious feeling of movement, you can add an extra group of layers with white lines on top FINALISE YOUR PREVIEW When you are finalising your highresolution images for a web preview, it is possible that you will lose some sharpness in your artwork. To solve this annoying problem, you can use Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask aer you have changed your image size to 72dpi. Then change the Amount to 30%, Radius to 0.3px and Threshold to 0 levels. This simple technique will sharpen your preview in one second.

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FINISHING AND SAVING

Since you are working on a high DPI with the purpose to print this artwork, it’s important to change some things before you share your work on the internet. First you have to change the image size (Image>Image Size). Change the Resolution from 300dpi to 72di and resample the image to Bicubic Smoother (best for reduction). Normal quality will be just fine since you worked on a high-resolution image. Now you can sit back and enjoy your portrait.

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WorldMags.net BLEND GRAPHICS AND TYPE

BLEND GRAPHICS AND TYPE T LEARN HOW TO MAKE A TYPOGRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION WITH IMPACT USING THE POWER OF PHOTOSHOP

hey say a picture says a thousand words, so imagine the possibilities in conveying a message if you were to combine the two. In this tutorial, you will learn how to blend elements and shapes to create an energetic and dynamic typographic illustration. During the implementation process, you will use many different techniques in Photoshop to balance elements and vary their proportions and shadows, and learn how to give volume to the shapes you draw with the Pen tool.

Using a digital tablet to follow this tutorial can be very useful, as the opportunity to play with the pressure of the pen works wonders when building quality into your final image. You will also see that the composition and balance of illustration is not only about knowing which elements to include, it is also knowing when to remove them. Finally, you will learn that colours play a vital role in to obtaining a composition with a consistent atmosphere. This tutorial requires a sense of subtlety, but you are free to create anything you wish.

OUR EXPERT DAVID DELIN

www.28162.com

David Delin, aka 28162, is an image maker based in Nantes, France. His clients include BNP Paribas and New Scientist magazine.

SOURCE FILES You will find a selection of resources provided by the artist on the disc, which you can use to recreate this tutorial and in your own projects.

SETTING THE TONE

CHOOSE A FONT AND COLOUR PALETTE THAT WILL HELP CONVEY YOUR MESSAGE

01

PICK A COLOUR PALETTE

Create a new document and select the colour palette you will use. Be creative with a limited number. The colour palette helps you to visualise your project as a whole. The colours here are #0b58a8, #001451, #de9e22 and #f0d2a0.

02

CHOOSE THE FONT AND TEXT

Add a new text layer (T) and choose a font in a large size. ‘Impact’ was chosen in this case, but you are free choose your own. Type ‘Be Creative’ and align the text in the centre. This is the main element and the illustration’s focal point.

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ADD A GRADIENT

Duplicate your text and go to Layer>Pixelate>Text. Double-click it and choose Overlay gradient. Add a Radial gradient from colour #c16205 to colour #d89543. You are free to choose other colours – the purpose here is to be creative.

MAKE A FLORAL SHAPE

Using the petal image, you can now create a floral shape. Duplicate the layer five times and position them so that it forms a rosette. Create a circle with the Elliptical Marquee tool, fill it with a grey Radial gradient and place it at the centre of your petals. The use of horizontal and vertical symmetry will help to balance your image. Go to Edit>Transform> Vertical Symmetry Axis.

04

CREATE A PETAL

Import the ‘Petal’ file into the document. Using the eyedropper tool (I), select colour #0157ac, hit Cmd/Ctrl+U, click Reset and push the Saturation to 45. Add a new layer, change it to Multiply mode, and with a soft edged brush and Opacity set to 35%, paint the shadows of your form. Repeat on another layer and paint the highlights to add volume.

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06

Open the ‘Flower’ file provided on the source disc and copy and paste the image into your scene. Apply an Invert adjustment (Cmd/Ctrl+I) to create a negative version of it. Put it to the side, as you will use it later in the process. For a more personal look, this flower was created from a photograph, with shadows and light painted on with a digital tablet. Feel free to do the same.

