sinjah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sinjah) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
severalplums2010-08-08 08:32 pm
sinjah) wrote in severalplums2010-08-08 08:32 pm
Winner's Tutorial, Challenge #100, by sinjah
(Sorry for being a little late, I was on vacation.)
--> 
Made in Photoshop CS3, uses filters, selective color and curves.
Like I almost always do with icons, I found a crop I liked and then just played around until I was happy with the result. So, for starters, I cropped my base.
I thought the red of the leaves was too bright, so I added a selective color layer and fiddled with the reds: Cyan +66 Magenta -19 Black +34
I added a curves layer to sort of tie the colors together and give more depth.
Red Channel, Input: 196 Output: 130
I set it on 25% opacity.
I thought the sky was a bit too dark, so I added a fill layer with #9bcce0 and set it on Overlay 36%
At this point I started thinking about using one of the other images, and since I wanted a golden hue anyway, I settled on the sky picture. I pasted it on top of my image, resized it and moved it around until I found an interesting enough part, then I painted over the darkest parts with #e2a201 because it gave the picture a more uniform color. This is what I ended up with:
I set the layer to Soft Light.
For more depth and to drop the brightness a bit, I copied and pasted everything as a new layer (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E) and desaturated the image, then set the layer to Darken 20%
To bring out the highlights on the leaves, I added a Brightness/Contrast layer:
Brightness: +15
Contrast: -50
I wanted the colors to be more defined, so I hit Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E again (I’m really fond of this trick so you’ll see it a lot more), sharpened it once and set it on 31% opacity.
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E again, and here I added a Radial Blur filter, set on Spin, Amount 6. This blurred mostly the edges and left the center sharpened. I set the layer on 20% opacity.
The upper corner that didn’t have any leaves looked kind of empty to me, so I added some tiny text. I typed some dots and dashes in Times New Roman font, about 2 points size, with the text orientation changed to vertical. I lowered the opacity to 78%.
I really liked the golden highlights and wanted them to be more intense, so I added another Selective Color layer.
Yellows: Magenta -29, Yellow +45, Black -25
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E again (told you), and I added a Motion Blur filter, with the Angle set on 0 and the Distance on 5 pixels. I set this layer on Hard Light, 28% opacity.
Finally, the upper left corner was bothering me again, so I added a simple gradient on top, with #9da73d, and set it to Soft Light, 40% opacity.
Et voila! Hope it made sense! My layers for reference:
--> Made in Photoshop CS3, uses filters, selective color and curves.
Like I almost always do with icons, I found a crop I liked and then just played around until I was happy with the result. So, for starters, I cropped my base.
I thought the red of the leaves was too bright, so I added a selective color layer and fiddled with the reds: Cyan +66 Magenta -19 Black +34
I added a curves layer to sort of tie the colors together and give more depth.
Red Channel, Input: 196 Output: 130
I set it on 25% opacity.
I thought the sky was a bit too dark, so I added a fill layer with #9bcce0 and set it on Overlay 36%
At this point I started thinking about using one of the other images, and since I wanted a golden hue anyway, I settled on the sky picture. I pasted it on top of my image, resized it and moved it around until I found an interesting enough part, then I painted over the darkest parts with #e2a201 because it gave the picture a more uniform color. This is what I ended up with:
I set the layer to Soft Light.
For more depth and to drop the brightness a bit, I copied and pasted everything as a new layer (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E) and desaturated the image, then set the layer to Darken 20%
To bring out the highlights on the leaves, I added a Brightness/Contrast layer:
Brightness: +15
Contrast: -50
I wanted the colors to be more defined, so I hit Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E again (I’m really fond of this trick so you’ll see it a lot more), sharpened it once and set it on 31% opacity.
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E again, and here I added a Radial Blur filter, set on Spin, Amount 6. This blurred mostly the edges and left the center sharpened. I set the layer on 20% opacity.
The upper corner that didn’t have any leaves looked kind of empty to me, so I added some tiny text. I typed some dots and dashes in Times New Roman font, about 2 points size, with the text orientation changed to vertical. I lowered the opacity to 78%.
I really liked the golden highlights and wanted them to be more intense, so I added another Selective Color layer.
Yellows: Magenta -29, Yellow +45, Black -25
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E again (told you), and I added a Motion Blur filter, with the Angle set on 0 and the Distance on 5 pixels. I set this layer on Hard Light, 28% opacity.
Finally, the upper left corner was bothering me again, so I added a simple gradient on top, with #9da73d, and set it to Soft Light, 40% opacity.
Et voila! Hope it made sense! My layers for reference: