Thu, Jul 10th - 11:18AM
Photoshop tutorial making an eye
Eyeball. Colour Pupil and Iris
This is a texture that I found to be very effective for the Iris of an eye.
Start by creating a new file around 1000 pixels square.
Your colour palette should be set to Red foreground, white background or
You can use Red foreground, black background if you want flecks of red in your iris.
Filter/render/clouds
Filter/texture/stained glass/ cell size 10/ light intensity 4/ border 3
Filter/blur/radial blur zoom/distance 80
Image/Adjust/Invert
Image/adjust/exposure (adjust for more contrast)
New Layer. Draw circle on a new layer. Almost filling the canvas. Feather 1 pixel and fill with black.
Next from the drop down menu, Select, modify/contract/ set to 6.
Feather the selection by 5, delete. You should now be left with a dark ring.
On a new layer draw a new circle for the pupil, not too big and fill with black.
In the Layers pallet, select this layer and add outer glow. Choose a green that compliments the blue textured iris. Make it wide and diffused, just play with the setting until you are happy.
On a new layer create the highlights by drawing a circle and filling with whit, but use the graduated fill set to colour to transparent. Shape the catch light how you like, but bear in mind you should be following the curvature of the “ball” of the eye.
On new layers add more catch lights or reflections as you so desire and vary the transparencies of the layers to get varying degree of reflections.
To finish, select with the magic wand the outside of the larger circle. Keep the selection active and create a new layer and fill the selection with white.
A final burning in of the mid-tones around the edge of the eye should create a further illusion of a bulge in the eye.
Update!!
I made the iris outer glow a bit brighter. Added another outer ring underneath the existing one with a thicker and heavily feathered dark green. Then on the "iris rays" layer, i used the smudge tool to create the dividing line between the green glow and the outer colours. I added a more convincing highlight!!
Back to restorations in the next post.
If you would like to download an action that automates most of this then you can get it here.
I will be revisiting this post to produce a more realistic eye soon...stay tuned!
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Thu, Jul 10th - 11:15AM
Photoshop tutorial, text bathed in light
Making text bathed in light
Start by creating a new file around 1000 pixels square.
Your colour palette should be set to white foreground, black background
Fill the layer with black
Create a new layer, with this layer
Choose
filter/render/clouds
Next filter/texture/stained glass enter cell size 10, border 2, light intensity 3, click ok
Next Filter/blur/motion blur. Set angle to 90 blur amount 400
Set blending mode of this layer to “Hard light”
Next select all “ctrl A” and edit/transform/perspective tweak until you are happy with the angle of light. We are trying to go for a “coming down from above” look.
Take a big soft eraser brush and erase the hard edges of the perspective transformation.
If you like you can now crop the canvas to encompass the best shafts of light to an image of landscape proportions.
Add new layer
Select text tool and white text
Type your word or slogan
Enlarge so that the text is two thirds of the canvas size.
Duplicate this layer
Set the top layer of text to blending mode “exclusion”
Set the bottom layer of text to blending mode “difference”
Now using the selection tool to make the bottom layer active, use the arrow keys to nudge the layer off set slightly by around two nudges or two pixels to give the text a 3D effect.
Finally position the text in a good shaft of light
Play with the fonts and bevel and emboss or other filters to make you text stand out even more.
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Thu, Jul 10th - 11:12AM
Text and waves tutorial
Making waves in Photoshop
Start by creating a new file around 3000 pixels square.
Your colour palette should be set to white foreground, black background
Choose filter/render/clouds then Filter/blur/motion blur angle 0, around 350
At this point I though the contrast was a bit lacking for the effect I was trying to create so I hit the auto levels button
More blurring. Filter/blur/motion blur around 350
Smooth out the blur effect slightly with filter/noise/median. Set to around 20
Select all and use the Edit/transform/perspective to crunch down the perspective so it looks like the waves are heading off into the distance. You will then need to use the “scale” from the same menu to squash this down vertically to stretch out the waves even more. And then scale it wider for more stretching.
Another quick auto levels to adjust the contrast again.
Now we add some lighting effects to bring in some enhancement of the waves.
Convert image to RGB mode if not already.
Use filter/render/lighting effects single spot and have a play with what give the most pleasing contrast enhancement to the waves. Something central and above gives a moonlight sea effect. Crop the image to encompass the best bits of the sea.
Please take note here. The waves are completely random and you will end up with different looking waves to me.
Add new layer
Select text tool and white text
Type your word slogan or company name
Enlarge so that the text is a good size.
Duplicate this layer
Set the top layer of text to blending mode “overlay”
Set the bottom layer of text to blending mode “exclusion”
bevel and emboss text of the top
layer using the layers pallet.
