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Sunday, October 12, 2008
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| | Author | Messages | |
Jeff St John 
ePhotoPros Staff
The OC
Forum Fanatic
Posts:436
 | | 06/30/2008 6:25 PM |
| Half the fun of Photoshopin' is creating new, photorealistic scenarios. While looking through the endless supply of stock photos on my hard drive, I came across this image of a brick wall (a very imperfect brick wall, which is what I like). I instantly had a vision of populating part of the space on said wall with a crumbling poster which I knew I'd have to manufacture. So here's how it went down:
- First, to get the "Pop" art effect, I duplicated the background layer of the girl and applied a generous gaussian blur. I then set the blend mode to Darken which gave me a cool, illustrated outline effect. I repeated this whole process one more time.
- Next I made the background layer editable by double clicking on it (the thumbnail) and created a new blank layer above it. I then CTRL clicked (Cmd for Mac users) on the background layer to load it as a selection and made sure that my new blank layer was the active layer.
- I then went to Select > Modify > Contract, and contracted the selection by 100 pixels. To invert the selection I pressed Shift + CTRL + I (Shift + Command + I for Macs) and filled it with white to get a nice white border.
- Next I put in some text (which was pretty much just random, place holder text) and added a drop shadow layer style to it.
- I then flattened the new "poster" and dropped it onto the wall graphic where I sized it down quite a bit and rotated it slightly.
- I added a new blank layer above the poster and with that new layer active, I CTRL clicked the poster graphic thumbnail underneath to load it as a selection which I then filled with black. Pressing ( CTRL + [ ), I dropped the black shape under the poster and hid it temporarily from view.
- Next it was time to warp the poster a little by pressing CTRL + T to bring up free transfrom, then right clicking and selecting "warp". I brought in the side and bottom a little to give it a less "perfect" appearance and pulled the upper left corner down until it looked like it was peeling off the wall.
- Since the back of the poster would probably be white in real life, I created a path with the pen tool which I converted to a selection in the Paths palette, and filled it with white. I then applied a gradient overlay layer style to the "curled corner" shape to give it some depth.
- Next I selected the black shape which was to be the shadow of the poster, blurred it and lowered the opacity. With the eraser tool (set to around 20% opacity) I gradually erased away some of the upper left corner. Since there would be a darker shadow closer to the poster, I layered the shadow layer by duplicating it and eraseing away more of the corner. I then merged the two shadow layers.
- The last thing I had time for this week was to add a little reflection, since many posters are printed on glossy paper. To do that, all I did was use the polygonal lasso tool to create a cone shape on a new layer, and then filled it with a white to transparent gradient. To finish off the reflection, I applied a slight blur and lowered the opacity a little.
Next week: I'm going to add some wrinkles and scratches to the poster and fabricate some adhesive to go behind the peeled corner.
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| luke james
New Member
Posts:6
| | 08/18/2008 4:33 PM |
| hya,
a bit confused from what youve said. you said this,,, ' I then CTRL clicked (Cmd for Mac users) on the background layer to load it as a selection and made sure that my new blank layer was the active layer.'
my question is, how can i have the background layer as a selection, and also have the blank layer as an active layer? arent these two things one of the same?
isnt a selection and active layer?
when i ctrl click, the layer is either highlighted then when i ctrl click again, it isnt. And to make a layer active, all i have to do is click on it?
or am i missing somehting here?
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| luke james
New Member
Posts:6
| | 08/18/2008 4:35 PM |
| bye the way!
becuase i cannot do what you ask, i cannot use 'Select > Modify > Contract' and therefore i cannot get the white border.
so some help would be very useful.
thanks. | | | |
| Ron Dyar
ePhotoPros Staff
San Diego, Ca
Forum Fanatic
Posts:453
| | 08/18/2008 4:41 PM |
| If you ctrl click on the icon for the layer - not the part where the layer name is - PS will create a selection around whatever that layer is, and you can then work with that selection on any layer... watch the video again and see where he clicks when he does this step and i think you will understand.
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| Jeff St John
ePhotoPros Staff
The OC
Forum Fanatic
Posts:436
| | 08/18/2008 6:18 PM |
| Yes, I should have been more clear. You actually click on the thumbnail of a layer to load whatever is on the layer as a selection. Of course, to load the background layer as a selection you have to make sure it's editable first by double clicking it (the layer this time, it should then have a name like layer 0 or something like that).
So with my new layer highlighted, I CTRL clicked on the background layer's thumbnail to load it as a selection on the blank layer.
Sorry for the confusion. | | | |
| luke james
New Member
Posts:6
| | 08/19/2008 3:47 PM |
| ahhh.. ok i got it now. Thanks for all your assistence in this matter. Its a fantastic tut. So thanks to ephotopros for it. Jay. | | | |
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