Showing posts with label digital. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 29, 2015 , , , , 0 comments

Photoshop and the digital revolution

“I use Photoshop as I would to hand-print an image; e.g., burning, dodging, etc. I don’t use ‘special effects’ very often; I’m still a big fan of more traditional techniques—applied digitally, of course.”—Marcus Bell

In the days leading up to the advent of digital imaging, the skeptics/realists often predicted that until a digital image could rival the amount of information found in a 35mm film frame, professional photographers would continue to ignore digital imaging. These thoughtful folks proclaimed that there are 10,000,000 discrete units of information (bits) in an exposed 24x36mm film frame. Equalling that requires a 10MB image—a file size that is now commonplace. In fact, at this writing there are a handful of professional 35mm digital SLRs that offer 16–18MB original files. Unlike film photographs,

Photoshop and the digital revolution have helped propel wedding photographers to the level of fine artists. Photograph by Jeff Hawkins Photography.

Hawkins, the other half of Jeff Hawkins Photography, a very successful wedding studio in Longwood, FL, the greatest benefit is “the creative control of our work.” The pair has a renewed excitement for covering weddings and an appreciation for being able to view the images right away—a “powerful advantage for both photographers and clients.” Photographers are no longer just recording images and sending them off to the lab for color correction, retouching, and printing. Says Kathleen, “We can now perfect our art to the fullest extent of our vision!” In the high-style world of wedding photography, the impact of Photoshop has permanently changed the style and scope of the genre. The photographer, in the comfort of his home or studio, can now routinely accomplish special effects that could only be achieved by an expert darkroom technician in years past. Photoshop, paired with the many available plug-in filters, has made wedding photography the most creative and lucrative specialty in all of photography.

And brides love it. Digital albums, assembled using Photoshop-compatible design templates, have become the preferred album type. The style and uniqueness they bring to the wedding experience make every bride and groom a celebrity. The photographers featured in this book are digital artists. While they are not above using time-saving shortcuts in the image-processing side of things, they
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Posted by Unknown at 11:30 PM
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The Adobe Photoshop CS6 Book Tutorial Pdf for Digital Photographers

 The Adobe Photoshop CS6 Book Tutorial Pdf  for Digital Photographers



ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 Scott is Editor, Publisher, and co-founder of Photoshop User magazine, Executive Editor and Publisher of Light It (the how-to magazine for studio lighting and off-camera flash), and is host of The Grid, the weekly live videocast talk show for photographers, as well as co-host of the top-rated weekly videocast series, Photoshop User TV.

 The Adobe Photoshop CS6 Book Tutorial Pdf  for Digital Photographers

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He is President of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), the trade association for Adobe® Photoshop® users, and he’s President of the training, education, and publishing firm,

For more information on Scott, visit him at:

His daily blog: http://scottkelby.com
Google+: Scottgplus.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com@scottkelby
Facebook: www.facebook.com/skelby

Seven Things You’ll Wish You Had Known Before Reading The Adobe Photoshop CS6 Book Tutorial Pdf  for Digital Photographers

It’s really important to me that you get a lot out of reading The Adobe Photoshop CS6 Book Tutorial Pdf  for Digital Photographers, and one way I can help is to get you to read these seven quick things about the book that you’ll wish later you knew now. For example, it’s here that I tell you about where to download something important, and if you skip over this, eventually you’ll send me an email asking where it is, but by then you’ll be really aggravated, and well… it’s gonna get ugly. We can skip all that (and more), if you take two minutes now and read these seven quick things. I promise to make it worth your while.

You don’t have to read The Adobe Photoshop CS6 Book Tutorial Pdf  for Digital Photographers in order. I designed Adobe Photoshop CS6 Book Tutorial Pdf  so you can turn right to the technique you want to learn, and start there. I explain everything as I go, step-by-step, so if you want to learn how to remove dust spots from a RAW image, just turn to page 84, and in a couple of minutes, you’ll know. I did write the book in a logical order for learning CS6, but don’t let that tie your hands—jump right to whatever technique you want to learn— you can always go back, review, and try other stuff.