Add reflection, by duplicating the text layers and selecting them both. Rasterize these layers and merge them together.
Edit/transform/scale and drag from the top through to the bottom to scale the words upside down, about two thirds height of the original text.
Edit/transform/perspective and widen out the words to give a slight perspective.
In order for the next bit to work we need to scale down the whole image to around 400 to 600 pixels wide.
Make a rectangular selection around the lowest part of the perspective text and feather to around 10 pixels and delete. This is to fade the text into the water. You may need to adjust the levels or brightness to get the effect you like best.
Now from the filters menu select distort/ripple/ -100
Finally adjust the opacity till you are happy with effect.
If you like you can add a colour overlay layer to blue.
More to come in the next post...
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Mon, Jun 9th - 4:32AM
A conversation with the Author on restoring a photo
Ed. What is involved in the cost of a photo restoration?
Neil. Certainly, but don’t think of it as cost, think of it as investment. You are preserving your memories. Price should be a concern, yes, but not the primary one. You have made the decision that your photo needs restoring, so I am here to help you transform it.
Ed. Surely you just hit the “filter” button and it’s all done?
Neil. No absolutely not. Take a closer look at the image you are sending me to restore and be honest with yourself. There may be an obvious big rip or scratch, but look closer. Is the surface of the emulsion all scratched and dull? Is there a spider’s web of fine scratches embedded in the emulsion filled with fine dirt? If so then I have to remove these as well.
Ed. The finer scratches are barely visible why does it matter?
Neil. If I ignore them It may be ok to print to a typical 6×4 inch sized postcard as you wouldn’t see them. If you wanted me to make an enlargement then the fine scratches would also be enlarged. You would then have to pay a second time to have them restored and removed.
Ed. Fair point, so how do I know you have done anything at all other than remove the rip or tear?
Neil. I restore what damage there is, you may not appreciate it at first but just compare the original to the restored image. If it’s a digital file you can compare the before and after. You will see how there are subtle differences in the tones, the shadows are richer and the highlights stand out more, edges are more defined, its punchier and less flat than it was. Nearly all of the flecks of dust, scratches, stains and faded tones are restored.
Ed. Nearly all?
Neil. Yes, sometimes if the image is overworked it can look “restored”. This is not what I am about, I don’t airbrush back in areas like some restorers. I tend to use the tone and textures from what’s there and restore it. I simply cannot bare the mix of badly matched, soft smooth-toned backgrounds and the gritty texture of an original photo, it just doesn’t work and certainly does not look natural.
Ed. It sounds like you are very passionate about your work, will you take on anything?
Neil. I will be honest, in some instances there is not much that can be done. I will always discuss beforehand what can be achieved and what expectation can be met. Sometimes it maybe that there is very little detail there to start with and all there is to do is a simple clean up and try to recover some tone and contrast. Others can require a complete rebuild of the lighting. By this I mean where there was very little tone to add back in light and shade, to give the feeling of depth. This doesn’t work for all images but most can be rescued.
Ed. I’ve heard that some people provide inkjet prints, do you do that?
Neil. No, heaven forbid no. I appreciate that there are some very good inkjet printers, but I am old fashioned I guess and trust the tried and tested chemical colour process. Your photos will be printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper for 100 year fade resistance, or so the manufacturers claim.
Ed. That’s reassuring. Thank you for explaining.
Neil. You’re very welcome.
Photo restoration in your local county or shire
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Mon, Jun 9th - 4:27AM
Sepia tint a photo 3 different ways
PhotoShop has many ways to do the same thing. This tutorial shows you how to tint an old black and white photo to sepia using three different methods, each give a similar result but with subtle differences.
I want to show you 3 ways to sepia tint an old black and white photo in PhotoShop. We can use this image a test image.
Method 1. Make sure you photo is in RGB mode . Select from the top menus - image/adjustments/photo-filter.
You will get a colour box pop up. Choose a sepia colour.
Choose a fairly dark one
and then use the slider to increase the density.
Final result.
Method 2 Now lets try using colour balance. From the menus select image/adjustments/colour balance
Change the sliders with the radio button "shadows" selected so that you dial in around 20 red and 20
yellow.
Then do the same with the "midtones" but around 15 red and 15 yellow. You can tweak these setting to
your own preferences.
Here is the final result. This method does not alter the whites in the highlights.
Method 3 Using a colour fill layer. Select from the menus, layer/new fill layer/solid colour
Then select "colour" in the blending mode box.
Select a nice sepia colour
and you are done!
I hope this helps everyone and just choose a method which suits you best, if it were my choice I would go with method 2
Photo restorations from Image-Restore.co.uk
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