07

DRAW A CIRCLE AND DETAILS

With the Pen tool (P), create a circle. Double-click on your layer and add an Inner Shadow. Now draw a pattern. Ctrl/right-click on the background and add a focused shadow (Layer> Layer Style>Drop Shadow). Set the Opacity to 40%, Distance to 0px, Weight to 10px and Height to 80px.

There are always points that can be improved such as masking imperfections or removing elements

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Give dynamic movement to the artwork by adding some curves. Draw them with the Pen tool. If you want to be really accurate then this is the time to use a digital tablet, as it will allow you to play with the pen pressure. Fill them with a grey colour. Build flowing shapes and give them volume for realism – see Step 4 for an example. Arrange the shapes so they intertwine with the text.

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If you’re new to digital painting, this tutorial can be challenging. Our tip is to try speed-painting exercises to get better each day. There are great videos and schools out there to learn that particular skill. We recommend Advanced Photoshop contributor Feng Zhu’s website at www.fengzhudesign. com. Also www.schoolism.com from Bobby Chiu. There are also a lot of free tutorials on YouTube regarding this method, so it’s definitely worth a look. In the end there is no shortcut for making the tablet do what you want it to. No stock images or filters will unleash that potential.

CREATE AN ABSTRACT FORM

You will now create the last main form of your illustration. Add a new layer (Layer>New>Layer) and name it ‘Abstract form’. Take the Pen tool and draw a shape similar to the one above. Repeat the process that was outlined Step 4 to give volume to the shape. A Wacom tablet is often useful for doing this.

11 ADD CURVED SHAPES

TRAIN YOUR TABLET SKILLS AND SPEED PAINT

ADD A FLOWER

09

BUILD THE COMPOSITION

12

PAINT IN SHADOWS

The next step is to import the file named ‘Sphere grid’ into your document. Now that the main elements are at your disposal, you can begin the most exciting part of the tutorial: the composition. Take the time to find the right balance.

INSERT PATTERNS

Add a new layer and create a rectangle by using the Pen tool. Double-click the layer or click fx in the Layers panel and select Pattern Overlay. Select an existing pattern or use one from your own library. While adding organic geometric elements to an illustration can be a good idea in terms of balance, keep in mind your main objective, which is to make the text the focal point of your composition. Place large elements in the background and smaller ones in the foreground. so that the message isn’t obscured.

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Now that you have your shape elements, it’s time to add a little more realism. When you overlay forms, the credibility of these is achieved through shadows. Use them to create a 3D effect of depth. Paint them using a soft brush set to 40% Opacity with your layers in Product mode. Obviously there are other means to add shadows, like using drop shadows, but painting your own offers a more personal touch.

WorldMags.net BLEND GRAPHICS AND TYPE SETTING THE TONE

CHOOSE A FONT AND COLOUR PALETTE THAT WILL HELP CONVEY YOUR MESSAGE

13

PASTE IN THE BIRDS

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MORE DEPTH

Bring some life into your composition by adding an extra element. Download a bird image from morguefile.com/archive/display/843318 and import it into your document. Duplicate the image once or twice, and place your birds in dynamic ways by varying their size (Edition>Free transform or Cmd/Ctrl+T). Playing with the variation in size allows you to provide a depth of field, to create the illusion of a foreground, midground and background.

Now it’s time to add more depth to your scene. Duplicate the flower used in Step 6 and choose a neutral colour like grey. This increases the depth between your foreground, the second plane and the background. Go to Layer>Smart Objects>Convert to Smart Object. Increase its size (Cmd/Ctrl+T) and set the layer to Overlay mode. Duplicate this layer, arrange it differently and play with the opacity.

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CREATE DECORATIVE CHIPS

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APPLY ADJUSTMENT LAYERS

In order to bring even more energy and vitality to your illustration, you can add a few chips with features brushes. To do this, draw some random shapes and turn them into brushes (Edit>Define Custom Shape). Hit F5 to open the Form panel and play with the settings of the dynamic forms, and those of Diffuse. Do not go too far, even if this kind of effect is fun to use. It can quickly give a rough look to your composition if you add too much. Instead, be subtle.

