Tutorial 08 (Merlin) | 09 (Inception)

Opening goodies, part 2. I made two tutorials, a new one and a not-so-new one. The 'Merlin' one is almost a year old. Loved using the coloring back then, and well, still think it's quite useful and versatile.
If there are any questions, feel free to ask, and enjoy!

Program: Photoshop CS3
Difficulty: Medium
Translatable: Yes
PSD Included: Yes

	0. Crop and resize your picture. I got my picture from disparue.org, cropped it and resized it to 100x100.
	1. Duplicate your base and set the copy to Screen, fill at 40%. As always, play around with the fill and opacity. It depends on your picture; the darker the picture the higher the fill/opacity.
	2. Create a Color Fill Layer: # eaf681 – Set it to Color Burn – Fill: 75 % This sets the basic tone of the picture. I wanted a yellowish/brownish tone, so I decided on a pale yellow color fill.
	3. Create a new Curves Layer (Layers – New Adjustment Layer – Curves) Blue: Input: 60, Output: 71 Parts of the picture (esp. walls) turned out a little bit too yellow, so I added a Curves Layer. To reach a similar effect, you could also use Levels (Layers - New Adjustment Layer - Levels), eg. Blue: 0 \| 1,20 \| 255.
	4. Create a new Color Balance Layer (Layers - New Adjustment Layer - Color Balance) Shadows: 0 \| 0 \| +25 This will increase the contrast and emphasize the dark parts of the picture.
	5. Create a new Channel Mixer Layer (Layers - New Adjustment Layer - Channel Mixer) Red: 100 \| 0 \| -15 I wanted are more vivid sky, so I only played around with the 'blue'. Play around with the settings so that it fits your picture.
	6. Add a greyish/light texture and set the blending mode to Overlay – Fill: 55 % I personally wanted to spiff up the sky, but this (and the next) step is totally up to you.
	7. Add another light texture and set the blending mode to Screen - Fill: 40 %. And you're done!
	.psd

	0. Crop and resize your picture. I got my picture from homeofthenutty.com, cropped it and resized it to 100x100.
	1. Duplicate your base twice and set both copies to Screen. As always, play around with the fill and opacity, it depends on your picture.
	2. Duplicate your base again and drag it up to the top. Desaturate the picture (press Ctrl+U, Saturation: -100) and set it to Screen - Fill: 70 % This will desaturate and light up your picture.
	3. Create a new Levels layer (Layers - New Adjustment Layer - Levels) RGB: 35 \| 0,89 \| 235 Red: 25 \| 1,00 \| 255 Blue: 20 \| 1,00 \| 225 The most important step in terms of adding contrast and emphasizing the dark parts of the picture.
	4. Create a new Color Balance Layer (Layers - New Adjustment Layer - Color Balance) Midtones: 20 \| 0 \| -15 Shadows: 10 \| 0 \| -25 Highlights: -10 \| 0 \| 20 This will (after desaturating the picture in step 2) mainly re-emphasize the reddish parts of the picture.
	5. Create a Color Fill Layer: # 261b19 – Set it to Exclusion – Fill: 75 % The black-brown color fill will set up the aimed brownish coloring.
	6. Create a new Channel Mixer Layer (Layers - New Adjustment Layer - Channel Mixer) Blue: -10 \| 0 \| 100 Similar to step 5, this sets up the aimed coloring. The Channel Mixer Layer turns the pale (skin) tone into a brownish one.
	7. Now, duplicate your base again and drag it up to the top. Set the copy to Color Burn – Fill: 15 % A quite effective step to add lots of contrast to your picture and emphasize the dark parts of the picture.
	8. Add a gradient texture. Set the blending mode to Soft Light. It's up to you whether or not to add a gradient texture. It just adds another nice contrast to the picture. Et voilà, done!
	.psd