Merge photos into digital paintings

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to integrate photographic elements into your digital painting to add an unbeatable sense of realism and textural detail.

Digital painting maestro Richard Tilbury shows how photography can complement your artwork without necessarily disrupting the realism of your painted aspects.

Of course, the painted image you’re creating will partly dictate the types of photos you end up using – and the act of selecting these images can be a key part of the creative process.

You’ll explore the key techniques used to blend photos into digital paintings, and the types of image adjustments that will ensure your photos work seamlessly with the digitally painted elements.

You’ll also learn how blending modes and brush selections can play a crucial role in integrating photos. These are important techniques within digital painting – particularly in concept work, for example for computer game environments – and can be hugely effective when it comes to enhancing your images. When used together, the tricks you’ll learn will help you add richness, vitality and believability to your artworks.

01. Start by creating a new canvas in Photoshop measuring 4691-x-3508 pixels, with a resolution of 300dpi. Now using only greyscale brushes (black to white) start to block in your composition very roughly, thinking in terms of tonal values and where you want to place your light source.

02. Don’t be afraid to make random marks at this stage, and use a number of custom and textured brushes to suggest the forms. At least three brushes have been employed to describe the tree here, with the standard Hard Round brush used to draw the trunks. Keep this tonal stage on a single layer to begin with and think purely in terms of shape and areas of light and dark. step ow.

03. Now create a new layer (Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + N). This will be your initial colour scheme, so choose an appropriate scale of greens and start blocking in, being sure to set the blending mode to Overlay (in the top left of the Layers palette, next to opacity). The actual colours can be seen in the bottom right.

04. Now open a suitable sky image (you can download one for free from stock.xchng at (tinyurl.com/c5uho9) and select an area that will fit into the painting. Copy and paste this into your image and, using a soft-edged Eraser (Airbrush Soft Round is good) blend the edges. Go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast and adjust the sliders to help integrate it better.

05. Now open the image file Trees01.jpg from the cover disc and go to Select > Color Range. Using the Eyedropper, select the sky area and set the fuzziness to 200. Now go to Select > Inverse (Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + I) and then copy and paste this into your image.

06. Now go to Edit > Transform > Scale and resize the trees so they match the scale in the painting. To better integrate them go to Image > Adjustments > Color Balance (Cmd/Ctrl + B), ramp up the yellow value and slightly increase the red. Now set the blending mode to Overlay and use a soft eraser to delete some of the bright sky edges.

07. Now let’s repeat the process for other sections of the opposite treeline. Open the image file DSCF0014. jpg from the cover disc and Trees01.jpg again, and use the Lasso tool to draw a rough selection area around the sections highlighted in red. Copy and paste these into the painting and resize them accordingly.

08. Here you can see how various selections have been pasted in and transformed to blend in. Trees 01.jpg is in the bottom right (with the blending mode set to Normal and the opacity at 75%) and the other tree occupies the far left (again, set to Normal at 65% opacity). Experiment with the Blending modes and the Opacity values as well as the Color Balance to maintain the tonal range established at the beginning.

09. Now for the foreground: open the files P1000186.jpg and b14vickysheperd006.jpg (this came from tinyurl.com/c4nkrb) on the cover disc. Make a rough selection around the areas highlighted above in red. These will occupy the right-hand side of our image. As in the previous steps, alter the brightness and contrast to match the lighting and scale accordingly. Don’t be concerned about them being perfectly integrated at this stage – focus again on the tonal range and contrast.

10. Once the image adjustments are made, select the Eraser tool (E) and use a textured brush with some randomness or scattering in order to erase an irregular shape. This will help blend it in better and make the edges between the photo and painted elements less discernible.

11. For the left side of the tree canopy, open the file b17geoff_vane027.jpg from the cover CD (this came from tinyurl.com/dhkj5n) and open it. Select the sky area, invert the selection as we did before, then copy and paste the trees and building into our image. Here we’ll use another method of blending the photo into the picture. Go to Image > Adjustments > Curves (Cmd/Ctrl + M) and then click on the line, creating two points to tone down the lighting.

12. To form the base of this tree line open b17maartent1366.jpg from the cover CD (this came from tinyurl.com/c9zuq2). Make a selection area as shown in red. Copy and paste this into the image and scale and colour-correct it so that it blends. Use the Clone Stamp tool to fill the remaining area. Use a textured brush to form an irregular edge in a similar fashion to the method of erasing.

