Alison 

344 creative works found

• 

  Alison
  by littlegirllost

• 

  Down the steps (Jan 2008 Acrylic) Alison B Allen
  by fatchickengirl

  I went to Fountains Abbey Yorkshire with my mother in 2005, she took a photo of me at the top of these steps (that led nowhere) and I took one of her from the top. I painted this quick and feel I got the light and the atmosphere. I don’t normally do landscape but this, for some reason, worked.

• Dodging and Burning
  by Alison Johnston

  For some reason, people go a funny shade of green when one starts talking about Dodging and Burning …. nothing to fear at all. I’ve ju…

  For some reason, people go a funny shade of green when one starts talking about Dodging and Burning …. nothing to fear at all. I’ve just realised that I haven’t got any little images to insert in this tutorial …. I’ll make them later. Dodging and Burning is not difficult at all, when you realise that 20 low opacity strokes are better than one huge Dodge or Burn stroke. D&B is used to create precise shadow/highlight and can certainly add enormous amounts of lift/punch to an image. Most people would duplicate the layer to do some D&B on, and this is fine until you are working on a 10/15/20mb file and everytime you duplicate the layer the image size doubles. Unless you have a huge amount of RAM, your computer will slow down and sometimes even freeze. Is there a solution …. of course there is, its photoshop. So you’ve been working on an image, and naturally taken snapshots along the way. Now you decide that you would like to do some D&B. Click on the new layer icon on the bottom of the layers palette. Go to Edit>Fill>50%gray>click ok and that’s it LOL, nah, only kidding. Change the blend mode of this layer to soft light. Go grab the Burn tool (example), select whether you want to burn the highlights, midtones or shadows from the top menu and I would suggest quite strongly that you use a very low opacity – around 10% to start out with. I usually use a very soft brush for this and set the size according to what I’m going to be doing. The sheer beauty of using the 50% gray layer set to soft light is that you can simply turn the layer on and off to view your progress – don’t like what you’ve done … trash it and start again. Use exactly the same principle for the Dodge tool. Yet another way to D&B. Click on the new layer icon on the bottom of the layers palette, change the blend mode to soft light (without filling it with 50% gray), select your brush tool and make sure the foreground colour is set to black. Lower your brush opacity in the top menu bar to round about 10% again and start brushing where you want to Burn (darken) the area. Do exactly the same thing, only with white as the foreground colour to do some Dodging (lighten). Yet another interesting take on the above is that you can D&B with colours. Try it … grab your f/ground colour as red (example), check the opacity is down and Dodge or Burn away with that colour. Perhaps even pick a dark red (example) from the image itself to use as the Burn colour. Have fun, and don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in. The sheer joy of photoshop is all the fun you can have with it.

• Making Fog/Mist in Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  You may want to add some atmosphere to an image in the form of fog/mist and we can do this quite easily in Photoshop. First I’d like t…

  You may want to add some atmosphere to an image in the form of fog/mist and we can do this quite easily in Photoshop. First I’d like to thank MARK GERMAN for letting me use his Silence Lane image in this tutorial. If you don’t have an image to try this tutorial out on, you will have to contact Mark to ask his permission to use it. Here is our start image Our image with one application of fog/mist And I added another layer of fo/mist because I wanted to cover the bottom right of the image a little more. A larger view of the finished image is available HERE So lets get started. Open your image, duplicate and close the original. I want you to click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, or you can go to the top menu bar and go Layer>New>Layer, or press Ctrl+Shift+n. Making sure the new layer is active and that your foreground/background colours are set to the default of black/white (press d on the keyboard if they aren’t, or if white is the f/ground and black the b/ground, press x on the keyboard) go to the filter menu in the top tool bar and choose Render>Clouds. In this tutorial I have applied Render>Clouds once, if you would like some variation on this press Ctrl+f on the keyboard to repeat but you will also notice that the clouds appear differently each time. To get some rather different effects, instead of pressing Ctrl+f – press Ctrl+Alt+f ....... try it and see :-) So now we’re going to give the clouds a little blur. Go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur and you can set the same amounts as I have in the image below. Most of what you do from now on will vary according to each image, and what it is you are trying to achieve. At the bottom of the layers palette you will see a little icon with FX on it, 2nd from left, I want you to click on that and choose Blending Options from the menu – alternatively you can go to the top menu bar and choose Layer>LayerStyle>Blending Options – and a dialogue box will appear like the one in the image below, I’ve highlighted the part of the dialogue box that we will be using next – ‘Blend If’ Make sure that ‘Blend If’ in the highlighted red area is set to gray. You’ll notice that the sliders have a triangle at each end (black and white) we will be concentrating on the black end, so don’t worry about the white slider. You’ll also notice that the triangle shape has a small white area in the middle of the slider, this is so that we can split the slider, which we are going to do now. Hold down the alt key (option for mac) and put your cursor to the right of the white area then click and drag the slider, it should now have split into a half triangle. Looking at the image below, move this half of the traingle to 125, then come back and move the left part of the half triangle to 25. When you’ve done that, click ok. Now I want you to press Ctrl+t on the keyboard to bring up the Transform tool, or you can go to Edit>Transform>Scale – you will have to decide at this point where you want the fog/mist to be and bring the top down accordingly, as I’ve done in the next image. What you will have to do next is throw in a gradient to take away the harsh transition. Making sure your f/ground and b/ground are set to the default, select the gradient tool and on the top menu bar make sure that black to transparent is selected. You need to do the gradient from the top to the bottom, BUT not from the top of the image, from above the harsh line of the clouds layer. You may have to do this more than once, just keep trying until you get a nice transition. In the image below I did the gradient 4 times till I got it how I wanted it. I then took the opacity of the layer down to 70%. I then duplicated the clouds layer by dragging it to the create a new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette and with that layer selected I grabbed my move tool from the side menu bar and moved it up until it was were I wanted it. Now I have a harsh transition at the bottom of this clouds layer, so do the same as above except start at the bottom of the harsh line and work upwards with your gradient. A bit of practice will make this a very simple task. I changed the opacity of this clouds layer to 60%. The image below shows the final work, which btw is different from the image at the top of this tutorial because I couldn’t remember what I had done LOL :-) And the larger image HERE Remember that all of these steps can be used in various ways on different images, not just to create fog/mist and they can be adapted to create the type of fog/mist you want – it is the process that is important.

• 

  Alison's Soul
  by Karl Denton

  With every brush stroke, a dark figure appears, / Blacks and grays blend in one color, / Leaving behind the shape of Alison’s soul, / Just as it was after the loss of innocence, / Just as it was after an eternity of fear and horror. / / The beauty of Alison exists today, / but with her protector helping her on the way. / Alison’s soul is visible to my eyes, my mind. / She is beauty, caring, warm and loving / She has been all but wiped out but from this life / And as I look at this painting she is screaming to come out. / / “Alison’s soul” is a painting dedicated to the loss of innocence / the unspeakable crimes that betray love and trust. Any sales of items related to this piece will be donated to help abused children. The original is an oil on canvas 22” x 30”

• Grunge Text/Type
  by Alison Johnston

  So lets make some grungy text. You may never need this, but it’s simple to do … so why not! The image below is the only image we ar…

  So lets make some grungy text. You may never need this, but it’s simple to do … so why not! The image below is the only image we are going to be using today, but you will need the larger file, so clicky on THIS link. Copyright is mine – yada, yada. Open Photoshop and create a new file 800px X 600px, background set to white. Open the larger image (which you will have saved to your computer) and with your move tool selected and the shift key held down, drag the tree image over to your new file. Holding down the shift key will centre the image for you. Working on the trees layer Go to Image>Adjustments>Threshold and I want you to take the slider to the left until it reaches 80 (see image below). We’re aiming to get a lot of white in the image. Next we’re going to add the type. Select a foreground colour, I used Red. Grab your type tool and select Horizontal type – then go ahead and type something, I used RedBubble. (Arial Black > Regular>100pt>Sharp – for those who may be interested) Move your text to where you would like it to be, you can place it similar to where I placed, but it will need to be over some of the black. Once you’ve played around with this a couple times you’ll get a general idea of where the text should go. Before we go any further, we have to rasterize the text. You can either right click on the text layer and choose rasterize type or go to Layer>Rasterize>Type. Now the fun begins :-) click on the trees layer, the one you did the threshold adjustment on and select your magic wand tool, check that the contiguous box on the top menu bar is unchecked and select some of the black. Because you have the contiguous box unchecked, the magic wand tool will select all of the black areas. Now, hide the trees layer by clicking the little eye icon and click on the type layer, then press the delete key. Go to Select>deselect or press ctrl D on the keyboard. And there you have it, some grungey type text. Use your move tool to position the text wherever you want and you can drag the trees layer to the little garbage bin icon … cos you don’t need it anymore. I’ve cropped my final image. Larger file is HERE Enjoy playing, and if I haven’t made anything clear just ask me.

