Back-to-basics photo illustration techniques

With the recent release of Adobe CS5, it’s easy to get carried away with the new tools and presets. They might be designed to maximise workflow efficiency, but an over-reliance on these can give your work a generic feel To keep your style fresh, you need to get back to basics.

In this tutorial, Markie Darkie shows you how to create a stunning photomontage. You’ll master repetition and layering of shapes, efficient use of simple colour palettes with the aid of Layer Style effects, or a file of vector elements.

The file for this tutorial is available from the Download Zone, but you’ll also learn how to create your own design elements that you can use on future projects.

Step 1 Download and open the Geometric Design Elements.ai file in Illustrator. You can use it as a reference or resource file for this project. Creating images from scratch is useful – not only does it save you searching for stock image files, you also build up a valuable archive for future projects.

Step 2 Next, click the View tab and enable Smart Guides and Snap to Point. This will allow you to align paths and points with ease. Use the space inside the dashed box as your work area. Using the Selection tool (V), select Shape 1, create a copy and change it to Colour Swatch 2 using the Eyedropper tool (I). Right Click on the edited path and select Transform > Reflect. Then set the orientation to Vertical and angle to 90°.

Step 3 Connect the two paths to look like a pyramid, select both and hit Cmd/Ctrl + G to group the selection as one object. You now have a base design element that you can modify to create more variations. Use the Selection tool (V) to change the width, height and angle of the basic form.

Step 4 Next, we’ll enhance the forms by adding a basic stripe pattern. Copy Shape 2 and change the colour to Swatch 3. HitShift + Cmd/Ctrl + F10 to bring up the Transparency Window and change the Opacity to 30%. Create three copies of the path and stack them on top of each other to create the pattern.

Step 5 Place the stripe pattern on top of the form. Group the selection as one object, tap Shift + Cmd/Ctrl + F9 for the Pathfinder window, then select the Merge option tab and use the Direct Selection tool (A) to delete excess paths. Use the Selection tool (V) to tweak the dimensions and angle of the new element.

Step 6 Now copy and select Shape 4 from the downloaded file. Click Effect > 3D > Revolve to bring up the 3D Revolve Options Window. Press OK and the default Off-Axis Front Position will give you an instant sphere. You can create various spheres by using the Eyedropper tool (I) and selecting different colour swatches.

Step 7 Next, open Photoshop and hit Cmd/Ctrl + N to create a new Canvas. Specify the size and resolution of the file. I normally go with an A4 size and 300dpi for a lot of design projects. Press F7 to bring up the Layers Panel and change the background colour to black using the Paint Bucket tool (G).

Step 8 Place the model shot on the centre of your artboard. This image has been kindly provided by photographer Kate Frankfurt but you can use stock photos from our Download Zone or use your own pictures. If your model is on a background, make sure you cut them out so you can wrap elements around them.

Step 9 Create a folder by hitting the Create A New Group button on the bottom section of the Layers Panel. Rename it as ‘Foreground Elements’ and place it on top of the model shot layer. Create another folder and rename it as ‘Background Elements’ and place this under the model shot layer. This will help you classify layers when you start placing multiple design elements on your artboard.

Step 10 Now it’s time to create an array of dynamic visual compositions using the design elements you made in Illustrator. This can be achieved by aligning and redistributing multiple design elements using the Align tool (Shift+F7) in Illustrator or just by randomly grouping them.

Step 11 Create various repeating patterns in Illustrator and place them on your artboard in Photoshop. You can vary the sizes and orientation to make the patterns interesting, or change their colours to add some contrast between designs elements.

Step 12 Make individual layers for each pattern you’ve created. Place them inside the ‘Foreground Elements’ folder if you want them to appear on top of other design elements, or in the ‘Background Elements’ folder if you want them to appear on the background. This technique will create visual depth when you apply Layers Styles such as Drop Shadow and Outer Glow on selected design elements.

Step 13 To help define your foreground layers, apply Drop Shadow and Outer Glow in the Layer Styles palette. The default settings are good enough but feel free to experiment and change the opacity, angle, distance, spread and size of the layer styles you want to use.

Step 14 Create more depth and volume by adjusting the opacity of the background layers to between 80-40% on the upper right section of the Layers Panel. This will fade the background layers a little, giving the entire visual composition a 3D-like quality.

