PS 7: 'Secretary' Tutorial - Lightening a Dark Base
Secretary Tutorial for PS7
with an emphasis on lightening a dark base
Start Here
End Up Here
Beginner-friendly (I hope!) - you only need to know how to crop, resize, and add text. The rest is easy as pie. Venez avec moi. (More advanced users are welcome, but they'll want to skip large chunks of exposition.)
[Icon is totally stealable, just credit! Also - obviously - don't just follow this tut verbatim and then claim the icon as your own. Be creative! Do your own thing! And I'd love to see your creation in the comments here, if you're so inclined. This is my first tut, so doucement, my lovelies.]
Get to Know Your Workspace
Non-beginners can skip this.
Firstly, get yerself oriented. To your left, there's a floating toolbar with various little icons on it - to add text, choose colours, etc. I'll call this the "floating toolbar." Creative, eh? In your lower right-hand corner is the layers palette; we'll be using that a lot too, so get friendly with it. In the upper right-hand corner is the place where you can zoom. We'll be doing that bit too. Up at the very top left is the toolbar with the file menu and such; we'll be working with that, hereafter referred to as "the menu."
Step One: Preparing the Base
First, we crop and resize. I select the part of the image that I want, setting the "Style" up near the menu to be "fixed aspect ratio" before I select. The width and height should be 1 and 1. This assures that you end up with a perfect square. I make a new canvas with this (up at the menu, File -> New), then resize it to 98 by 98 (at the menu, Image -> Image Size). This is because I like to copy the whole thing later and smack it on a solid background for a nice, clean border of exactly 2 pixels - if you don't plan to do this, you can make it 100x100.
Now I've got my perfect little square:
But, ew. It's dark and ugly. Time to bring up the colour and the light, baby! Firstly, go down to the layers palette and set the opacity to 60%
Now we have this:
Totally washed-out, but we can fix that. Right-click on this layer in the layer palette, and duplicate it! Twice!
Now we've got three layers. Leave the bottom one alone. Select the middle one on the layers palette, and set that nameless little menu to "Screen." The Opacity should be 60%.
On the top one, make it "Soft Light." The Opacity should also be 60%.
Then, Sharpen the top one: at the menu, Filter -> Sharpen -> Sharpen.
Finally, Desaturate each of these two top layers. When you're done with one, select the other on the layers palette to repeat the process on it At the menu, Image -> Adjustments -> Desaturate or on the keyboard Shift + Ctrl + U.
This gives us a nice, ghostly look:
But we have a problem. The eye is naturally drawn from left to right, which means everyone's going to look at Mr. Grey first. I want Lee to stand out more, since she's really the focus of this scene; it's time to do some hardcore selectin'.
Step Two: Edit the Image
Grab the lasso tool from the floating toolbar.
When doing delicate cropping, I find it helps to enlarge the image a bit. Go to the upper right-hand corner and zoom in as much as you want; about 300% is good enough.
Now, we can draw around the part that we want to enhance. Make sure to trace the whole thing, and not just the part that's inside the image - go around the left border as well.
Right-click on the part you have selected. Click New Layer via Copy when the menu pops up. Do this twice. Now go down to your layers palette; for each of these duplicated crops, set the Opacity to 20%.
Perfect! (I realise her suit is left out of the crop; I did this on purpose because I know I'm going to cover it up later.)
Step Three: Colouring
I want to go for the soft, muted look, so I turn to
teh_indy's wonderful colouring tutorial - but with a few tweaks. These are the two colours from that tutorial, which we'll be using to create new layers:
An easy way to do this is to Copy the above image and Paste it into a new canvas in PS7 (at the menu, File -> New). Then, back at our icon, create a new layer:
Using the eyedropper tool, select the blue colour:
And using the paintbucket tool (four buttons up from the eyedropper), fill the new layer with this colour. Create a new layer and do the same with the peach.
Now, for the blue layer, go down to the palette and set it to Exclusion at 37%.
For peach, we want Color at 24%.
Looking goooood.
Now to add some flavour that only Kelly Clarkson lyrics can provide.
