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Modigliana Guy

Drawing of a guy in the style of Modigliana.

Totally had fun creating this sort of cowboy-looking guy while trying to do another Modigliana figure as in my recent Fun Photoshop Blog (A Few Photoshop Digital Painting Tricks You May Not Know). Been following some of the tips in Aaron Blaise’s class on Clear Expression to learn face object placement (watch for great sales on his various classes). The painting took a long time to do, but eventually it was drawn to get a Modigliana perspective. The background was created with one of my Painter backgrounds and setting 9 Levels in a Posterize Adjustment Layer. A Kyle T. Webster Tilty Pencil Variant (from Winter 2022 set) Mixer was converted to a regular brush (changed Erodible Tip to Small Round and 9 px Tip; added Shape Dynamics Size Jitter 11%; Texture Scale slider changed to 28%, Brightness 60, Contrast 10, and Texture Each Tip checked; and Transfer With Opacity Jitter also checked – use all other settings from the Mixer and it turns into a really nice sketch brush). Also Kyle’s the Hunky and Heroes Heavy brushes from the free Bowie Set (located in the Adobe Cloud-search for Bowie Toolkit) were used to paint his clothes. Aaron Blaise’s favorite brush was used for the face and skin. Used The Etherington Brothers various tips for the face and hands – lots of good information here. He may not be the best thing I have ever drawn, but I am learning a lot about drawing!…..Digital Lady Syd

02/16/2023 | Categories: Just Being Creative, Photoshop Painting | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

Trans Siberian Orchestra in Concert

Image of the Trans Siberian Orchestra in Concert

Hoping everyone is having a great holiday! This image was taken a week ago when they performed their Christmas show (hence the holiday card even though it is stretching it a bit) at the Amway Arena in Orlando. We were sitting pretty far away, but it was still awesome! Had to post a pix even if it is a bit crazy! I actually pulled this image out of a video, and then ran it through Skylum’s software Neo – used a lot of different effect before I liked it. Used Viveza to tweak it a little more and finally painted in a few areas to remove lines holding the hanging contraption. This is pretty much how the color was, which is what I remember most. Anyway, it definitely shows the scope of the color effects from the show! See ya next year!…..Digital Lady Syd

12/24/2022 | Categories: Photography | Tags: , | Leave A Comment »

Fog Lifting in the Fall

Image of some fall trees

Had fun with this image of a beautiful backyard in rural Virginia. Tried to copy the effect created by Albert Dros to get a fog lifting feel. The original RAW image was actually quite bright. To get a slight fog feel a short technique sent out by Adobe Creative Cloud recently called Enhance Fog and Haze by Liam Man was used. It is for night scenes, but it turned out fine on this overcast daytime scene. Mainly the Neural Beta Filter Depth Blur was downloaded and the Haze slider was adjusted for the image -the Haze was set to 60, Blur Strength to 11, Saturation to +11, and Brightness -8. The Focal point was placed on the main green leaves in the middle of the image. After outputting as a New Layer and blurred foreground areas that should not be blurred were painted over in an added layer mask. Some clean up was done and a Color Lookup Adjustment Layer added (used Scott Kelby’s Farm preset). Last step involved Opening the Camera Raw Filter and adding a vignette by using Scott’s tip to create a Vignette set to exactly -11 for landscape images – always makes them look good. He is right! …..Digital Lady Syd

12/01/2022 | Categories: Photoshop Filters | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

Some Fancy Text

Fancy text lettering

This is an example of a Sam Peterson Challenge from a few months ago called Fancy Text. It was a lot of fun to do. The painting effect was created using Brushes from Kyle T. Webster’s Fall 2021 brush set (these are all part of the PS collection of brushes that can be downloaded for free with a PS membership). The Boxit, Circlez, and Rippolo brushes were used to create the painted look on the letters. From his Summer 2020 set the Brix Brush was used for the splashed-paint background. Overall just a lot of fun to do. Check out Sam Peterson at the Adobe Creative Cloud site for more challenges. …..Digital Lady Syd

09/04/2022 | Categories: Photoshop Painting | Tags: , | 1 Comment »

Classic Florida

B&W image of a place in Florida

Had an HDR image that I took a while ago and decided to convert it to a black and white HDR image by following some of the advice from a YouTube video by Joel Grimes called How to Edit a Picture of a City – Cityscape vs. Urban Landscape Tutorial. Since this is not exactly a building type image, a few different setting were used in Lightroom before opening the document into PS. One of the things I did do in PS was apply Luminar Neo (apparently this is using more AI than their other programs) using the Enhance Accent AI slider and Mystical tools only. I have always enjoyed the Mystical effect that Skylum has had for years. Ran Blake Rudis’s High Pass Sharpen Action on the image (this puts the layer set to Linear Gradient mode and a Fill of 30%) – it ends up with a black layer mask so only the building was painted back to apply the sharpening. A couple parked cars were removed and that was it. I love how the clouds look with the Mystical effect applied. It was fun to do a black and white image for a change……Digital Lady Syd

08/27/2022 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Just a Bird Buddy