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Download The Adobe Photoshop CS6 Book Tutorial Pdf for Digital Photographers 
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Posted by Unknown at 8:15 AM
Thursday, April 2, 2015 , , 0 comments

Digital Art Tutorial

Photoshop Tutorials

Digital Art Tutorial


Step 1

Open the girl model in photoshop and using the Pen Tool (P), trace the contour but make sure you have the paths selected. I suggest using the pen tool technique because it’s a lot more accurate. Also, when you’re dealing with high resolution images like this, try to subtract the subject from the background before scaling down the original image because you will be more accurate.
After you traced the contour, with the pen tool active, right click and choose “Make Selection”. Delete the background.
Create a new document 1500×2026 pixels and paste the girl, name this layer model. Create a new layer below the model layer, use a radial Gradient (G) and draw from the top left corner of the canvas to the bottom right. Use a light gray 66686b as foreground color and 474b4e for the background. See the image below.

Step 2

Now we are going to make some adjustments to the color and the contrast and add some shadows.
Make some color adjustments and increase the contrast of the girl. I used Adjustments Layers because they are non destructive, in other words, you can eliminate the adjustment layer or modify it without affecting the original image.

Levels settings to increase contrast.

Saturation settings to increase color

After making this adjustments, make some shadows on the ground to give a more realistic look, otherwise it looks like the girl is hanging in the air.
To add the shadows like I did in the image below, use different size brushes and hardnesses on different layers. For the contact shadows use a 35% hardness brush and diameter 30 pixels. Set Flow and Opacity of the brush to 40-50% and make several passes along the inner edge of both feet.
To make the big ground shadow use a bigger soft brush. Try to get something like the image below. The next tutorial will be all about shading techniques so don’t worry now if you don’t get it right.

Step 3

This is where the fun and the creative stuff starts. I will give the links to the images that we will use next but if you want to make this with different images, download the Colors in Motion pack and the Cosmic Lights PNG images pack .
The first image that I used was from the Cosmic Lights pack. Open the image “18-star-radiation”  and paste it on a new layer below the girl’s layer but above the shadow layers, change it’s Blending Mode to Screen and if you see that is not visible enough duplicate the layer or increase the saturation to make the colors more visible.
Now open the image “11-cosmic-rays” from the same pack, flip it vertically and paste it above the girl’s layer and change the blending mode to Screen, just like you did with the previous one. You should get something like in the image below.
Use a soft edge Brush and 75-85% Opacity and on a new layer under the two previous lights click just one time with the brush and change the Blending Mode to Color Dodge. I used the color bc7a39.
Now you have to do the same but using a bigger brush, a different Blending Mode and this time the layer must be above the girl layer. For the color I used e2a02d and the blending mode Screen. The way to do this next light is by making 2 strokes. The first one using a 650px brush and 50% opacity and the second one on the same layer on the center of the first stroke using a 350px brush and 100% Opacity.
Open the “stock 4” image in photoshop and paste it above the previous light that you just made but flip it first, like in the image below. After that, change the blending mode to Screen.
Open “red_light.jpg” and paste it over the left foot and change the Blending Mode to Screen. As you can see we will use this technique for all stock images that have black background.

Step 4

All the lights that we just added on step 3 look great but we can make them look a bit better by adding some lights on the floor and on the girl’s body. We will do that manually and we will start with the left leg where you just added the red_light.jpg
Locate the model layer on the palette and click it’s thumbnail while you hold down the CTRL key in order to select it’s edges. Once you have the edges selected, create a new layer above the model layer (the layer of the girl) and create a layer mask on it. I named this layer ambient lights. This is necessary because we want to paint the lights only on the body.
Change the Blending Mode of the ambient lights layer to Color Dodge. Select a soft edge brush about 90px in diameter and set the Opacity of the brush to 20%. As I said, we will start with the left leg so the light that we need should match the red color of the stock image that we used on step 3. But because the blending mode of the layer is set to Color Dodge, we must use a lighter and less saturated color, I used e0446c. With the soft brush selected paint along the edges of the left leg.
You must create a stronger light at the bottom of the leg making multiple passes with the brush and fade out the effect with less brush strokes as you go up because the light is fading away. Do the same thing on the right leg but use green and yellow desaturated colors and paint on the same ambient lights layer.
Create a new layer above the model layer and set the blending mode to Color Dodge. Paint the floor with a soft brush and color 8c0548. Reduce the opacity of the layer if the effect is too strong. See image below.
Now we will move to the upper parts of the body and using more stock images from the packs mentioned earlier, add more lights.
On the hand I used the image Color_gradient (15) located in the “smoother gradients” folder from the Colors in Motion pack. Again change the Blending Mode to Screen and duplicate the layer for a stronger effect.
Add another light to the hand from the same textures pack. I used the image Color (13) and I changed the Hue from Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation to match the colors of the first image added on the hand on the previous step. This time I didn’t duplicate the layer.
Use the same technique and add the image Color_gradient (18) like in the image below.

