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If you are like me, you have the bad habit of
collecting photos, textures, or other graphic objects for future
use in your work. I've been collecting these things for years,
and have quite a library of unused images just gathering dust in
various nooks and crannies on my hard drive or around my office.
They call to me occasionally, begging to be warped or
manipulated. When your CD collection starts talking, you need to
do 2 things fast: get your head checked for injuries, and for
Pete's sake, get them to shut up! There is little more annoying
than whining graphics.
I have been working on several actions (I think
I'm up to 30 variations now) for getting some use out of these
photos. Most of these first turn an image into an artistic
rendering and then warp said photo into something seamless,
giving it a Goth-like quality that on occasion is pretty creepy
but generally always cool. How could I describe the process
without taking a full month of tutorials is the question. I
think I've found an answer. Why not use an existing online
tutorial for the first portion of the process, and then complete
the effect here? I'm not sure if this will work, but we can
surely give it a try.
For the first part of this tutorial, please
direct your browsers to an excellent Photoshop Tutorial
Resource, Access Denied (http://www.axxessdenied.com/).
This site is fantastic and has quickly become a personal
favorite of mine. In the upper right corner of the main page you
will find a navigation menu. Go into Tutorials, then Click
Photoshop. Scroll down through the long list of tutorials (maybe
stopping to perform a few on the way) until you find one
entitled "Photo -> Sketch by axxessdenied".
Open an image/photograph, preferable a head shot
as these work best for the rest of the tutorial I'll be covering
here.
I've just gone through the tutorial, and here is
the before image alongside the after image:
I love the process the author of the tutorial
uses to create the subtle brushing in that effect. Nicely done!
Ok, now to my portion of the tutorial.
1) Once you have your image ready, collapse it.
Duplicate the background layer.
2) With the duplicate layer selected in the
Layers Palette, go to Edit>Transform>Flip Vertical.
3) This next part of the process is basically
covering the seamless tutorial we did on texture photos a few
weeks ago, but wait until you see the result! With the duplicate
layer selected, click the ‘Add a mask' icon on the bottom of the
layers palette. The foreground/background colors should default
to Black/White respectively.
4) Before we apply the mask, let's square things
up a bit. Go to Image>Image Size and set the size to 3 inches x
3 inches, resolution 96 DPI.
5) Now select the Gradient tool. Set your
gradient up so that there is a fairly stark division between the
2 colors.
Also, make sure the Linear Gradient is selected.
6) Starting at the top edge of the image, draw
the gradient down to the bottom edge. Use a strait vertical
line… any variation will mess up the end effect. Your image
should appear reflected, like this example:
7) Go to Layer>Merge Visible. Duplicate this
newly merged layer. Select the Duplicate again and go to
Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal.
8) Again, Click the Add a Mask Icon. This time
draw your gradient from the left edge to the right edge, as
strait as possible. Here is the result:
Have a great week, everyone! |