TGJ2O

Creating Photo-realistic Effects

How does this:

How does this become an underwater scene like this?

Photorealism was a reactionary movement stemmed from the ever increasing and overwhelming abundance of photographic media, which by the mid 20th century had grown into such a massive phenomenon that it was threatening to lessen the value of imagery in art. Creating photo-realistic art (commercial or not) can be a stunning expression of individual thought. To be able to manipulate a photograph in such a way as to create an artificial scene is a talent much demanded in industry (read: National Enquirer). Often times the art is created from nothing except penstrokes as we saw above and here.

You are to do ONE of the following tutorials as practice in photorealism.

Newspaper Magnification

In this tutorial we're going to make a glass ball. The main goal of this tutorial is that you get an idea how to approach this. It's not that important to remember all settings, but it's more important that you understand what's exactly happening and to be able to think about how, using layers and blend-modes to create objects in a picture that never originally existed there.

The tutorial is divided into 5 main areas:

Preparing the background and drawing the basic shape (step 1 and 2)
Filling the shape with gradients and layer styles (step 3 to 6)
Adding a highlight (step 7)
Adding a shadow (step 8)
Adding distortions (step 9)

1. Preparing the document

Save the following file called newspaper.jpg on your computer.

Drag the picture into photoshop

In Photoshop. Add a new layer by clicking on the Create a new layer icon.

Grab the Elliptical Marquee tool from your toolbar (behind the rectangular marquee) and make a selection (hold down the shift key before you make the selection to make the selection a perfect circle) somewhere in the area and with the size that I'm showing here

2. Filling the selection with the base color of the glass ball

Click on the foreground color (black) in the tool bar marked with red in this screenshot

In the Color Picker window that opens you enter the value D6D3C0 in the area marked with A (you can copy/paste from here)

Press Alt+Backspace. Now press Ctrl +D to get rid of the selection. You can also use the menu to do this: Select/Deselect.

3. Adding a layer style

Go to the layers panel and click on the Add a Layer Style (FX button) icon and select Inner Shadow and use the settings shown here (watch out: the color white is selected):

The result should look like this

4. Adding a gradient

Add a new layer. Call it gradient. Clip it to the layer below by pressing Ctrl+Alt+G (note: with google drive installed that shortcut won't work). Instead right click the layer and choose Create Clipping Mask

Keep the foreground color the same (D6D3C0), but change the background color in the tool bar and use the following color: 65645F. We're now going to draw a gradient using the current fore- and background colors. Select the Gradient Tool in the toolbar (if it's not visible, then look under the Paint Bucket tool). At the top in the gradient menu choose FOREGROUND TO BACKGROUND (it should be the two colors you've used)

If you don't see a gradient that uses your colors at A which should look like this

Drag your gradient from about the middle of the circle towards the edge

The result should look like this:

Add a Layer Mask to this layer by clicking on the Add Layer Mask icon . Don't you worry if the fore and background switch when you do this, this is normal behavior. Click D make the foreground colour black.

With the layer mask still active (It will have a double border), choose a soft brush. Now click in the centre of the circle. You should see a small soft black circle in your white mask.

By this time we should you have something like this:

5. Adding more layer styles

We're now going to duplicate our Layer 1.

Click on its icon in the layers palette, hold down the mouse button and drag (A) the layer to the Create a new layer icon and release the mouse button (it's the spot next to the trash bucket).

Move this duplicated layer to the top of our layers palette by click on Layer 1 and drag (B) it all the way up until you notice a dark blue line appearing above the top layer. At that moment release the mouse button.

Finally, since Photoshop CS2 and onwards changes Layer 2 (our mask layer) will ungroup and we'll see a large gradient across the whole screen. To correct that make sure the mask <Layer 2> is active and press Ctrl + Alt + G to regroup it with the layer below (or right click and choose clipping mask).

Make sure that Layer on (our new top layer) is active (you will notice the in front of it).

Set the Fill of this layer to 0% (A) and then double click on the Layer Style icon (B) to modify the Layer Style of this layer (or click on FX button on the bottom):

Use the following effects settings for the layer style. Make sure that all settings are exactly the same, including color or blending mode settings.

Uncheck 'Use Global Light'

Change your Inner Shadow to the following settings

add an Inner Glow

After this our image should look something like this:

6. Adding more volume

Add a new layer by clicking on the Create a new layer icon .

Select the Brush Tool in the tool bar.

Click on the area of the options bar that I've marked in red and select a 175 px brush, with a hardness of 0%, which is the softest brush you can use.

Set the foreground color to white.

Click once with this brush exactly in the upper left of the circle (Layer 3). Now go to the top menu and select Filter/BLUR/Gaussian Blur... and select a radius of 25 and click OK.

This adds a "shine" to the top left of the circle, but some of that shine has actually bled out

Note: because we've blurred the white dot, white pixels might appear outside the area that we have defined as our glass ball, so we have to get rid of it. It's quite simple and we're going to use a little 'trick' for that.