Now give the composition a balanced chromatic scale. Add a layer of brightness and contrast adjustment to bring out some elements (Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Brightness/ Contrast) and a Curves adjustment layer (Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Curves ). This is almost essential, as it offers so much more flexibility in colour correction and contrast. Experiment with the settings until you are happy.

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ADD A LAYER MASK

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STRENGTHEN THE COMPOSITION

There are always points that can be improved during the creation process such as masking imperfections or removing any unwanted elements, because you think they are useless. Layer masks are ideal for this as they allow any changes to be non-permanent. Add one to your document and remove some unwanted areas of your artwork. Layer masks have an important role in the integration and credibility of an illustration, so do not hesitate to spend a little time applying them.

To finish, select all your layers, duplicate them and then merge them . Apply a High Pass filter (Filter>Other>High Pass) with a radius of 1.2px. Set the layer mode to Overlay. Attenuate the effect of the background using a layer mask. Perform these final touches, zooming to 100%. Your picture is now complete, but of course you are free to go even further and add more forms and elements if you feel it is necessary.


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MASTER POLYGONS T LEARN HOW TO PRODUCE CREATIVE PORTRAITS USING GEOMETRIC SHAPES AND PHOTOSHOP’S COLOUR ADJUSTMENTS he popularity of isometric shapes in digital art can be explained in many ways. This style is retro, shiny and there’s a lot of play involved when creating. There are plenty of great examples online to get inspired by – www. polygonheroes.com and the works of our artist Ryan Barber (www.behance.net/rbarber), for example. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to work from a model photo, combining both Photoshop and Illustrator to create exciting shape styles. We’ll begin by using Illustrator’s Pen tool, and show you how to trace a grid of carefully mapped triangles on top of a photo. A more interesting

WORK IN PROGRESS

FROM ILLUSTRATOR TO PHOTOSHOP

isometric illustration will have a map of triangles that’s not evenly distributed. Therefore, we will be adding and subtracting anchor points, and using the Direct Selection tool to adjust triangle corners, in order to distribute our shapes. We’ll be using the Eyedropper tool, gradients and swatches too, showing how these are all used to fill and affect colour. After the initial vector drawing is complete we’ll then take our design into Photoshop. Here we’ll explore how to make overall colour changes to our rendered design, using Gradient Overlay, Levels and other color adjustments to achieve a fantastic final image.

OUR EXPERT RYAN BARBER

www.behance.net/rbarber Ryan is an LA-based illustrator and graphic designer. Connecting with subjects on an emotional level is important to his work.

SOURCE FILES You’ll find all the images you need on the disc provided.

BUILD A BLUEPRINT

USE ILLUSTRATOR’S SHAPE AND SELECTION TOOLS TO BUILD A SHAPE GRID

01

PREPARATION

The first phase involves tracing a series of triangles on top of a photograph, in Adobe Illustrator. Create a new file at 6.66 inches x 10 inches. Hit File>Place and find a start image. In this case we have used a Dreamstime model (#18986388). Once the file has been placed into Illustrator, lock the image.

02

LOCKING YOUR IMAGE

You can lock the image in one of two ways: either lock the layer in the Layers palette or highlight the image and then press Cmd/Ctrl+2. All your work will be laid directly on top of this image. Once you are done with the illustration, you won’t need the base image any longer.

Step 5: Begin the grid

Step 11: Colour the shapes

03

Now that your image is locked activate the Pen tool. Make the Fill colour transparent and set the Stroke colour to something that will be easily visible when laid on top of the image. In this case, a bright magenta.

Step 19: Add adjustments

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PEN TOOL COLOUR

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04

PEN TOOL WEIGHT

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SECOND TRIANGLE

The next step is to set the weight of our Pen tool’s stroke. We don’t need this to be too thick as our marks will only work as guides. In the troke palette, set a thickness of 0.02 inches – this will keep the illustration thin enough for us to still be able to see most of the photograph underneath. If your view of the photograph’s details is obstructed then it will be more difficult to map the grid.

