GRASP ADVANCED BLEND MODE TECHNIQUES
QUICK TIP
For a piece of artwork to be truly great, it is important that you are telling the viewer a story. Artwork
with a story is always far better than an emotionless piece of work.PHOTOMANIPULATION
In order to do great photomanipulations, you
need to have a great photo library. Here are
some great sites to gather the best stock photos
and resources: deviantart.com, cgtextures.
com, psdbox.com, mediamilitia.com. It is a
great thing to have good photomanipulation
skills because it’s not only used to create
illustration for books or music, but it is a great
tool to use in concept art for the film industry,
because it needs to look as realistic as possible.16
STORY ELEMENTS
Our photomanipulation
is nearly done, so finish it by
adding some story elements.
Here we added tears, and smoke
coming out of the gun, as if she
has just killed someone she cared
about who betrayed her. So for
this step we will use smoke
brushes and watercolour brushes- you can find free brushes like
this on deviantART or any
resource site on the internet.
Select a watercolour brush,
choose a black colour and apply it
on the eyes as shown, then erase
any unwanted parts. Next select a
smoke brush, choose a white
colour and apply it on the tip of
the gun.
17
COLOUR CORRECTION
Our illustration is basically finished, all that’s left
are the finishing touches. Let’s add some adjustment
layers first to bring some cool tones to our piece. In the
Layers palette next to the Mask button, click on the
Adjustment Layer button and select Gradient Map. Set
the Color Pickers to: Left picker: 1f0c03 Right picker:
acdfff. Set the adjustment layer to Hard Light and turn
down the Opacity to 20%. Next select Colour Correction
and set it to the following: Midtones: 1st slider: -17, 2nd
slider: -3, 3rd slider: +28, Shadows: 1st slider : 0, 2nd
slider : -28, 3rd slider : +20, highlights: 1st slider: -10, 2nd
slider: 0, 3rd slider: +20. Next add another Gradient Map:
set the blend mode to Lighten and left picker colour:
220545 and right picker to black. And finally select
Exposure and set the middle slider to: 0.0165.18
FINAL EFFECTS
Make sure all your elements are in place and everything is set out properly, then right-click on any
layer and hit Flatten Image, this will merge all layers into one. For the final effects apply Smart Sharpen,
Lens Correction and Noise. Start with Smart Sharpen, go to Filter>Sharpen>Smart Sharpen, set the amount
to 150 and Radius to 1.0px. Next go to Filter>Lens Correction. In the Custom panel on the Chromatic
Aberration slider, set the 1st slider to +50.00, 2nd slider to -30.16 and 3rd slider to -75.40. Finally, finish the
tutorial by going to Filter>Noise>Add Noise, set the amount to 2.45, Distribution: Uniform and check
Monochromatic. Your composite is complete and thanks to blend modes, packs some awesome effects!