Special effects on TV, the big screen and in magazine images always come with a large price tag for any production team. Adobe Photoshop allows you to replicate and create your own ‘out of this world’ images for very little cost, or even free if you use your own images.
In this Adobe Photoshop masterclass, I will be showing you how I created the image below. You will learn about many of the most powerful features of Photoshop as well as get an insight into how the pro’s add drama to an image. Perhaps you would like to follow this tutorial with your own images?
- Photoshop – Image Manipulation
Step 1: Gathering together the images
I always like to pause and think before putting my image together. Some of my best work has been formulated whilst trying to get to sleep at night. Make sure that the images you choose are going to work well together as united elements in your composition. It’s all about similarities – if the images are similar to each other to begin with, then they will be less work for you and the finished art-piece will yield a better result:
- Are they of matching resolution? Dropping a small image onto a high resolution image will end in tears. You will end up with a mish-mash of different levels of detail that will scream out ‘copy and paste’.
- Do the images have similiar lighting? One image taken with natural sunlight and another with front on flash will be difficult to match. If the lighting is coming from the opposite direction, you’re in control, you can flip (mirror) elements within your composition to match.
- Are the textures in the images compatible with each other. Adding a very grainy image element to a fine crisp image will make a rough union. If you have no other choice, may be it would be better to add grain or blur the crisper elements in your image to match the lesser.
Once you have gathered together your image elements, it’s time to create an image document that will form as a container for your composition.
Hold down the CTRL key (Win) or APPLE key (MacOS) and press ‘N’ for New. This will bring up the New dialogue box. The size of your document will depend largely on what you need it for. If it is just for screen output, then a width or height up to 1000 pixels should be fine – don’t worry about the Resolution setting if this is the case. If you require your image for print, then create a width and height in cm or inches and set your resolution to 288 pixels/inch. I always like to work on a ‘little larger than I need’ basis so that I can be flexible with the image later. For this project, I will be using the following settings:
Width: 3000 pixels
Height: 3000 pixels
Resolution: Irrelevant (as I am working in pixels)
Click on ‘OK’ to create a blank canvas.