• What lengths must we go to?
  by JenniferB

  What lengths do we go to / to validate our existence / and immortalise ourselves?

  This once is screaming out for me to do an image of it… / Sigh… Yet another unfinished project. xox

• Working Smarter Using Adjustment Layers In Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  Adjustment layers are a great way to work in Photoshop, they give you the flexibility to go back and alter adjustments on the fly – makin…

  Adjustment layers are a great way to work in Photoshop, they give you the flexibility to go back and alter adjustments on the fly – making sure that you don’t have to lose any of the work you have done by undoing steps to correct an error. Another positive about adjustment layers is that they add very little size to your file, which is a bonus if you don’t have 8 gigs of RAM at your disposal :-) I’m going to give you a kind of example here using a Hue Saturation adjustment layer to add colour back into an image. What you need to bear in mind is that it applies to all of the adjustments that are available under adjustment layers. Adjustment layers can also be useful when using blending modes on a single image without having to duplicate the image and add to the file size. Try this one yourself. Open an image, duplicate it of course :-) and close the original – now go to the little ying yang looking symbol at the bottom of the layers palette and click on it to bring up the menu – click on levels for now. When the dialogue box opens, click OK without making any adjustments, then pick a blend mode …. lets say multiply …. your image will now have used itself, to darken itself …. or you could say that you have used the image to darken the image without having to duplicate the background and then apply a blend mode. Take a look at your file size ….. You can also turn the adjustment layer on and off, reduce the opacity, add a mask to darken certain areas, use a gradient to edit the mask or perhaps a brush. There are several ways that you can do just about anything in Photoshop, and bringing back colour into an image is no exception. By default photoshop has the history set at 20 states of undo, so if you reach 21 states any previous work will not be available to go back and edit without losing all of the work you have done. You can change the amount of history states available to you by going to Edit>Preferences>Performance and at the top right hand side you will see History States | Cache Levels – just change the history states to a higher amount if you like. Using adjustment layers, rather than permanent adjustments, will give you much more flexibility in your editing capabilities. Getting into the habit of saving your image as a .psd file right from the outset and then remembering to ‘save’ along the way … press Ctrl + S or go to the top menu bar and press ‘save’, will make sure that you are never disappointed if PS freezes or your computer has a hissy fit and dies. Lets get back to the tut :-) I’m going to add some colour back into an image that I have used a Hue/Sat adjustment layer to desaturate. Why not just go to the top menu bar and use Image>Adjustment>Desaturate you might be asking – because it is a permanent adjustment – one that I may decide that I don’t want there in the future and doing this change with an adjustment layer gives me the option of turning it on and off using the little eye icon, going back in and adding some saturation back into the image etc., If I try to do that 25states later using the permanent adjustment I will lose all of my later work. There are also several ways to add colour back into an image. You can start with your B&W image, place a new layer above that, choose a colour and fill the layer, change the blend mode to colour, soft light etc., add a mask, invert the mask, and then start adding back in the colour – but what if you decide that you don’t like that colour ? You then have to choose another colour, lock the transparent pixels of the layer, then fill with the new colour. You can also create a new blank layer, choose a colour to paint with, change the blend mode of the brush from the top menu bar and paint away – but still, if you decide you don’t like the colour then you will have to go through the process for the first method. What if you could just move a slider to create a different colour ? Now wouldn’t that be a whole lot simpler ? Here is our start image, just click through for the larger image. The first adjustment layer we are going to use is a hue/sat and we are going to desaturate the image. What you’ll notice in the below image is that I forgot to take a screenshot of the desaturated image and had to go back and take one after I had made several adjustments. Its as simple as turning off the adjustment layers. Next you are going to use a hue/sat adjustment layer again, but this time you are going to check the colorize button when the dialogue box comes up. Then go and adjust the sliders till you get a colour that you like. This is probably the most time consuming part of this adjustment until you become familiar with where the colours lie, and using the saturation and lightness adjustments. I chose a blue colour that was similar to the original image, you can choose whatever colour you like. Obviously that isn’t quite what we want to happen here :-) Adjustment layers come with a mask – that’s the little white box on the right hand side of the adjustment box – click on the mask to make it active and then press Ctrl + i on your keyboard to invert the mask to black (hide all) white is reveal all. You could also go to Image>Adjustments>Invert – just make sure that the mask is active. Grab your paintbrush and start painting back in the pants. You should now have something similar to the image below. I haven’t painted back in all of the pants, I’m just showing you how to achieve the adjustments. Just say that you had taken this image in B&W originally, and I pop over to your place and notice what you’re doing and say ….. the pants on that scarecrow weren’t blue :-) The easy way to choose another colour is to double click on the adjustment box itself – not the layer mask – and the dialogue box will open and you can adjust the colour to something new. What I would normally do when re-colouring an image is duplicate the blue layer, turn off the visibility of the original blue layer and then make the adjustment to the copy. This way you will still have the choice of reverting to the blue copy if you decide you want that one instead. In fact, you could make as many different coloured trousers/pants adjustment layers as you wanted. When doing something like this it is wise to get into the habit of naming the adjustment layers. You can do this by double clicking on the text next to the mask and renaming this what you want. You can see in the image below that I have carried on with a few more adjustment layers and named them. I’ve also done 3 different shades of red for the jacket, shoes and pocket on the pants. I would then do a different red for the scarf. I’ve also done the hair and the flowers, both of these more need more refining to make them look realisitic but I would do the refinements on adjustment layers. I’ve highlighted the file size at the bottom of the image. You may also notice as you progress with your design, composite, colourising etc., that the adjustment layers can start to get out of hand. This is where Grouping layers together can come in very handy. Select which adjustment layer you would like grouped together i.e. in this particular image you might group together the clothing as I have done – although I accidently added the hair and shoes to the group and couldn’t be bothered going back and grabbing another screenshot – so just ignore those 2 layers :-) Click on an adjustment layer then hold down your Ctrl key to select the next one etc., If your layers are one above the other you can click on the top one, then shift click on the bottom one to select them. Next go to the little downward triangle near the top right hand side of your layers palette, and from the menu select the option ‘New Group From Layers’ Each of the layers you chose will now be in a folder which you can name, I used Clothing in the example below. All you have to do now is open that folder using the little arrow to the left of the folder to have access to the adjustment layers, but more importantly you can still edit each of those adjustment layers. And that’s it really. Remember to save often while you are working on a file, as I said at the beginning of this.

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  Alison
  by Dee Boylan

  My amazing daughter Alison…..such an ageless little one…. / .....the original pic was taken by Peter Mciver…reworked by me…..