05

FIRST TRIANGLE

Let’s map out a series of adjacent triangles on top of the base photo. No other shapes should be used, and each triangle should roughly cover one solid area of colour. Squint when you’re looking at the start image – this helps you to separate out the areas of colour. Draw the first triangle by clicking at the top of the hair then completing a triangle covering that section of hair.

Activate the Direct Selection tool by pressing the A key. Our selection tool’s cursor will change in colour from black to white. Click on the top triangle’s uppermost anchor point. Drag that anchor point down and slightly to the right, as you can see in our example. The second triangle will now only share one common side with the first triangle. We’ll keep on repeating this process of copying, pasting and dragging one anchor point at a time until the photograph is covered with triangles.

06

COPY AND PASTE

08

N TRIANGLES

Select the first triangle and then copy it by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+C. Paste it on top of itself by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+F. We want this new triangle to be adjacent to the first triangle. In other words, it will share only one side with it. It’s important to generate new triangles by copying them directly from the ones that have been created before; if we don’t, our grid will have holes and cracks between the shapes.

Copy the second triangle with Cmd/Ctrl+C and paste it on top of itself with Cmd/Ctrl+F. Apply the Direct Selection tool to this third triangle’s top anchor point and then drag it down as shown. The third triangle should now only share one side with the second triangle. We’re starting to get the hang of this sort of application.

QUICK TIP The more detailed the grid becomes, the more the viewer will want to look at it. Decide which areas of the image you want them to focus on. These areas should have smaller, more detailed triangles. To create apparent contrast, add some areas that are more basic.

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FILL IN COLOUR

USE ILLUSTRATOR’S TONAL OPTIONS TO CREATE SOLID SHAPES

09

WORK WITH ANCHOR POINTS

Most triangles will share one common side with another triangle, but some triangles will only share a portion of another triangle’s side. We’ll use the Add and Subtract Anchor Point tools to make precise edits to the length of one of our triangle’s sides. This will provide much more flexibility in how we lay our grid out. 003

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We copied and pasted our initial triangle on top of itself, creating the second one. This is the triangle we want to edit

Select the right corner of the second triangle. Drag it to the left, to shorten the side, then use the Add Anchor Point tool

Select the second triangle. Activate the Subtract Anchor Point tool and click the farright anchor point to remove it

SOLID COLOUR

You’ve got your grid – now it’s polygon time. Grab the Eyedropper and sample a dark skin tone from beneath the triangle we’ll colour first. Add it to the Swatches palette and the New Swatch window will appear. If you’re planning to print an illustration set this to CMYK mode. If you’re using an illustration online set this to RGB mode. Apply Direct Selection to the triangle and click on the new swatch.

12

GRADIENT SWATCH

Press I to activate the Eyedropper. In the reference image, the red triangle has a light tan colour and fades to a darker brown. Sample the tan area to update the Fill colour. Drag to the Swatches palette, then repeat for the brown. Drag both swatches into your Gradient palette, delete the black and white swatches, then adjust the gradient slider so the tan and brown colours are at opposite ends.

CONTINUE THE GRID

It’s easy to just make all triangles the same size because it speeds up the process. However, resist the temptation. Really focus on varying the sizes and shapes of the triangles. The more we vary the locations of our shapes, the more unique our illustration becomes. The reference images in the screenshot, for example, show two circular shapes; one is much more interesting than the other. So with that in mind, continue mapping out your grid.

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Really focus on varying the sizes and shapes of the triangles. Varying locations will make the image unique

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APPLYING A GRADIENT

From the upper-left corner of the Gradient palette, drag the Gradient swatch to the Swatches Palette. Click on a triangle and then the new swatch. To specify the location and direction of the gradient, select the triangle, hit G and click where you want the gradient to begin, then drag the cursor to the end point. Repeat in different locations, adjusting the gradient slider, until it represents the photo’s colours.