Step Four: Text
With the Text tool on the floating toolbar, type your text in the image. I chose the phrase "because of you." Because it's on a lighter part of the picture, I set the colour to be one I selected from one of the dark colours in the picture. This makes it blend in much better than it would if I had selected a colour by hand. I believe I used the darkest tone from Mr. Grey's suit or Lee's hair.
A general rule of text is not to cover up any of the foreground, unless you absolutely intend to (sometimes more talented artists will put "tiny text" that partially covers someone's face, but that's not the look I'm going for, so I size and place the text accordingly).
I used the font "High Strung," which you can download. Up at the menu, I set it to 12 pt and Sharp.
Small problem: I can hardly read it.
Go down to that layers palette and right-click on the text; select "blending options."
Check "Outer Glow". In the "Structure" box, play around with the settings until it looks right to you. For the colour of the glow itself, I again picked one of the lighter colours from the image - I think from Mr. Grey's skin or collar. It's always better to stick within the original colours. These are the settings I came up with, making the text readable but not too gaudy:
There we are.
But we still have the second part of the text to deal with. Using the text tool, I made a new text layer with the words "i am afraid." Font is Decker, 18 pt, Sharp. I scooted it down to the lower right-hand corner to offset the other text. Unfortunately I'm still using the same colour, so it's unreadable against the darker parts of the image.
Solution for the lazy, like me? Right click the layer on the palette, go to Blending Options, and select Inner Glow. Leave the settings as they are.
Better.
Still doesn't quite stand out how I'd like it to. A good way to make text more visible is to put a solid, darker background behind it. So, grabbing the Shape tool from the floating toolbar - that's the square button right under the text tool - draw a rectangle around the text. On the layer palette, drag the shape's layer so that it's below the text. Set the Opacity to 80%.
Step Five: Border
If you want to make a border at this point, go up to the menu. File -> New. Make it 100 by 100. Fill it with one of the darker colours from the picture. Now go back to your icon, on the keyboard, Shift + Crtl + E. This merges all the layers. Ctrl + A to select, Ctrl + C to copy, then return to the background layer, and paste. Now we have the final result:
with an emphasis on lightening a dark base
Start Here
End Up Here
Beginner-friendly (I hope!) - you only need to know how to crop, resize, and add text. The rest is easy as pie. Venez avec moi. (More advanced users are welcome, but they'll want to skip large chunks of exposition.)
[Icon is totally stealable, just credit! Also - obviously - don't just follow this tut verbatim and then claim the icon as your own. Be creative! Do your own thing! And I'd love to see your creation in the comments here, if you're so inclined. This is my first tut, so doucement, my lovelies.]
Get to Know Your Workspace
Non-beginners can skip this.
Firstly, get yerself oriented. To your left, there's a floating toolbar with various little icons on it - to add text, choose colours, etc. I'll call this the "floating toolbar." Creative, eh? In your lower right-hand corner is the layers palette; we'll be using that a lot too, so get friendly with it. In the upper right-hand corner is the place where you can zoom. We'll be doing that bit too. Up at the very top left is the toolbar with the file menu and such; we'll be working with that, hereafter referred to as "the menu."
Step One: Preparing the Base
First, we crop and resize. I select the part of the image that I want, setting the "Style" up near the menu to be "fixed aspect ratio" before I select. The width and height should be 1 and 1. This assures that you end up with a perfect square. I make a new canvas with this (up at the menu, File -> New), then resize it to 98 by 98 (at the menu, Image -> Image Size). This is because I like to copy the whole thing later and smack it on a solid background for a nice, clean border of exactly 2 pixels - if you don't plan to do this, you can make it 100x100.
Now I've got my perfect little square:
But, ew. It's dark and ugly. Time to bring up the colour and the light, baby! Firstly, go down to the layers palette and set the opacity to 60%
Now we have this:
Totally washed-out, but we can fix that. Right-click on this layer in the layer palette, and duplicate it! Twice!
Now we've got three layers. Leave the bottom one alone. Select the middle one on the layers palette, and set that nameless little menu to "Screen." The Opacity should be 60%.
