Post by caligo on Feb 28, 2011 15:34:00 GMT -5
Right, today we're going to be making this. It's an old piece of mines and not the best but it doesn't have many layers so it's a good place to start when just getting back into writing tutorials.
Anywho, start off by opening a canvas sized 600x400 fill this with colour #bababa and then go to filter>noise>add noise> i set mines to around 7.5% but do whatever you feel is best for your blend.
Next is the hard part, take your photo that you want to put on the piece and paste it onto your canvas, resize it so it's exactly how you want it then take your polygonal lasso tool and start cutting it out. try to keep as close to the edges as possible and always remember to make plenty of anchor points as it makes the cutting far more specific. Once this is done do the exact same for your other images and place them how you want them on your canvas. Merge these three layers so that in future it's easy to mess with the colouring of them all in one go (this can be done by hitting ctrl+e to merge it with the lower layers).
Now it's onto the real stuff. Take a grungy looking brush (you can download some from deviantart or you can use one of the defaults) and set your default colour to #7f7f7f. Now make a new layer (shift+ctrl+n) and drag this so it's in the middle of the layer containing your image and the base layer and start drawing along the bottom so you have some nice grunge like dabs on your canvas. After this go above the layer with your pictures (creating a new layer of course) and put in a few dots using any brush you want, setting your colour to white, just random dots to give a lighting effect.
Go back onto your image layer now (yes i know, we're going back and forth here but it makes sense in my head
) and set this layer to colour burn. It looks a tad grainy but that'll sort itself out later. Now create a new colour fill layer and fill it with #898989. Set this layer to hue and it'll help your image blend in a bit for now. Leave the opacity at it's maximum.
Now copy your image layer (ctrl+j) and drag it above your colour fill layer. Set this layer to multiply with an opacity of 64%. duplicate this layer and desaturate it (ctrl+shift+u) and change this layers opacity to 100% but leave it as multiplied.
Now you want to merge all of the layers but you don't want to lose what you've already done so make a new layer as before then hit ctrl+shift+alt+e and this will merge all the layers onto this layer and now you should set this to screen at 22% opacity.
You get to improvise from here on out. I added a cloud like layer after this and set it to light at 77%, i also added a light layer which was set to lighten as well. Unfortunately after numerous reformats these textures are gone from my computer so i can't be specific. What you should know though is that you should always delete the area where your picture is. this can be done by going to your picture layer and holding in the ctrl button when you click on it so that it selects it, then go to the layer you want to erase from, click on it (without ctrl) and then delete and your image will look back to normal.
the final touches were just the text and a quick border and voila, something half decent with very little work. Hope this can help some of you