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WORKING IN PHOTOSHOP

FIND OUT HOW TO APPLY DETAILED ADJUSTMENT SETTINGS TO CREATE STYLISH EFFECTS

14

ADJACENT COLOUR

As we fill our grid shapes with colours and gradients, we need to ensure we can clearly distinguish all of our triangles. If any start to merge together then the image will begin to appear flat and lack that third dimension. Colour hues, colour values or gradient angles may need to be adjusted. Refer to the base photo for reference and remember; you should always be able to distinguish the edge of every side of every triangle.

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BEGIN WORK IN PHOTOSHOP

It’s time to add some colour adjustments and lighting effects in Photoshop. Hit Select All then Copy. Open Photoshop and create a new document. Photoshop will set up the file to fit the dimensions. Once again, if you want to get this printed then set your workspace to Image>Mode>CMYK. If you want this illustration to be used online, select Image>Mode and the choose the RGB colour mode instead. Apply Paste as Pixels and press OK.

QUICK TIP Mapping out all the triangles perfectly in one go is almost impossible. You’ll need to adjust areas so that all the triangles butt up against each other cleanly. Select all shapes and fill them with 100% black. Remember which shapes need adjusting, undo the black fill and then adjust accordingly.

16

BRING HAIR INTO PHOTOSHOP

We’re going to change the model’s hair so it includes vibrant purple tones. In Illustrator, lock the photograph by selecting it and pressing Cmd/Ctrl+2. Select all of the shapes that form the hair, except the buzzed area around her ears. Individually select each triangle with the regular selection tool; hold down Shift and click on each desired triangle, continuing to add to the selection. Once you have the hair, hit Cmd/ Ctrl+C. Switch over to Photoshop and then paste.

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17

RENAME LAYERS

Back in Photoshop, we now have two separate layers. The complete illustration should be on the bottom layer and the layer with just the hair should be set at the top of the stack. Change the hair layer’s name from Layer 2 to Hair by double-clicking directly on the layer’s name; a white box will appear around it. Type in Hair and then press the Return key. It’s always good practice to keep all layers intuitively labeled, no matter how few layers a file may contain.

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18

LAYER STYLES

Now that we have an editable hair layer, we can make colour changes to it. Double-click just to the right of the Hair layer’s name; the Layer Style dialog will appear. In the left-hand column of options there are a lots of different Layer Styles. Select Gradient Overlay. Photoshop will default the gradient style to black and white, which will be previewed for us. If you don’t see the applied gradient overlay, tick the Preview checkbox under the New Style button.


19

APPLY COLOR BURN

Set this Gradient Overlay’s blend mode to Color Burn. This blend mode creates an interesting effect by looking at the colour channel information and then darkening the base colour, which it does by increasing the contrast between the base and blend colours. The next thing for us to do is click on the gradient slider to activate the Gradient Editor. Here we will specify which swatches will use.

22

ADJUST BUZZED HAIR’S COLOUR

24

ADD LEVELS

20

COLOUR STOPS

The first thing to do is to click on the small black swatch at the bottom-left of the gradient slider. This will activate the colour stop at the bottom-left of the gradient, which you’ll find under the Stops section at the very bottom of the window. Ours is a black stop colour, as seen in the upper of the two windows shown below; click on it to activate the Select Stop Color dialog, which defaults to red.

The polygons are beginning to pop now. Next we’ll make the model’s buzzed hair a darker purple. In Illustrator, copy these areas then paste into Photoshop. Now we apply our new Gradient Overlay to this. Set the Gradient Overlay’s blend mode to Color Burn. Set Opacity to 85%, Angle to 140˚, Scale to 115%, and then set the stop colour’s RGB values to R:83, G:0, B:136.

To finish, head to the bottom of the Layers palette and click the Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer icon, then select Levels. Holding down the Alt key, click in-between the Ring Levels layer and the Ring layer. Any edits you make in the Adjustments palette will now be applied to the layer below it. Change the first Output Level value to 45, as shown.

21

LONG HAIR BECOMES PURPLE

23

ADJUST THE RING’S COLOUR

Click and select an area of purple in the Select Color Stop colour swatch. Notice how the woman’s hair now looks slightly purple. Click OK twice to continue. We don’t want the purple to stand out too much – it will look more realistic to dial the opacity back a little bit. In the Layer Style dialog set Opacity to 70%, Style to Linear, Angle to -100˚, Scale to 75% and check the Align with Layer tickbox.

