So here's the behind-the-scenes of how I made one the prints from my last free prints collection. ;)
Here's what you'll need:
1.Your PC
2.Adobe Photoshop (I recommend CS3 and above. I use CS6)
3.Your favorite pictures that we will be morphing into prints
Note: I'm showing how to do this by the route of absolute newbies, so if you know more or less of PS already, you'll find me a little slow. ;)
Let's start!
1.Begin by creating a new document with the required dimensions. I typically do mine 1440 x 1920 pixels so it kinda matches up to an A4 sized paper. You'll also need to select the Color Mode. CMYK is the preferred way to go when printing and for only digital use, RGB is the best. I'm doing RGB here because it gives me more flexibility.Click OK and a blank document appears on your workspace. Resolution for printing is normally recommended to be 300 pixels per inch. The higher the resolution, the better the print quality. :)
2. You'll next need to select the Brush Tool (B) on the left hand side vertical toolbar. Photoshop brushes are a really easy and popular way to make prints but we are just using the tool here to create one of the backdrop elements which is our Eiffel Tower.
3.After you've selected the brush tool, a horizontal toolbar should appear on the top giving you a variety of choices of brushes you can use, the size you want to use (small>>>big), their opacity etc.
I'm assuming an Eiffel Tower brush wouldn't normally be installed in your PC so I'm going to show you how to do it here. You'll need to go to this link and download them for free. You'll end up with a zip folder which you'll need to extract in order to get the brush files. All Photoshop brushes have an extension of .abr. So right click the zip file and extract it to it's folder. Your option in the drop down list should be something like "Extract to Paris-Brushes"
You'll now have a new folder with the same name containing the abr file. Just click on the abr file and Photoshop should automatically open up- meaning, the brushes have been loaded in Photoshop's brushes database.
4. Open up the brush you want to use (the Eiffel tower one) by picking it up from the drop down list. You can see mine highlighted in the picture.
5.Select the color you want the brush to be by choosing the last icon of the foreground in the same left vertical toolbar
6. Once you have selected the size and opacity of the brush, apply it wherever you want on your document. I did mine smack in the middle. You can always try out different colors by going to the layers panel from Layer>>Layer Style >> Color Overlay.
I later changed mine to a sunny yellow. :)
7.When you're happy with how your brush appears, proceed to making the flowers. Here, all your pretty snapshots come in play. So go to File>> Place, and browse your libraries for a pretty picture you'll want to add on top. You can also use stock images. I'm using pictures I took from my farmhouse trip in India.
8.Select okay and the picture should appear on top of your document. Time to play around with the picture and give it a more artistic feel. Go to Filter >> Filter Gallery and choose "Artistic" and play around with "Paint Daubs" and "Dry Bush" filters till you reach the desired effect and click okay. Your snap should now have an aura like it's been painted.
9.Now we need to cut off the unnecessary background from the photograph
Go to the fourth icon "Quick selection tool / Magic wand tool" in the left hand side toolbar and begin making a running ants (as close as possible) selection around the flower. Select Layer Mask as shown in the image below and it will cut off the excess. However since this is still a mask we need to make it's original state the same. For that right-click the layer >> Convert to smart object.
Troubleshooting: If you can't find the Layers Panel on the right side, go to Window >> Layers and the panel should pop up if it isn't already there.
10.Move around or play with the dimensions of your flower by using the shortcut Ctrl + T or Edit >> Free Transform. To escape from the mode, hit Enter.
11.Once you're happy with the size and placement, you can either repeat the steps for a different flower or duplicate the same one using the shortcut Ctrl + J and change it's size making it smaller/bigger. Fiddle with the arrangement of the cluster as much as you want. :D
Tip: If you're repeating the steps for a different flower, name the layers according to the color so that you don't get confused as to which flower is in what layer.
12 This step is optional but if you'd like to add a watercolor punch to the print, you can download a set of watercolor brushes for Photoshop, follow the actions above to load them in the database then use them in the backdrop/forefront. I used some subtle swashes of yellow to match my Eiffel Tower.
13.If you need to add text, just select the Text tool (Looks like a capital T) from the left hand toolbar, select the font choice and size from the overhead toolbar and click the cursor on the document to type in. You may want to put your text layer as the highest layer to make it appear on top of everything else or somewhere in between the florals to hide parts of some letters among the florals.
To give a subtle shadow effect for this text layer go to Layer >> Layer Styles >> Drop Shadow and play around with the levels to get the amount of shadow you need.
14.To make a border around your print, select the rectangle tool (U) from the left hand toolbar (You can see the darkened icon due to selection in the left toolbar below) and draw it around like a frame of the print. This will create a new Layer named Rectangle 1.From the overhead toolbar select no fill to make the fill color transparent. Then Layers>> Layer Style >> Stroke and choose a gradient slope from the drop down list.
Select the colors in the image for the gradient fill to give it a gold feel, Click Ok.
And we're done!
To save your work, go to file>>Save as and name your file and select it's location. The file by default gets saved in Photoshop format.To save it in jpg format as well, go to Format >> Jpg from the drop down list and you will have an image copy of it as well. You even have a save as pdf/png option plus loads others so it's smooth sailing when it comes to file format.
There you have it, Your very own print. I hope I made that simple even if length. *wink* If you have any questions or get stuck anywhere, you can always drop me a comment below!
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Lots of Love,
Nash
that's a nice creative tutorial post........
ReplyDeleteADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS 8 SERIAL KEY INCLUDED
very nice and creative post. thank you very much for sharing.
ReplyDeleteHappy it helped Tanvir.
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