Step 5

Now things will get even brighter with some soft spotlights that we will add on this step. You can paint this spotlights above all the other layers on the palette.
From now on you will need a big soft brush to make this lights. We are going to start from the bottom part.
Se the brush color to 534906 and using a 600-750 pixels brush size and Opacity 65%, stroke once over the bottom right leg where we added the first lights at the beginning of this tutorial and set the layer Blending Mode to Color Dodge. That will make the light even brighter. See image below.
Change the brush size to 800px, create a new layer and set the foreground color to 064953. Make another light on the girl’s back and change the layer’s blending mode to Color Dodge (Add).
Do the same on the hand but this time using two different colors and different opacities. For the first stroke, use a 500px brush and the color 5a4f34. Set the brush Opacity to 100% and hardness to 0%. Create a new layer and click once over the fingers of the girl’s hand. Decrease the layer’s Opacity to 65% and change the Blending Mode to Color Dodge.
Make a new layer above the previous one and increase the brush size to about 960px. Change the color to 574739 and click once over the same spot as before. Leave the layers opacity to 100% and change the Blending mode to Color Dodge (Add). You should get something like in the image below.
Download the Media Militia particles pack and open two images that look like an explosion and paste them on the base of the right leg and over the light that you made on the previous step. Change the Blending Mode for both images to Color Dodge (add). Depending on the images you choose you might need to use another blending mode that fits better.

Step 6 – post editing

We are almost there. What we are going to do in this final step is shift the general lights of the image using the Lighting Effects filter.That’s something that I recommend you do always because you will always end up with a much better result. We are also going to reduce the size of the image. If you remember, on the first step we set the image resolution to 1500×2026 pixels but now we will make it smaller. Is always better to work with a high resolution image and then make it smaller. That way, you have more control for example when you cut out the image from its background.
Save your work because we are going to work on a new document. To create a copy of the final result you have two options. The first one is to select the top most layer on your layers palette and press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E to create a stamp of the image and then copy and paste it into a new document. The second option is to select the entire canvas with Ctrl+A and then go to Edit>Copy Merged.
Now create a new document by pressing Ctrl+N or go to File>New and the new document should be the exact size as the image you have on your clipboard (as long as you copied the image). Paste the image on the new document and resize it (Ctrl+Alt+i) to 1000×1351. I added a default Lens Flare to the hand but that’s up to you. Go to Filter>Render>Light Effects and apply the settings that you see on the image below.
Now make the image sharper. Go to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask and apply the settings from the image below TWICE.
And that’s how you make a cool digital art manipulation. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and that you learned something. If you like this technique feel free to spread the word and submit this tutorial to as many social sites as possible, I would really appreciate that.
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Posted by Unknown at 8:00 PM
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Create an Emotional Dreamscape Digital Photo Manipulation

Photoshop Tutorials

Step 1

Let us start by preparing the objects of the scene we are going to create. Firstly, we will creating a castle. Make sure we have downloaded all the stock images needed. Create a new document in photoshop with size of 1600 px wide and 1800 px high. Open the castle stock image in the document.

Open the tree stock image in the document, place the image behind the tree. Scale the size of it accordingly. Give the tree layer a layer mask by clicking the mask icon located in the layer panel. Mask unneeded part of the tree image.

Duplicate (Ctrl+J) the tree image, scale its size down a bit and place the duplication behind the castle. Arrange its position as the result below:

Step 2

Create a new document (Ctrl+N) with size of 1600px wide and 1808px high.

Open the grass land stock picture and extract the land from its background. Use pen magic wand tool to select the background and when the backround is selected, hit Del to clean it out

Place the extracted grass land to the new document. With free transform tool (T), scale its size to fit the canvas. Then, go to filter > blur > surface blur. Follow the screenshot below for the setting of the blur:

Then, mask the unwanted part and top most edges of the grass land. Make sure to use spatter brush for this purpose. Please see the screenshot to find out the parts to be masked (marked in red arrows).

Step 3

Next, crop some part of the grass land. Use lasso tool to select the part and then hit Ctrl+J to duplicate the selection into a new single layer.