We’re going to make the ring a baby blue colour. Go to Illustrator then copy and paste the ring into Photoshop. Set the Gradient Overlay’s blend mode to Overlay, then set Opacity to 100%, Angle to 119˚ and Scale to 150%. In the Gradient Editor, set the left-hand swatch’s RGB values to R:168, G:209, B:255 and the right-hand one to R:58, G:146, B:255.

QUICK TIP Experiment further with blend modes by applying a relatively low contrast photograph on top of your illustration. Press Cmd/Ctrl+U to adjust Hue/ Saturation and activate Colorize. In the Layers palette, select the drop-down menu to play with different blend modes. The results are fun and will make your image even more unique.

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WorldMags.net METROSTYLE WEBSITES

METROSTYLE WEBSITES O CREATIVE AND TECHNICAL ADVICE ON HOW TO PRODUCE STYLISH GRIDBASED WEB DESIGN ne of the more popular web design trends is the Metro style, along with its design language created by Microsoft. This interface allows you to make innovative layouts, associated with mobile device functionality. All concepts begin in Photoshop. It’s become standard practice for coders to receive web designs as PSD files, eliminating any need for file conversion. Permitting a wide range of effects, plug-ins and Smart Objects, graphic designers can follow an entire design process using Photoshop alone.

Here we will go through the basic steps and show you the important things for modern web design. When implementing this style, it’s better to focus on processing details rather than creating very complex components. You must address the user, who needs to be able to navigate our design in an intuitive fashion. Linking simplicity with imagination makes for a good Metro design. Don’t be afraid to experiment, but always look at your design in an objective way – evaluate aspects that create additional problems in the programming or actual usage of the site.

OUR EXPERT VIKTOR CHOVANEC www.entiri.com Chovanec is a freelance designer who specialises in web design. He is the co-owner of creative studio Entiri.com, which has gained popularity by designing contemporary website templates.

WORK IN PROGRESS MAP TO METRO

01

GRID SYSTEM

We need to select an appropriate grid to work from. The Internet offers many grid generators, which can be set up to create our own examples. For this work we used a 1200px grid, including 12 columns set to a width of 91px each; the width size for all the columns equals 1180px. This is for higher resolutions and bootstrap technology.

02

WIREFRAMING

03

BACKGROUNDS

Graphic designers are often tasked with creating a wireframe design for a client first. Here we work with basic HTML elements (shapes). This gives us the chance to make amendments, whether from our own judgment or due to a client’s reaction. This way, we’re not risking time-consuming edits with the final design, which is a big gamble.

We have divided our design into three basic areas, each with a different background. For our page header we start with a gradient area containing blurred Ellipse shapes of different sizes and shades of grey. These were applied with Gaussian Blur. We enhance this blurred area further by adding several more shape layers and introducing Motion Blur.

When implementing this style, it’s better to focus on processing details rather than creating complex components WorldMags.net

Step 2: Fashion your grid

Step 4: Scheme colours

Step 11: Add functionality


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04

COLOUR SCHEME

07

ADD ICONS

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Colour management is an integral part of this workflow when you begin to add your tiles. Using certain types evoke certain moods. This is particularly true for a simple-looking design with an emphasis on detail. Try to pick colours that balance; don’t over-do it with bright and vibrant looks, as these should be used only to highlight something important. Add your colours to the Swatches palette and save them separately, so they’re at hand for every project and we can load them in later.

05

CONTENT STRUCTURE

Metro requires a structured layout, and we group elements to avoid less interesting areas. It’s important, though, to size tiles appropriately to avoid the possibility of obscuring content after clicking. We can find a similar caveat with mobile apps, where the emphasis is on motion and user-friendly navigation. This all requires careful tuning so that the content fits with the overall tone of the site. Try to draw out the significant and visible navigation aids so that users always know where they are within the website.

