Tutorial #03

to for this

Program: Photoshop CS4
Translatable: Should be.
Psd: If desired.
Difficulty: Easy-Average, 8 steps total.



Part 1: The picture

First off we open up out base image. I got mine from The Amanda Tapping Club's Gallery.

Duplicate your base, and set it to screen. Then go to filter>other>high pass. Set it to about 60. Play around with your settings to see what you get with higher or lower numbers. It will look really bright, but that’s OK. We’re gonna fix that in the next step.



Duplicate the screened high pass layer and set this one to soft light. Now you can see that it looks a bit more normalized, but it’s still very bright and rather plain coloring.



Now for the jazzy bit. Add a new gradient adjustment layer (layer>new adjustment layer>gradient map) and pick the red-to-green gradient. Don’t worry if it looks crazy, ‘cause we’re gonna fix that, by setting the gradient layer to soft light. If you’d like you could also play with checking reverse and seeing how it looks the other way. In fact, play with other gradients to see what you get. You can get all kinds of different coloring from this nifty little trick.
Here’s the red-green gradient, then the purple-orange gradient, and the purple-green-orange gradient. You can use others, but these are some of the ones I like best.
// //

For this picture, I’m just sticking with the red-green gradient.


Now we’re almost done with this pic! The last touch I added is a solid-color layer, a light yellow (I used #f3efcd) set to multiply at 45% opacity. This makes the whites a bit more skin-toned. You’ll probably want to play around with the opacity on your image, as well as the color itself. Now you have the finished single image.




Part 2(BONUS): The picspam

 I used the exact same coloring (approximately) for the other two images in the picspam. It looked good, but I wanted to add more pop to it. So, I decided to play around with some textures.

Here’s the base of the picspam, with the images flattened. I then added this texture by me, and set it to screen, 100%.



Now I wanted to add more contrast, so I added this texture by (unknown, if you know, please tell me so I can credit!), and set it to soft light, fill 50%. Play with the opacity/fill and see what you like.



Lastly I wanted to add some more color the whole thing, so I added this texture by (unknown, again, if you know who made it let me know so I can credit!), soft light, fill 50%. Again, play with the fill/opacity and see what you prefer.



Now I wanted just a bit more contrast, so I duplicated visible (ctrl+alt+shift+E), and set it to soft light, opacity 35%. Now we’re done!



I hope I’ve made everything easy to understand and hopefully you can use this stuff to help you.
I learned most of these tricks from various things at good_tutorial, so I can’t take all the credit. I just added them all together with my own special touches. :)
Feel free to ask any questions you may have, and I’ll try to help. If you’d like the PSD just leave me a comment.

ORIGINAL POST HERE(please leave comments, requests for PSD, etc. there, that way it's easier to work with) -  Please don't use the pictures I made for anything without asking - Don't copy exactly - I'd love to see your results! - Thank you! :)