On the top one, make it "Soft Light." The Opacity should also be 60%.
Then, Sharpen the top one: at the menu, Filter -> Sharpen -> Sharpen.
Finally, Desaturate each of these two top layers. When you're done with one, select the other on the layers palette to repeat the process on it At the menu, Image -> Adjustments -> Desaturate or on the keyboard Shift + Ctrl + U.
This gives us a nice, ghostly look:
But we have a problem. The eye is naturally drawn from left to right, which means everyone's going to look at Mr. Grey first. I want Lee to stand out more, since she's really the focus of this scene; it's time to do some hardcore selectin'.
Step Two: Edit the Image
Grab the lasso tool from the floating toolbar.
When doing delicate cropping, I find it helps to enlarge the image a bit. Go to the upper right-hand corner and zoom in as much as you want; about 300% is good enough.
Now, we can draw around the part that we want to enhance. Make sure to trace the whole thing, and not just the part that's inside the image - go around the left border as well.
Right-click on the part you have selected. Click New Layer via Copy when the menu pops up. Do this twice. Now go down to your layers palette; for each of these duplicated crops, set the Opacity to 20%.
Perfect! (I realise her suit is left out of the crop; I did this on purpose because I know I'm going to cover it up later.)
Step Three: Colouring
I want to go for the soft, muted look, so I turn to
teh_indy's wonderful colouring tutorial - but with a few tweaks. These are the two colours from that tutorial, which we'll be using to create new layers:An easy way to do this is to Copy the above image and Paste it into a new canvas in PS7 (at the menu, File -> New). Then, back at our icon, create a new layer:
Using the eyedropper tool, select the blue colour:
And using the paintbucket tool (four buttons up from the eyedropper), fill the new layer with this colour. Create a new layer and do the same with the peach.
Now, for the blue layer, go down to the palette and set it to Exclusion at 37%.
For peach, we want Color at 24%.
Looking goooood.
Now to add some flavour that only Kelly Clarkson lyrics can provide.
Step Four: Text
With the Text tool on the floating toolbar, type your text in the image. I chose the phrase "because of you." Because it's on a lighter part of the picture, I set the colour to be one I selected from one of the dark colours in the picture. This makes it blend in much better than it would if I had selected a colour by hand. I believe I used the darkest tone from Mr. Grey's suit or Lee's hair.
A general rule of text is not to cover up any of the foreground, unless you absolutely intend to (sometimes more talented artists will put "tiny text" that partially covers someone's face, but that's not the look I'm going for, so I size and place the text accordingly).
I used the font "High Strung," which you can download. Up at the menu, I set it to 12 pt and Sharp.
Small problem: I can hardly read it.
Go down to that layers palette and right-click on the text; select "blending options."
Check "Outer Glow". In the "Structure" box, play around with the settings until it looks right to you. For the colour of the glow itself, I again picked one of the lighter colours from the image - I think from Mr. Grey's skin or collar. It's always better to stick within the original colours. These are the settings I came up with, making the text readable but not too gaudy:
There we are.
But we still have the second part of the text to deal with. Using the text tool, I made a new text layer with the words "i am afraid." Font is Decker, 18 pt, Sharp. I scooted it down to the lower right-hand corner to offset the other text. Unfortunately I'm still using the same colour, so it's unreadable against the darker parts of the image.
Solution for the lazy, like me? Right click the layer on the palette, go to Blending Options, and select Inner Glow. Leave the settings as they are.
Better.
Still doesn't quite stand out how I'd like it to. A good way to make text more visible is to put a solid, darker background behind it. So, grabbing the Shape tool from the floating toolbar - that's the square button right under the text tool - draw a rectangle around the text. On the layer palette, drag the shape's layer so that it's below the text. Set the Opacity to 80%.
Step Five: Border
If you want to make a border at this point, go up to the menu. File -> New. Make it 100 by 100. Fill it with one of the darker colours from the picture. Now go back to your icon, on the keyboard, Shift + Crtl + E. This merges all the layers. Ctrl + A to select, Ctrl + C to copy, then return to the background layer, and paste. Now we have the final result: