Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Elvis has a new job

Hello !

For this post I’ll take a picture with Elvis and one with a man at work. So I’ll put Elvis to do something else besides singing : )
This is my picture with Elvis :
and this is the man willing to give him his job :

Start with Elvis. Maybe you’ll choose another picture of him or with another man. But be sure you’ll notice all the details that were not supposed to be there, like you see in this image. But this is an old picture, anyway.
If your image looks fine take the Lasso tool and select his head and neck. The neck helps you to blend the two images better. Copy the selection.

Open the other image and paste the selection you’ve just made. Because the image with the man is in grayscale automatically the selection will be transformed in grayscale.
Turn off layer visibility for Elvis’s head, in order to prepare the image behind.

Take the Clone stamp tool and start to clone the areas next to the man’s head so that when you’ll put Elvis's head there you wouldn’t see the other man’s ear, for example.

Turn on the layer visibility for Elvis and place his head above the man’s head. Now apply a layer mask and with brush tool start masking around what you don’t need in the picture.

If you look at the picture behind you notice that the light enters in the room from the left side of his face. So Elvis can’t have shadow’s of light next to his nose and his eye (right eye) and we have to put some light on his left side of the head.

So take the Clone tool and erase the shadows. Then go to Filter – Render – Lighting effects. Make sure you have the layer that contains the head selected and not the mask.

Position the light where you think is best and then click OK. If you don’t like the result undo the filter and try it again.

Use the clone tool again to erase the light from the top of the head.

So ..that’s it. Have fun !

I forgot to mention. I take my picture from SXC . You just have to create an account there and you’ll have free pictures at high resolution.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

The world through a broken vase - part II

Here we are, part II of this post where I showed you how to make the crack in the vase. You'll find there the pictures we work with too.

After you finished part I open the second picture. To put it into your current project make sure you have the move tool select, click on the image and drag it into your project.

Position it over the vase. Load the last saved selection. With the second photo layer active press the Add layer mask icon. Now click on the link between photo and layer mask
and then select only the photo layer so you can now move your photo where you consider it’s ok in the selection.


You can notice that your photo is less then the selection. Go to the original photo and select the water. Then copy it and paste into the project. You can use the Transform tool to make it as big as the selection. And then apply the same step to put “the water” into selection. Or you can select just the bottom of your image with Rectangular marquee tool ant then transform it.



Based on the selection you already have make a new one, just a little smaller, And just for the right side of the selection.

I looked at the picture form the lest side and that’s how I imagine the thickness off the vase. If you see it otherwise make it in your way :)

I took this picture to fill the selection ant make my vase look like it was made by clay. Use the same steps with layer mask here too.


Play around with that crack until you make something you like. :)

Now I’ll do the water that is draining off the vase. Make a selection that looks something like this:

Save selection. I tried to do a realistic water for many times. Most realistic was when I did like this : Marge down all the layers.(hold down Ctrl key and select each layer then Ctrl+ E.
Duplicate the new layer. Ctrl + Transform – flip vertical. Lower the opacity so you can see where to put it so that the water will be were you made the last selection.

Load the last saved selection.

Let only this piece of selection and put it in a new layer so you can apply layer styles to it. I put this ones:



That’s it :)
I hope you liked it !

The world through a broken vase - part I

Hello !

I found these two pictures on the Internet and I thought I can do something beautiful with them.


It didn’t came out well from the first time, and I’m not sure it’s ok even now when I finished the picture. But I worked some time to get it right and I asked some people to help me because I don’t have any knowledge about drawing and static nature.
This is what I’ve done :


Ok .. we have the picture that contains the vases. I took the polygonal lasso tool and I begin to do a form like you see in the picture below, but for now without the crack from the bottom of the vase.

Don’t forget to save the selection you made – you’ll need it later.(Select- Save selection and type a name)

Then pick the brush tool. Choose e crack brush (you can easily find it on the net) and paint.


Now go to Select – Load selection, click on the name of selection from earlier and position it over the crack in order to expand it and give it almost the crack form (in some places)

To expand the actual selection choose polygonal lasso and press Shift while you add to the selection. You’ll notice a “+” sign. If you want to contract the selection press Alt.

Make sure you are in the crack’s layer. Using the eraser tool delete the part of the crack you don’t want in the image.

If your selection is active, like you see in the picture you can delete only the crack inside the selection. To delete outside of it inverse the selection : Select – Inverse.
Save selection. Deselect

I'll show you the rest of it in the next post :)

Thursday, October 2, 2008

From day light to night time

Hello everybody !

For today I chose to show you how to transform a picture taken in the day light and turn it into night time. Then I'll show you a easy way to make light beams shooting out the house and make them reflecting out on the grass.

Choose a picture with a house. I chose this one:
Open it in Photoshop. Duplicate the layer – it’s a easy way to come back from where you start.
Hold down ALT and the press the Adjustment layer icon and select Layers.
Tick the box that says: "Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask".

Always use that when you want your adjustments to affect only the first layer below.
Now go to the bottom of the Levels control and just clik on the white slider and move it to the left. Now you're making the sun go down. :)

It looks like that:

The sky looks too bright so I select it and I did the step above again.

If you’ll zoom in a little you’ll notice that around the house and among the trees you can still see a little bit from the blue sky from earlier.

Go to Filter – Other – Maximum. Increase the radius to get rid of the outline. You did the selection larger without going to Select- Modify – Expand and then apply the filter again.

Using the Polygonal Lasso tool make the selection of a window.
Choose now a yellow color as foreground from the Color picker and fill.
Make a new layer and using again polygonal tool to something like this:

For the color use orange. Lower the opacity of this layer :
Do the same with the other two little windows from the left, each one in separate layer. Lower the opacity to these layers too.

If you think that the “light” is not quite at the beginning of the window you can press CTRL + T (or go to Edit - Transform) and then press right clik and choose Distort.

Now you can select all three layers by holding down CTRL and press each one and then press CTRL+E to merge them into a single layer.

Because the line of the light is too sharp you can apply Gaussian Blur.

I'll make a gradient over the light beams in order to make the light fade away.
Make sure your active layer is the one that contains the light. Press the Add vector mask icon and then press the icon mask to select it so you can apply a gradient just over the light and not to the hole image.

Choose the first gradient from Gradient tool (black to transparent) and start dragging from right to left.

Reduce the opacity of the layer if you want and you can distort the hole layer if you thing it’s not just like you wanted.

Now let’s do the light reflected on the grass.
Pretty easy to make it after I’ve seen somebody else doing it :P. All you have to do is to select the brush tool (create a soft brush) and just paint down like this :Lower the opacity and apply Gaussian Blur to fade it.

Here you are :