13. To add detail to the foreground trees open images P1000194.jpg and P1000206.jpg from the cover disc. Make a rough selection around the main tree and ivy in the first photo and the far left tree from the other one. Once integrated you can then repeat the process and use the Clone Stamp tool to fill in the gaps. The sky areas can be deleted with the Eraser tool or by going to Select > Color Range and removing it this way.

14. We’re onto the final steps now. Add in the three characters, which you’ll be painting in manually. The key here again is to get the tonal range correct. Start by simply blocking in a silhouette, as often the shape of your characters will determine how the viewer reads them, particularly when they’re in shadow, as in this instance.

15. Once you’re satisfied, start filling the characters in with colour, making sure to keep the tonal range narrow and the brightness low. Often a well-placed highlight is enough to suggest form and the brain easily fills in the gap, but bear in mind where the light is coming from. Paste in photos of clothing, hair and so on to blend the characters in more, using the techniques you’ve learned so far.

16. In the final stage, flatten the layers and then make refinements on a new layer. I added some sun glare by using a soft round airbrush and painting a white circular shape next to the right hand tree. Then go to Layer > Layer Style > Outer Glow and apply a pale yellow. Click OK and then set the layer’s blending mode to Hard Light with around 80% opacity.

Author:- Richard Tilbury

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Best of the Web - April 2009

Apr 30th in Web Roundups by Grant Friedman

Each month we scour the Internet in search of the best vector content on the web. April was another great month for the vector design community with tons of excellent tutorials, freebies, and articles to choose from. Take a moment to review some of our favorite picks for the month of April!

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42 Questions Every Freelancer Should Ask Their Clients

Freelance projects sometimes involve working with a person for an extended period of time. This article from Freelance Folder presents you with a list of 42 questions that you should ask your clients before you begin a project.

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Create 3D effects in Photo shop

Seamlessly integrate 3D elements using Photoshop Extended.

In this tutorial Mark Mayers show you how to seamlessly blend 3D models into your 2D composites using Photoshop Extended. You’ll discover how easy it is to roll, rotate and slide complex models within 3D space.

We’ll start off by transforming an everyday city scene into a war zone by incorporating a dramatic sky, then adding some spectacular explosion effects.

Next, we’ll use Poser to load and export some Martian war machines to wreak havoc in the streets. We’ll then build up the scene by adding some extra details, such as shadows and atmospheric effects using layers and blending modes.

While a similar image could be accomplished using a dedicated 3D application, it would mean a steep learning curve for users who are new to 3D – which is why these techniques are ideal for Photoshop artists.

We’ve used CS3 Extended for this tutorial. If you’ve got CS4 Extended you can still follow along, though Adobe has moved the position of some of the editing tools in step 8. See the application’s Help pages for more information.

01. In Photoshop create a new RGB canvas at 300dpi in portrait orientation, measuring 21-x-29.7cm with the Background Contents set to White. The city image I have used here is by Wanner Cavagnolle and can be downloaded for free from tinyurl.com/dyx8so. Open the city image in Photoshop and drag and drop it as a new layer into your working file. Resize as shown.

02. Switch to your Channels palette and cycle through each one in turn to determine which one holds the most contrast for buildings – in this case it’s the blue channel. Duplicate it by dragging the thumbnail into the Create New Channel icon. Open the Levels palette (Cmd/Ctrl + L) and set the black point to 169 and the white point to 242. Now use a black, hard-edged brush to fill the buildings and a white bush to fill the sky. Draw closed paths around any remaining areas, then generate selections and fill them.

03. Cmd/Ctrl + click the Duplicate Channel thumbnail to generate a selection, then highlight your composite channel. Switch to your layers palette and hit Cmd/Ctrl + J to float the selection as a new layer, then name it ‘Buildings’.

Now delete the original, as well as the white background layers. Clip a Colour Balance adjustment layer setting the midtone red to -33, then clip a Levels adjustment layer setting the midtone Input to 0.66 and the Output whitepoint to 236. Add all these layers into a group folder called ‘Background’.

04. Open Sky.jpg from the cover CD and drag and drop it as a new layer beneath the ‘Buildings’, naming it ‘Sky’. Clip a Levels adjustment layer to it, setting the midtone Input to 0.75. Next drag and drop Fireball.psd from the CD above the ‘Sky’ adjustment layer. Set the blending mode to Screen and Transform (Cmd/Ctrl + T) and position it. Duplicate the layer a few times and re-size as required. Name these layers ‘Fire 1’, ‘Fire 2’, and so on.

