photo manipulation

Retro Movie Poster Case Study

paul0v2 — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 13:33:03 +0000

Streets of Fear is the name of the movie poster and it was designed by the German; Ralf Krause a specialist in photo illustration. In this Case Study you will see step by step how this awesome retro action movie poster was done and get a feeling of how you can do yours.

For more from Ralf Krause visit behance.net/eyeofthedesigner and falconwhite.com

Case Study

Final Result

About the author

Hi there! I'm Paulo Canabarro, 26 year old web designer - paulocanabarro.com I'm from Brazil currently living and working out of Providence RI, USA. I'm truly passionate about design of all kinds, finding and sharing inspiration here has become part of my life. If you like to know more about me or get in touch visit my website paulocanabarro.com Stock me at Twitter and Dribbble

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Insane Clown Case Study

paul0v2 — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:58:17 +0000

The Insane Clown Posse is Detroit's own hometown harlequins. Photographer Paul Mobley teamed up with digital artist Mike Campau to put up an amazing series of photo manipulations and here you will see one of them broke down step by step.

After some early brainstorming and pre-production meetings with Paul, we chose our strongest concepts to execute on set. We were on a tight schedule and wanted to capture as many shots as possible, so we decided to shoot ICP on green screen at their own studio. Then we went on to Greene's Hamburgers in Farmington Hills to shoot the diner image. Next, Paul spent a couple days shooting downtown, precariously positioning himself on the edges of rooftops and coming back down to ground level for shots of dramatic Detroit architecture. And finally, the fun part — putting the pieces together. I created the balloons, Bomb Pops, and color block background entirely CGi, then composited the rest using everything Paul shot in the city. He dropped by the studio to work with me on some finishing touches and overall style decisions, and after a ton of strips, a few sliders, and a little bit of face paint remover we were done clowning around. It was a great experience. Now if we could only figure out why people kept calling me a Juggalo...

Case Study

About the author

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Nike Hair in Photoshop

abduzeedo — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 03:50:55 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I was playing in Photoshop in a Saturday afternoon and decided to create something using hair texture and photos. I was thinking about just a text with that but then I had this crazy idea of playing with the NIke Air brand to create the Nike Hair Ad in Photoshop. This idea is heavily inspired on the work of Glenn Jones AKA Glennz, always playing with real brands :)

So in this tutorial I will show you how to create a funny photo manipulation to create the Nike Hair ad. The tutorial is very simple and won't take you more than 30 minutes.

Step 1

Open Photoshop and create a new document. I am using 2560x1440 pixels and white background. After that get the Nike logo online. It's pretty easy to find, just do a Google Image Search

Step 2

Once you have the Nike symbol it's time to use some hair photos. The one I am using is by 1809056 Ontario Ltd and it's called long brown hair style on white. Courtesy of Shutterstock.

Place the image on your document and make sure that the Nike logo is on top of it. We will use it for reference.

Step 3

With the Polygonal Lasso Tool (L) select the area of the hair image you want to use only. Delete the rest of the hair.

Step 4

Go to Edit>Transform>Warp. Start deforming the image so you can sort of make the hair follow the nike symbol.

Step 5

With the Magic Wand Tool (W) select the nike symbol. Then select the layer with the hair photo and group it (Layer>Group Layers). With the group selected go to Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal Selection.

Step 6

Now that you have the base for the nike hair idea you will have to make it look more real. The secret here is start adding some hair on the edges of the symbol to make it less uniform. To do that is easy. First select the hair image again and delete the white background. Use the Magic Wand Tool (W) again and select the white part. Go to Select>Refine Edges. Enable the Smart Radius and select the brush icon. Paint over the hair and then press okay. After that just delete the selection and you will have extracted the white background of the layer.

Step 7

Start mixing some parts of the image with your logo especially the edges. The sort of tail is pretty easy (1) just add a part of the image and adjust with the warp tool again. Now the curve on the left requires more work. Notice that the edges are not perfect. So to do that just select the Brush Tool (B) with a very small and rounded brush. Then select the group with the hair and click on the mask. Now start painting on the mask with white color like as you were creating some hair.

