PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL - EXPERIMENT WITH BLENDING MODES

Desert Sun Mandala - © Sue O'Kieffe 2008
source image - escobaria cactus

When I go out into the world with my camera, I love getting up close to nature, feeling the energy of the plants and reveling in their colors.

Last week at the local Farmers' Market, I took a photograph of this cactus, which I think, after a quick Googling, must be a variety of escobaria.

I was attracted to the spikiness of the plant and knew that it was a force to be reckoned with. Is it any surprise that feng shui practitioners recommend having cactus outside the house as a form of protection, but not to put it inside unless you want to keep people away? I imagined all those porcupine-like spikes would transform themselves into amazing geometric forms.


Yup. But I just was not satisfied with the background. One of the things I am focusing on right now in my art is experimenting with different ways of creating more interesting backgrounds without overwhelming the mandala imagesthemselves.

One thing I love about digital art is being able to reuse certain design elements over and over again. I have lots of handmade paper that I scanned onto my hard drive just for this purpose.

First iteration. Old antique paper from India. I liked the color and the texture, but wasn't happy with the lack of contrast between image and background.
Second iteration. Again, still not quite right but closer.

I love playing with blending modes. It is, for me, the primary feature in PhotoshopI use to make my images painterly. When I selected Screen mode for both of the paper layers (see layer palette), all of the unwanted dark features of both paper layers lightened up, leaving a blend of the two layers of paper while removing the texture and darker colors in the onion paper layer. (Antique Paper layer >Blending Mode: Screen>Opacit :54%, Onionskin Paper layer> Blending Mode: Screen>Opacity: 100%)
Final step?
Adding a black frame around the image as I described in this tutorial.

I love the way this mandala came together. Earthy. Bright. Sunny. Desert-y. I think the cactus would be happy with my portrayal of its many gifts.

I hope you enjoy experimenting with Blending Modes. Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions, either via email or in comments.

COLORIZING PHOTOGRAPHS

When I first began to work in Photoshop, I became interested in the field of photo restoration. It's something that still interests me and I may some day go back and look at it again.

For today's tutorial I thought I would demonstrate one way to colorize photographs that builds on skills learned in other tutorials I have posted. We will also use quick mask mode and adjustment layers in this tutorial. You can review those tutorials here and here (I will be honest and tell you that I am borrowing the instructions for this from an assignment written by my photoshop instructor Jim Pegoda.)

I started with this photograph of a cute little girl (guess who?) in her flowergirl dress. In order to colorize a photograph, it must be in RGB mode. This particular photograph was already black and white, so when I scanned it to my hard drive, it was in RGB mode by default. If you want to convert a color photograph to black and white and then colorize it, this is how to do it:

• Go to Image>Mode>Greyscale
• Then, since your greyscale image must be in RGB mode, go to Image>Mode>RGB

With quickmask mode set to Color Indicates Selected Areas,(double click on quick mask mode button) paint black paint with a soft brush over an area that you want to colorize. Switch to Standard mode (press Q) and with your selection active, create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Click the colorize checkbox and adjust the Hue/Saturation sliders as needed.
For this particular adjustment layer I set Hue at 331 and Saturation at 31.


Use this method to create a new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer for every color you want to apply to an image.

Below is a capture of the entire layer palette for the colorized image


Once the adjustment layer is created, you can adjust the opacity and/or blending mode and change the color by double clicking on the adjustment layer icon.

If you have a question about Photoshop you would like me to address, please be sure to email me or leave me a comment. I would love to hear from you.

That's it for this Sunday. Have a great week!

BLENDING MODES - PART 2

I introduced the concept of layer masks in September 2nd's tutorial. In the tutorial on September 8th, I ended it using a layer mask, and that is where I am picking up for part 2 of this tutorial on blending modes.

1. If you look at Sunday's tutorial, you will see that I started working with this layer mask to play with concealing some of the lily pads. I did this by setting the foreground to black (Press D then X) and painted (or masked) them out the lily pads. BLACK CONCEALS AND WHITE REVEALS, remember? The other thing about working with layer masks that is important to remember is that you are working non-destructively. You can resurrect and restore anything you are not pleased with.

2. I wondered what it would look like if part of the lily pad showed through instead of it being masked out. Press X (which is a toggle key for setting the foreground and background colors) to make white the foreground color, then paint on the lily pad to "erase" the black of the layer mask. But really, you arent erasing as much as you are restoring. You could mask that lilypad again by painting it with black. Is this beginning to make sense now?

3. Sometimes I don't want to make a decision right away. It's easier just to turn off the mask for a while instead of masking and remasking. You do this by pressing the shift key and clicking on the mask, which is what I did here. (To turn the mask back on, do the same thing).

4.While I was making a decision about whether or not to reactivate the layer mask, I decided to play some more. I duplicated the layer (Ctrl/Cmd+J), then chose an artistic filter (Filter>Artistic>Brush Strokes>Ink Outlines), and set the blending mode to Overlay. Setting the blending mode to Overlay brightened the image quite a bit. Play with the blending modes to see what works for you.

I hope that you are enjoying these tutorials, that they make sense to you, and that you will be inspired to try them yourselves. Let me know by leaving a comment. If you post any of your work on your blog created after reading these tutorials, would you please reference this (or other tutorials) in your posting when you do?

Final image blending modes and layer masks - Sue O'Kieffe © 2007

Happy photoshopping.

© Sue O'Kieffe 2007