art109.tut_photo by andy darcy

TUTORIAL

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24/3/05 6:11:43 pm

TUTORIAL

PHOTOSHOP

TRANSFORM PHOTOS

Photoshop is perfect for adding extra detail to images, says Kev Speck. Whether you’re importing unwanted doodles or last year’s holiday snaps, with the right elements you can easily create great, dramatic illustrations

ON THE CD

You’ll find all the files you need to complete this tutorial in the file named Tutorial\Photo on the cover CD. TIME LENGTH

2 hours INFO

After appearing in the Computer Arts Graduate Showcase, Kev Speck is enjoying life – working with Beards with Beef and as a freelance illustrator. His clients include The Financial Times, Two Agent See, The NME and WGSN. For more information about his work, visit www. beardswithbeef.co.uk or www.kevspeck.com.

Whether you go abroad or just look out of your back window, there’s inspiration to be found everywhere – and no better way of capturing it than with a photograph. Cameras have always enabled us to snap such moments, but not always the unique atmosphere that goes with them. In this tutorial, we’ll be reworking an ordinary image so it does just that, adding depth and composition to make it look much more exciting and dramatic. Most creatives swear by their digital camera as way of capturing images to work with later on. The photograph you’ll work with for this tutorial was taken in New York, and is simply a shot of a road with moving vehicles. Not very interesting, admittedly, but with the confidence to work into and around the image, you can create something quite stunning, and develop the skills you need to rework some of your own digital images. This tutorial uses relatively simple tools. You’ll keep your work in duotone and rarely move beyond cutting and pasting, but sometimes that’s more than enough. Building with layers you have already made away from the computer is an effective way of creating interesting, detailed images. So get scribbling, painting, photocopying, screening and scanning, so you have plenty of resources to throw into your image. On this month’s cover CD, you’ll find the original photo used in this illustration, along with a few others which you can use to practice what you’ve learned. You’ll also find a range of textures and scribbles for adding depth and style to your work.

Illustration and tutorial by Kevin Speck www.kevspeck.com

First create a new document that measures 275mm by 295mm. Open the photo.jpg file from the cover CD and place the scanned photo onto your document. Notice how the file is rescaled to fit your workspace. All you have to do is position it accordingly.

Label this layer “photo” and convert it to black and white. Adjust Brightness and Contrast by clicking Image>Adjustments> Brightness(20)/Contrast(10). Then click on Image>Adjustments>ChannelMixer and choose Monochrome. Now you can alter the Contrast and Black scale as shown.

Duplicate your original layer and rename it “illustrate”. Now with the Polygonal Lasso tool, trace the edge of the buildings to create a selection of the sky you wish to remove. Finally, Delete the sky and excess buildings by choosing Edit>Cut.

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TUTORIAL

PHOTOSHOP

Create a new layer and place it under the “illustrate” layer. Pick the Gradient tool from the toolbar and fade it from top to bottom, making sure that your gradient fades to transparent. Now choose your colour by selecting Image>Adjustments> Hue/Saturation and ticking Colorize in the pop-up menu that appears.

Now to give your image some perspective and depth. If not already visible, give your document rulers by choosing View>Rulers. Create two guidelines by clicking and dragging them from the top and side rulers (axis number 5). This is the point from which your ray beams will shine. Create a set of beams using the Polygonal Lasso tool.

Open the skylines.psd CD ﬁle and drag the layers onto your image (these were originally drawn in Adobe Illustrator). Alter the Hue/Saturation as in step 4, but this time only change the lightness – dragging all the way to white. Duplicate this layer and place it in between previous lines. Change to Soft Light and, in the Layers palette, set the Opacity to 77 per cent. GET DRAWING If, like me, you spend a lot of time working on a computer, make sure you take some time out to put pencil to paper. Whether you draw in a sketchbook or scribble on a newspaper while commuting, adding these elements will ensure that you maintain an original style throughout your work. Anyone can use a ﬁlter, but we all interpret the world differently when we try to draw it.

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On a new layer, give each beam a gradient from top to bottom. The beams will look rather ﬂat at this stage, so open your Styles menu, duplicate the beams layer and give it an Outer Glow. Once this has taken effect, double-click the layer to bring up the Layer Style window and change the settings, as shown here.