05. Zoom in and check the edges on the ‘Buildings’ layer. You may need to defringe by a pixel or so (Layer > Matting > Defringe). Now eradicate any oddly coloured halos by selecting Image > Adjustments > Replace Color and picking areas with the Eyedropper. Now blend, using the Replacement Hue, Saturation and Lightness sliders. You can also use the Clone tool to erase the people crossing the road.

06. Our Martian war machine was bought for a small charge from Daz 3D. Download it from tinyurl.com/d7hr37. Install the Poser figure, then after reading the ReadMe files, launch Poser and load and pose the model as required. Now select File > Export > Wavefront OBJ, and in the next dialog box select Single Frame. In the Hierarchy window, tick the bottom geometry box and leave the Universe and Ground boxes unticked.

You’ll then have to save and name the file – I called mine Machine_1.obj. It’s important to save this within a new folder. In the final dialog box, tick Include Figure Names in Polygon Groups, and Weld Body Part Seams. When the export process is complete, you’ll need to copy the texture into the folder you saved the .OBJ file in – these can be found in: Poser Application Folder > Runtime > Textures > KuroKuma. I only copied the MWMachine.jpg – as Meshwire1.jpg and Meshwire2.jpg apply to an unused prop and the others are Poser lighting maps.

07. Collapse the ‘Background’ folder, then import the model by selecting Layer > 3D Layers > New Layer from 3D File and navigating to the Machine_1.obj file. When the import has finished, you’ll see a new 3D layer indicated by a cube icon and its texture as sub-layer. Double-click the layer thumbnail to activate 3D mode and you’ll notice the toolbar changes.

08. When the Edit icon is highlighted, here’s what each tool does: A returns the object to its original position; B rotates; C rolls; D drags; E slides; F scales; G lets you enter coordinates; H is a pop-out View menu; I deletes the current view; J saves the current view; K is a popout Lighting and Appearance menu; L is a pop-out crosssection menu; M shows animation settings; N cancels the transformation; and O commits the transformation. Use the following settings to position the model: 8.7322 for all Position fields; Orientation: X = 12, Y = 22, Z = 0 and 10 for all Scale fields. Then select the Single Light From Eye Lighting preset.

09 Add another tripod by duplicating your 3D layer. Use the Slide and Drag tools to pull it away from the foreground, then the Rotate tool to turn it slightly to the right. As this object is in the distance, you can position its layer beneath the foreground tripod. Now add a layer mask and paint out areas that would naturally be hidden, such as the right leg and the foreground vehicles.

10. Drop a slightly different posed tripod in behind the first two, then position and mask. Now open Sky.jpg again and use Quickmask to make a feathered selection. Copy and paste this above the tripods at the bottom of the canvas, then invert it (Cmd/Ctrl + I). Open Hue/Saturation (Cmd/Ctrl + U), tick the Colorize option and use the following settings: Hue – 33; Saturation – 64; blending mode – Vivid Light; opacity – 30% and label it ‘Smoke’. Next, add some foreground fire as you did in step 4, and name the layers accordingly. You can now add masks to the ‘Fire’ and ‘Smoke’ layers using Linear and Radial Gradients within selections generated from the tripod layers.

11. Organize your layers by adding all of the tripods into a group folder called ‘3D models’, then drag the remaining layers into another group folder labelled ‘Foreground FX’. Next, select Layer > 3D Layers > New Layer from 3D File and navigate to Explosion.3ds from the CD. This model was created by simply adding an ‘Explosion Deformer’ to some simple shapes in Cinema 4D. Position at the bottom within the ‘Foreground FX’ folder. Now access 3D Mode, set the Scale fields to 5 and position to the left. Duplicate the layer a few times, modify their positions in 3D space and shuffle their stacking order as shown.

12. To make the scene convincing, it’s important that the 3D elements interact with the 2D background. Add a new group folder below the ‘3D models’ folder and label it ‘Shadows’. Generate a selection from the foreground tripod and fill with black on a new layer within the ‘Shadows’ folder. Set the blending mode to Multiply, drop the opacity to 60%, rotate the layer by 180°, flip it horizontally, then squash and distort it using the Transform Perspective tool. Now add more shadow layers using the same process.

