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Tutorial goal:
Medium/Advanced Tutorial. Used CS2, but could have done much of it in PS 7. (The warps would have been MUCH harder! The image was to have been my entry in the "Hairy Things" contest, but i misunderstood the deadline! )c`=
Credits earned for writing this tutorial: 
1100 ($11)
step 1
Ask a chef the most important aspect of great cooking, and usually the word is "Ingredients"! Finding and selecting quality images is absolutely essential! It can be tedious - and sometimes fun, but it rarely goes quickly! The "Resources" link at the top and left of all PST pages has a great listing of royalty free images!
(While i was teaching myself to do this stuff, i made way too much use of images.google.com - and only once requested permission to use someone's photo. I think it VERY wise to break that habit by never starting it! You may not want people using your artwork, and photography is just that. Words to the wise-guys and wise-gals!)
I have ended up using the top link on most of my works since i started here at Photoshop Talent. www.sxc.hu - called stock.xchng vi - is a great great resource indeed! Many of the other sites in that list have a small fraction of the variety of images here.
I'm fortunate that i am a digital photographer, so sometimes i can go shoot something to use (or i can use something i have already taken like the water tower in this piece)! If you choose to take your own shots, use a camera with at least 3 Megapixels, even if you have to borrow one.
(SOME City and University Libraries have cameras you can check out. Worth checking on!)
When[\if] you shoot your photos either for a particular artwork or for possible later use (like 90% of my photos) — it is always wise to get several photos, from several angles! The more choices you have latter, the better your image! If ONE of 5 shots of something is blurry, no problem, you still have 4. If you only TAKE one - and it is blurry.......
So. More about shooting digital photos in a later tutorial. I want to dig into this contest!
PLEASE NOTE In the course of this "Tut" -- i not only "chop" some photos, i really remake the entire water tower "from scratch" and then 'trick it up' to look like a photo! There really is more to this tutorial (and un-entered entry) than might meet the eye!
Also: Step #12 contains a few valuable hints and shortcuts - PLUS some great ways to teach yourself shortcuts. It is all text, but i try to format in a readable way so you can go step by step.
step 2
My thought process for this contest was (somewhat 'boiled down' of course):
Why put hair on something?? The first entries have been fruits with a head of hair stuck on, and that is fine, but i want to stand out. Haven't seen any facial hair yet.... (For 17 years i have worn a very full beard.) That could be fun and challenging. But what should i put facial hair on? What do you do with facial hair?.... Trim it, shave the areas you don't want hairy.... So what would be a clever subject for shaving? Peach... been done... something biiiig..... with arms for holding razors.... and a source of water to rinse the razors... (getting excited at this point) something beside a pond or lake would be good, the reflection could be rewarding!.... Aha! That water tower on I30! I took 7 shots of it a while back. It has TWELVE arms - and one of those could be lifting up the top "lid" like a Monty Python animation! Schweeeeet!
step 3
I saw right away that the part of the squashed sphere to which the "arms" attach leaves very little "face" with which to work. I'll enlarge the sphere somewhat and let the arms attach near the "chin".
I selected the [Polygonal Lasso] tool (SO useful i've given it a keystroke i remember from my Corel Photopaint years: K). Starting at one side i made a curved line to delineate the flat cut around the round structure. This is made with several clicks, but a little bit of angularity is ok at first. You can smooth it later. I continued the line and masked off the area that will become the outside of the lid. Then i typed [Q] to enter quick mask mode. I typed [R] (i think bluR tool to remember) and used the [Smudge Tool] to drag across the angular straight lines to make it a smooth segment of an ellipse/oval.
Doing this makes a a blurry mask/selection, but i have a trick for that that i love like a pet puppy. (Well, maybe slightly less than that.) I do this to smooth all kinds of selections/masks. It is a versatile trick, and though others may have done it before me, i "found" in my trial and error learning digital art.
In this case the blur is already there from the [Smudge tool], but to do this trick on selections from the wand, marquee, lasso, or anywhere: go to Filter / Blur / Gaussian Blur. Type in a whole number (or decimal). It all depends on the resolution of the image and the amount of smoothing you desire. Usually for reasonably smooth selections 1 to 9 is fine, but remember you can always [Undo] or [Step Backward]: [Ctrl+Shift+Z] if the amount was wrong, and try a different number.
I could have used the [Elliptical Marquee] tool ([M] if you have it selected from the Marquee choices) to describe the curve, and then painted and erased it right in quick mask mode. I just tend to prefer the Polygonal Lasso most of the time.
