image combination and creation - the power of photoshop

Posted by Jen in design & art, tutorials on May 30th, 2009

I’ve been amazed by the special effects created in Photoshop for a long time, and this time I would like to make one by myself. Steps are as follows:

image 1: boy and ground
layer mask to select the part of the boy and ground that I want. and clone stamp to create the ground and ground edge.
shadow/Highlight was used to correct the brightness of the image. use the sun image as the color match source file, to apply it to boy and ground.

image 2: sea
free transform to stretch the pic and get rid of the sun. save it as the displace map. render light to the sea. and do displace of the sun shine. reflection of the clouds on the left side of the sea surface, filter used is motion blur and blend mode is softlight with opacity 20%.

image 3: sky and orange clouds
clone stamp to create part of the sky and get rid of the mountain. Free transform, perspective and scale to have more depth and to get rid of the mountain and composite with the sea.

image 4: crystal ball
techniques used: inner shadow, inner glow, linear gradient, sphere distort, hard brush, soft brush, square to polar distort.

image 5: sun
techniques used are as follows:filters: render clouds, render difference clouds, find edge;
image adjustments: levels, hue & saturation;
blend mode linear dodge.

FINAL IMAGE - the enlightened universe:

enlightened_universe_final

Gestalt is well accomplished in here. I separate the image into 5 objects: the sky with orange clouds, the surface of the sea, the boy and the ground, the fake sun and a fake crystal ball. The first 3 are from photos, the last two are made up by myself with Photoshop techniques and tools. Now, all the objects look like in one environment. I was trying to make the image match the color of the fake sun, since it is the shiniest part of the image. Therefore, the tone of the image will be yellowish orange. The theme of the image will be mystery. Sun is abnormally huge, the boy is standing in front of the sun on a high and steep ground, holding a crystal ball, just like a little witch.

There are quite some challenges I met in this project, like the colors of the original 3 images don’t go along with each other, the surface of the sea need to have reflection of the sun shine, etc. Therefore, in this project I would say this biggest effort I made is to integrate the objects to make it look like in one environment, which required the techniques in image adjustment and level adjustment.

2 Comments » | Tags: fun, Photoshop | Delicious Stumbleupon Digg

Toy Room - Photoshop: brush, vanishing point transform and more

Posted by Jen in design & art, tutorials on May 27th, 2009

With given components of the toys, I designed a 3-D environment (walls and floor and window) and a colorful toy box with shadows and vanishing point, plus a photo frame.

giftbox_final_less

A few highlights of this photoshop creative:

The brush I created is for the surface of toy box. The original brush is from the Assorted brush set, named concentric circles. I basically modified its master diameter to 200px and set the shape dynamics settings: size Jitter to 100%, minimum diameter to 15%. For the colorful background of the toy box, I actually customized another brush from Assorted brushes, called texture 6. I modified its master diameter to a much larger one and added the color dynamics feature to make it vary in Hue and saturatioin as well. In order to make the white circles integrated into the whole painting, I used the blend mode Lighten and opacity 90%. Then I think the white concentric cirle really goes with the abstract background of the toy box painting.

customized_brush21 giftbox_layers

I am using the CS version, therefore, I created the 3-point perspective all by transforming, without the vanishing point filter. I used the lines as the guide for the perpective, as shown in the image of the perspective box.

giftbox_perspective1

I set the environment as a corner of a room with a window on one side. I think this way, it will make it clear to the audience where the light source located. And having a little witch floating outside the window make the picture more interesting. Everything including the window, wall, floor and toys in the enviroment is transformed into 3-D.

The shadows are made according to the light source from the window. As the window is on the left side of the environment, all the shadows are heading toward the right side, except the shadow of the motocyle, because it is leaning on the left side wall, just underneathe the window, its shadow is on the wall.

The first frame is made from the texture of the roof on the house (one of the toys). The 3-D effect (bigger pattern in the middle, small pattern on the sides) are achieved by utilizing the technique of alpha channel. I like this effect, it looks pretty real.

2 Comments » | Tags: design, Photoshop | Delicious Stumbleupon Digg

red mountain - digital painting

Posted by Jen in design & art on March 30th, 2009

Presented here are two versions of the digital painting, red mountain. One for oil painting, one for crayon. Tablet and brush tools in photoshop are used.

landscape1