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.

Digital Image: Rose GIF

I saved this rose image in GIF format, so it would be alright to place on a web page. The file size is not too large, methinks.

The rose was created using pen tool in CorelDraw. With Ctrl+Q to convert lines to curve, I could manipulate the initial sketch into forms I wanted. Even the swirly lines were not difficult. To copy the object to their exact opposite, I just needed to drag it to the other side while holding Ctrl key, then right-clicked on the desired position. Instant flip. No need to copy layer, and then flip in from Edit menu. But that's just photoshop for you.

Still, photoshop has the advantages of colors. Really beautiful colors you can pick with only an eyedropper. And pretty textures you can custom-make. Some of the awesome effects are only a click away using filters or layer styles. I only added noise and a little lighting rendering for this rose image.

If you know flash, this image can be made into a button. At least, the rose can. Maybe I'll try to make a button with it.

Digital Image: Jewel

After being a bit down yesterday, I'm kind of content with this image. Quality-wise, way better than previous upload.
This is also fully digital, but with a lot of help from free tutorials around the net.
I think it's kind of pretty. Shiny, at the very least.

This image is all filter and a lot of blending style. I hope I can remember all of it. The tutorial is a little difficult for me to follow.
But I manage to do some changes from the original tutorial, like using fleur-de-lis instead of butterfly in the middle of the gem.

The background was easy though. I just used black filling, layered by blurred white circle. The swirly pattern could easily be found on the net. I only applied lightening filter to make the "pearls" stand out.

Digital Image: Landscape

This is getting ridiculous. The more I practice, the more I degrade.

I was going for a natural look. See? Natural, as in reddish afternoon sky. Not this forbidding gates of hell.

Next thing I know, I'd give up going digital and stick with the pencil and charcoal. At least, I have better control of my hand. Drawing with a mouse is harsh. My hand kept getting tangled with the cord. I clicked at the wrong places. Then the computer shut down.
I'm at my wits end.

So, on with the image. Fully photoshop. Tools: brush and smudge. Filter: noise and blur and lightening. Oh my.
That's it.

Digital Image: Tree in Winter

I am like that tree. Fresh out of leaves, fresh out of ideas.
Purely photoshop work.
I browsed my collection of photos and found a few images with trees in them. This one was the easiest to trace. Other trees had leaves.

I used polygonal lasso to trace the edges, then filled it with gradient. With selection still active, I filled a new layer with white, then another layer with black. I moved the selection a bit to the right and deleted a part of the white paint. Then moved the selection to the left and deleted the black one. Shading and highlight done.

I made the shadow using a layer copy of the tree image, and filled it with black, flipped vertical. From edit menu, I used transformation -> skew, then, well, just skewed it from side to side until I got the shadow position I liked.

Background was done in less than 5 minutes. I filled the bottom layer with black, added a new layer on top of it and paint the ground using soft edge brush.
I made the snow also with soft edge brush but added scatter and jitters (size and opacity) on brush preset menu.
Done.