13. Add a new layer at the bottom within the ‘Foreground FX’ folder, and fill it with black. Now select Filter > Render > Lens Flare, pick the 35mm Prime preset and set the Brightness to 115%. Now set the blending mode to Screen, move it over the foreground tripod and label it ‘Lens flare 1’. Now add a Hue/Saturation adjustment, ticking Colorize, then setting the Hue to 0 and the Saturation to 32. Duplicate/scale the layer and move over the remaining tripods and label them accordingly.

14. The colours are too vibrant, so add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer above all the group folders and use the following settings: red Saturation – -30; yellow Saturation – -65; Lightness – +18; green Hue – +41; Saturation – -38; cyan Saturation – -17. Add the helicopters as 3D layers in the distance, lowering their opacity to around 60%. The helicopter I’ve used can be downloaded for free from tinyurl.com/d5hvzm.

15. At this point I decided to add a car wreck to the foreground. The wreck image I’ve used can be downloaded for free from tinyurl.com/csbgbs. Open the image and use the Pen tool set to Paths to isolate the car. Then generate a selection from your path and copy and paste it into the ‘Background’ folder, clipping it to the ‘Buildings’ layer. Label it ‘Car’ and resize and position as shown. Now add a shadow layer, as detailed in step 12.

16. When you’re happy with the composition, go to each 3D layer in turn and select Layer > 3D Layers > Rasterize (or 3D > Rasterize in Photoshop CS4). Duplicate your first ‘Explosion’ layer, move it above the original and label it ‘Explosion blur’, then add a Motion Blur of 15 pixels and an angle of -24º, and set the blending mode to Lighten.

Repeat this for the other ‘Explosion’ layers and vary the effect by using the Soft Light blending mode. Fine-tune the image by using the Dodge and Burn tools on the ‘Car’ layer to match the scenes’ lighting. Finally, give the blades of the helicopters a slight motion blur and drop the opacity of the top Hue/ Saturation layer to 80%.

Author:-Mark Mayers

Tip

You can modify the texture of any 3D layer by doubleclicking the sub-layer icon. This will open a child-document which can be edited using Photoshop’s tools. In order to update the changes on the 3D model, save the file and it will automatically update on the 3D model. To overwrite the original texture on your hard drive in Photoshop CS3, go to Layer > 3D Layers > Replace Textures. If you have Poser 7, you can export content using Content Exporter, a free public beta download: tinyurl.com/c78tf3. Photoshop Extended also supports other common 3D interchange formats, including KMZ (Google Earth/Sketchup), U3D (Acrobat 3D), 3DS (3D Studio) and DAE (Collada).

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Create ice-cold image effects

The arctic freshness of this image is familiar enough from countless drink and toothpaste commercials – and in this tutorial, Photoshop master Fabio Sasso shows you how to reliably fake the effect from the warmth of your studio.

Sasso is a master at making miniscule tweaks to layer styles, and in this tutorial you’ll give the entire Layer Styles palette a good workout to create amazing effects, such as the apparently 3D water droplets that stud the outside of the bottle.

You’ll also develop your own custom brushes and make use of an amazing free smoke brush – both of which will stand you in good stead with your future Photoshop projects.

01. First, set the background colour: in a new Photoshop document, create a fill of a solid jade green (I used #90aea7) or a chilly mid-blue. Then add a new layer and select Filter > Render > Clouds, ensuring you have black and white as the background and foreground colours respectively. Then select Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, setting the radius to 180 pixels, and change the blending mode to Overlay.

02. Now let’s make the background lighter. With the cloudy layer selected, go to Image > Adjustments > Levels. Set the white input levels to 165 – this will increase the white areas of the image, creating a good background effect that’s highly versatile for a range of projects, and a great alternative to more conventional linear or radial gradients.

03. Next, we need to create the icy floor the bottle sits on. Add a new layer and fill it with white. Then go to Filter > Pixelate > Mezzotint, setting the type to Medium Dots. Then go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Set the distance to 80 pixels and the angle to 0º. You might need to resize the layer a little bit after the Motion Blur filter, as the edges won’t be uniform and the same as in the middle of the layer.

04. The idea here is to make the floor fade away as though it’s an infinite background. We’ll be using a quick mask to do that. Hit Q to enter the Quick Mask mode and select the Gradient Tool (E). Create a gradient starting close to the bottom and going to the centre of the document. The red area in the quick mask mode is the part that will be shown; the transparent area will be hidden. When you’re happy with it, hit Q again and the quick mask will be transformed to a marquee selection. Then go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal Selection.