Step 15 Masking is another method that you can use to enhance the relief and 3D qualities of your work. You can adjust opacity on certain areas by masking your layers. To apply a layer mask, click the Add Layer Mask tab on the bottom of the Layers Panel. Use The Brush tool (B) with a Black colour swatch to mask layers. Adjust the brush softness, size and opacity according to your preference.

Step 16 Finish up with more details, textures and visual elements using the same layering and styling techniques. Attention to detail is very important if you want to make your work stand out. It might be time-consuming but your patience will definitely pay off once you see the fruit of your artistic labour.

Markie Darkie

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How to create stunning gallery prints

Your art looks fabulous on-screen, but to show its maximum potential, you need to get it printed out at the highest possible quality ready for to hang on your walls. The best way to do this is to use a top-notch professional A3+ inkjet printer – which produces large prints that are ready for sale.

Follow step-by-step as Ciara Phelan takes you behind-the-scenes as she creates one of her fantastic retro-inspired artworks, and then see how she selects output settings and paper types to produce perfect prints from a Canon PIXMA Pro9500 Mark II.

You’ll learn how to arrange and combine elements for dynamic effect at A3 size, optimising contrast and developing collections of strong colours that will look stunning when output at the highest quality – with far more flexibility than with traditional print systems. You’ll also be guided through how to use Canon’s Easy-PhotoPrint Pro plug-in for Photoshop, which combines the functions of Photoshop’s Print and the printer’s settings dialogues to make conflicts a thing of the past and getting the results you want a doddle.

Step 1 When making a collage poster it is important to source the right imagery. The whole success of the composition will hinge on the range and quality of images you have to choose from.

For this print, we’re harking back to the look of the circus in old children’s books and encyclopedias. I’ve collected a set of stock images that represent what it must have felt like to go to a big traveling circus as a child in the mid-20th century – the excitement of human acrobatic ability and exotic animals. If you want to create retro-looking images from your own photos, see our tip.

Step 2 Open Photoshop and create a new print ready document by selecting File > New. In the Preset window chose International Paper. then Size > A3. The Pro9500 Mark II supports paper sizes up yo A3+, , but I’ve chosen this size to match a frame I have my eye on. Set the resolution at 300pi and Colour Mode to CMYK.

Step 3 It is important that an illustration has at least one central main element to draw the eye before it heads off to discover what else is to be seen. These must be clearly identifiable from a distance, but hold enough detail and/or texture to look to hold up under close viewing. For the aged look we’re going for here, texture is more important than detail.

For this collage I have chosen a horse and a tiger. I need to cut these out so I can compose them together. Open the image you want to use by selecting File > Open. To cut out the image and isolate it from its surrounding, select the Pen tool on the left hand side of the Tool panel. On the toolbar along the top, select the Paths option.

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Step 4 Zoom into the image and using the Pen tool draw a path around the image. To get a better edge to the cutout stay, slightly inside the edge. This way you don’t pick up any background pixels. Close the path.

Step 5 Once you have created a path all the way around, select Window > Paths. Click on the drop down menu on the right of the Path panel and chose Make Selection. In the dialog box that appears, set a Feather Radius of 0.0 and click New Selection. Click OK to create a marque selection around the image.

Step 6 Hit copy (Cmd/Ctrl + C) and return to your print-ready document. Paste your element onto the Canvas (Cmd/Ctrl + V) and place it in the centre of your composition ready to deck other elements around.

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Step 7 In the majority of images imported you will have to adjust the contrast to make the image feel richer – and to take advantage of our printer’s deep, glossy blacks. To do this, select Image > Adjustments > Levels. Slide the arrows inwards to add more contrast. For this project, a dirtier, more textured approach is preferable, so it doesn’t matter if the gradients break down – but you may want to keep them looking smooth.With the Pro9500 Mark II having separate matte black, photo black and grey ink tanks, you can be sure that whichever look you want, it’ll appear as you wish.

Repeat steps 3-7 until you have your central elements – more peripheral elements can be cutout and added as you need them.

Step 8 Start to build up a dynamic composition by bringing in strong colour and shapes using geometric forms such as semi-circles, triangles and squares. To create a circle, select the Ellipse tool in the Tool palette, and then Shape Layers from the top toolbar.

