This gives me the depth I need for mixer brush painting.
#Photoshop 2018 brush leash pro#
I enhance the pixels with Color Efex Pro using a recipe of Tonal Contrast, Contrast Pro and Contrast Only. I may do a future post on my favorite technique. Clean cutouts are very important for painting, as I enhance with Color Efex Pro before painting and use Topaz for a finishing technique. I generally use the quick mask for fine details but always use my stroke technique to find the stray pixels that should be deleted for the final cutout. Use Photoshop to cut the dog out of the background. The process of painting will put the pixels through the rigors of many adjustments, so you need hi res images. Camera phone snaps are not going to work. You need to work with a high-resolution image. Here is a recap of the steps in Photoshop to produce the canvas.įirst, the images. No setup, no lights just capture an image of a dog when you can get them to hold still for 2 seconds… or many not! I was on location at their home and captured a few images with the intent of producing a painting when I returned home and sending it as a surprise gift. The center of the frame should now be the brightest part of the image, with the eye naturally drawing to Benji in the middle.I recently created a digital painting of a couple of dogs for some friends and thought it might be interesting to recap the process of building a piece of wall art like this when you don’t have the luxury of a studio or lighting or traditional portrait equipment. To allow the vignette to blend even better, set the layer blending mode to Soft Light and reduce the opacity to 30% or so. I clicked OK and then inverted the selection with Ctrl, Shift + I (CMD, Shift + I on a Mac) and got the Paint Bucket tool (G), set my foreground color to black (D), and filled in the color. Next, I right-clicked, went to Select and Mask, and then boosted the Feather slider to over 300 px to make the selection's edges soft. Then, I took the Elliptical Marquee tool (M) and drew from a space in the top left of the frame to the bottom right to create an oval that didn't quite fill the image. I made a slight crop before doing this so that Benj was placed more off-center to the right-hand side. My final edit was to create a dark vignette around the edge of the photo.
I wanted to draw the eye into the center of the frame, and since the eye is drawn to the brightest part of the image, I set a dark vignette around the edge of the frame. I changed the layer blending mode to Screen and then tweaked the layer opacity until it was around 30% so that it didn't overpower. I used the Gradient tool (G) to draw out a yellow/orange radial gradient coming from the left of the image, spreading to the right. The next step was to create a new layer (Ctrl, Shift + N, or CMD, Shift + N on a Mac) and placed it in-between the two existing layers in the layers palette. Photoshop made quick work of making a selection around him, and then, I hit the Add Layer Mask button.
I duplicated the layer (Ctrl + J or CMD + J on a Mac) and then used the Object Selection tool (W) to highlight Benji. Top tip: if you're having issues with running Photoshop and Lightroom simultaneously, then close down Lightroom once you've opened the image in Photoshop.įrom here, I wanted to add a little light flare camera-left to mimic natural sunlight billowing through the trees. Once done, I exported the image to Photoshop CC, which you can do by right-clicking and heading to Edit In>Edit In Adobe Photoshop CC 2021. In Photoshop, I selected Benji using a layer mask on a separate layer before adding an orange gradient in-between the two layers to mimic sunlight bursting through the trees.