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Thursday, March 17, 2011

How To Bring Some Night And Mystery into Your Bright Sunny Photos

This is a short tutorial about how to bring some night and mystery into your bright sunny photo. Here is the photo I took in the forest near my home. IMPORTANT NOTE - all steps below are true only for this very photo! This tutorial is only to describe general approach. Trust your eyes when applying effects.

Siberian Winter - making of  - Step 1 Use Sharpen effect several times, until the snow starts to glow.
 
Siberian Winter - making of  - Step 2 Create new layer, fill with color (in this case, blue).
 
Siberian Winter - making of  - Step 3 Set layer blend mode to Overlay and opacity to 50%.
 
Siberian Winter - making of  - Step 4 Duplicate this layer, so that color overlay is more vivid.
 
Siberian Winter - making of  - Step 5 If you want to make image a bit brighter, duplicate layer again, set its blend mode to Screen, and opacity to 30%.
 
Siberian Winter - making of  - Step 6 Now we want to add some light sparks. For that, we need a custom brush. Create new (square) document, select Shape tool, choose Polygon, set Side to 4, and in Polygon options, set indent to 93 and check Star checkbox.
 
Siberian Winter - making of  - Step 7 Now simply create such shape, filling entire document. Rasterize layer, then go to Edit menu -> Define Brush Preset. After that, close this document.
 
Siberian Winter - making of  - Step 8 In our original document, make new layer. Open Brush settings (Window menu - brushes). Click Brush Tip Shape, choose the brush you just made, set Size to 40-60px and Spacing to 1000%. Then click Shape Dynamics, set Size Jitter to 99% and Minimu diameter to about 15%.
 
Siberian Winter - making of  - Step 9 Now it is very easy to put sparks here and there! You can also add Outer Glow layer effect.
 
Siberian Winter - making of  - Step 10 Here is how all our layers look together.
 
Siberian Winter - making of  - Step 11 next step: Select all, copy merged (Ctrl-Shift-C) and paste into new layer (Ctrl-V). Then, set this new layer blend mode to Multiply and opacity to 50-60%
 
Siberian Winter - making of  - Step 12 Then again, select all, copy merged and paste. Then, apply Gaussian Blur filter with 5-10px radius.
 
Siberian Winter - making of  - Step 13 Now set this layer opacity to 20-25%. Almost done! The final touch is dark edges, made by very large black brush (in new layer with Color Burn blend mode).
 
Siberian Winter - making of  - Step 14