With the selection/mask smoothed i [Q]: exit quick mask mode.
[Ctrl+X] to [Cut] the lid off, then [Ctrl+V] to [Paste] it in a new layer. (We used to be able to right click the layer, and select "New layer from selection" which had the added virtue of leaving it right where it is, just on a new layer. Adobe insists on improving things even that don't need improving.)
I know i will have to distort this light blue "skull cap" later so that it looks right in perspective, but i set that aside for a moment. I will need hinges and structure for the interior, so i go fishing for something, with little success. Pressed for time, i thought to look for an interior of a geodesic dome. Found only an exterior. I [Polygonal Lasso]ed it, dropped it in, [Ctrl+I] to [Invert]... [Ctrl+U] for [HSB] aka [Hue Saturation Brightness], and dialed down the saturation to almost nil. All the way desaturated images will always look out of place in a true colour digital photograph. Take a colour photo of a black and white photo, PS it and zoom WAY in. See what i mean?
I'll have to do a little trickery to make the dome. I'll show that after the next step.
step 4
To make the lid look like it is angled more toward the viewer, i must have an ellipse for the interior. ANY round flat item is seen as an ellipse when it is at an angle.
I have a custom keystroke for [Duplicate Layer(s) without Dialogue]. You are welcome to use it IF you don't already have this combo in use: [Ctrl+Alt+F12]. [Ctrl+F12] is the default shortcut for [Duplicate Layer(s)] - but you have to deal with the dialogue. This is often a good thing, because naming your layers is a wise habit to develop as soon/early as possible! I don't name the new copy of the Dome interior because i know i'll be merging it back with the original soon.
step 5
Basically i just mirror the interior vertically. PS doesn't really have that as it's own function (like just about EVERY other programme) but there is an easy way to do it. To flip a layer Vertically: type [Ctrl+T] to Transform. With your mouse click the right-most side of the H:[__] field. Type a minus sign [-] and hit enter twice. Of course you can combine that with other transformations, but that is the fast work-around for mirroring/flipping something. To do it horizontally (like in a mirror on a wall) do the same but make the 100% in W:[__] into -100%. Older versions of PS wouldn't allow you to do this "by the numbers" this way. You could drag the top-middle or side-middle handle while holding [Alt] - and you still can, but in older versions you couldn't see what negative percentage value you had, so you were likely to be off a little. Progress is occasionally progressive.
I saw early on that i was going to have to do SO much work on the tower - that i might as well DRAW the thing, and then trick it to look like a photo. This fateful decision (+the overall complexity) help explain how i missed the deadline, and almost missed what i THOUGHT the deadline was. (ANY mods out there?) (c=
Here you also see the simple step of making the essential Leg/Arm element. [M] for Marquee, trace the width and height of the real leg (i added to the height because the bases of each support will be occluded by foliage). Then i type [B] for Brush; hold down [Alt] for the eyedropper tool (no mnemonic, but one of the oldest and most useful shortcuts in PS history!). I click the lightest part of the blue tower, the top of the "lid" and type [X] to swap (think eXchange) the foreground and background colours. Then i click the darkest part of the tower (excluding the really dark bit way up under the "chin"). To make the leg on its own layer, i type [Ctrl+Shift+N] for N ew Layer.
Now i'm ready to create the leg in a single step. I type [G] for Gradient. (I tend to select the [Gradient tool] instead of the [Paint Bucket tool] because i rarely need the latter.) Click & HOLD the [Paint Bucket tool] icon and then select the other choice. PS remembers this until you change your selection, which is nice! With the [Gradient tool] i click near the right side of the rectangular selection area, and holding down [Shift] i drag the mouse to the left and release near the left side. Holding Shift make the gradient straight up and down, desirable in this case.
You can also see that i 'duped' the bifurcated tower layer ([Ctrl+F12]) then type [Ctrl+T] to Transform. I click the [Chain]/[Link] icon between W:[__] and H:[__] (see inset) - OR hold down the [Shift] key while i - drag a corner handle to size it right for the placement of my home-made "legs".
5.6 / 10
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233]:
not a small detail at all! My tutorial seems to have been edited. I had a link to the final imagein step one. Never mind; try this: http://i9.tinypic.com/5z5vaqr.jpg
(1 year and 107 days ago)
As with all my entries and tutorials - comments and critiques very welcome! (1 year and 101 days ago)
(1 year and 107 days ago)