Step 8

Select all layers and duplicate them. After that with all the duplicated layers selected go to Layer>Merge Layers. You can use the keyboard shortcut for that: Command(mac)/Control(pc) + Alt + Shift + E. With the new layer selected go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 10 pixels for the Radius. Change the Blend Mode of this layer to Soft Light.

Step 9

Add a new layer and then with the Brush Tool (B) and black for the color paint a little shadow underneath the symbol. You can use gaussian blur to make it very soft like the image below.

Conclusion

Just add the word Hair using Futura Condensed for the font and our funny Nike Hair image is done. As you could see the process was extremely easy. The most important thing is always the ideas. Creating funny representations of brands is a good exercise and we can always learn a lot from that. Now it's up to you, I would love to see what you can come up with :)

Download Photoshop File

Download the Photoshop file used for this tutorial

About the author

Abduzeedo is a blog about design. There are all sorts of articles for those who want to look for inspiration. Also you will find very useful tutorials for the most used applications out there, with a special selection of Photoshop Tutorials and Illustrator Tutorials. You can get in follow us via Twitter at @abduzeedo

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Mysterious Designs by Josh Vanover (aka. Space Knuckle)

marcos333 — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 06:06:49 +0000

Josh Vanover is probably one of the most mysterious designers I ever known. Wroking most with black and white, his designs seem to emanate a sense of duality and "controled chaos", this guys got some serious skills, I haven't seen someone developing in this direction before. There's no doubt why he got to work with such big clients as Nike and Linkin Park.

If you want to know more about Josh, please access his Website

Skatedecks

Nike

Linkin Park

Stussy

Nike

Linkin Park

Coltesse

Serum Vs. Venom

RYZ

/p>

About the author

My name is Marcos Torres, I'm Graphic Artist from Porto Alegre, Brasil. You can get to know more about me by acessing my Personal Website or by following me on Twitter: @marcos333. You can also see some of my last projects at my Flickr.

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Dark Knight Rises Poster in Photoshop

abduzeedo — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 05:36:31 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I saw the new Dark Knight Rises poster and I love it. The concept was beautiful, using negative spaces to show the Batman symbol. As usual I started to think about ways to do that in Photoshop, then last Saturday I started looking for assets and trying to put together the first concept. After a couple of hours searching for images I found good ones and had a nice start.

Today, Sunday, I woke up 6:30 in order to finish this piece and of course share with you my process. As you will see in this tutorial, the technique behind is pretty simple and straightforward. I didn't want to create exactly the same because I know it's impossible due the assets and I believe the original one was done using 3D.

So in this tutorial I will show you how to create the Dark Knight Rises poster in Photoshop. Be ready, it might take you a few hours, but the result is really nice and you will be able to apply this technique in other future projects, I am really sure of that.

Step 1

Open Photoshop and create a new document. I am using a portrait mode for the poster, the size is 2550x3500 pixels. After that fill the background layer with grey (#b0adad).

Step 2

The next step is find the Batman logo. Search it on Google, it's pretty easy to find. Once you have the logo, place it in your canvas like the image below. The color doesn't really matter, we will use for masking reference.

Step 3

As I said in the beginning this tutorial is a big photo collage, in which the most important thing is finding the right assets. In this part we have to place some buildings. I found quite useful images on Shutterstock and you can check them out here:

http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-20863036/stock-photo-modern-buildings-in...
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-346534/stock-photo-three-corporate-build...
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-2286315/stock-photo-corporate-buildings-...
http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-80798674/stock-photo-corporate-buildings...

Step 4

Start placing the buildings using the batman logo for reference of position and size.

Step 5

Here we have covered all canvas and the logo is our negative space.

Step 6

In order to create all the shatters and destruction in the original poster I used some other images from Shutterstock that I had downloaded while back. It's good to have these assets because you can always reuse them later. This one can be found at http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-73243228/stock-photo-abstract-character-...

Step 7

Just copy some shatters from the image and start placing in your scene. You can resize and rotate them, or even create a brush. I was lazy so I was copying and pasting them.

Step 8

In order to make the effect more realistic it's necessary to add some motion blur to these shatters. So for every block go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur. Use the building perspective for Angle reference.

Step 9

Here you have the scene with the shatters.

Step 10

Everything was too clean an perfect in terms of textures and colors. So in order to solve that I placed a big concrete texture on top of the other layers with Multiply for th Blend Mode. Don't worry about colors yet, we will get there in a few.

