A Halloween AI Party

I have always loved doing Halloween images so it was a lot of fun to create this one after this rather weird AI generated background from the Photoshop Beta software was produced. The prompt used on this one was “flowers and river oil painting” – see my AI Digital Oil Painting – How To Do This Fun Photoshop Blog for more on how this was done (used Method 2 by Brian Mataish called Photoshop Generative Fill AI Can Turn Photos into Paintings. This Tidbits Blog is on just the post-processing steps used after the AI background was created.

The original AI background had this pretty scary vampire looking guy on the right, so that felt very much like Halloween. A Halloween theme was created using a free Color Lookup Adjustment Layer called SS Vieru 02 for the basic color that I thought looked really good (to download click Sparkle Stock Canyon Film). On a New Layer the Vampire was painted in using my SJ-Pastel-3 Painting Brush (see my How to Create My Favorite Brush Fun Photoshop Blog for the settings) and some cloning was done on another layer. The Remove Tool/Spot Healing Brush layer was created to remove some bad looking areas – I am finding I do switch between them (see center of my Photoshop Beta AI with Fenced Zoo Images Fun Photoshop Blog for more on this). The Pot and Fire were both generated in two different generation layer prompts and read “Halloween black witches pot” and “flames” – then smoke was added on layer above using some really old smoke brushes. The bat was generated using “Halloween bat” in the prompt. The cat is from a Halloween Obsidian Dawn vectors set ($4 set) which had the cat brush, skeleton brush and the raven brush. The cat was painted with a Cheetah Fur brush that the great Aaron Blaise taught how to make (see How to Make a Digital Brush using a Photo) and the tail was flared out to look scary (used Coyote Mange Rough Tough brush for this – still the best animal fur brushes around!). The Dark Skin Cobra Attacking Pose Snake is from PixelSquid, the greatest object resource item around – hopefully even after AI – it is a pay-to-use site. (For more info on them, check out my Some Compositing Tips and Resources Fun Photoshop Blog halfway down.) A sampled light orange was used on a New Layer to add some Fog (used Grut-I Fixray brush – he has the best brushes around – and a free brush weekly!) and then on another New Layer used the same brush with a darker sampled color for a slight vignette effect. Two layers were added as Darken and Highlight layers using Sam Peterson’s brush and colors – see my A Few Photoshop and Lightroom Tips and Tricks Fun Photoshop Blog – Tip 2 – use this for pinpointing light and shadows on an object. A Black and White Adjustment Layer set to Luminosity (because it always looks good) was added next. Used Pratik Naik’s technique Tip 2 for lightening and darkening parts of image (on new layers above set to Overlay blend mode – use at least a 100 px soft round brush set to Airbrush in the Options Bar and Flow at 9% and use white or light color to lighten image or black or darker color to darken image – different colors give some great results – use layer opacity to lower effect). This enhanced the light at the top coming and the dark in areas for more of a cave feel. Last step involved adding a New Layer on top with a few little sprinklers to add some texture in the lighted areas. Phew! That was it – took a while to complete!…..Digital Lady Syd