• Making Eyes Shine In Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  I’m all about the easiest way to get from A to B and the process in this tutorial of making the eyes sparkle and shine in a portrait, is …

  I’m all about the easiest way to get from A to B and the process in this tutorial of making the eyes sparkle and shine in a portrait, is definately easy. You could use this on animals as well if you wanted. You can download the image below to practise on if you like, just click through for the larger image. Open the image in Photoshop, and click on the little ying yang symbol at the bottom of the layers palette to create a curves adjustment layer. Do not adjust any setting, just click OK, then change the layer blend mode to Screen. Click on the mask, and then press Ctrl + i on your keyboard to invert. Or you can go to Image>Adjustments>Invert. Double click on the writing (Curves 1) to change the name of this layer to Iris. Click on the ying yang symbol again and click on curves, don’t change any settings just click OK. Change the blend mode of this layer to Multiply, click on the mask and hit Ctrl + i on the keyboard to invert the mask. Rename this layer Pupil. You should end up with something similar to the image below. Making sure that the foreground colour is white, that you are working on the ‘pupil’ layer mask, go and grab the pencil tool making sure that you are using a hard edge. You can simply press B on the keyboard to access the brush tool and to further scroll through to select the pencil tool use Shift + B on the keyboard. You’ll probably have to zoom in on this image to about 200%. Place the pencil over the pupil and use the right bracket key on the keyboard to increase (or the left bracket to decrease) the size of the pencil till if is covering the pupil and then click once. Go and do the same thing on the other eye :) Still using the pencil and adjusting the size accordingly, go over the outside band of the iris – the dark bit – I don’t know what they are called :) Look at the image below for an idea of what I am doing. At the moment this will look really dark, but we haven’t finished with it yet. Still on the Pupil Mask go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and perhaps use a radius of 1 on this image ….. it will be different on a larger image of course. Then take the opacity of the layer down to whatever suits you. I used about 25% which I can go back and change at any time because I have used an adjustment layer. Lets work on the Iris Mask now. With your f/ground set to white and a soft edged brush (adjust with the bracket keys to suit) and making sure that you are working on the mask by clicking on it – we’re going to look at the specular highlights first. This image has quite a few and I’ve chosen to leave the largest ones alone, just click once on some of the smaller ones. This is going to look pretty weird when you first do it :-) Just remember that you are working on a mask and by pressing X on the keyboard you can paint out any of the work you want to change – just remember to press X to switch back to white :) Still working on the layer mask, go to the top option bar and reduce the opacity of the brush to 50%. Now zoom in and paint over the Iris, because of the layer stack it won’t make any difference if you paint over the darker adjustments you just did. I took the opacity of the layer down to 50%. You could go ahead now and sharpen the eyes with your favourite method, or you could continue to adjust and enhance the eyes. I went ahead and added a bit of depth to the eyelashes. There is a tutorial on it HERE Once I was happy with the eyelashes I merged the layers … then I decided he might look nice with different coloured eyes :) I used a Selective Colour adjustment layer to turn his eyes green and finally flattened the image, duplicated the b/ground, set the blend mode to overlay used Filter>Other>High Pass to do some sharpening, and took the opacity of the layer down to 50%. And here is the end result – have fun :) EDIT – Here is a comparison image. 1st is the original – 2nd the enhanced – 3rd the colour change.

• Another Portrait Effect In Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  I think this is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get a nice portrait in Photoshop. Again, it isn’t beauty retouching. Unlike the…

  I think this is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get a nice portrait in Photoshop. Again, it isn’t beauty retouching. Unlike the Dreamy Glow effect this should :-) be a little more realistic. You can use the image here to start with or use one of your own. Once you have the image open, duplicate it and then you are going to run the Surface Blur filter. If you are working with a version of Photoshop prior to CS2 you are going to have to use the Median filter, this filter isn’t quite as good as the Surface Blur filter but you should still be able to achieve a similar result. I’ve divided my image into two so that you can see what is going on – don’t you do this :-) unless you want to of course. You are looking to keep the lips, teeth, eyes to a certain degree – see image below. If you are working on the same image you can just punch in the same numbers. Still working on the blurred layer, hold down the Alt key and click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette. This will make the mask black (hide all) which is exactly what we want, because we are going to brush back in the Surface Blur. Make sure your f/ground colour is set to white and you have a comfortable size soft edged brush – start painting back in the face avoiding the eyebrows, eyes, mouth and teeth. If you make a mistake, just switch your f/ground to black by pressing x key on the keybaord, fix it, press x again to switch back to white. If you want to make sure that you have painted back in every bit of blur, Hold down the Alt key and click on the mask this will give you a B&W version – see below – and you can fix it from there. Alt click on the mask to take it back to the normal view. I’ve taken the opacity of the surface blur layer down to 80%, you can choose whatever you want. Normally, this is the time where you would start evening out the skin tones, but you’re not going to do that :-) Before you go any further, rename the layer you just did the surface blur on to ….. hmmm …. Surface Blur. Making sure that layer is active, hold the Alt key and click on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette – a small dialogue box will appear. If you don’t change the mode in the dialogue box, you won’t get the ‘Fill with soft light neutral colour 50% grey’ Now you’re going to pick a colour from the original b/ground to use on the face – so, with a soft edged brush selected hold down the Alt key and the brush will change to the eyedropper tool – once you have the colour selected just release the Alt key to go back to the brush. I used R-192 G-141 B-121. This is going to look terrible when you first brush it on – panic not – just dial the opacity of the layer down to about 40%. You will have to be quite careful with this layer, remember you are not working on a mask. The image below has the opacity at 100% and is not completely covered so that you can see what is happening. Turn the opacity down and complete the skin. The image below shows the completed colour with the opacity at 40% You can try some things now, like reducing the opacity of the surface blur layer … if you are using this image try about 55% and you could stop here if you wanted to – but there is more. Leave the opacity of the surface blur layer at 80% for the moment and the colour layer at 40%. All skin has some texture in it and you are going to replace some of the texture that was wiped out with the surface blur filter. Hold down the Alt key and press on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette – fill out the little dialogue box as you did earlier. Now go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise and use 5, Uniform, Monochromatic – press OK to accept. Now go to Filter>Stylize>Emboss and try an angle of -90, height 15, amount 100%. Next go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and on this particular image try a radius of 0.5 pixels. And there you have the texture for the new skin. Once you are happy with the portrait, flatten the image duplicate the layer change the blend mode to overlay and sharpen with the High Pass Filter – Alt click on the layer mask icon to get an inverted mask (black – hide all) and with a soft edged brush, brush back in the areas you want sharp. Try different opacity levels for the surface blur layer and the texture layer. I’ve gone ahead and lowered the opacity of the colour layer to 20%, left the blur and texture layers at 80% then used seperate layers created in the same way as you did before but without clipping them with the previous layer, to burn the eyebrows, eyelashes, eye makeup and hair – then did the same to use some dodge on the eyes and hair. You could also use another layer to slightly sharpen the image overall to give the skin a less blurred look, as I have in the image below.