Step 11

Select all layers but the background and go to Layer>Group Layers. After that with the Magic Wand Tool (W) select the batman symbol. You can hide the batman symbol layer right after that.

Step 12

With the group selected go to Layer>Layer Mask>Hide Selection Now the buildiing and the shatters will be hidden on the area that th batman symbol was. It looks good but it's too perfect. So in order to solve that let's use the Brush Tool (B) and create a brush using a grunge brush. Just Google for grunge brushes in Photoshop. Tip: Reduce the spacing, use Shape Dynamics and Scattering in order to make a brush that is perfect for destruction effects.

After that start painting in the mask with black and the new brush. The idea here is destroy the edges of the batman symbol to make it very subtle.

Step 13

Add a layer on top of the others and then with the Brush Tool (B) and a very soft brush, start painting the edges of the canvas with black to create a vignette effect.

Step 14

The image still was too clean in my opinion, so I added a few more shatters and also paint some of the white windows with black using a grunge brush. The idea is make the image really destroyed. Another detail is when you are make the edges of the batman symbol less uniform, try to make it was the buildings were really falling a part. So keep some windows and structure of the building visible. Use the image below for reference.

Step 15

Time to fix the color problem. There are many ways to do that, but my idea is find a quick fix. So go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue and Saturation. Change the Hue to 195, the Saturation to 8 and the Lightness to -7.

Step 16

Now go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels. Use 29 for the black input, 1.00 for the grey and 155 for the white input. Tip: both adjustment layers have to be on top of the other layers.

Step 17

Here is the image after the adjustment layers. It looks really nice aready.

Step 18

Here lets add some clouds in the sky. Just use any clouds image you find, desaturate it and place it using multiply for the Blend Mode. If you place it on top of the other layers, use the same mask you are using for the buildings to show only the batman symbol area.

Step 19

Add a new layer behind the buildings layer and the with the Brush Tool (B) and a very small brush with black, start painting some sort of lines on top of the building like in the destructed areas.

Step 20

The original poster had some rocks falling from the sky. So let's add some rocks too. I used another image from Shutterstock for reference, you can find it here http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-24964786/stock-photo-zoom-of-gravel-gray.... I just selected one rock copied and pasted it in my design.

Step 21

Paste the rock in your design and select it. After that go to Edit>Define Brush. You will create a brush with the shape of the rock. Edit the brush and for the Shape Dynamics make sure you have Flip X and Y selected, also Size Jitter. Select Scatter too in order to make the brush very random.

Once you have the brush done, start painting some rocks falling from the sky. Follow the perspective and make the ones on top smaller than the ones close to the bottom of the page. You can see I used white for the color, don't worry about that, we will fix this issue with Layer Styles.

Step 22

Go to Layer>Layer Style>Pattern Overlay. Select Multiply for the Blend Mode and for the Pattern select Black Marble (it's a default one).

Step 23

Select Color Overlay. For the Blend Mode use Multiply and for the color use a dark grey.

Step 24

Now select Inner Shadow. For the color use White; for the Blend Mode use Color Dodge; for the Angle, this is really important, depending where the rocks are, use an angle that follows the perspective of the building they are in front of. In this case 121º. For the Distance use 28 pixels, for the Choke 0 and for the Size 25 pixels.

Step 25

Here are the rocks with the layer styles. Notice that the adjustment layers are on top of the rocks layer as well. Another important thing here is to apply motion blur (Filter>Blur>Motion Blur) to the rocks as we did for the other layers in the steps 7-9.

Step 26

Add more rocks in your design. Remember the inner shadow angle will vary according to the location of the rocks.

Step 27

Select all layers and duplicate them, after that merge all the duplicated layers into one. The shortcut for that is Command(mac)/Control(pc) + Alt + Shift + E. Change the Blend Mode to Soft Light at 50% Opacity. Duplicate this new layer and change the Blend Mode to Screen at 100% Opacity. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 20 pixels for the Radius.

Conclusion

Delete pretty much the whole layer with the screen mode, leave just a few areas around the batman symbol to create a sort of glowing effect. The design is practically done.

