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February 2006

In this tutorial you’ll be shown how tocombine different mediums – abstractart and photography – to create visuallyappealing effects. You’ll take a simple black and white photo of a girl and add colour,textures and lighting effects to create avibrant and lucid piece of artwork.The image featured here is inspired bythe concept of lucid dreaming, a phenomenon that has fascinated me sinceI ﬁrst discovered it, in which the conscious perception of one’s state while dreamingenables a more cogent (‘lucid’) control over the content and quality of the experience.Lucid dreaming is very different fromnormal dreaming; the person becomesaware that they’re dreaming during theexperience, and the scenes within the dreamoften expand suddenly and dramatically inrichness and colour as the dreamer becomesaware that the world being experienced,although appearing believable, is imaginary.Among the techniques we’ll look at hereare how you can use gradients to create a palette of colours, and how these colourscan be manipulated using Blending Modessuch as Soft Light, Overlay and Colour Dodge to create the illusion of depth and vibrancy. As always, the best way to get theresults you want is to experiment.You’ll also use Blending Modes to add light and highlight effects, which will createfocal points within the image and further enhance the dreamy feel of the piece. I’llalso show you how to create a particleeffect, which is great for adding detail and really easy to create, and we’ll also look athow to give an illusion of depth by using blurs and transforming certain elements.Let’s get down to it.

Open Canvas.psd from this month’s CD.Create a new Floor layer under the GirlSitting layer. Select the Gradient tool thenRadial Gradient in the Options bar. Set theforeground colour to white. Open theGradient Picker and select Foreground toTransparent style. Draw the gradient shown.

Now select the Floor layer and use theFree Transform options to reshape thegradient as shown. Create another newlayer and name it Floor Shade. You can nowuse the Brush Tool to paint a black area onthe ﬂoor and create a shadow for the girl.Use the Smudge tool to smudge the blackarea, making the shadow more realistic.

Illustration and tutorial by Jort Braamwww.avensys.orgDOWNLOADTIME NEEDED

3 hours

INFO

Jort Braamis a youngmultimediastudentbased in TheNetherlands who set uphis website, Avensys, inearly 2003 to showcasehis unique brand ofgraphic design andmultimedia artwork. Findout more about his workat www.avensys.org.

VIVID COLOUR EFFECTS

PHOTOSHOP

Photoshop

wizard

Jort Braam

combines abstract images with black and white photography, using gradients, blursand Blending Modes to create a stunning composited image that’s bursting with colour and movement

Open the Girl_formation.psd and pressCommand/Ctrl+A to select the wholecanvas. Now press Command/Ctrl+C to Copythe selected area. Close the document andreturn to your original ﬁle. Press Command/Ctrl+V to Paste the selection into the maindocument. Position the layer as shown, andname the layer Grouped.

Now duplicate the layer you have beenworking on and use the Free Transformoptions to rotate and scale the layer asshown here. Name this layer Grouped2.

TUTORIAL

abc

February 2006

Hide the Grouped and Grouped2 layers. Duplicate the Grouped layerthree times and use the Free Transform options to position them as inscreenshot

; refer to screenshot

to help. Set the Blending Mode ofeach layer to Soft Light. Make the layers visible again. It will look likethey’ve disappeared, but they’re blended into the background – we’ll comeback to these. It’s important to keep your Layers palette organised, soselect all of the layers except for the ﬁrst three and put them into a newfolder named COMP/Girl. Refer to screenshot

to see how it should look.

PHOTOSHOP

Create a new layer under thenew folder. Pick the Gradienttool and set the foreground to thefollowing hex value: #8E9274.Create a Radial gradient asshown, and name the layerGradient1. Duplicate the layer,set its Opacity to 50 per cent andname it Gradient2. Duplicate thelayer, set the Opacity to 20 percent and name it Gradient3.Position the Gradient3 layer inthe upper-left to get a wider glowrange. You’ll now see that thelayers set to Soft Light blend intothe Radial gradients.

Next, create a newlayer, and name itBrush Highlights. Selectthe Brush tool, choose a300-pixel-wide brush,and set the Opacity ofthe brush to 60 per cent.Add some randomhighlights across theimage, as shown here.

In the next few steps you’ll start to createthe main colour scheme. Do this bycreating three Radial gradients. First choosea strong red foreground colour using the hexvalue #F2000. Draw a large gradient asshown. Now set the Blending Mode of thelayer to Hard Light, and reduce the Opacity to20 per cent. Name this layer Gradient4.

Create a new layer above the COMP/Girlfolder and name it Gradient5. Draw agradient as shown, using 00F1F5 as theforeground colour. Set the Blending Mode toHard Light, and set the Opacity at 14 per cent.

To stop the girl being affected by thecolour of the blue gradient you havecreated, apply a mask to the Gradient5 layer.Now select the mask and brush over the girlusing a black 100-pixel brush.

This will be your last gradient. Createa new layer and select a foregroundcolour with the a hex value of #A59670. Drawa gradient as shown above and set the Opacityto 69 per cent. Name this layer Gradient6.Leave the Blending Mode on normal.

Open the Screen base.psd ﬁle fromthe CD. Select the Brush tool andselect a hard, round 5-pixel brush. Set theforeground colour to white. Create a newLines _overlay layer above the Backgroundlayer. Set the Blending Mode to Overlay. Usethe brush to paint lines, as shown, changingits size to create different width lines.

Create a new layer under the Lines _overlay layer and name it Glow _colourdodge. Set the Blending Mode of thelayer to Colour Dodge and select a 200-pixelbrush. Set the Opacity of the brush to 50 percent and add highlights to pick out the partsof the lines created in step 12. Add spots andplay with the brush size and Opacity.

TUTORIAL