PHOTOMANIPULATION
QUICK TIP
When designing something you always need to have an idea or sketch; don’t come up with something on the
spot unless you’re really confident about your designing skills. Also, when designing a suit with superbike
parts, make sure to study the shapes very well. Combining two or three parts can be very useful.04
ADD SMOKE EFFECTS
We said earlier that composition is
important and the bokeh should not cover the entire
scene because we still need to add more elements.
Next, we’ll add smoke effects to add more texture to
the background, so grab some smoke textures, and
repeat Step 3, but this time change the blend mode to
Color Dodge instead of Linear Dodge (Add), that way
the smoke will not ruin the bokeh shapes and it will
show clearly on the empty areas that we left earlier.
Now we need to blend the model with the
background; this is really simple, we just place a
smoke texture layer in front of the model layer, place
it as shown in the image and turn the blend mode to
Linear Dodge (Add).05
SKETCH THE FUTURISTIC SUIT
Now it’s time to add futuristic elements
to the scene, but first, before we start designing our
suit, we need to have a clear idea about what we
will be designing. So create a new layer and, using
a pen tablet and a Round brush around 40px, start
sketching the shapes on the model that we want to
the suit to look like. Here we followed the anatomy
of the human body, so that the suit will look
functional and practical, and will not hold our girl
down. You can still do this step if you don’t have a
tablet by holding the Shift key and pointing with the
mouse to create a straight line.06
CREATE THE SUIT
The sketch is done, and now it’s time to
make the actual suit. Superbike parts are the best
stock to create a futuristic suits or robots or anything
from the future thanks to their slick designs. Grab
our PNG files with the bike parts already cut out. On
this part you can be as creative as you can but keep
in mind that the suit needs to be practical. Our
model’s hand is in the foreground, so we need to
create a mask so that the suit will appear to be
behind the hand. To do that, we will select the Pen
tool and repeat Step 1. When the selection is on,
select the bike part that will be behind the hand and
click the Mask button below on the Layers palette,
then you can duplicate the mask by holding Shift and
dragging the mask to another layer.07
ADD SHADOWS
For now, the suit looks too flat, so add
some shadows for some depth and realism in the
scene. Grab our Soft Round brush again. If you have
a pen tablet you can create the shadows using the
brush pressure feature, but if you don’t have a tablet,
you can play with the brush opacity to get more
control over it. Now create a new layer below the
part where you want to paint the shadow, for
example, on areas like the neck and under her arms.08
ADD RAIN EFFECTS
It’s time to add some motion to bring more dynamism to our piece. This part is very similar to
Step 4. Create rain by using snow textures. Take the snow texture by Moosplauze on deviantart.com, place
it below the model layer and above the bokeh and smoke layers, go to Image>Adjustments>Curves, create
a point in the middle and drag it down to make the snow particles sharper, then change the blend mode to
Color Dodge, and go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur and set the angle to 32, and Distance to 31 and click OK.
Then we need to blend the model, so duplicate the rain layer and place it above the model layer, and change
the blend mode to Linear Dodge (Add) and mask areas like the face. Also take a snow texture without
Motion Blur, create a mask, invert it, Cmd/Ctrl+I and paint back areas on the head and shoulder to make an
interaction effect.