As you could see, most of the process was messing with layers and adding some blurs. The most difficult part is finding the right assets, once you find them it's putting everything together and adjust them to make the image look real. It's a really nice technique and I love this posters and recreate them to learn new things and practice Photoshop more. Now it's up to you. Have fun.

Download the Photoshop File

Click here to download the Photoshop file used for this tutorial

About the author

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Amazing Digital Illustrations by Vision

paul0v2 — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:50:02 +0000

Adrián Romero is an 18 year old illustrator and graphic designer from Spain known as Vision. His work is breathtaking, a mix of illustrations with photo manipulations that just fits right in and the final results are amazing. Keep an eye on this young talent and check out some of his works!

For more from Vision visit www.hellovision.net

About the author

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Mirage Case Study by Peter Jaworowski

paul0v2 — Thu, 19 May 2011 14:20:39 +0000

Peter Jaworowski needs no introduction, we have featured his work here plenty of times and the quality never goes down as he keeps impressing us. This case study is another amazing piece by Peter and the cool part about it is that Mirage is a personal work piece from him, and you get to see step by step how it was done. Enjoy!

For more from Peter Jaworowski visit his behance gallery, check out his design studio Ars Thanea or simply follow him at twitter

Mirage

Personal Project - This is the first personal piece that I've done in a while...and it feels good!

Close Ups

Case Study

About the author

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Surreal Inspiration by Eugene Soloviev

abduzeedo — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 09:23:29 +0000

Eugene Soloviev is an 21 year old Russian Photo Manipulator from Nizhniy Novgorod, he started off in the design world in 2006 processing photos in Photoshop and Corel Painter. I was very impressed with Eugene's work since the very first time I saw some of his pieces, very surrealistic. What was even more impressive was that we haven't featured him here on Abduzeedo, so let's fix this little misunderstanding.

At first I began with processing of photos with Photoshop and CorelPainter, then for a joke I cut out objects and placed them in non-standard landscapes. As I grew more serious, I started designing much more seriously. It is necessary to note that I the self-educated myself completely!

For more information about Eugene visit his Web site at http://apachennov.daportfolio.com/

About the author

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Design History: Photo Manipulation Pioneer John Heartfield

guest — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 03:47:51 +0000

John Heartfield (1891-1968) was a pioneer in photo manipulation. Born Helmut Herzfeld, he changed his name as a protest against anti-English sentiment in Germany between the World Wars. Heartfield was one of the first artists to use photomontage, skillfully manipulating photographs to vicously satirize the brutality of the Nazi regime. This was decades before Photoshop, so he did them all by hand, making his artwork all the more impressive. His best known work is "Hurrah! The Butter is all gone!", showing a family attempting to eat various metal items, decrying how war takes food away from the people.His artwork stands as an example of Photoshopping before Photoshop, and continues to inspire people to resist oppression and violence.

For more information about John Heartfield visit http://www.towson.edu/heartfield/artarchive.html

Some Works

About the Author

David Delony is a freelance writer based in Ashland, Oregon, USA. He blogs at Reading In Public (http://ddelony.posterous.com) and tweets at (http://twitter.com/ddelony).

Case Study: Nike Apparel

paul0v2 — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 14:34:42 +0000

In this case study will go over step by step how the masters from Ars Thanea (Peter Jaworowski and Karol Kolodzinski) created this amazing photo illustration for Nike, to be part of Nike's 2010 t-shirt collection. This just opened my mind to so many ideas, hope the same will happen to you, check it out!

Take It To The Max & Zero Gravity

Agency: Ars Thanea

Digital Artists: Peter Jaworowski, Karol Kolodzinski

3D Artist: Pawel Wilkos

The Process

Details

Final Result

About the author

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Playing with Displace Filter in Photoshop

abduzeedo — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 06:22:19 +0000

I have been playing a lot with the Displace filter in Photoshop and I still get impressed with how powerful it is. Even though I have written some tutorials using it, I decided to try to recreate a different effect that I saw in one of the images submitted for the Daily Inspiration. It was a brick wall deformed like it was made of cloth.

So in this tutorial, or a quick-tips I will show you how to create a curtain made of bricks or how to deform a brick wall as it was a curtain. To do that we wil use a few stock photos, layer adjustments and the Displace filter in Photoshop CS5. The technique is pretty simple and the tutorial won't take you more than 30 minutes to go through it.