Now open the splatter.psd ﬁle from the cover CD. As in step 5, place the textured ﬁle above the gradient layer in the top lefthand side of your composition. Play around with the settings once more until you are happy with the appearance of the texture – it can be as obvious or as subtle as you like.

Duplicate the original beam layer once again and go to Layer> LayerStyle>Stroke. In the Layer Style window that appears, change the Colour to purple, the Stroke Size to 8, the Position to Inside and the Opacity to 26 per cent.

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TUTORIAL

A great way to add character and movement to the van is to place some rough, handdrawn lines on top. You could either draw and scan these yourself, or use the template provided in the drawndetail.jpg ﬁle on the cover CD. Alter the colour as you wish and then set all layers to Multiply.

Now, to trace the buildings. Start with the one on the right, using the Polygonal Lasso tool. Copy and Paste the result into a new layer and change the Hue/ Saturation to a light brown. In the Layers palette, choose Multiply to add depth. Repeat for the building on the left and the one peering over the top of the centre building.

Now to rework the road. Here, I’ve used a grey marker to draw the sort of lines that you’d regularly find left on the tarmac. This adds depth to the image. Open the felt.jpg file from the CD (or simply draw and scan your own). Drag the file onto your document, alter the Brightness and Contrast and again set the layer to Multiply.

Repeat the same process (step 11) with the van using the felt tip marks included in the felt.jpg document. Drag the ﬁle onto your image and then change the colour once again by selecting Image> Adjustments>Hue/Saturation.

You can now highlight the areas of the photograph that you wish to erase – the building sign and the advertisement on the back of the lorry, for example. This is simple. Just cover the areas you wish to remove with a new layer ﬁlled with white.

THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN’T USE Whether it’s badly exposed photos or your ﬂatmate’s late-night phone-call doodles, everything has a use in design. Whether you opt to play with such elements ﬁrst or scan them straight into your composition, remember to store them in a library afterwards. When deadlines are pressing, they’re handy to have, helping you to form a style of your own.

Open the ﬂoor.psd – a photograph of ﬂoorboards I put through Adobe Streamline, which you can now use as a texture. Magic Wand it with a Tolerance of 32. Drag your selection over to your workspace and apply a gradient from brown to transparent. Set to Overlay over the building and cut away what’s not needed. Repeat for the building further back.

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TUTORIAL

PHOTOSHOP

Use scribble.jpg, the texture you used in step 15, or even some old dirt, to give the buildings a little more depth. You should now also add texture to the two lorries or anything else in the composition you feel is too important to leave blank.

Create greater perspective by adding more buildings. Start by opening the photo2.jpg ﬁle and altering the Brightness and Contrast levels. Choose one building, carefully trace around it and then drag the cut-out onto the illustration under the “illustrate” layer.

Now to create a background collage; the Empire State Building is ideal. Once your buildings are in place, change the colour to a light brown, dull orange or pale purple. Apply to as many buildings as you wish. Finish on the Empire State Building and highlight it in purple.

SAVE AND SAVE I can’t repeat this enough: always save your work every 15 minutes to half an hour. There’s nothing more soul-destroying than working on something and then losing it because your computer crashes for no good reason. Of course, you won’t know how annoying this is until it happens, but I’m guessing it already has to most of you.

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Add subtle doodles to draw attention to the Empire State Building. Open spiragraph.jpg, pull it over to your workspace and position as desired. Change the contrast by choosing Image> Adjustments>Auto Contrast, select Invert from the Adjustments menu and change Layer Property to Screen.

At this point in the design, you can bring some of the elements forward – lift the cab and the posts at the front left, for instance. Choose areas that could do with a dash of colour – simply select and ﬁll them before hitting Multiply.

The water tank that sits on top of the building looks heavily under-worked. Zoom in and trace around it. Create two new layers, one for the lid and one for the actual tank, and ﬁll them at different shades. Now again add texture from a previous layer – the drawndetail.jpg, for example.

Look back at the original photo. Is there anything you’ve missed or want to put back into your new illustration? As a ﬁnal touch, drag over the felt-tipped drawings of branches and leaves from the drawndetail. jpg on the cover CD and insert them on the left-hand side of your image.

May 2005

24/3/05 6:12:06 pm