• Selective Colouring With A Twist in Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  I like selective colouring, when it’s done properly of course. Good thing is that it is relatively easy to do and can certainly add dram…

  I like selective colouring, when it’s done properly of course. Good thing is that it is relatively easy to do and can certainly add drama and impact to an image. Grab yourself an image, use an adjustment layer (well I hope you use an adjustment layer) to desaturate the image, or use one of the many other methods available in Photoshop to do it, add a mask, paint back in the colour you want – easy – the problem with that is that people mostly do it that way and end up with a B&W image with a bit of colour on it. Lets try another variation on this to get an image just a bit different from the norm :) You can get the image below to practise on if you like, copyright is mine etc., (because though it’s a sucky image, it’s still my sucky image) Open the Image, duplicate the image by either dragging it to the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette or pressing Ctrl + J on the keyboard, then hide the b/ground layer by clicking on the eyeball. This is just a habit with me, in this case you probably have no need to do it. Go to the create new adjustment layer at the bottom of the layers palette and choose Hue/Saturation to bring up the dialogue box. Check the Colorize box and choose a colour that you would like the background of your image to be. You can see what I have chosen in the screenshot below, don’t forget that you can fiddle around with the Saturation and Lightness – I haven’t. Grab a brush, check that the f/ground is set to black, click on the Hue/Sat mask to make it active and paint back in the area that you would to have colour. You could have made a selection prior to doing the Hue/Sat adjustment with an Alpha Channel, the pen tool, quick mask etc., I prefer to paint back in the selective colour. If you make a boo boo whilst painting on the mask, just switch the f/ground to white, correct and then switch back to black. And that is it basically. I’ve gone ahead in my example and used a curves adjustment to lighten my son, held down the Alt key, then dragged the mask from the Hue/Sat layer onto the curves adjustment layer, then pressed Ctrl + i on the keyboard to invert it. I then did a Stamp Visible Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E (make sure you are on the topmost layer before you do this) or, if you run out of fingers, you can hold down the Alt key go to the little downward facing arrow at the top right of the layers palette and select Merge Visible – don’t let go of the Alt key until you have clicked on Merge Visible, you’ll figure out how to make sure it does work, when it doesn’t work for you :) On the newly merged layer I then did an Unsharp Mask (how primitive of me), added a layer mask and grabbed the layer mask from the curves layer to make sure that it only affected the selectively coloured area. Have fun with it. As an end thought to this, make sure you do all your image corrections before you do this process – you’ll probably notice that I didn’t with my image.

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  Twisted
  by Alison Johnston

  More experiments with Filters in Photoshop

• Swirls and Twirls with Filters In Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  Does this technique have a practical purpose, probably not really. You could use it as a backdrop in a composition, or maybe as a backgr…

  Does this technique have a practical purpose, probably not really. You could use it as a backdrop in a composition, or maybe as a background in the header for a website. You could also create some artwork to sell as I have done with the following Mostly it’s about playing and seeing what different images you can come up with. I’ve also tried some variations to the technique I used in the images above and came up with more interesting stuff – so it really is all about playing. A word of caution – I would definately grab a pen and paper to jot down what you’ve done as you go along because you really don’t want to be trying this out on a 5,000px X 3,000px 300dpi - I would suggest that you use a 800px X 600px 72 dpi file do whatever you want to do (keeping notes) and then do it on the larger image if you happen to like the end result. The filters will take a lot longer to run on a larger size file and with the likes of the Radial Blur Filter you are going to use it at ‘Best’ rather than ‘Good’. The good news is that the filters used are available in all versions of Photoshop. Create a new file 800 X 600 @ 72 dpi and then duplicate the b/ground by using Ctrl + J on the keyboard or drag the b/ground to the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Turn off the b/ground layer for now. You may or may not end up using this layer depends if you’d like to use a solid colour or gradient to blend your final image with. Make sure the default colours are set to black and white, then go to Filter>Render>Clouds. This is where teaching this gets a little tricky – you can accept the default clouds or press Ctrl + F on the keyboard to get some more variation, that will be entirely up to you. I haven’t done any variation with mine, but you will end up with different effects if you repeat the filter. The next part is tricky as well :) Go to Filter>Pixelate>Mezzotint and choose Long Strokes from the drop down menu. I’ve tried a couple of other effects from the pixelate menu and they have worked quite well – experiment. Now go to Filter>Blur>Radial Blur and use the settings that I have below. Once it renders press Ctrl + F on the keyboard so it renders again. You should end up with something similar to the second image Duplicate the layer you just did the radial blur on and turn the topmost layer off by clicking on the little eyeball. Click on the other radial blur layer to make it active and go to Filter>Distort>Twirl and you can punch in the numbers I have below if you like. the amount of Twirl you use will change the final image, so again, experiment. You can also try out some of the other Distort filters if you like. Click the eyeball to turn the top layer back on and click on the layer to make it active. Go to Filter>Distort>Twirl and you can punch in the numbers I have or try some of your own. You will notice this is a negative number. Once you have completed that, change the blend mode of the top layer to Lighten. Isn’t that pretty :-) You can add colour in a couple of ways, but I’m going to use a Hue/Sat adjustment layer here. So, working on the top layer, go to the bottom of the layers palette and click on the little ying yang symbol and choose Hue/Sat from the menu. Once the dialogue opens, check the Colorize box. Fiddle around with the colours until you get something you like, then Clip the Hue/Sat adjustment layer with the layer below. Hold Down the Alt key and hover the cursor on the line that seperates the hue/sat layer from the topmost layer, wait till that strange symbol appears then click. Click on the first layer you did the Twirl on and repeat the steps but use a different colour … and remember to clip the hue/sat adjustment layer with the Twirled layer. You might end up with something similar to the image below That is the basis of the tutorial. You could merge down the layers by merging visible and this will leave you free to add a gradient to the b/ground layer you turned off right at the start of the tutorial and then change the blend mode to get an interesting effect. You could also look at my tutorial on making a mirror image effect and try it out on your image. You’ll notice I’ve done that on the image below. I’ve also gone ahead and duplicated the layer, then changed the blend mode to Multiply. I then merged the 2 layers and used a Colour Balance adjustment layer. I then duplicated the layers and ran the twirl filter on both of them again and changed the blend mode to Darken. Here is another one that I was messing around with earlier, which was done using some different Distort Filters. Have fun with it :)

• Faking Tilt Shift Photography In Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  From Wikipedia HERE _Tilt-shift photography refers to the use of camera movement…

  From Wikipedia HERE Tilt-shift photography refers to the use of camera movements on small- and medium format cameras; it usually requires the use of special lenses. “Tilt-shift” actually encompasses two different types of movements: rotation of the lens relative to the image plane, called tilt, and movement of the lens parallel to the image plane, called shift. Tilt is used to control the orientation of the plane of focus (PoF), and hence the part of an image that appears sharp; it makes use of the Scheimpflug principle. Shift is used to control perspective, often involving the convergence of vertical parallel lines, as when photographing tall buildings. In many cases, “tilt-shift photography” refers to the use of tilt and a large aperture to achieve a very shallow depth of field. Tilt shift faking is the process whereby we take a normal life size location or object and give it an optical illusion to make it appear as a miniature scale model. Probably the best images to use are those that look down on a subject i.e. from a high angle – this isn’t always the case though and a bit of fiddling in Photoshop will soon let you know if the image is suitable. Definately one of the easier effects to achieve in Photoshop – so lets get rolling. I would very much like to thank Steve Carter for the use of his image Shieldaig Village in February. Steve has some fabulous images of Loch Torridon and other places that I’ve never heard of :-) over at his site – which you can find HERE THIS is the link to the images of the latest local photos(Highlands) I have resized the image a little for the purpose of this tutorial. Please be respectful of Steve’s copyright to this image. Open the image, duplicate the image and close the original. Duplicate the image by dragging it to the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette or pressing Ctrl + J on the keyboard. Make sure your f/ground is set to black and the b/ground to white then click on the gradient filter, go to the top toolbar and make sure the filter is set to f/ground to b/ground i.e. black to white and click on the Reflected Gradient icon. Next click on the Quick Mask Icon at the bottom of the side toolbar, or press Q on the keyboard. In this particular image, you want the main row of houses to be in focus, see the image below for the start and finish position I used for the gradient. Once you have done that, the mask will appear, exist quick mask mode by clicking on the icon on the side toolbar, or pressing Q on the keyboard – marching ants will appear. Next you need to go to Filter>Blur>Lens Blur and the teeny weeny dialogue box will open :) I did adjust my gradient after previewing it in the Lens Blur dialogue box, just take it a little bit higher than shown in the example above. You can punch in the same settings as I have, see image below. Most miniatures are painted bright colours, so next you are going to use a Hue and Saturation adjustment layer to boost the colours. Click on the little ying yang symbol at the bottom of the layers palette (create new adjustment layer) and choose Hue/Saturation from the menu. On the Master, pump the colours up quite a bit, I chose +60 on the saturation slider – just watch what is going on with the houses, you are going to add a mask in a minute so the changes only apply to the part that is in focus. Hold down the Alt key and click on the add layer mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Grab a soft edged white brush and making sure the mask is active by clicking on it, paint back in the colour to the houses, road, cars etc., all things that are in focus. You can boost the Saturation a little more if you want by double clicking on the adjustment layer thumbnail. And there we have our miniature village. I went ahead and added a small amount of sharpening to the houses. Bear in mind that the settings used are relevant to this image 800×507@72dpi.