Step 1

Open Photoshop and create a new document. I'm using 2560 x 1440 pixels for the size. After that import an photo of a brick wall. The one I used is courtesy of Shutterstock and you can find it here http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-56014678/stock-photo-red-brick-wall.html

Step 2

Let's import another image, now of a girl opening the curtains. This photo is also courtesy of Shutterstock and can be found here. http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-44776357/stock-photo-a-young-woman-openi...

Step 3

With the Lasso Tool (L) or the Pen Tool (P) select the empty white. Once you select the areas you can go to Select>Refine Edges. Select the Smart Radius over the Edge Detection and then click on the brush icon on this panel to select the Refine Edges Tool. Paint on the edge of the hair to refine that area. Once you have the selection refined, go to Layer>Layer Mask>Hide Selection, or you can do that on the Refine Edges settings too.

Step 5

Now select the hands/arms of the girl and the curtains.

Step 6

Move the brick wall layer so it will be in front of the girl layer. As you can see in the image below, there's a marquee selection of the curtains and the arms of the girl.

Step 7

Go to Layer>Layer Mask>Hide Selection. Now you will have the brick wall in front of the curtains.

Step 8

Duplicate the girl layer and delete the girl using the mask of the bricks wall for reference. Then go to Image>Adjustment>Desaturate, then go to Image>Adjustment>Levels. Increase the black inputs and a little bit of the white. Check out the image below for reference.

Step 9

Change the Blend Mode of the Layer to Overlay. Your result will be something like the image below. You can make the effect strogner by duplicating the layer if you want, but then you will have to change the opacity otherwise it will get too dark.

Step 10

Now we will need the photo of the girl opening the curtains in Black and White. Open the file again in a document with the same size as your design (2560x1440) and then go to Image>Adjustment>Desaturate and then Image>Adjustments>Levels. Increase the black input and a little bit of the white input as well until you get a result like the image below. Save this file as a Photoshop format.

Step 11

Back to your design select the brick wall layer and go to Filter>Distort>Pixelate. Use 10 for the Horizontal Scale, 30 for the Vertical Scale. Select Stretch to Fit and Repeat Edge Pixels. Press OK and then another dialog box will open asking you to select a file. Select the Photoshop file you saved in the previous step.

Step 12

You will notice that the bricks will be distorted following the highlight and shadows of the curtain file. After that go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Gradient Map. Make sure that it's balck and white and the change the Blend Mode to Soft Light.

Step 13

On top of the other layers, go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Photo Filter. Use orange for the color with 60% Density.

Step 14

Let's add another adjustment layer, go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue and Saturation. Change the Saturation to -20.

Step 15

After all the layer styles you will probably get a result like the one in the image below.

Step 16

Import another image, this time a landscape image to be used as the background, like the girl is open this brick wall and now she can see this field. The image I used is courtesy of Shutterstock and you can find it here. http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-61151230/stock-photo-daylily-flower-at-s...

Step 17

With the field layer selected go to Image>Adjustment>Hue and Saturation . Change the Hue to -35 and the Saturation to -50.

Step 18

Add a new layer on top of the others and fill it with black, then with the Brush Tool (B) select a very soft brush and white for the color. Then paint with white in the center until you get a white ellipse. After that just change the Blend Mode to Multiply to create a vignette effect.

Step 19

Select the layer on top and then using the shortcut keyboard Command+Alt+Shift+E to create new layer with all layers merged into it. After that with this new layer selected go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 10 pixels for the Radius. Change this layer's Blend Mode to Screen and the Opacity to 60%.

Conclusion

You can repeat the same keyboard shortcut applied in the previous step and create another layer with all layers merged, then add some noise to the image. Go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise. I used 3% for the Amount and Gaussian for the Distribution.

The effect is done, and once again we used the Displace filter to add more realism to our design. I love the Displace filter and I've been playing a lot with it. In this example I used the curtains to distort the bricks. Of course this is just a concept, there's a lot of adjustments to be make in order to make it look perfect, however the technique is the same, the only difference is the amount of time you will have to put into it.

Now it's up to you, you can try different images and see the result, the most important thing is that you practice and have fun with Photoshop.