Pick a strong colour from the Color Picker. With a traditional four-colour print job we’d stick to 100% cyans, magentas, yellows and blacks for the most striking effect – but the PIXMA Pro9500 Mark II’s 10-ink system gives us much wider scope. With the printer having separate red and green ink tanks, we don’t have to worry about warm shades looking murky.

Step 9 You can add texture to a shape by creating a quick masked folder. To do this draw a vector shape, in the menu bar click Layer > Rasterize > Shape. In the Tool panel select Magic Wand and highlight the shape. In the Layers panel select Create a New Group and then click on Add Layer Mask. This creates a folder the same shape as your vector element. In here you can drop any texture to add depth.

Step 10 To match the circus theme, I’ve used star shapes and intricate vector patterns. An easy way to build these is to create the shapes you require in Illustrator, copy them, move to Photoshop and then paste them into your print document.

Step 11 Once your composition is complete, add a textured background to complete the retro feel, and get it more depth.

I have also added a subtle blue overlay to pull all the different imagery together. To do this, duplicate the background by right-clicking on the layer in the Layers palette and selecting Duplicate Layer. Bring the duplicated layer to the top of the layer order. Set the opacity to 20% and the Blending Mode to Overlay.

Step 12 Once you are happy with the composition, it’s time to create a fantastic-looking print. Select File > Automate > Canon Easy-PhotoPrint Pro to launch Canon’s plug-in. Replacing the Photoshop Print dialog and the printer driver’s settings dialog, this not only makes it printing easier and faster, but also ensures colours are reproduced faithfully. By applying settings in both the Print dialog and driver settings, it’s easy to apply your printer’s colour profile twice and throw your colours out – this plug-in prevents this.

First off, select A3 in the Paper Size drop-down menu so the print will now fit to the whole page.

Step 13 My illustration has a blue background that should bleed fully. To achieve this, simply select Borderless in the Layout panel. If we were creating postcards or flyers, there are a lot of options here to create multiple prints on the same page.

As we are printing our artwork to gallery standard, we need to set the DPI to as high as possible to get the most amount of detail. In the Print Quality drop down menu select High.

Step 14 To create a great print, it’s important to use paper that suits the look you’re going for. These are selected in the Media Type drop down menu. For my print I have chosen Matte Photo Paper as the non-glossy textured quality sits well with the collaged illustration.

Canon has a wide range of high-quality papers to print onto, from ultra-glossy to gallery-style “Photo Rag” and “Museum Etching” papers – and the Pro9500 Mark II has a flat paper path that allows stocks as thick as 1.2mm.

Once all the settings are correct press Print. In the print dialog box that appears just select OK. Canon Easy-PhotoPrint Pro amends all the settings in one location so there is no need to adjust them in the driver. When your artwork has printed, frame and enjoy!

The output showed fantastic tonal range, within the black and white images and yet still retained accurate bright solid colours.

Author :- Ciara Phelan

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Basic Lighting in 3D Max

This is my first little tutorial I'm posting here in my portfolio. I'm going to try explaining you how to get some better rendering results in 3D Studio Max. I'm using the 2008 version, since the others don't work well with Vista, but it should work fine in other versions too. Of course, there are many aspects when it comes to improving your renderings. You can get your models to look better, improve your textures, get better animations, ... but what I'm going to talk about is the lighting of your scene. Although it may sound like an unimportant thing, lighting is a crucial part of your rendering. I suggest we start of immediately. As you can see, I've set up a little scene over here. The scene contains a ground plane, a few boxes and some text, to make sure I use all kinds of geometry. This means, there are no hidden elements that could improve the renderings later, making it easier for you to follow along. I'll try mentioning all steps, to make it easy for you. So, after setting up the scene, I immediately hit the render button, and this is what will pop up. Well, actually I moved the camera too, but that won't influence the rendering much either. This means, there are no lights, materials, ...whatsoever in the scene. By default, 3D Studio Max will use an ambient light to light the scene. The thing is... the chances of this light being exactly the light you want for your scene are very small. So, the first things we're going to do is add some lights! I prefer working with omni lights since they give your scene a natural look. While when you're using something like a spot, you'll get a hotspot and a falloff zone, which you don't have in real life. Omni's make your light scatter nicely.

Download Scene File here.