With the top layer (Layer 2 in my picture) still active we Ctrl + click on the thumbnail the layer below it. Now click on the mask icon and layer 2 should be masked. (the picture below the last one)

Now change the opacity of this layer to 30%. This screenshot also shows how your layer palette should look like at this moment:

7. Creating a highlight

Add a new layer by clicking on the Create a new layer icon and that's going to be Layer 4.

Select the Brush Tool and use a hard brush (hardness is 100%) with a size of 20. Change the foreground color to white (or a very slight yellow (close to indoor light) using a value of FFFFE8).

Place the highlight in the location shown here

Go to the menu and select Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur... and select a small radius of .5 and click OK.

Go to the layers palette and click on the Add a Layer Style icon to add a layer style and select the Outer Glow effect and use the settings shown here:

Select the first layer that has your content (the one above the newspaper). Now set the Fill of this layer to 25% (fill is just under the opacity selection). You'll notice that by doing that, that we're are getting closer to the final result

8. Adding a shadow

If the bottom is too bright (marked with arrow), then just select the Layer Style of Layer 1 copy and lower the opacity of the Inner Shadow effect (or increase it if that's what you prefer). (I set mine to 25%)

We now click on the background layer with the newspaper image on it, to make it active. Add a new layer by clicking on the Create a new layer icon . This should give us a layer right above the background that is empty.

With this layer (shadow) active we click on Ctrl + click on the thumbnail of the layer above (the one with glass ball, Layer 1 copy) to load the shape of a circle. Now press the letter D on your keyboard (remember that sets the foreground/background colours to default). You'll now have a circular selection on an empty layer and black as a foreground color

We're now going to draw a gradient using the current foreground color (black) in combination with transparency. Go to Windows>Gradients and you'll get the gradient options on the right panel. Choose Black to Transparent. It should fill the selection with a radial gradient

Annoyingly you'll need to outthink Photoshop now. Right click the layer and choose convert to Smart Object. If you don't get the following you've done something wrong in the steps above.

We're now going to transform this selection in an elliptical shape by using the transform tool. Press Ctrl + T. A rectangular box with 8 handles will appear. Hold down CTRL and pull the upper center handle downward (see A) until you have a shape that looks like the one in B.

Click checkmark to commit the change.

We now have to move this shadow to the right (B). Be aware that the arrow only marks the direction, not the distance.

Select the Move Tool in your tool bar.

Now change the opacity of this layer to 50%. In the menu we select Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur... and select a radius of 2 and click OK. On the right you can see how the layers palette should look like after you've done all steps (in this screenshot I marked the color of the shadow layer with yellow).

9. Deforming inside of glass ball and shadow

In this last step we're going to deform the image inside the glass ball. Right click the shadow layer and turn it into a smart object

Make sure that our shadow layer is still active and Ctrl + click on the thumbnail of the layer above (the one with glass ball, Layer 1). Now go to the menu and select Filter/Distort/Spherize. Select for Amount the value 100% and make sure that Normal is selected for Mode. Click OK.

The shadow is now deformed.

Make the background layer active and Ctrl+click on the layer 1 ball (to get the circular selection). Press Ctrl + ALT+F. Note: Ctrl + ALT+F will always apply the filter that was used previously, in our case Spherize.

That was our final step and this is the result:

It's important to know that you have to select a background with colors that are not the total opposite of the colors we selected in the beginning of our tutorial when you want to use this technique.

You can make the ball even more realistic by adding more highlights or reflections. For the purpose of this tutorial I've kept it simple by adding just one single highlight.

Also be aware that once you deform the shadow or inside of the ball that you're not able to move the ball, since both deformations are of course in a way "connected" to the background. So make sure that the glass ball is in the right place, before you start with the deformations. Make sure that your background is not to plain. A real glass ball doesn't look cool either on white piece of paper in front of a white wall. Always try to use the environment to strengthen the effects you're using to make the result look more realistic.

This whole tutorial should be seen as a step in the right direction. If you like the final result, that's fine with me, but there will always be people who want to take this a step further. My advice; buy a glass ball or collect images of glass balls. It's the best way to study highlights, shadows and reflections, which can be rather complicated at times.

Vampire Effect

Take a portrait of a friend in a somewhat creepy pose. Also download this background

Step 1: blurring the sky

First, let's whip up a quick and easy background and color grade to set the mood. Open the moon background photo

Let's open a bright Full Moon landscape and pin the center with a Filter > Blur Gallery > Field Blur of 16px

Click on the radial slider in the middle and drag it around until it says approximately 16

Step 2: Reddening the sky

Now, we want it nice and bright, so let's create a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer of Brightness: 36 and Contrast: -11.

And then let's turn it a vibrant red using a Photo Filter adjustment layer with a RED in the properties dropdown. UNCHECK Preserve luminosity and put the density to about 75%

Step 3: adjusting reds and blues

We're going to adjust the strength of some of the lights and darks

Go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>CURVES.