Download the Photoshop File

Click here to download the Photoshop file used for this tutorial

About the author

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Old to Young Case Study in Photoshop by Cassio Braga

guest — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 02:58:14 +0000

Reading the comments about the Photoshop Battle and I noticed the a lot of people were interested in knowing and seeing the images that were created during the event. Because of that I decided to recreate one of the images I did in my first battle, which was my favorite. This time however I had more time to pay attention to some details, in the event we had only 30 minutes to come up with an idea and make it come true.

So as I mentioned before this image, I will present in this case study, was created in my first duel and the subject was water. I really like the result because besides the visual strength it has a simple idea that makes us wonder and think about life and aging.

Video of the Photoshop Battle

Abduzeedo - Battle of Photoshop from Alexandre Guterres on Vimeo.

For the whole composition I used 6 other images as you can see in the case study that follows now.

Step 1

The first image I selected was a photo of a little girl that we have taken last year in the end of a photo session back in the studio where I work, StudioMe. I chose this image because I really like the expression on her face, she is only 7 years old but was very comfortable in front of the camera.

Right after this I placed the girl’s photo in my composition I selected a photo of an old lady that was taken again in another photo session at StudioMe.

Step 2

Incredibly the two images matched pretty well one I put one over the other, so all I have to do was to create a good transition between the two faces right below the nose line. This transition was done simply by putting the image of the girl in a layer beneath the old lady layer in which I added a layer mask and hid the layer. Then with a very soft brush I started to make some areas visible, but very smoothly and natural.

In order to make the transition very realistic I made some adjustments using the Liquify filter to move the nose a little bit down on the face of the girl.

After that I did a color adjustment to make the hue of the skin of both photos match. To do that I used some Adjustment Layers such as Curves and Vibrance.

Step 3

The next step I started to create the mood for the composition, sort of like how I would like to perceive the idea behind the composition. To do that I created a selection to separate the top from the bottom part. For the top part I created this sort of vignette effect to driver the user attention to the face, like the focal point. For the bottom part, I just did some color adjustments to make sure that the girl really looked as if she was underwater.

Step 4

To make the scene more realistic, specially the underwater part, it was necessary to add some light effects. So in this part of the process I looked for an image to create the caustics effect.

In optics, a caustic or caustic network is the envelope of light rays reflected or refracted by a curved surface or object, or the projection of that envelope of rays on another surface. The caustic is a curve or surface to which each of the light rays is tangent, defining a boundary of an envelope of rays as a curve of concentrated light. Therefore in the image to the right, the caustics can be the patches of light or their bright edges. These shapes often have cusp singularities.

To add some depth I applied a blur to the caustic effect and I also added some blurry air bubbles. Still I thought the image needed even more depth. So I added a layer and applied a render clouds and after that used the Gaussian Blur to make it super blurry, enough to give the idea that the background wasn’t empty.

Now for the underwater part I created a sort of inverted the illumination. To do that I used a Curves Adjustment Layer in which I pulled all the channels up increasing the brightness of the image. I also Inverted the mask to hide this adjustment and then with a very soft brush I started make the layer visible, that way the transition would be much more smooth.

Step 5

The bubbles in the water made the difference in terms of realism. This part took me more time because I had to do some testing. To make the effect as realistic as possible the bubbles needed to reflect the rest of the image, but a little bit darker. However I didn’t like the result of none of the images I was testing, only after quite a lot of time I found the image I was looking for, with some subtle air bubbles. Even though the image might not be the most coherent in terms of photography and with the composition, in my humble opinion they were the ones that created the best effect. Those little bubbles really give this ideas that they are making the aging process turning the old lady into a child.

Technically speaking, the bubble layers were a layer with a very light background with the bubbles, so I simply inverted it and change the Blend Mode to Screen. In case you don’t know, the Scree mode hides all black pixels of the layer.

Still in this step I selected the lenses of the glasses of the old lady layer and then applied a blueish gradient as if it was reflecting the water. The gradient layer was created on top of the old lady layer and then I applied the Soft Light Blend Mode.

Step 6

Here the process was almost done, just some fine tunes and little tweaks. I added some bright spots on the water surface, change the color of the old lady eyes to a more blueish tone and applied a Smart Sharpen only in the top part, that way the two parts would match a little better. The last thing I did here was to apply a Photo Filter Adjustment Layer with blue with 10% of Transparency on top all the other layers. That way all layers would sort of get better blended together.