05. For the bottle, we’ll be using an image from iStockphoto.com, which you can buy for a small cost from tinyurl.com/bzs9p7. The image already has a clipping path; import it into the document.

06. To create the frozen-bottle effect, we need to create a brush that will give us a frosted effect. To do that repeat the same filter we used for the floor. Add a new layer and fill it with white, then go to Filter > Pixelate > Mezzotint. Select the Elliptical Marquee tool (M) and change the feather option to 50 pixels, then create an elliptical selection and go to Edit > Define Brush Preset. Rename the brush to ‘Frosted’.

07. Go to Window > Brushes ( F5) and select the ‘Frosted’ brush, then enter the following settings to change the brush’s behaviour: in the Brush Tip Shape menu, change the spacing to 10%. In the Shape Dynamics menu, set the size jitter to 100% and the minimum diameter to 20%. In the Scattering menu, change the scatter to 120% and the count to 5. In Other Dynamics, set the opacity jitter to 50% and the flow jitter to 20%.

08. Now create another layer above the bottle layer and start painting using the Frosted Brush. It’s important to paint only over the bottle area, so use the Pen tool (P) to create a path around the bottle, then right-click (Cmd + click) and choose Make a Selection. Convert this selection a layer mask (Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal Selection) to mask out everything but the bottle, then paint using this mask.

09. Now let’s add a thick ice layer is some areas of the bottle. To do that we’ll need to create another brush. Go to the Brush Engine (F5) and select a regular rounded brush of about 100 pixels. Then enter the following settings: in the Shape Dynamics menu, set the size jitter to 100% and the minimum diameter to 1%. In the Scattering menu, set the scatter to 0% and the count to 3. In the Texture menu, select the Noise pattern and change the scale to 20%. In the Other Dynamics menu, set opacity jitter to 50% and the flow jitter to 40%.

10. Add another layer and mask it as in step 8, to make sure that you will paint only over the bottle area. Select your new brush in white and start painting some areas that will be frozen. Change the sizes of the brush using the keyboard shortcuts [ and ] to create a varied, more realistic effect – paint with a big brush first and then a very small one. Use a very light grey to create details, such as the shadows right below the bottle cap and the bottom of the neck of the bottle. These little details with the grey brush will add a great depth to the ice effect.

11. Add another layer and, using the same brush at a small diameter, carefully paint a border around the bottle: this will create the rough frozen edge. Also paint over the edges of the ice in the middle of the bottle to create a subtle 3D effect.

12. Add another layer, this time right above the frosted-effect layer and, using a normal rounded brush, paint some circles that will become water dots. Vary the size, but make most of them small, with only a couple of larger ones. Then select Layer > Layer Styles > Drop Shadow, setting this to 40% opacity, with the blend mode set to Color Burn, the distance set to 1 pixel and the size set to 2 pixels. Next, select the Inner Shadow menu and use 75% opacity, set the angle to 90º, the distance to 0 pixels and the size to 1 pixel. In the Bevel and Emboss menu, enter the following settings: depth – 730%; size – 4 pixels; soften – 3 pixels; angle – 151º; altitude – 37º; shadow mode – Color Burn with 30% opacity, in a dark red.

13. To create the frozen text is simple. First type in your text – to keep it simple I used ‘ICE’ – then add another layer and start painting with the Ice brush we created in step 9. The important thing here is to make sure that the edges are not too uniform, you can even use the Eraser Tool (E) with the Ice brush to erase some areas. Next, use the Layer Style menu to create a shadow (Layer > Layer Styles > Drop Shadow). Set the angle to 90º, the opacity to 30%, the distance to 1 pixel and the size to 1 pixel. Finally, go to Edit > Transform > Warp – you can select a predefined setting or create one – and use it to make the text follow the bottle’s cylindrical shape. Make the height bigger in the centre of the text and shorter in the areas close to the edge of the bottle.

14. Go to tinyurl.com/2madgw and download the free brush set; once you’ve installed and activated the smoke brush, create a new layer beneath the bottle layer, and paint some small wisps of smoke around the bottle, as shown here.

15. Group all the layers involved in the bottle (not the floor or background layers) and duplicate the group. Go to Layer > Merge Group and then Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, specifying a radius of 30 pixels. Change the blending mode to Screen and the opacity to 70%. Select the Eraser tool (E) and delete some areas. You’re trying to fake the effect of being in a cold environment. Keep adding details to the composition, such as some clouds in the background and a reflection on the floor.

Author:- Fabio Sasso

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