Click the line up at the top right of the graph shown at right. Create 2 points by dragging the base curve around.

Use the dropdown in CURVES to RED and adjust the left tone slider to the right a bit (far right picture)

Do the same with the BLUE dropdown. Pull the right slider to the left a bit to boost the blues

Finally, on the MASK (the white rectangle in the layers panel) choose a black paintbrush and with a flow of 10%, paint black onto the mask over the moon and lower bank of clouds until they appear reddish again

Step 4: Adding a subject

Let's place our subject. Extract them using your preferred method. Subject Select and a Layer Mask worked out perfectly fine in this case.

Step 5:Adjusting clothing colours/tones (if necessary)

If you need to adjust clothing colour (as in my model), select the region you want to recolur and create a Gradient Map Adjustment layer

Then in the properties you can click on the gradient bar anywhere. You can adjust the colours by moving the left and right colour stops around. Try to keep a dark colour on the left.

In this case I've adjusted his shirt to be far darker than it was.

Step 5: Darkening Shadows

We also want to add some shadows to the face. My favourite way to add deep shadows to an otherwise bright subject is to create and clip a SELECTIVE COLOUR fill layer. Boost the BLACKS values up.

Drag it to make sure this layer is right above your subject.

Create a clipping mask (right click the layer and choose clipping mask). Set the blend mode to Multiply, in the subject.

You can move your opacity slider around to taste.

You can always paint in black on the mask to remove any areas you don't want dark

Step 5: Adding vampire teeth

Now, let's add vampire teeth to the photo! First, Duplicate your subject, and clip the duplicate into the original subject. Go ahead and name that duplicate "Fangs."

Now, let's go to Filter > Liquify. We're going to push and pull the teeth we want to become fangs. I'm doing the classic canines. However, you can make any teeth into a nice sharp fang.

Don't worry about overly warping the tooth or the surrounding teeth and tongue. Just focus on getting the ideal fang shape.

If you're having trouble getting it to be nice and sharp, don't worry about that either—we will be able to make some final shape adjustments.

Step 6: Adjusting the eyes

Now, let's move on to the eyes. Start by creating a New Layer set to Multiply. Right click and make a clipping mask with the body layer below it. On this layer, we're going to fill the eyes in.

Make a selection of the eyes and fill this blank layer with black.

Right click this layer in the layers panel and change the Blending Options

At the bottom, under "underlying layer" drag the right side handle to about 152.

Now hold down ALT, and drag the handle off to the right. It'll split the handle in half. Find a nice combination of locations for the sliders so that you get a shine in the eyes, but the rest are black

Step 7: Blood time!

When you want to vampire yourself in Photoshop, you can't forget the blood!

So let's create a New Layer set to Multiply and paint some dripping blood shapes coming from the mouth and fangs of our subject.

I'm using a medium red #5d0d0e color, but you might need to go lighter or darker depending on your image's color grade and where you're painting the blood. Using a mix of a few different reds is an excellent idea.

Looking at references of dripping blood is a great idea as well, and I just used a default hard round Brush for my Brush Tip.

Now create a new layer and clipping mask it to your dark blood layer. On this one choose a lighter color of red (I did #a6180c). Paint the edges of the blood pool

If you'd like make one final layer where the blood can be thin. This would be NEW LAYER set to OVERLAY

Finally, we're going to add blood highlights. This is going to make it three dimensional.

Create a New Layer and use a hard round brush to paint little white dots of highlights over the blood drips.

You want these dots to be imperfect and follow the shape of the blood. Use an Eraser brush if the dots and lines look too harsh, and you can also try lowering the layer's Opacity.

I also added some shadows around/below the blood drips using a New Layer set to Multiply and a soft round brush set a darker red tones we used to paint the blood. I painted where I thought shadows and darker flows of blood would be

Add we can finish the blood off with a small amount of red set to Screen, adding some shine to parts of the blood drips. This part is optional and mainly brings some light and vibrancy to the blood if it's too dark.

Step 8: Makeup

Let's finish our vampire's skin by adding some grungy dark face paint.

First, add a black and white Gradient Map adjustment layer placed above your subject but below the blood and eye layers.

And then add a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer, bringing the Brightness down to -125 and the Contrast up to 30. (see right picture)

On the brightness/contrast layer, right click and use blending options and remove the darkness of the highlights, replicating something like what you see here

Now, we can Group those layers together (ctrl+click them both and CTRL+G). Add a Layer Mask to the Group (layer mask icon). Click on the layer mask and invert it using Control-I.

Use that mask to place the dark face paint where you'd like. You can also use any brush you'd like, but turn down the flow to about 10%.

Paint in on the mask (in white) anywhere you want to add skin tone changes

That's it, you're done!!

Assignment#5 - Photorealism - Newspaper Magnification OR Vampire effect!!!

Complete EITHER the newspaper magnifying glass OR the vampire tutorial and submit the psd and jpg of 100kB in size.

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