Okay, this is looking a tad bit different. What have I done here? Well, I added one omni behind the camera (meaning, in front of the scene). I just left the settings to default, since it looked okay in my case.But, depending on your scene you may want to change some of the settings, depending on the look you're after. Eg. in a desert scene, you may want to add a tad bit of a yellowish color to the light. While in an underwater scene you'll want to go for a blue color. I just left the settings as they were over here. But to be honest... it still looks aweful, no? These are the kind of rendering people who work with 3D programs for the first time usually get. When you're outside and look out of the window, looking at something like a house, is it only are only 2 sides of the house lighted? No... or you're house is rather weird. In real life, light can be deflected, meaning the light will diffuse over a large area, also lighting the walls not pointing towards the sun. At the moment, only the polygons pointed towards the light source will be lit. A simple way tosolve this, only using omni lights would be to add a light in the back of the scene. This way, the other sides of our boxes and text will also be lit. Make sure you set the intensity a bit lower then the front omni though, since that will be our primary light source!

Download Scene File here.

There we go, one omni added in the back of the scene. I used the default settings once again, only thing I changed is the intensity, I set it from 1 to 0.75. Now we are getting somewhere right? Everything seems to be lit naturally, and we don't have the massive contrast problems we had before. The thing is, it still doesn't look natural at all. All light is divided pretty much equally over the surfaces right now, which is not how it works in reality. In real life, there are areas's the light can't reach, and they will cause shadows. Luckily, shadows are no problem in this age of 3D technology.

Download Scene File here.

What we need to do now is find the best shadow solving system. As you can see in the screens up here, there are 3 main systems that can be used (mental ray excluded). Shadow Map and Ray Traced both look brilliant, while the Area Shadows looks like it could use some work. What will we choose? You may call me crazy but I'm going for the Area Shadows, to show you what a little bit of tweaking can do. So, access both of your omni lights, check the box in front of "Shadows" and choose "Area Shadows". You may also want to check "Use Global Settings" for both of them. This way you only need to change the settings once in case you want to adapt something later. After that, hit the render button once again and something like this should pop up.

Not looking too good is it? But it IS actually the most realistic render we've got until now. The only thing left to do is some tweaking in the settings for the shadow system. What I want you to do is change the shadow integrity to "15", set the quality to "8", change the jitter to "8" and change length and width both to "50". This will cause the shadows to appear more diffused over the surfaces of the objects in your scene.

Download Scene File here.

As you can see, everything looks way smoother and even pretty realistic, compared to the first render we got. Using this technique you have a lot of control over the positioning of your lights, intensity, color, and much more, making it quite a good system to use for shadows. To prove it, here is a render of the exact same scene, with the color of the back light changed to a pretty dark blue color, the front light with a near-white-blue color and the material for the text to a purple color.

Download Scene File here.

Still looks quite good no? That's basically all you need to know to get your scene well-lit. Of course, you can add more lights, move them, different colors, intensities, ... it'll always look good. But, there are some other lighting solutions I'd like to show you. First of all, a solution to shadows even better than this one, but with less control.

Download Scene File here.

As you can see, the amount of light in the scene had significantly increased. This is because I added a skylight on top of the scene (hovering in the center of the world, and a bit above the scene). After doing that, I checked "Cast Shadows" and used 20 Rays per Sample and a ray Bias of 0.005. This gives for a nice overall lighting of your scene as you can see. Also, depending on the Rays per Sample you use, the solution will overall be way better than the solution you get using omnis. The only problem is, that you're shadows won't show up that well anymore and that all objects will already have some kind of "lightness" to them. You can decrease the intensity, but the surfaces will always be lighted a tad bit. It does look way better though!

Download Scene File here.

In this render, I turned off our omni lights and as you can see the scene looks pretty good. It is equally lit everywhere and shows shadows where needed. It doesn't use any of the information of our previous lights though. In some renders, this may be the look you're looking for. Up to now, I've been telling you we were working on the lighting, but actually we have been working on the opposite all the time: the shadows. Of course, these 2 things are actually the same, since shadows are created by light. But, we only made the dark spots look right for now. Another thing 3D Max will allow us to do, is to calculate how the light will be scattered all over the surfaces. This process is called radiosity. I'll show you a quick example of it.

Download Scene File here.