• Fix A Blown Out Sky In Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  I can’t remember where I first saw this tutorial, but its been around for a couple of years and it ’s a very quick and easy fix for blown…

  I can’t remember where I first saw this tutorial, but its been around for a couple of years and it ’s a very quick and easy fix for blown out skies. You can borrow my horrible image to practise on if you like, copyright is mine etc., The image was taken on an overcast, hazy day and probably really wouldn’t be worth keeping, but there will be images that you have with a blown out sky that are worth keeping. Open the image in Photoshop and duplicate the layer by pressing Ctrl + J on the keyboard or dragging it to the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. On the side toolbar select the rectangular marquee tool – reference the image below and make your selection is in a similar place. You can selecting the blown out sky and down into the tree area to get any patches that may be showing through the trees. You should have the marching ants showing. Create a Selective Colour adjustment layer by clicking on the little ying yang symbol at the bottom of the layers palette and selecting Selective Colour. The marching ants will disappear, that’s OK. At the bottom of the selective colour dialogue choose Absolute (see image) and from the drop down menu at the top choose White. Fiddle with the sliders until you get a colour that you like – you can make the colour quite strong because you will be able to take the opacity down later and change the colour altogether if you like (the joys of adjustment layers). I’ve gone a little nuts with my colour to show you how well it works. Make sure your f/ground colour is set to black and the b/ground to white. Click on the mask to make sure you are working on it, then go to Filter>Render>Clouds – you can just click on clouds, or you can hold down the shift key when you click on clouds to get a more intense result. After you have applied the clouds filter you can also use Ctrl + F to get a different effect. I doubled clicked on the Selective Colour thumbnail and changed the colour, I also took the layer opacity down to 65%. Here is the final image and then a comparison image – Have fun!

• Using The History Brush Tool In Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  With more people using adjustment layers, the History Brush Tool isn’t used as often as it used to be. It is still useful to know how th…

  With more people using adjustment layers, the History Brush Tool isn’t used as often as it used to be. It is still useful to know how the tool works though, just in case you ever find the need to use it. I’m more likely to use the HB tool in image restoration than anywhere else, but it can do other things – lets have a look at a couple of them here. After you have performed a change to an image in Photoshop, it becomes a History State – and by default, Photoshop allows 20 history states. So once you hit 21 history states, the first change you did to the image will disappear forever. You can change the amount of History States in Photoshop by going to Preferences and changing the amount. The more History States you choose, the more memory Photoshop will need/use. You can borrow my image below to practise on if you like, the copyright remains mine etc., If your History Palette isn’t visible, go to Window>History to open it. Open my/an image in Photoshop. Lets use the image itself to do some dodging and burning on the flower. You can either press the Y key on your keyboard to bring up the History Brush tool, or go to the side toolbar to open it. Once you have the History Brush selected, you can use the top toolbar to choose a brush size/type, change the blend mode, opacity and flow. Change the mode to Multiply – Opacity to 25% and leave the flow at 100% (unless you want to change it) Go to the Layers Palette and duplicate the b/ground by dragging it to the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, or pressing Ctrl + J on the keyboard. Go to the History Palette and click in the area at the left of the start image (where the eyball would normally be in the layers palette) See image below. Now paint on the image in some of the darker areas to give them some more depth. After you have done this – go to the blend mode and change it to Screen, then paint on the lighter areas. You can vary the opacity of the brush as well if you want. Change the blend mode of the history brush to Soft Light and paint over the b/ground to darken it, you can change the opacity of the brush to 100% for this. Try out different blend modes and opacities to see what you can come up with. You can also use different brush tip sizes and shapes. A comparison image is below. So lets look at other things you can do with the History Brush. Have the image open again and duplicate the layer , go to Filter>Artistic>Paint Daubs and choose something you like. Mine were Brush size 8 – Sharpness 7 and Brush Type simple. Take a snapshot of the image – see image below. Name the snapshot Paint Daubs. Name the layer you did the filter on, Paint Daubs also. Because the history brush has to have a corresponding layer we are going to delete the contents of the layer named paint daubs. Select the layer in the layers palette (not the history palette). Press Ctrl + A on your keyboard to select the contents of the layer, press either the backspace button or delete button on your keyboard to clear the layer contents, then press Ctrl + D to deselect the marching ants. You should end up with a palette that looks like the image below With the History Brush selected, in the History Palette click on the area on the Paint Daub state which says ‘Set the source for the history brush’ (see earlier image) Make sure you are working on the Paint Daub layer in the layers palette and brush away. You can change the blend mode, change the opacity etc., You can also duplicate the b/ground again, use a different filter, follow the steps above to take a snapshot, clear the contents of the layer, set the history brush source and paint the b/ground (example) I chose a palette knife effect for the b/ground in the image below. You can continue to build up different effects to your hearts content using this method. If you make a mistake while painting, simply use the eraser tool to correct and then carry on. One of the ways that you are most likely to see the History Brush used, is in image restoration. Along with the Dust and Scratches filter, Surface Blur, Median Blur etc., it can save huge amounts of time, compared to using the Healing brushes, Clone stamp tool etc., So lets have a quick look at how that works. You can use the image below to practise on, copyright is mine etc., It comes from another tutorial that you’ll find in my journal entries, where I took a new image and made it old. Open the image and then duplicate it (Ctrl + J) You will be concentrating on the white and black spider lines that I made on the image. Go to Filter>Noise>Dust and Scratches and you can use the same numbers that I have if you like. Click OK to accept the settings, then take a snapshot – name the snapshot dust and scratches. Go back to the layer in the layers palette and rename that as well. Then use Ctrl + A to select the contents of the layer – hit the backspace key to clear the layer and then hit Ctrl + D to deselect the marching ants. Grab the History Brush and in the History Palette click in the little box to the left of the Dust and Scratches snapshot to set that as the source. Make sure that you are working on the Dust and Scratches layer in the layer palette – choose an appropriate sized soft edged brush and check that the top menu is set to Normal and 100% opacity (you can try a smaller amount if you want). Zoom in on the layer, and then start to paint over the spider lines – see image below. Continue to go over the white and black spider lines until they have gone. You can see in the final image below that I haven’t lowered the opacity enough on the bridge (where the white spider lines were) so it looks smudged. The idea would be to take a bit more care :) Have fun!

