Playing with Photoshop in a sustainable way !
A few weeks ago I followed the Doug Landreth tutorial on photoshop that Creativelive broadcasted and it made me realise that I use photoshop the same way whether I do advanced editing or a quick retouch work. Gigantic creative potential aside, what I learn from Landreth was a way to work on my pictures that was completely flexible and re editable to infinity. No more saving as a different name or having to start from scratch again just for one additional adjustment : using masks to show and hide parts of a layer and playing with blending modes like so :
This is a fun collage I did for the Bear Bicycle's art competition (If you see my pic on that page at some point, please put some nice comment on it...I really need a new bike...well, not really but I mean...I'd love to !!)
The technique of applying a mask onto a layer was particularly handy when I started to move the position of the bike and the pin up around, all I needed was to brush the masks white if I wanted more to be shown, and black if I wanted to hide some parts...which means anything could be undone ! Once you've created your layer, just drag it to the button next to fx at the bottom of the layer tab and it will create a mask. Then check all the time whether you're applying a change on the mask or on the actual layer and you'll be flying !
I found that multiply was the smoothest way to blend layers together.
Finally Landreth inspired me to play around with textures and frames, which I wasn't really doing before. It does help bringing the vintage look together.
Some words of warning though : 1.name your layers or you'll soon be lost and 2. this is seriously addictive !! be prepared to spend hours on photoshop to get things right. I tend to work for 1 or 2 hours and go back to it another day, just to keep a fresh eye to what I'm doing.
Wish me good luck on that bike competition !!!
The technique of applying a mask onto a layer was particularly handy when I started to move the position of the bike and the pin up around, all I needed was to brush the masks white if I wanted more to be shown, and black if I wanted to hide some parts...which means anything could be undone ! Once you've created your layer, just drag it to the button next to fx at the bottom of the layer tab and it will create a mask. Then check all the time whether you're applying a change on the mask or on the actual layer and you'll be flying !
I found that multiply was the smoothest way to blend layers together.
Finally Landreth inspired me to play around with textures and frames, which I wasn't really doing before. It does help bringing the vintage look together.
Some words of warning though : 1.name your layers or you'll soon be lost and 2. this is seriously addictive !! be prepared to spend hours on photoshop to get things right. I tend to work for 1 or 2 hours and go back to it another day, just to keep a fresh eye to what I'm doing.
Wish me good luck on that bike competition !!!