The Canon Magazine 47
SMOKY PORTRAIT IMAGERY
NEXT MONTH
MONOCHROME
SEASCAPES01 CONVERT TO MONO
Open the portrait into Photoshop. Duplicate the
background layer with Cmd/Ctrl+J, then go to
Image>Adjustments>Black and White. Use the
controls to tweak the look. We’ve chosen the Red
Filter preset from the dropdown to lift the skin.
03 WHITE FILL LAYER
Go to the Layers panel (Window>Layers) and click the
new layer icon, then go to Edit>Fill, set Contents:
White and hit OK. Next, click the Add Layer mask icon.
Now we can paint on the image while the mask is
highlighted to gradually reveal the portrait.
05 BUILD IT UP
Continue dabbing over parts of the face with your
smoke brushes to gradually reveal the face, making
sure to leave plenty of gaps. You can change the
rotation and angle of your brushes in the Brush
Settings panel by rotating the circular control.
02 WARP THE HEAD
Go to Edit>Transform>Warp. Hold Alt and click a series
of vertical points down the face, then click another
point near the back of the head to add an extra column.
Hold Shift and drag a box over the points over the back
of the head, then drag them to the side to stretch it out.04 PAINT A MASK
Grab the Brush tool from the toolbar and hit D then X
to set the colour to black. Go to the Brush picker and
choose one of your newly created smoke brushes (or
load the smoke brushes supplied into Photoshop).
Dab over the image to paint with the smoke brush tip.06 TONE THE IMAGE
Keep painting to build up the effect. When happy,
highlight the top layer and press Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+
Alt+E to merge a new layer, then go to Filter>Camera
Raw Filter for final toning. Click the Profile Browser
and choose a profile, then use tonal tools to finish up.STEP BY STEP PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Use your smoke brushes – or our free set – to send your portrait up in smoke
ESSENTIAL
BRUSH
SHORTCUTS
When using the Brush
tool, there are a few
handy tricks that will
speed things up. Firstly,
the essential shortcuts
you need to know are
] and [ bracket keys,
which resize the brush
tip for you. Alternatively,
you can hold Ctrl+Alt
(Mac) or Alt+right-click
(Windows) and drag right
or left to resize the brush
tip (you can also drag up
or down to change the
hardness with circular
tips). The number keys
let you quickly change the
brush opacity - hit 1 for
10%, 2 for 20% and so
on, and hit 0 for 100%.