A few days ago someone requested a psd to light up a screencap but still make it look natural so this is exactly what this psd does, it has some optional layers to adjust the brightness in case is too bright or too dark.
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» Photoshop is life: Shadow on a picture
I’ve been asked how to do this for a while, so sorry it’s taken so long!
- Select your picture. Open it in Photoshop (File > Open). I used this picture of Demi.
- Duplicate your background. Place a solid fill layer between your…
» Fuck Yeah Resources: USING TEXTURES; an theory/guide by -dunham/-redux
Ah, since I’ve been getting a lot of requests for either textures (which unfortunately I don’t have much of a motivation to do anymore as there are so many being produced by the week and I don’t have much time on my hands- but I will try to release another one soon!) or .psds/tutorials, I thought I’d go with the latter. Please bear in mind, the most important rule of thumb when it comes to tutorials and especially Photoshop in general, as Photoshop is a bipolar sun of a gun that does what It pleases- don’t follow this step by step. Experiment. That’s honestly the most important advice you can leave with today after you read my clutter of an attempt in showing you how I tend to make my graphics.
Are we all set then? Let’s go!
First, you can download this .psd which is my recent MSR graphic. After getting that, open it up in Photoshop and just kind of look through the placement of each thing? My thought process varies from day to day, to be quite honest- but usually I start off by placing textures first, and then finding the right screencaps to fit in with the scheme. But first, some tips to keep in mind~
- Color scheme. You don’t want too many colors flying around in your graphics- that’s one thing I’ve noticed about a lot of people is that they have lots and lots of random vibrant colors and it looks stunning of course, but it just kind of hurts your eyes if you don’t have a set focus on what colors you want. There are two very basic palettes; either go with the red/pink/yellow/orange palette or the blue/green/violet/cyan palette. Of course, you can mix n match these accordingly- for example you can have red and violet, or yellow or cyan, but pay attention to the color wheel. Complementary colors work best; Primary colors can be base colors in starting off something but you don’t just want green red and blue all over the place.
- Hue/Saturation is a double edged sword. As much as we all get carried away with the lovely H/S or Vibrancy feature, don’t go overboard for the same reasons listed above- you’ll get a headache staring at that thing for a while. I prefer to keep my graphics dark and slightly vibrant, personally because I don’t like light things.
- Light/Dark- where do you want to focus your graphic? In my .psd I wanted the circle to be the main focus which is why I placed the darkness there and then all around it was light backgrounds. This can be achieved by setting a new layer and then making it Soft Light and adding black/white accordingly wherever you think the highlight of your graphic is.
So basically, I start off with a much larger version of what I post; as you can see my default format is a 1000x1300 page. This is because it’s easier to control what I want to have on the page and blot out any mistakes and place everything properly. After setting that up I choose a color palette- in this case, red/yellow/orange/pink and then I choose my textures accordingly. Most of the textures I’ve used in this graphic are used from Emme, who has some great textures for you all to use, if you haven’t downloaded her packs already! (The other two are mine).
Then I just play around-literally. I sometimes duplicate my texture, minimize/maximize it and place it somewhere else and set it to multiply/darken/soft light/ lighten usually; this applies with a lot of textures I use. I then choose the next texture based on the color scheme I’ve chosen and rinse, lather and repeat. The most fun part of doing this is layers. Layers are actually the best thing if you know how to use them- honestly, just play around and you’ll see what I mean. Some of the layers are normal wedged between a multiplied layer and a lightened layer and you’ll see how that turns out- as seen with the bubble layer near Mulder’s face. This is one of my favorite things to do, so. EXPERIMENT! Really, if something doesn’t work- don’t delete it. Honestly, you’ll never know if you want to come back to it so just unclick the layer and move on. Also, something I’ve learnt the hard way-save a LOT.
You’re not going to like what you see the first time, but don’t quit, just keep experimenting with the same process- if I change it like this, does it seem to fit what I’m doing? Be sure to know what ‘fits’ and what doesn’t ‘fit’. That comes with experience I think, but it’s also basic sense- why put triangles next to circles? Why put an oversaturated box next to a grey dull swirl? Shape is really important as well as color choice, so be aware of that!
That said, as you can see from the .psd, my most used settings are overlay/soft light/darken/multiply/lighten. But don’t shy away from the other settings too- some of them are actually really helpful sometimes.
Choosing screencaps is all up to what you’re using of course, but one general tip in mind is that you color balance it to fit the color scheme of your graphic. For instance, the screencaps I chose for this graphic were totally different- some were very blue and I had to manipulate them a bit to get the reddish color I wanted.
Lastly if you want to add a little lighten layer so that it’s not just black- I chose a gradient map and set it to hard light at around 15% so that it gave that pinkish effect- go ahead, but it’s not absolutely necessary. Also, this is the time where you add any curves above all the layers you’ve played around with so that you can manipulate the lighting as you please. This is also where I put in any soft light layers to focus my graphic in certain places.
The final thing I do is text, which I’m not the best at, alas- I’m way too lazy to download cool texts and all. But don’t make your text too hard to read (make it simple and clean and big so that it can be read, unless you’re doing the fancy small text thingy)
This is the rough guideline I tend to follow when making my graphics- of course, like I said; it’s very very shaky and random, as I’m sure you’ll find out. Don’t just stick to one style though- always keep thinking about things you want to do! Create your own style and see where it gets you.
Hope I’ve helped!
~Natasha
PSD 1 / [download]
- Black & white option
like/reblog if you use.