• Selections, Adjustment Layers and Effects
  by Alison Johnston

  This isn’t going to be a start to finish project, but rather a couple of different ways you could be using selections and adjustment laye…

  This isn’t going to be a start to finish project, but rather a couple of different ways you could be using selections and adjustment layers that you may not have thought of. You can borrow my image below to practise on if you like, copyright is mine etc., Lets look at doing dodging and burning with some very loose selections and a bit of mask blurring. Open the image and grab the Lasso tool. You can press L on the keyboard or access it from the side tool bar. Select the road area – see image below – when you get to the straight parts of the image, hold down the shift key to so the Lasso Tool draws a straight line. Hold down the Alt key on the keyboard, then go to the bottom of the layers palette and click on the ying yang symbol (new fill or adjustment layer) and click on Curves. A small dialogue will appear (you can name it burn if you like), change the blend mode to Luminosity and click OK – the Curves dialogue box will then appear. Try to keep part of the road in view, then you can pull the line down to where mine is if you want. See image below. Click OK to accept the change. You can fix up the mask at this stage if it needs a little adjusting. Grab a white brush and paint :) There is an obvious transition line, so it needs fixing. Click on the layer mask to make it active, and then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur I punched in 20 pixels for this image – that will vary of course depending on what size image you are working on. Click OK to accept your blur settings and then you can switch the adjustment layer on and off to see what you have done. If you don’t like it, click on the curves adjustment thumbnail (not the mask) and the Curves adjustment dialogue will appear and you can change the settings to suit. Duplicate the adjustment layer and click on the eyeball of the ‘Burn’ layer to hide it. Double click on the adjustment layers thumbnail and when the Curves Dialogue box reappears hold down the Alt key of the keyboard and you will notice that the cancel button changes to ‘reset’, click on that to reset the line. Reference the image below to see where I have moved the line to and voila – some instant dodging. You would normall do that on 2 different parts of the image and on 2 curves adjustment layers. After you have finished the burn process, grab your Lasso (or any selection tool) and select another area and go through the process again. So this gets the mind moving to think …. how else can we use this to do interesting things to our images. What about some colour ? Lets have a look at doing something like that :) With the same image open, go to View in the top toolbar and make sure that “snap’ is ticked, and then in the view menu go to ‘New Guide’ and in the small dialogue box check either Vertical or Horizontal and in the ‘Position’ box type in 50% – a guide will appear. Do the same again, only make sure that if you checked horizontal the first time, that you check vertical this time. You should end up with something like the image below. Grab the Rectangular Marquee tool and draw around one of the 4 sections in the image. The selection should ‘snap’ to the guides. see image below Hold down the Alt key and click on the ying yang symbol at the bottom of the layers palette and choose Solid Colour from the fly out menu. Change the blend mode in the ‘New Layer’ dialogue to soft light and click OK. Now go ahead and choose a colour in the Solid Colour box …. I chose Red. Click OK to accept the colour. Remember that you can change this at any time simply by double clicking on the adjustment layer thumbnail – change the blend mode of the layer if you like, or take the opacity of the layer down. Grab the rectangular marquee tool again and select a different section of the image and run through the whole process again until you have all 4 sections with a different colour. see image below To clear the guides go to View>Clear Guides Whether you do any blurring on those layer masks is entirely up to you. I didn’t on the image above. So can we do something with type in a similar way …. course we can :) Grab the Type Tool from the sidebar, or press T on the keyboard, and type something – I chose ‘A Road’ LOL Hold the Ctrl key on the keyboard and click on the type layer thumbnail, that will load the transparency of the type – grab the type layer and drag it to the little garbage bin at the bottom of the layers, or make sure the layer is highlighted and then click on the little garbage bin at the bottom of the layers palette and then click yes in the dialogue press that comes up or hit enter on the keyboard. You should be able to guess what is going to happen from here :) Hold down the Alt key and click on the ying yang symbol at the bottom of the layers palette and choose solid colour from the fly out menu, change the blend mode to soft layer in the new layer dialogue box that appears and then choose a colour. You might end up with something like the image below. What you’ll notice, is that you can see the road texture through the type. You could do a similar thing with a shape layer. Draw out the shape, select the transparency and then delete the shape layer. Continue on with the usual procedure. You can also use this to produce a coloured vignette around the image. Select the Elliptical marquee tool and draw out an oval kind of shape. To position the oval in between drawing it out, hold down the spacebar and move the mouse to drag it where you want. Release the spacebar to continue enlarging it. Go to Select>Modify>Feather and 50 pixels for this particular image. Go to Select>Inverse or Shift + Ctrl + i and then follow the usual procedure – hold down the Alt key and select whatever adjustment you want from the adjustmet layers fly out menu. I chose solid colour and changed the blend mode to Overlay and picked a dark brown colour. I also chose to give it some more blurring, using Gaussian Blur with a radius of 50 pixels. See image below. You can use any of the adjustments on your images, so don’t just stick to the ones I’ve shown you here. I chose a Pattern Fill layer with Green with Fibres at 300% on the image below and changed the blend mode to Darken. Have fun !

• A Simple Design Effect In Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  This is an extremely simple design effect. Probably image dependant to a certain degree, but try it out and see what you come up with. / ...

  This is an extremely simple design effect. Probably image dependant to a certain degree, but try it out and see what you come up with. Our image is brought to us by lock-e over at the StockExchange site HERE I have resized the image for this tutorial and darkened it a little. Open the image and bring up your Rulers by going to View>Rulers – select the Single Row Marquee tool from the side toolbar, it is nestled with the rectangular marquee tool etc., and create a new blank layer. Make sure the f/ground is set to black – if you are using a dark image use white. And referencing the image below just click and the single row marquee will appear, Alt + Backspace to fill with black/white and then deselect. Duplicate the marquee layer Ctrl + J or drag it to the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette, grab the move tool ( V key on the keyboard) and then drag the duplicated line to where you want it. Continue doing this until you have all the lines as you want them. You might end up with something similar to mine – See image below. If you are happy with the lines merge the line layers into one layer. Select the single column marquee tool and make vertical lines the same way you did the horizontal ones . see image Once you are happy with lines, merge the vertical lines together and then merge the vertical and horizontal layers together. Go to View and uncheck rulers, rename the merged vertical and horizontal layers Grid Guide. Create a new blank layer, make the f/ground colour white and choose the rectangular marquee tool (M on the keyboard) Go around the image and randomly select some of the squares (or whatever shape they may be), you could select two squares at the one time if you want. See my image below for my first selection. Once you have that done, Alt + Backspace on the keyboard to fill the squares with white. Deselect, and then take the opacity of the layer down to whatever suits you, I did 25%. Turn the Grid Guide layer off to get an idea of what is going on. Continue randomly selecting areas, filling them with white and changing the layer opacity on new layers to build up the effect. Once you are happy, you can throw the Grid Guide layer away. You could also add some text to the image etc., and you may end up with something similar to the Final below, or you may end up with something much better because you’ll take more time making it :) As an end note, you don’t have to use white in the squares, use whatever colours you want. Have fun!

• Masking - It's more than black and white - Photoshop Tutorial
  by Alison Johnston

  We all know about masking – White Reveals, Black Conceals or Hide All (Black) Reveal All (White). So what about the other 253 shades/ton…

