Tutorial and a Header
Mar. 20th, 2010 11:56 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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suerteSomeone asked me about writing a tutorial about how I made my last two headers (found here), so here we are: I'm gonna go from this to this, and I'mma show you how :)
I use Photoshop CS4 Extended and I'm using a Windows system, and I don't have a clue if the tut is translatable. Have a go! :)
I am going to go through colouring technique (vaguely) and the use of the radial blur (AKA: My favourite thing ever) I used in the last batch of headers I did.
I actually nabbed this colouring technique from a friend, so she totally gets full credit for me even being able to make colours pretty~.
1. I haven't sharpened my image yet (I cropped it before I began this tutorial, because the original image is huuuuuuge), so that's what I'm going to do now. Go to Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen and then freak out because of how scary and over-sharp your image looks.
Freaking out done? Great, now go to Edit > Fade Sharpen.... I change the opacity to 40% and then hit OK. Much better, no?
2. Now, duplicate your base image. You can do this one of two ways: Layer > Duplicate Layer... or by right-clicking your current layer in the layers panel and selecting Duplicate Layer. Next, double click your new layer (probably named "Background copy" or "Layer 1 copy") and set the blend mode to screen. Yay, lighter!
Depending on how light or dark your base already is, you can decrease the opacity of this layer copy, or add more duplicated / screened layers. For this image, because it was already quite light, I took the opacity of the Screen layer down to 70%.
3. Bright. Now add a new fill layer (Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color), change the mode to Exclusion and pick a really dark blue. I picked #060623. Hit OK.
4. Now for selective colouring. Go up to Layer > New Adjustment Layer... > Selective Color.... I kept mine relatively simple:
Reds -100, 0, +100, 0
Yellows +100, 0, -100, 0
And make sure you have "Relative" selected throughout this step.
You can have a play around with the other colours and sliders, but that's all I did for this specific image. My image is now:
And that's all there is to my colouring! I usually have have two more layers than this, but for simplicity's sake, we'll leave those out.
5. Flatten your image (Layer > Flatten Image) and duplicate the layer. Now go to Filter > Blur > Radial Blur.... Typically, I have mine set to 5-15, Spin and Best, but you can go wild with it if you so desire. For this image, I set my Amount to 15.
6. Ee! Spinny! Now we have to get Sebastian and Jaime un-radialed. There are two methods of doing this, but I'll go for the quicker, simpler one. You have to add a layer mask to this layer, so go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All.
Now, with the layer mask selected (will be automatic after adding the mask), set your palette to black and white (default, you can just press D on your keyboard and it'll revert) and pick a soft-edged brush. I usually set this layer's opacity to around 50% so that I can see what I'm doing.
7. Now begin tracing over your subject matter(s) with the brush tool (make sure you're doing so in black, otherwise you'll see no change!). Once traced, ramp the opacity back up to 100%. You may find that you've run over the lines a little. No worries: just change your brush to a smaller, harder one and switch it to white. Now start going over the parts you don't necessarily want to be in focus.
Don't worry too much about it: we're going to be toning the radial blur down anyway. :)
8. Pick a large (I used 300px, 0% Hardness), soft brush and set the brush opacity to 10-20%. I used 20%. Start going over your entire image (in black). I repeated this step 3 or 4 times to get the desired look.
9. I then flattened my image and repeated step 2 and step 4 (repeating step 3 made the image look odd, so I skipped it out.). This is just down to personal taste.
10. I slapped some text on.
"Jaime and Sebastian" is written in a font called Sunshine In My Heart. I can't remember what size. Heh.
"i close my eyes and all i see is you" is written in TrashHand
Both have Drop Shadows applied, colour #505050, Angle 120, Distance 2px, Size 3px - I use this setting on most of my text.
The writing I've got set to Soft Light across the whole image is also Sunshine In My Heart. It's lyrics to the song I'd Do Anything by Simple Plan - the opacity is set to 50% and I've erased the parts that were overlapping Jaime and Sebastian, for the most part.
Voila - you're done! :)
The header above is available for use if you haven't been able to make your own, of course.