The right choice of icon is almost as important as the correct choice of font. It’s good if the designer has developed his or her own examples for easy commercial use. You can create them using the Pen and Shape tools. In CS6, these are vector objects that retain their quality even when you’re resizing and zooming in on them. Always draw icons at an appropriate size that makes them easily visible. Try to set the icon’s colours in sufficient contrast to the background colour that they are placed on.

06

TYPOGRAPHY

08

SMART OBJECTS

Original web design requires a unique font. We must keep in mind that what looks fine in one browser might not look fine in another. Some sites are almost based on beautiful typography, so it should be chosen from trusted sites. Developers from Google offer Google web fonts, and these are guaranteed to work correctly in all major browsers. It’s especially important with Metro styles to choose a font that is easy to read because we’ll be applying it to active tiles that should be easily definable.

Smart Object layers are very advantageous. In our design, we work with these in two ways. First, to interpret the size and dimension of our images, as we transform bitmaps freely. Second, we also group our elements into Smart Objects so that we can quickly import designs into other projects (PSD files). When you open these grouped Smart Objects (by double-clicking) you’ll find nested layers – in our case images, which we can then edit or add too.

QUICK TIP It’s easy to swap elements between projects by using Smart Object layers. These can easily be imported when you hold Ctrl and then click on the layer. You can choose from several options, including Edit Contents, Export Contents and Replace Contents, which helps us to perform these operations rapidly.

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WorldMags.net METROSTYLE WEBSITES PREPARE FUNCTIONALITY

GEAR UP TO PUBLISH YOUR FINAL LAYOUT

09

INTERESTING BACKGROUND

Add a new layer and use the Brush tool to create several circles of varying sizes, between 2px and 12px. Deploy them irregularly over the entire background. Set the layer’s colour to white by heading to Layer Style>Color Overlay, leaving the blend mode set to Normal. Now apply the Motion Blur filter and set the parameters as shown in the screenshot below. 001

002

003

001

002

003

Alternate blurring of elements to create depth, adding more blur to distant objects and less blur to closer ones

Add noise (Filter>Noise>Add Noise) in small amounts to areas containing gradients for smoother colour transitions

Don’t be afraid to experiment with multiple layers. Work with the layer styles and use Photoshop filters

11

CONTENT OPTIONS

The image above shows all of the options that may occur on the website. We have chosen to use a laptop element to display thumbnails of our other web projects. There are other, easier ways to creatively display your projects. It’s often enough to apply a soft drop shadow or put something into an alternate shape, such as a circle. Don’t forget about the grid when inserting similar elements, and set the size of the elements according to their columns.

12

10

ELEMENT STATES

13

FINAL PRODUCT

EDIT PICTURES

The appearance of photos is important in the overall tone of the design. Of course, their looks may be subjective according to your colour scheme. The tools you use are also up to you, but we find colour adjustments work best. We applied Color Balance to our photos, setting Shadows to 5, -10, 6, Midtones to -19, 5, -9 and Highlights to -20, -5, -14, with Preserve luminosity active. For quick brightness adjustments, use Brightness/Contrast or Levels adjustments.

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Our functionality is made dynamic by creating a number of possible states which can appear once the site goes live, such as the active tiles we’ve previously mentioned. We created two different Smart Objects, one representing an active state and the other an inactive state. This screenshot shows a before and after, demonstrating the dynamic effects you’ll get once we go live with the site. The red tile on the left will be our active state, for when a mouse hovers above it. The three grey tiles represent the inactive state.

After completing our design we need to recheck our files and tune them. This is so the next person to work with our project can understand and manipulate it clearly. Don’t underestimate this stage, as the state of your PSD file determines the quality of your work. If you use more than the default patterns, brushes and other Photoshop components, provide people with your final set. In PSD files, always try to have most of the layers active to allow future editing.


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Professional Photoshop tips

Transform images

Paint in Photoshop

Industry experts explain how to take full advantage of Photoshop’s best features

Discover photomanipulation tools and create dynamic, surreal and exciting scenes

Use brushes and blending techniques to render dream worlds and futuristic effects

Edit like a pro

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