  We all know about masking – White Reveals, Black Conceals or Hide All (Black) Reveal All (White). So what about the other 253 shades/tones inbetween, have we forgotten about them, and how can they benefit us. We can use masks to precisely perform an adjustment/filter/effect on an image, but also use it to give varying degrees of the adjustment to certain parts of an image. Think of it in terms of 255=white 100% revealed 128=grey 50% revealed or 50% hidden, whichever way to want to look at it .. and 0=black 100% concealed. It’s all those different shades inbetween that can add an extra dimension to an image – or as Chris Orwig likes to say “Subtle, yet Significant” You can borrow my image to practise on if you like, copyright is mine etc., Open the image and duplicate the b/ground layer by pressing Ctrl + J on the keyboard or dragging the layer to the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Take a few moments to look at the image (your image, if you have one of yours open) and really think what you want to do with it and where you want the viewers attention to be focused. In my image I’d like to hit some of the b/ground with a Gaussian Blur to increase the shallow Depth of field. I’d also like to do something with the green stem sitting right in front of the flower. Cloning it out might be a pain in the bum, so using some of the Gaussian Blur on that might be a good idea. I’d also like to take the back petals a bit more out of focus, but not a great deal. You can do all that on one mask using different greys as well as the standard black & white that we associate with masking. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and I’m going to hit this with a 10 px blur – you might want to choose something lower or higher. Hold down the Alt key and then click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette, you will be presented with a black mask (hide all). Make sure the f/ground colour is set to white and choose a soft edged brush and start painting over the b/ground area. Zoom in and out as necessary Ctrl + the plus key to zoom in – Ctrl + the minus key to zoom out. Hold down the spacebar to temporarily get the hand to move around the image. If you make any mistakes while doing this, simply hit the X key on the keyboard to get black (provided your b/ground colour is black) and paint over to fix. You may end up with something like the image below. You can also check on your painting abilities by holding down the Alt Key and clicking on the layer mask. See image below. Hold down the Alt key and click on the layer mask to go back to the normal view. You can paint directly on the mask to make sure you have everything selected. Lets have a look at that two petals at the back of the flower. I don’t want them to be waaay out of focus like the b/ground, so I’m going to try a 50% neutral grey i.e. 128, 128, 128. Bring up the Colour Picker and in the RGB section use 128 for each of them. Paint over the two petals behind the flower. Your layer mask will now look something like the image below Okay, now lets deal with the leaf thing. I don’t want the blur effect completely revealed like the b/ground and I don’t want it as subtle as the petals, so lets try a darker grey. Bring up the colour picker again and in the RGB boxes try 200 and paint over the stem/leaf thing. Your mask might be looking similar to the image below. We really need to do something about the bright green. Click on the little ying yang symbol at the bottom of the layers palette and choose Hue/Saturation from the menu. Choose greens from the drop down menu at the top of the dialogue box. Use the eyedropper tool to select one of the greens, then use the eyedropper with a + sign next to it to add some various shades. Take the saturation slider all the way down to -100. Click OK to accept that change and then click on the white layer mask and press Ctrl + i to invert it (black – hide all) Open the colour Picker (by clicking on the f/ground colour) and pick 64-64-64 for the RGB colours – paint over the stem/leaf. Change the f/ground to a neutral grey 128-128-128 and paint over the b/ground area. Your layer mask might look something like the one below. Create a new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, and this time just increase the Saturation by +15 on the Master. Click on the white layer mask and then use Ctrl + i to invert it. I used a white brush to paint over the main flower petals and then took the layer opacity down to 50%. You can carry on doing this to your hearts content, at the end of the day you will probably want to sharpen selective areas as well. You’re going to do a Stamp Visible (you may want to phone a friend to help with this keyboard shortcut) Make sure the topmost layer is selected, then Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E will place all the layers below in to one single layer, whilst still retaining the layers below. If you adjust the layers below, the adjustment will not be visible on the Stamped layer. Once you’ve done that, duplicate the layer and change the blend mode to Overlay. Go to Filter>Other>High Pass and choose a radius of 3 pixels. Hold down the Alt key and click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette. The mask will be Black (Hide All) Go about the business of selecting various shades of grey – white etc., to bring some areas into sharper focus than others. Just to finish off this image you may want to create a new selective colour adjustment layer and choose whites from the drop down menu – make sure Absolute is checked at the bottom of the dialogue box. Move the Yellow slider to about +10, click OK and then click on the layer mask and press Ctrl + i to invert it. Use a white brush to take out some of the glaring white areas and then take the layer down to 75%. And there you have it. You will probably take much more care than I have. Have fun!

• More Effects In Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  Initially this was going to be a tutorial to do with portraits, but I couldn’t find an image that I liked. I got all huffy about it and …

  Initially this was going to be a tutorial to do with portraits, but I couldn’t find an image that I liked. I got all huffy about it and decided to do a tutorial about making water silky smooth, but decided that selecting something and using the motion blur filter was probably a bit lame :) So then I thought I’d change a road into a river, which is how I ended up with the start image below. The tutorial isn’t going to be about turning roads into rivers though, it has reverted back to my original idea. When I find a decent B&W portrait shot, I’ll show you how to use the effects on that, but in the mean time we are going to take this rather lovely image by meisax over at the SXC site and turn it into a nice end of day type image. I have added a comparison image, but there will be a couple more effects added to that. So you can grab the start image and open it in Photoshop. All settings will be relevant to this image only 800 X 532 @72dpi Duplicate the layer by pressing Ctrl + J on the keyboard or dragging it to the create new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Press Ctrl + U to bring up the Hu/Sat dialogue box and take the saturation all the way down to -100. Duplicate the desaturated layer, change the blend mode of the new layer to Overlay, then go to Filter>Other>High Pass and punch in a radius of 20. Click OK to accept the changes. Alt + Click on the Add vector mask icon at the bottom of the layers to add a black mask to the layer. The effect will now be hidden. Choose a soft edged brush and with the f/ground set to white brush over the area where you would like the effect to appear (Leave the opacity of the layer set to 100%). You can see in the image below that I chose the house, garage and tyres. You’ll also get a sense of the layers we will be using. Create a new blank layer above the High Pass layer, fill it with white, change the blend mode to soft light, and take the opacity of the layer down to 25%. Alt + click on the mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette to add a black mask. With white as your f/ground colour, brush over the house, garage, tyres, road in front of the tyres and the garden just in front of the house. See image below. Make sure you are the topmost layer then, Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E to stamp visible and go to Filter>Blur>Shape Blur and use the Hexagon Shape with a Radius of 5 pixels. Add a layer mask (reveal all – white) and choose a soft edged black brush, then brush over the house, garage and tyre stack. When you’ve done do a Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E again, then change the blend mode of the layer to Overlay and go to Filter>Other>High Pass and choose a radius of 10 pixels this time. Alt + Click on the add vector mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette to mask the effect. With white as the f/ground colour and a soft edged brush, brush back over the house, garage and tyre stack. Take the opacity of the layer down to 50% Create a new blank layer above the High Pass layer and fill it with black. Alt + Click on the add mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette to get a black mask and change the blend mode to soft light. Brush over the left hand side of the large tyre to take way a bit of the brightness. Click on the new adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette and choose Hue/Saturation. Check the Colorize box and you can punch in the same numbers I have if you like. Duplicate the original colour background layer and drag it to the top of the stack. Change the blend mode to Multiply and take the opacity down to 70% Add a new Selective Colour Adjustment layer and make sure that the Absolute box is checked. And you can punch in the following numbers. Reds C = -50% / M = +25% / Y = +25% / B = 0 Yellows Take the yellow slider to +100% Whites C = -19% / M = +15% / Y = +46% Click OK to accept those numbers. Create a new levels adjustment layer and from the drop down menu choose the Red Channel and move the white slider in until it gets to 225 – or you can just type in the numbers. Do the same in the Green and Blue Channels. See image below Add a new blank layer to the top of the stack and choose a brightish orange colour. My was R253 – G97 – B4 click on the gradient tool and choose f/ground to transparent. With the Radial Gradient selected drag from the left hand top corner to the left bottom of the large tyre. Change the layer blend mode to soft light and take the opacity down to 30%. Making sure you are working on the top most layer Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E to stamp visible. We’re going to use this layer to make a vignette. Create a new blank layer above the stamp visible layer and fill it with black. Press Ctrl + T to bring up the Transform tool and in the top toolbar click on the little chain icon to lock the width and height. Adjust either the height or width number to 80%. Press enter to accept that. Ctrl + Click on the layer thumbnail, when the marching ants appear take the layer and throw it in the bin. Go to Select>Modify>Feather and choose a radius of about 50 for this image. Shift + Ctrl + i to inverse the selection, then Ctrl + J to put the selection on its own layer. Change the blend mode to Multiply and take the opacity of the layer down to 50% or to suit. And there you have the final image. You could have stopped the manipulation at a couple of places in the tutorial to come up with different effects. Have fun!

• More Effects For Portraits In Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  The start image is brought to us by mirimcfly over on Flickr, you can find it HERE...