Step 7

The whole process to create this image took me like 10 hours, however a good amount of this time was just testing different images trying to find the best ones.

I hope you like this case study and that it may help you. Feedback is always appreciated, so feel free to share your opinion with comments and tweets.

About the Author

Cassio Braga is an art director and digital artist from Candelária, RS, but currently based in Porto Alegre. He is graduated in advertising from ESPM and have already worked for some big Porto Alegre agencies such as Escala and DCS. Currently working at StudioMe.

Reader Case Study: AeroStuff by Trisme

abduzeedo — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 02:55:16 +0000

The tutorial of this week is from one of our readers, his name is Trisme and he is an illustrator, digital artist and web designer from Poland. Trisme will show us how he created the design called AeroStuff, it's a really cool artwork mixing photos and some 3D objects. The best thing about blogging is that we have the chance to see how digital artist from all around the globe overcome the challenge of making an idea come true. In this little tutorial/case study it's not different.

The idea I had in mind was to show some sort of air/gravity applying a force on some objects in a very visual and sort of abstract form - inspired by some airy d'n'b beats I just started this piece.

Resources

Step 1

Firstly I imported and placed the sheep, because they remind me of light and soft stuff, I don't know why. The gradient and the rest of the composition was related to this idea I had in mind and want to turn into an real artwork.

Step 2

With the sheep and gradient, the next step I started adding some abstract 3d shapes that I had rendered before.

Step 3

Some other 3D render objects this time with a bronze color for contrast. After that, as you can see in the image below, the composition has some more coffee/creamy look which is exactly what I wanted to achieve.

Step 4

Here I needed to do some changes like small details and shadows were added, also, those big 3D objects that you can see in the first plane. I still was just checking to see if that would work.

Step 5

Time for a major resizing and I also replaced some elements and colorize some as well.

Step 6

Here I added other 3D objects and had to make some little changes as well.

Step 7

In this phase it was time to add clouds and try some different light effects.

Step 8

Still playing with the clouds.

Step 9

To create a better focal point I added some elements in the middle as you can see in the image below. After that some little adjustments and finished.

Conclusion

Looks easy but I have to say, I spent quite some time to create this. I hope it might help you. Thank you very much for following along.

Details

For more information about Trisme visit his Web site at http://cargocollective.com/trismeart. You can also check out his Behance Profile and his DeviantArt profile.

About the author

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Surreal Photo Manipulations by Eugene Soloviev

paul0v2 — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:15:42 +0000

Eugene Soloviev is a 20 year-old Russian Photo Manipulator from Nizhniy Novgorod. He started off in the “Design World” in spring of 2006. At first he began with processing of photos with Photoshop and CorelPainter, then for a joke he cut out objects and placed them in non-standard landscapes. As he grew more serious, he started designing much more seriously. It is necessary to note that he is completely self-educated!

For more from Eugene Soloviev visit apachennov.daportfolio.com

About the author

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Knorr Quick Case Study and the Work of Cassio Braga

abduzeedo — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:04:55 +0000

Last weekend we had here in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the first Photoshop Battle, an event that we organized in which designers and digital artists had to compete in this sort of design battle of creation. The winner was the super talented Cassio Braga from StudioMe.

Cassio Braga is an art director and digital artist from Candelária, RS but currently based in Porto Alegre. He is graduated in advertising from ESPM and have already worked for some big Porto Alegre agencies such as Escala and DCS.

My biggest goal is to make good ideas come true, either through good photography or illustration.

Knorr Quick

Copa Gerdau

Renner Copa

Olympikus Lombas

Detran RS

Nacional Páscoa

Case Study Knorr Quick

Since I started working at StudioMe I had this idea of using all available resources to show off the quality of our work, that would include stockphotos, photography, 3D and photo manipulation.

As you can see below everything started off by putting the ideas on paper, then it was all about mixing the available resources.

First sketch

Photo by Claudio Meneghetti

Book on a counter photo by Raul Borges

Testing some renders and models

Final Render

For more information about Cassio Braga visit his website at http://www.cassiobraga.com.br/ . We also recommend that you take a look at the StudioMe website.