Place the cropped in front of the original layer. Scale the sizes and arrange their positions like the one shown in the screenshot:

Mask the unneeded part of the duplication layer to make it well blended:

Step 4

We will add background to the scene. Open the mountain stock image. Hit Ctrl+T to activate free transform tool. Scale the size of the image by press Shift key on the keyboard while clicking, holding and dragging one of the dragging point.

The result should look like the one here:

We will mask the background of the mountain image to hide it and just the mountain part is just revealed. Click the layer mask icon in the layer panel to give the mountain layer a layer mask marked by a white thumbnail next to the layer. Mask the entire sky background of the image by stroking black color to the background.

Duplicate (Ctrl+J) the masked mountain layer and place the duplicate to the other side of the scene. Arrange its size a bit and position so it does not look uniform.

Finally, reduce the opacity of each mountain layer to just 10%.

Step 5

In this step we will add cloud texture to the background. Open the stock image. Activate the rectungular marquee tool and select the cloud part of the image by clicking, holding and dragging the tool on the cloud part. Then, hit Ctrl+J to duplicate the selection into a new single layer.

Add the cloud texture to the background of the scene. Scale its size to fit the background.

Step 6

Create a new layer (Shift+Ctrl+N) above the cloud texture layer. Activate gradient tool and create a gradient color on this new layer. Set the color of the gradient as the ones shown in the screenshot. Fill the new layer with gradient by clicking the top of the document, holding and dragging down to the bottom.

Set the gradient layer to soft light blending with opacity of 68%.

Give this gradient layer a layer mask and mask the red marked part of the gradient as shown in the screenshot:

Step 7

Add another stock cloud image to the document to add more cloud texture.

Set the blending of this cloud layer to screen at 35% opacity.

Step 8

Next, add the castle image we have created to the sceen. Scale its size and place it in the center between the two mountain.

Reduce the opacity of the castle layer to 30%

Step 9

Create another new layer behind the two mountain layers. Take the brush tool and choose the one of the moon brush in the brush preset picker. With white color paint the moon on the new layer with size of about 200 pixel.

Mask the part of the moon that is visible on the wall of the castle.

With the moon layer still selected, go to layer > layer style > outer glow:

Step 10

In this step we will give some highlight on the castle on which the light of the moon is strongly casted. Go again to the castle layer. Hit Ctrl on the keyboard and point the cursor to the castle layer thumbnail. When the cursor change into a pointing finger icon, click the thumbnail to load the castle a selection. When it is selected, hit Ctrl+J to duplicate the selection into a new single layer layer and give this duplication layer a clipping mask. Fill (Shift+F5) the duplicate with 50% grey. Now, activate the brush tool and choose a very soft round brush. With white color, stroke the brush on the edges of the castle.

Then, set the duplication layer to overlay at 100% opacity.

Step 11

Create another new layer and make sure to give this new layer a clipping mask. Choose again a very soft round brush with opacity of 10-20%. With white color, stroke the brush on the edges of the castle to define more highlight. The blue arrows in the screenshot will guide us where to stroke the brush.

Step 12

We will give a new adjustment layer and some highlight to the grounds as well. Go select the ground layer and then hit layer > new adjustment layers > hue/saturation. Make sure to give this adjustment layer a clipping mask. Finally, create a new layer above the adjustment layer and give this new layer a clipping mask. Give some highlight to the ground as the same way we have created in the previous step 11.

Do the same as well to the other ground layer:

Here is the result should look so far:

Step 13

We need to complete the composition of the background by add more castles in the distance. To do this purpose, we will just simply duplicate the castle and add the duplicates in the distance. Scale down their sizes and reduce the opacities to 10-20%

Step 14

Open the path stock image in the document. Place the image behind the ground layers.

Scale down the size of the image and place it on the right side of the scene. Mask almost the entire image and only the fence is revealed. We can see the result as shown in the screenshot:

Duplicate the path image and place the duplicate where needed. With the same way as in the previous step, add more fences to the scene:

Step 15

In this step we will add path on the ground. Duplicate the path image and place the duplicate above the ground layer.

Mask the unneeded part of the path image to reveal just the path and set the opacity of this layer to 50% in normal blending.

Step 16

Now we will prepare the trees to be added to the scene. We will paint the trees. Firatly, create a new document (Ctrl+N) with size of 1600px wide and 1800px high. To get idea of what the tree should look like, take a look the tree stock image as reference. Then, with color #211e15, paint the tree as the one shown in the screenshot.

Activate dodge tool and set the tool as shown below:

Start define the highlight of the tree by stroking and clicking the dodge tool on the tree.