Comment and let me know if you had any troubles or have any questions! Or just show me what you made! I'm always interested to see :D
I use Photoshop CS4 Extended and I'm using a Windows system, and I don't have a clue if the tut is translatable. Have a go! :)
I am going to go through colouring technique (vaguely) and the use of the radial blur (AKA: My favourite thing ever) I used in the last batch of headers I did.
I actually nabbed this colouring technique from a friend, so she totally gets full credit for me even being able to make colours pretty~.
1. I haven't sharpened my image yet (I cropped it before I began this tutorial, because the original image is huuuuuuge), so that's what I'm going to do now. Go to Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen and then freak out because of how scary and over-sharp your image looks.
Freaking out done? Great, now go to Edit > Fade Sharpen.... I change the opacity to 40% and then hit OK. Much better, no?
2. Now, duplicate your base image. You can do this one of two ways: Layer > Duplicate Layer... or by right-clicking your current layer in the layers panel and selecting Duplicate Layer. Next, double click your new layer (probably named "Background copy" or "Layer 1 copy") and set the blend mode to screen. Yay, lighter!
Depending on how light or dark your base already is, you can decrease the opacity of this layer copy, or add more duplicated / screened layers. For this image, because it was already quite light, I took the opacity of the Screen layer down to 70%.
3. Bright. Now add a new fill layer (Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color), change the mode to Exclusion and pick a really dark blue. I picked #060623. Hit OK.
4. Now for selective colouring. Go up to Layer > New Adjustment Layer... > Selective Color.... I kept mine relatively simple:
Reds -100, 0, +100, 0
Yellows +100, 0, -100, 0
And make sure you have "Relative" selected throughout this step.
You can have a play around with the other colours and sliders, but that's all I did for this specific image. My image is now:
And that's all there is to my colouring! I usually have have two more layers than this, but for simplicity's sake, we'll leave those out.
5. Flatten your image (Layer > Flatten Image) and duplicate the layer. Now go to Filter > Blur > Radial Blur.... Typically, I have mine set to 5-15, Spin and Best, but you can go wild with it if you so desire. For this image, I set my Amount to 15.
6. Ee! Spinny! Now we have to get Sebastian and Jaime un-radialed. There are two methods of doing this, but I'll go for the quicker, simpler one. You have to add a layer mask to this layer, so go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All.
Now, with the layer mask selected (will be automatic after adding the mask), set your palette to black and white (default, you can just press D on your keyboard and it'll revert) and pick a soft-edged brush. I usually set this layer's opacity to around 50% so that I can see what I'm doing.
7. Now begin tracing over your subject matter(s) with the brush tool (make sure you're doing so in black, otherwise you'll see no change!). Once traced, ramp the opacity back up to 100%. You may find that you've run over the lines a little. No worries: just change your brush to a smaller, harder one and switch it to white. Now start going over the parts you don't necessarily want to be in focus.
Don't worry too much about it: we're going to be toning the radial blur down anyway. :)
8. Pick a large (I used 300px, 0% Hardness), soft brush and set the brush opacity to 10-20%. I used 20%. Start going over your entire image (in black). I repeated this step 3 or 4 times to get the desired look.
9. I then flattened my image and repeated step 2 and step 4 (repeating step 3 made the image look odd, so I skipped it out.). This is just down to personal taste.
10. I slapped some text on.
"Jaime and Sebastian" is written in a font called Sunshine In My Heart. I can't remember what size. Heh.
"i close my eyes and all i see is you" is written in TrashHand
Both have Drop Shadows applied, colour #505050, Angle 120, Distance 2px, Size 3px - I use this setting on most of my text.
The writing I've got set to Soft Light across the whole image is also Sunshine In My Heart. It's lyrics to the song I'd Do Anything by Simple Plan - the opacity is set to 50% and I've erased the parts that were overlapping Jaime and Sebastian, for the most part.
Voila - you're done! :)
The header above is available for use if you haven't been able to make your own, of course.
Comment and let me know if you had any troubles or have any questions! Or just show me what you made! I'm always interested to see :D
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Date: 2010-03-20 04:20 pm (UTC)