Here is a render where I used radiosity. To be honest, it's not pure radiosity. I turned off the skylight, turned the omni lights back on and made 3D Max calculate the scene's radiosity. This can be done by going to "Rendering" -> "Advanced Lighting" -> "Radiosity". There, you can specify the quality and perform the calculations. I chose to go with the default: 85%. You may be wondering... "You said Radiosity is a solution for the lighting distribution, not a shadow system, then why am I seeing shadows?" Well, I kept the shadow settings for the omni light activated. This means, we are using both a system for lighting distribution and one for shadow calculation at once, making this probably the most accurate shadows we can get in this scene. Of course, you can still improve the quality, by adapting the settings for both solvers.

Download Scene File here.

Here, I changed the radiosity quality to 98% and changed the shadow quality to 15. As you can see, it's just a minor improvement, and when you are looking for a decent render speed, you don't want to go for this. But it may just give your scene that extra bit of detail you are looking for. Those are pretty much the basics of getting your scene well lit in 3D Studio Max. Of course, these same principals can be used for any kind of scenes. You'll just need to adjust the settings accordingly to get everything to look right. Also, when you are making test renders, you may want to reduce the quality of the solutions, inorder to be able to render frequently at a decent speed. For your final render, you'd best go with the best settings your computer can handle.

Download Scene File here.

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Making a Tractor in 3d max

Topics Covered :

1. General Scene Setup 2. Material Settings 3. HDRI for reflections only 4. Environment Lighting A short animation which utilizes the topics covered in this tutorial can be seen here.

Global Switches Settings :

- Default Lights are off - Everything else is basically default settings

Irradiance Map Settings :

- I set the preset to custom and used the settings shown on the left Note: I like to enable Show calc phase just so I can see the Irradiance map calculation

Global Illumination Settings :

- Global Illumination is Enabled - Irradiance map for Primary GI engine with a multiplier of 1.0 -Quasi-Monte-Carlo for Secondary Bounces with a multiplier of 1.0 - Post processing settings are all default

V-Ray Environment Settings :

Note : There are no lights in this scene...as in zero. The only thing lighting the scene is the environment light shown on the left.

- GI Environment Skylight override is enabled. - Reflection/refraction override is enabled.

Note : I used a HDRI map for the reflections in the scene but the the HDRI map does not contribute to the lighting. I could easily use the HDRI in the reflection slot to light the scene by dragging "Map 15" into the "None" slot of the GI environment. For this particular scene, basic GI environment lighting worked well so I chose not use a HDRI map in the GI environment slot.

The Ground Plane :

In order for the shadows, reflections and GI bounces to render over the background image we need an object in the scene to catch all of that data. For this we will use a matte object. Note: To match the perspective of the background image I simply rotated the camera by hand until a suitable match was achieved.

Matte Object Settings :

Note : to access the V-Ray properties dialog box select an object in the scene and right-click in the viewport. Select V-Ray properties from the quad menu. - Matte object is enabled and shadows are checked.. This will make the selected objects invisible at rendertime but things like shadows, reflections and GI bounces will still show up. - Notice you have control over many options like reflection and GI amounts. This is a very useful dialog box because you can control how V-Ray treats scene geometry on a per-object basis.

Settings for the red metal are on the right :

Here is a closeup of the red metal on the tractor. Notice all of the nice subtle highlights. This is a combination of the material settings and the HDRI reflections. - Reflections have been set to a dark grey - Reflection glossies have been lowered to .75 - Fresnel reflections were enabled and Index of Refraction (IOR) was set to 2.0 - Max depth was raised to 8 - All other settings were left default.

Here is a closeup of the dark metal on the tractor. Notice the nice subtle highlights/reflections. This is a combination of the material settings and the HDRI reflections. - Reflections have been set to a dark grey - Reflection glossies have been lowered to .75 - Fresnel reflections were enabled and Index of Refraction (IOR) was set to 1.6 - Max depth was raised to 8 - All other settings were left default.

Settings for the tire material are on the right :

Here is a closeup of the large tire on the tractor. Notice the nice subtle highlights/reflections. This is a combination of the material settings and the HDRI reflections. - Reflections have been set to a dark grey - Reflection glossies have been lowered to .75 - Fresnel reflections were enabled and Index of Refraction (IOR) was set to 1.6 - Max depth was raised to 8 - All other settings were left default.

Small Details :

Since I knew the camera wasn't going to get to close to certain things I was able to get away with just mapping a few things in the scene. - The headlights and grill are simply textures mapped to the geometry. - For the hoses I used renderable splines.

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