Digital Image: Heart of Gold

Seeing that I'm still in love with this theme, I post an image with similar vibe as the one I posted weeks ago. Shabby Victorian feel is a little addictive, like caffeine. This full photoshop-generated image is an expression of love. Well, of course, what with the heart and flower, can it express anything else? So ....

Background. Simple brush downloaded from Brusheezy, under the floral category. Or maybe swirly? Just click the brush anywhere you like. Even random clicks may get you a nice picture. What I did here was tampering with corner only. Try this: put swirls around the corner, duplicate layer, move to opposite corner, then flip horizontal. If you want the same pattern for each corner, just merge the two layers, duplicate it, move to opposite side, then flip vertical and merge the two layers.

Texture. This, I like. Because it's easy and can alter the whole appearance of an image. Create new layer, fill with color (I used BEAD90). Add noise and apply motion blur. You'll get a layer full of scratch lines. Duplicate the layer and rotate 90 degrees clockwise. Change blend mode of top layer to soft light. It will now look like a cross-hatched canvass. Merge the two texture layers and reduce opacity until you can see the background swirls.

Heart. Pick the heart shape from free shape, make path as selection, then make a stroke using black. Get the floral brush again and click randomly inside the heart. After you're done, tidy up the image a little. Erase any swirl that crosses over the outline.
Now we hit layer style. Apply drop shadow and bevel. Choose a smooth inner bevel and ring for the curve. Experiment with depth, size, and soften. Apply color overlay because we don't want a black heart. In this image, I use gold color (ffc900 or so). It's done. Looking nice and shiny. Everything a girl likes.

Digital Image: Badz (Text Effect)

For once, I wanted to do something about text. Simple font like Arial can look cool too. My first thought was to make the text looked like zooming fast. By using a couple of filters, this can be done. Before doing anything, we needed to make sure the canvass was a perfect square, because there would be a lot of rotating. Less than perfect square would make the end result a little weird.

First I typed a short word with Arial Black. Then I duplicated the layer and filled the duplicated layer with white on multiply blending option. I blurred it a little with 2 pixels Gaussian. At this stage, the text would look rather plain.

How to make it not so plain. Hit filter, find distort and find polar coordinate. Check the option polar to rectangular. See the difference? Rotate it 90 clockwise. Hit another filter. This time, it's stylize, the wind effect. Make sure to pick wind method and direction from left. Do this twice, then we'll have a bunch of scratch marks. Then hit Ctrl+I to invert the color. Do the windy twice, again. We'll have a blackboard with white scratches. That's fine. Rotate it 90 counter clockwise. Still not getting it, eh? Try the previous filter, polar coordinate. Pick rectangular to polar option. Now we're getting somewhere. For this layer, choose hard light for blending option. Adjust hue/saturation as you like. See? A lot cooler than simple type.

If it's still not enough, make another layer. Fill with white and add 100% Gaussian monochrome noise. Use motion blur with direction 90 degrees, and distance 200 pixels. Hit polar coordinate again and choose rectangular to polar. Again, pick hard light blending mode. See?
Oh, but text becomes unclear. We need to add layer mask on this and brush the areas we want to make clear with black. If the zoom lines is too strong for your taste, just reduce the opacity of the layer. Done.

Digital Image: My Banner (?)

I've just finished making a banner for this blog. Not saying that I'd use it anywhere, but still, there's some sort of a satisfaction when you made something that you liked. Although, it's not as pretty as I wanted, but it would have to do.

Fabric textures always interest me. So, when I made this image, I wanted it to look like a banner from an older era. Hence, the fabric. The color is a little dull and boring, but it's the color of common people. Bright colors and lush fabrics are only for royalty. Shabby Sketch Pad was created by common people for common people. See, people power. And because I'm sort of female, so the feel has to be sort of feminine. Hence, the flowers.
The tools are simple, just a few brushes, paint bucket, and filters. I downloaded the brushes from Brusheezy, free of charge. Making the background was fairly easy. I filled a layer with color, add some noise, and filtered with motion blur. Then I duplicated the layer, rotated 90 degrees CW, changed the blending mode, and merged. Voila! Instant fabric less than 2 minutes.
I made the text using Janee's photoshop tutorial for jelly text. But I overdid the Gaussian blur intentionally so the text wouldn't look too jelly-ish. Check out the other tutorials at http://www.myjanee.com/tutorials.htm! They are awesome and easy to follow. You don't have to be photoshop savvy to understand the instructions.

Digital Image: Yoga Pose

Yesterday, I saw a group of people doing yoga in the gym. I wasn't a gym member, only a passer by. Anyway, one of the instructors who wasn't guiding the class did a pose which I thought only existed in ballet or gymnastics. It was a beautiful pose.

I made the background thinking about how yoga was a part of Indian culture. The image wasn't exactly accurate, because it's too geometric. But the pose was so fluid, I needed to balance it with a bit of angle. So by using a hexagonal shape, copy layer facility, and a move tool, the background pattern constructed itself.

The focus subject only consisted of a silhouette because sketching the exact feature of the person wasn't really my niche. I selected the subject, filled it with white with 30% opacity, added a bit of shading and highlight so it wouldn't look too flat. And with selection still active, I added a 2 pixels black stroke and a 3 pixels Gaussian blur.

Here's the result.

Digital Image: Rose 2

This is the same rose as previous post. I only made a few changes on the vines. This new one had more floral feel to it, compared to the last one. I don't know, more sword-n-shield vibe?

I made the outlines using Corel's pen tool because of its newbie-friendliness. So were the vines. Only this time, I chose artistic pen. You can even write calligraphy with the artistic pen. Don't know where to find the tutorials though.

I filled the color on photoshop, as usual. The effects were not layer style, only simple filters. Lighting rendering as usual. Some friends told me that the lighting filter only adjust ... well, the lighting effects and none of the bevel effect. Here is the cheat code: use channel. Yup, load your image as selection and create new channel. The result would be a black background with your selection. Fill the selection with white. New channel would be named alpha. Copy alpha channel layer. With selection still active, apply gaussian blur filter with any value you want as long as the image still has definite form. Invert the selection and cut background. Go back to layer tab. Create new channel and fill with any background color you want. Go to filter > render > lighting, and pick the channel alpha copy. The preview window should show an relief-like image, like your original picture was carved there. Apply the filter. Back to original pic layer and load it as selection. Go to the layer with lighting filter on it. Invert selection and cut background. The result should have similar effect to the image above.