  The start image is brought to us by mirimcfly over on Flickr, you can find it HERE The image is available with a Creative Commons License, which you can read about HERE You’ll notice that the image is a little flat i.e. not very much contrast going on, and this will suit the type of effect you are going to do very well. The settings are relevant to this image 1024X768 @72dpi, but personal taste has a lot to do with the settings as well, so please experiment and don’t take the settings I apply as stock standard. There are a gazillion ways that you could finish this effect with, I’ll show you a couple of different ways at the end. I’ve added a comparison image below of the original colour image, the desaturated image and a (maybe) final version of the image and also a look at the layers you will using. Open the image, Ctrl + J to duplicate the layer, I used a black and white adjustment layer set to Green Filter to desaturate the image. If you have anything before CS3 you won’t have this available to you, so I have added the image above for you to work with (incase you were wondering what that was for). Open both images – the Start image and the desaturated one, then make sure the move tool is selected by pressing V on the keyboard. Hold down the shift key and drag the desaturated image onto the coloured one. Then duplicate the desaturated layer. If you have CS3/4 you can use the Green Filter and then Merge down and then Ctrl + J to duplicate. You should have 3 layers – the original colour layer and 2 desaturated layers. Change the blend mode of the top layer to Overlay and go to Filter>Other>High Pass and use a radius of 20 pixels. Click OK to accept that and then hold down the Alt key and click on the add new vector mask at the bottom of the layers palette to assign a black (hide all) mask to the layer. If you’re working along with the same image as I am then you can simply brush back in the face,neck, ear, hands, arms with a white soft edged brush. You want the High Pass effect to be visible on those parts. See image below. Make the mask pretty accurate because we are going to use it over and over again throughout this project. Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E to stamp visible then go to Filter>Blur>Shape Blur, use the Hexagon shape set to a radius of 5 pixels. Take the layer opacity down to 30%, blend mode set to normal. Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E to stamp visible again, change the blend mode to Overlay and then go to Filter>Other>High Pass and use a radius of 10 pixels, take the layer opacity down to 50% add a layer mask by Alt + clicking on the Add Vector Mask at the bottom of the layers to add a black mask (hide all). Hold down the Alt key and drag the mask from the first High Pass layer onto the layer mask, let go when it is over the layer mask thumbnail – a small dialogue box will appear asking you if you want to replace the mask click yes. You should end up with something similar to the image below. Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E again to stamp visible and then go to Filter>Blur>Shape Blur and choose Hexagon with a radius of 5 pixels. Take the opacity of the layer down to 50% blend mode set to normal. This blur will be used on the b/ground, not the man, so add a layer mask by clicking on the add vector mask at the bottom of the layers palette (white mask). Grab the layer mask from the layer below Alt + Click + drag and drop it onto the layer mask thumbnail. Ctrl + i to invert the mask. You might have something like the image below. You could leave the image at that if you wanted to. Maybe give it a bit more contrast and a sharpen, or you could carry on doing some more things to it. In the image below I’ve used a Hue/Sat adjustment layer set to colorize with Hue 200 and Saturation 5 Brightness to 0 – opacity set to 50%. I’ve used the mask to confine the adjustment to the man. In the next example, I’ve dupicated the original colour b/ground and dragged it to the top of the stack, changed the blend mode to soft light and taken the layer opacity down to 50% The next image shows what happens if you leave the blue adjustment layer turned on underneath the original coloured layer. Next, I decided that I didn’t like the quite white background of the composition so I added another Hue/Sat adjustment layer, chose colorize and used Hue 25 Sat 10 changed the blend mode of the layer to Multiply and took the opacity down to 75%. I used the mask again to isolate the effect to the background. Next I used a Levels adjustment layer and took the middle slider to 1.25, then used a radial gradient on a mask to lighten the image in the centre. Then I used a vignette to darken down the edges. Next I used an S curve in a curves adjustment layer to give it a bit more punch and confined the effect to the man with a mask and finally I used a High Pass layer to sharpen the image, radius set to about 2 and a mask to again confine it to the man. Below is my final image, if you have any questions, just ask. Have fun!

• Working With Reflections In Photoshop
  by Alison Johnston

  Making reflection in Photoshop is generally an easy affair, if you have a head on view of the image. Duplicate layer, Flip Vertical, Blu…

  Making reflection in Photoshop is generally an easy affair, if you have a head on view of the image. Duplicate layer, Flip Vertical, Blur, Gradient, Opacity. What if you are making a design and the easy affair turns out to not be so easy …...... well as it turns out, it’s pretty easy to fix :) In the image below I’ve made a new file 800 X 600 @ 72 dpi and filled it with white. Created a new layer above that and made a selection toward the bottom of the image and filled it with a lightish grey, they inverted the selection and filled it with a darker grey. I then blurred that layer using Gaussian Blur at 3 or 4 pixels. I then created a new blank layer above that and with the Rounded Rectangle Tool (set to Fill Pixels) I drew out a shape, the f/ground colour was set to white. Ctrl + T to bring up the Transform tool and right click to choose Distort, I then distorted the image. Ctrl + J to duplicate layer, Locked the Transparency of the layer and then filled with a different colour. Ctrl + T to transform, lock the ‘maintain aspect ratio’ in the top bar and choose 95%. Do this twice more to end up with four different colours and then reverse the order of the layers. Drag out the three smaller layers to end up with something like the image below. You can use your own photos/images to do this with. Click on the top rectangle layer and then shift click on the bottom rectangle layer and then use Ctrl + E to merge those layers together. Duplicate the layer and then go to Edit>Transform>Flip Vertical. Duplicate the flipped layer and then hide it (just in case we make a dog’s breakfast of the next part) with the Move tool, drag the flipped layer down to somewhere similar to the image below. You can see the problem straight away – it’s gonna need some extra work. It’s an easy process. Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool and draw out a similar around the white part of the flipped layer similar to the image below. Ctrl + T to bring up the Transform Tool and then right click and choose Distort. Distort the image by using the top right handle and dragging it up, till it’s where you want it. Use the arrow keys on the keyboard for fine tuning. Ctrl + D to deselect. Use the Marquee tool again to select the Green (or whatever colour yours is) part of the reflection and do the same thing as you did with the white area. Take a little time to refine the edges. The very bottom of the image isn’t as important as the top area of the reflection. When you’ve done, Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and use about a 3 pixel radius. Add a layer mask, and with a black to transparent Linear gradient start at the bottom and draw upwards. You might end up with something like the image below. Click back on the layer with the two different greys and add a new layer above this. Grab the Elliptical Marquee Tool and draw out an oval or circle and then go to Select>Modify>Feather I used a 50 pixel radius. Ctrl + D to deselect – change the blend mode to soft light and add a layer mask. Using a black to transparent linear gradient, draw from the bottom up, and take the layer opacity down if you like. You might end up with something like the image below. To tie all the elements together, click on the topmost layer and then Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E to stamp visible. I used a Lens Flare, you could also use lighting effects or something else to tie the whole image together. I then cropped some space from the bottom of the image, duplicated the layer and changed the blend mode to Multiply to come up with the image you see below.

• 

  Time falling Apart
  by coppertrees

  Done in Apophysis 3D hack / Featured in Music Inspired Art (M.I.A) / Featured in Creative Cards As Time Falls Apart / By Alison Pearce. / Link Drifting through infinite space / Pastel bursts of colour abound / As galaxies bud, blossom, then wither away The mind expands in radiating circles / Absorbing the wisdom of galaxies lost / All encompassing truth in the space between I am nothing / I am everything / I am emptiness / I am entirety Thoughts wander through stretches of eternity / Synapses of all that has passed before / Floating in the iris of God’s Eye Brilliant fireworks erupt with spent passion / Soul cocooned in the nothingness of absolute peace / Watching on as time falls apart © Alison Pearce 2009 MUSIC