CREATING THE LANDSCAPE
ADD THE ROAD, MOUNTAIN AND DINER14
DEEPEN THE BACKGROUND
Now the head is in a good place, you can
start to develop the background and composition.
Deepen the colour background by opening
‘orange_yellow_wash.jpg’ and placing it behind the
portrait. Use a layer mask and the Gradient tool to
fade it off on the left side. Use the ‘rschach.psd’
shape to build up an interesting light texture on the
left using Overlay blending modes and two layers
with differing texture placements.15
MAKE A MOUNTAIN
You can begin to build up the background
landscape, starting with some distant mountains.
Open up ‘mountain.psd’ and duplicate it onto a
layer with an Overlay layer blend. Use a layer mask
on this to fade off the top and bottom and use
‘brush.psd’ to create an interesting edge on the
right within the mask. Duplicate this to create a
Gradient Map colour version using a yellow and
blue to substitute the white/black areas. Place
above the overlay and fade off to the right so it
blends into the overlay beneath.18
ADD A FRAMING DEVICE
To bring the composition together you’re
going to add a circular frame in the background.
Open ‘circle.psd’ and place it behind Dean’s head as
shown. Switch the layer blending mode to Overlay to
give a sun-like luminescence. To make the shape
more interesting, you’re going to make it more
intricate by removing areas. Open ‘chequer.psd’ and
place into the comp at the bottom-right of the circle.
Select the chequer shape and use this to delete from
the circle in a layer mask. This offers a design
counterpoint to the chequer design on the diner and
suggests chequered flags and speed. Open
‘palmtrees.psd’ and do the same with palmtree 1
behind the diner sign. Place the palmtree layer
underneath to also add definition. Place the white
palmtree 2 layer to the left of the diner at the edge of
the circle.17
OPEN A DINER
The diner is an essential icon of 50s
Americana, so you’re going to work one into the
composition. Open up ‘diner.psd’ and ‘diner_sign.
psd’. Greyscale them both and up the contrast with
Levels sufficiently so that you can select a good
black tone image using the Color Range technique
from earlier. Place the separated black tone layers of
both into the comp as shown and fill with a flat,
orange colour. Fill another layer of the diner with
blue and fade that off to the right side with a layer
mask to give a blue to orange colour gradient. You
can duplicate another diner layer and apply Filter>
Blur>Motion Blur to achieve a speeding-past effect
when Multiplied onto the layer beneath.USING LAYER MASKS TO CREATE A
DISTRESSED IMAGE
A technique that is employed here frequently is
using paint splatter textures to create distressed
masked edges. By creating a layer mask on an
image, you can work away in the safety of the
black and white matte area while retaining the
original shape on the layer. Once you’ve selected
a paint splatter shape, you can then position the
selection in the layer mask and fill with black to
remove portions of the image on the layer or with
white to make visible again. If used effectively
then your image can take on a more painted,
organic look or appear distressed at the edges.16
ADD THE LANDSCAPE
Your composition needs a road, so open up
‘back_road.psd’ and place it into the document. To
separate the road from the terrain, use Color Range to
pick out the grey tarmac and reduce Fuzziness to 60 to
get a clearer selection. Use Layer via Copy to put the
road on a new layer, then fill it with a flat, warm grey.
Use a Lasso tool to quickly select and delete any loose
pixels around the road edges. Switch the back_road
photo layer underneath to Overlay blend mode at 90%
and fade off the top, bottom and right using layer
masking and the Gradient tool.QUICK TIP
A good way to quickly merge many layers and create a new layer with everything included to make new
edits to is by holding down Cmd/Ctrl+Opt/Alt+Shift+E.PHOTO EDITING