Give the tree more highlight where needed:

Keep on stroking and clicking the tool to define more highlight. Try to vary the size of the brush and range of the tool by switching to shadow > midtones > highlight. Use the burn tool as well to give parts of the tree some shading.

Step 17

This is the tree I have created:

Then, open the texture stock image on the tree document. Scale the size of this image (1). Create a clipping mask for this texture layer (2). Finally, set the blending of this layer to soft light at 68% opacity.

Create a new layer and give this new layer a clipping mask. Take a very soft round brush and set the brush at 10-20% opacity. With white color, stroke the brush on the edges of the tree to give more highlight. There, we have a new tree now. Select all the tree layer and hit Ctrl+G to group them.

Step 18

Finally, add the tree group to the main document.

With the same ways as in the previous step on how to create a tree, create another tree and add the tree to the right side of the scene.

Step 19

Create the other tree from the tree brush. Make sure we have downloaded and installed the brush. Paint again the other tree.

SAdd some more distant trees to the scene.

Step 20

In this step we will add foregrounds for the scene. Go to the cropped grass land layer again. Duplicate the layer two times. Then, place the duplicates above the main tree group layers. The screenshot below will guide us where the duplicates should be placed:

Step 21

Now we will add a model to the scene. Firstly, open the model stock image. Take the pen tool, and with the tool, start tracing the model by clicking the edges of the model to create anchor points (I started the anchor point on the head). Keep on tracing until the path is closed which indicated by a thin line around the model.

Right click on the path to show path command options. Choose make path selection to change the path into a seletion. Hit Shift+Ctrl+I to inverse the selection and hit Dell to clean the background:

Step 22

Scale the model to the size needed:

Step 23

In this step we will add ties to the model’s swing. Firstly, cut out the part of the swing’s rope.

Place the cut out on the branch of the tree on which the rope should be tied. Activate free transform tool and warp the rope to bend it a bit.
Cut out again the rope of the swing into a small piece. Duplicate the cut out some times as needed. Place each duplication above one to another to create the tie:

Finally, add more ropes to complete the swing:

Step 24

In this step we will paint more cloud to the scene. Take brush tool and set the brush preset as the ones below:

Set the opacity of the brush between 20-30% . Then, on a new layer paint white cloud for the scene.

Step 25

Now we will add new adjustment layers to the scene. Go to layer > new adjustment layer > color balance. Set this adjustment layer to normal blending at 100% opacity

Then, give another adjustment layer: curves. Set this adjustment layer to normal at 60% opacity.

This is the result should look like after adding the adjustments:

Step 26

Select the curves layer in the layer panel. Mask some areas (indicated by the red mark in the screenshot). Use a very soft round brush to mask the areas.

This is the result should look like:

Step 27

Create a new layer above the two adjustment layers. Activate the brush tool. Choose a very soft round brush with opacity about 20-30%opacity. On the new layer, paint black transparent color to the edges of the scene. Then, to complete the composition, add some birds to the trees. Place the bird layers below the adjustment layers.

Step 28

Now create again a new layer above all the other layers. Fill the new layer with black. Set this layer to color dodge blending with 100% opacity. Take the brush tool. Set the opacity of the brush to 5-10% and choose a very soft round brush. With white color, paint the windows of the castle to give them light and give some highlight to the grounds as well. Here is the layer should look like in normal blending:

And here is the result will look like when the layer set to color dodge:

Step 29

Next, we will give another new adjustment layer to the scene. Go to layer > new adjustment layers > curve. For this curves layer, give it normal blending at 90% opacity.

Step 30

Hit Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E to stamp all the visible layers. This will create a new single layer of the scene we have created. Right click the stamp layer to show the layer command options. Choose convert to smart object. This will convert the layer into a smart object layer.

Then, go to filter > others > high pass. This will give the smart object layer a smart filter: high pass.

Point the cursor to the visible high pass filter in the layer panel, right click on it to show the filter command options. Choose Edit Smart Filter Blending Option…

Then set the blending to multiply at 100% opacity.

This is the result will look like:

Step 31

Click the filter mask thumbnail to mask the effect of the filter. Mask on the red marked areas. Use a very soft round brush to mask the areas.

The result should look like this now:

And We’re Done!

You can view the final outcome below. I hope that you enjoyed this tutorial and would love to hear your feedback on the techniques and outcome.
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Posted by Unknown at 9:15 AM
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