Friday 10 April 2009

Trick or Treat Vol. 1

Well this is Daisy and i'm gonna use her to show how to,in 5 min or less, add some kind of mystical pattern onto her. This method requires that You are working with background layers only, so if You have 20+ layers you can not do this. Flatten Image is Your friend...

So here we go, firstly make a Background Copy. Now there are two identical images, one on top of other.


Now right-click on upper layer and Select Blending Option, then left click Bevel and Emboss. Some Options will appear, set the lighting position according to established source on painting/drawing. Once satisfied click OK and effects tab will appear underneath Background Copy Layer..


From Tool Tab select eraser tool. Make it have size control = pen pressure, so it changes thickness according to pressure. Use it to draw pattern by erasing Background copy layer, Bevel and Emboss effect will draw shadow and light...


Once some kind of pattern is drawn, make normal layer beneath Background Copy and merge Background Copy down to that layer. Now there's a bit of extra effect, so use eraser set to large soft brush. Since beneath Background Copy is still original painting anything You erase gets reverted back to original state. So use eraser to blend pattern with picture, erasing where shapes get darker for instance..

Use Hard Brush to erase edges of picture and add some highlight on parts of pattern..Merge all down if You're satisfied and voila You have some kind of pattern on picture with correct lighting in under 5 minutes. You can tweak it further if necessary...Well that's it, maybe You knew this, maybe You didn't, i hope it may help someone. I don't use this method for pattern, usually ill just paint it in, but if You needed it really fast for some reason, You could use this.Anyway thank You for reading..

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brilliant! Seriously that is a cool trick.

But there is a way to do that with multiple layers. There's a command to add a layer on top that has all layers below it merged. I believe it's ctrl+alt+shift+E but dont quote me. :)

HB said...

I apologize if there is a way to do it with multiple layers. :)