Glows
and highlights can really make your
image stand out. But they're very easy
to overdue, and in fact, this example
probably has too many, but that's OK.
Here's
where we left off, with the background
in place:
The image is naturally backlit, so
simulating the light coming from
the background will be the main task
here.To start this, we need some selections.
Open
your Channels Palette and Ctrl+leftclick
on the Alpha Channel to make it a selection.
Next go to your Layers Palette and create
a new layer. With the new layer selected,
click edit>fill and choose white,
opacity 100%. We didn't NEED to fill
this with white, but it helps give an
idea for where this is heading.
Without
deselecting, choose select>feather
(shortcut ctrl+alt+D). Use a setting
of 15 pixels and hit OK. Feathering
the selection partially selects
pixels around the start selection, and
15 pixels is just a range I think looks
good in this particular case. Go up
to edit>fill and choose white and
100%. Do that twice, so you end up with
something like this:
Sure
it looks glorious, but it hurts the
eyes to look at too much, and it hides
the pretty background stuff we made.
So first things first, we need to lower
the layer opacity a little. I used 72%,
which isn't much, but we're going to
take the backlight down even further.
Deselect
everything and click on your Layers
Palette. Add a mask to the layer by
on the glowy layer and clicking the
"Add Mask" button at the
bottom of the palette.
The
mask should immediately be created
and selected, so go right away to
edit>fill and this time choose
100% Black. This hides the Glowly
Layer we created and allows us to
reveal it bit by bit.
Still
working with the mask, change your foreground
brush color to white, and select the
airbrush. Using a fairly large brush
begin to "unmask" parts of
the layer where the glow would most
likely appear. I used a brush opacity
setting of 40%, but that's personal
preference. Here's an example of what
I had after a minute or so.
It's
a good idea to click once and evaluate,
then click again and evaluate, instead
of just clicking and dragging. This
will allow you to decide whether or
not the glow really works where you
let it shine through.This image shows
my individual clicks with the airbrush
tool in red, the bigger the area of
red, the more times I clicks and thus,
the more glow I let through.
Continue
letting more and more glow through,
while working around the elements in
the background. For the windows, I only
let the glow come through the bottom
parts, since the light was coming from
the top of the picture and wouldn't
be able to creep around the top inside
the of the window as well. Here's what
I finished with
The
brightest area is definitely in the
at the center towards the top and
the far right window. I did this on
purpose to balance out the next glow
we're going to work on.
It's
a good idea to rename your glowy layer
to "glowly backlight area"
or something more creative. Save too.
The
Skull
You
can't have a glow-in-the-dark lego skull
without having it glow, but this is
going to be a little trickier than the
backlighting. Why? Well, two reasons:
1: We don't already have a selection
of the skull
2: It's a much smaller area and has
important details (the face). Those
details need to stay pronounced while
the glow needs to mimic what real glow-in-the-dark
objects look like.
Problem 1 is not difficult to take care
of. And while the magnetic lasso tool
would work really well at first glance
(due to the high contrast of the area),
it's not the best tool to use.
If you look at real glow-in-the-dark
objects they cast a little illumination,
but most of the glow is within the
object itself, like an inner glow. If
we use the magnetic lasso we would then
have to shrink and then feather the
selection to prepare for this inner
glow, and then we would have to repeat
this for a smaller illuminating outerglow.
It's easier and quicker to just use
something called Quickmask.
Quickmask
mode lets you literally "paint
a selection". You can use brushes,
gradients, filters, even adjustment
effects to create whatever selection
you need. But it is a little tricky
to get the hang of at first.
To shift into Quickmask mode, click
the little right button just below your
"foreground/background color box
things". While in this mode, your
"foreground/background color box
things" will be grayscale, similar
to how it looks while working on a layermask.
But instead of masking or revealing
a layer, if you paint in quickmask it'll
highlight the area on your picture,
defaultly with a bright red.
At anytime you can shift back into regular
editing mode by clicking the little
button on the left, just next to the
quickmask button. This turns anything
you "painted" into a marquee.*
*Even
though you won't see it when you switch
back to regular mode, Quickmask will
create selections containing partially
selected pixels. Like any selection,
Photoshop will only display a rough
estimate of pixels selected (by showing
those that are "mostly" selected).
Keep in mind, with Quickmask, the more
red, or highlighted an object is, the
more it will be selected. The less red
it is, the less it will be selected.
Using Quickmask and a fairly large airbrush,
change your opacity to something really
light, like 10%, and try and paint something
like the below:
See
how there's only a tint of red, that
means there will only be a little
bit of a selection along the outside,
barely enough to be noticeable. That's
what we want. Switch to a smaller
brush size and up the opacity to something
like 80% and paint along the inside
of the skull, clicking much more this
time. Try and get something similar
to the image below:
That
deep red tint means that those pixels
will be completely selected when we switch
back to regular mode. There's one problem,
the edge of that pole that overlaps the
skull shouldn't be red at all, since it's
way in front and wouldn't pick up any
of the glow. Use the Polygonal Lasso to
select the red area of the pole.
Simply hit delete to get rid of any red
overlapping the pole.
Now
it sure would be a shame click somewhere
and lose our pretty selection after
all that. Click on Select>Save Selection
to make sure you'll always have it.
If
you look close you'll see a field marked
"channel". That's right, it
saves the selection as a channel and
you can open your channels palette and
see it right there.
Anyway,
saving selections is just another good
habit to get into. Let's move on to
creating the glow already. Create a
new layer and rename it "skullglow".
Next we need a color to base the glow
around. Start with a color sample (using
the eyedropper) from the skull and then
use the Color Palette to adjust the
color until it resembles that glow-in-the-dark-green-glow-color.
Here's what I settled on:
Now
if you lost the skull selection then
switch over to your Channels Palette
and Ctrl+click the "skullselection"
channel to restore it, then click
on the skullglow layer and select
edit>fill. This time choose foreground,
100%.
The glow itself looks pretty good,
but what about the face.
That's
actually really easy to fix, just
change the layer blending mode to
"overlay"
It
doesn't look that bad actually, and
the image is just about ready for the
next step, which is Depth-of-Field and
Blurs. Here's a final image of where
we are so far.