This image was actually created while trying out some of the new Spring and Summer 2022 brushes by Kyle T. Webster (that come with PS). This bird was drawn from one of my camera pix taken at the Jacksonville Zoo of a Verreaux Eagle Owl. He was a pretty good size with huge eyes and appeared to be a rather calm kind of bird. I decided to have some fun and give him a different color palette and background. The rough and refined drawing brushes were created using one of Aaron Blaise‘s drawing tutorials (check out any of his YouTube tutorials to see how he does this – pretty easy). The underpainting effect used his Color Brush. The tree was created by making a selection of a tree with the Lasso Tool, then painting with Kyle’s Spring 2022 Woodchuck Joey brush over it using a couple different colors, and removing part of the right side of the tree using the Tilde (~) key (acts like an eraser but uses the brush currently selected). The skin texture was made from Kyle’s Summer 2022 Pellet CS brush with different colors. The little flowers used the Summer 2022 Soft Spat 1 brush also in different colors. The tree leaves were from Kyle’s Spring 2022 – Shrubbed brush. The rest just involved some lightening and darkening. The hardest part was painting the beak – this owl does have a very colorful beak. It was a lot fun just to try out new brushes!…..Digital Lady Syd

07/21/2022 | Categories: Photoshop Painting | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

St. Andrews Golf Shops & Hotels

St. Andrews Old Course image

Enjoying watching The British Open at the Old Course in St. Andrews for the next few days (yep, I am a golfer) and decided to find an image I had not post processed when I was there several years ago (I believe this is the 18th green). Had to do a bit of cloning on the sidewalk area – turned out better than using Content-Aware Fill. Still had a little Chromatic Aberration in this image even after using Lightroom to remove most of it. Therefore a duplicate image was created and a Gaussian Blue was set to Radius of 6.0 – then set layer to Color Blend Mode, added a black layer mask (press ALT+Layer Mask icon to create), and painted out the aberration colors. Worked like a charm! On a stamped layer, Topaz AI Sharpen Filter was set to Out of Focus with Auto settings to sharpen up the whole image. On another stamped layer, my favorite stand-by filter that is no longer available, Lucis Pro 6.0.9 was applied – love the effect! A Color Lookup Adjustment Layer was added and a free Sparkle Stock LUT set called Beautiful Day using Carnival 02 LUT. Last step involved adding New Layers for Darkening and Highlighting part of the image – used Sam Peterson’s technique to do this (see my blog A Few Photoshop and Lightroom Tips and Tricks – No. 2). That was it – wish I was there but I am enjoying the memories by working on this older image……Digital Lady Syd

07/14/2022 | Categories: Photoshop Tips | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

Uber Driver in Venice

Painted digital art of a Gondolier and a canal in Venice

Just had fun with this one mainly trying out different brushes to see what would happen. The really cool texture effect for the orange buildings came from Kyle T. Webster’s Winter 2022 set – using the Winter BG Variant on the orange buildings. In the Spring 2022 set from Kyle, The Marshall was used to create the bridge and The Marshall Var was used to create the white church building. The Tilty Pencil Soft and the Tilty Pencil Variant were used to create a few of the black sketch lines in the image. In the 2022 Spring Set Tree Leaf Mess Alt and Fresh Leaf were used to create the leaves in the tree and plant. Just used a pencil brush I created to paint the Boat and Gondolier – pretty rough sketching here. Three textures were used: Kim Klasson’s Womandweathered (Soft Light blend mode at 50% opacity), 2 Lil’ Owls Mosaic Set Celeste (Linear Burn blend mode at 23% opacity), and Adobe Paper Texture Pro Villa Adriana (Overlay blend mode at 40% opacity). Had to blend out some of the shadows with a Mixer blender brush. That meant I had to go into the Camera Raw Filter and add some grain in so it did not look too smooth. Overall it was cool to try out some of the new brushes. ….. Digital Lady Syd

07/05/2022 | Categories: Just Being Creative, Textures | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

The Tiger

Drawn and painted image of a tiger in digital pastel

Watched the Kyle T. Webster (the Adobe Brush Evangelist) video called Brush Hour: Digital Pastels. I thought he would go over his various pastel brushes he has created for Adobe Photoshop, but instead he demonstrated how to create a relatively interesting pastel painting using just a few. This was my first attempt at trying a pastel painting, but it was a lot of fun – and a little bit challenging. The tiger is the actual sketch created using an Aaron Blaise tutorial (see my A Little Aaron Blaise Digital Drawing Practice Fun Photoshop Blog). I also adjusted one of my own pastel brushes to get the nice pastel background effect as I had trouble getting the correct pressure with Kyle’s brush. It has been a long time since I used traditional pastels and doing this digitally is definitely a lot less messy!…..Digital Lady Syd

06/24/2022 | Categories: Art Tidbits, Just Being Creative, Photo Art | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

Turtle and Child Sculpture

Digital Art painting of a sculpture of a turtles with a child swimming along.

This image was taken on the Big Island in Hawaii at a small shopping center near Waimea – I wish I knew who did the original piece of sculpture as it is quite striking and beautiful. The photo background was very busy so I decided to try some digital effects to the image. It really is a faux digital painted image as the background painted effect used Topaz Studio (AI Remix – 0.69 opacity and Normal mode, Velvet Abstract preset set to Style Strength High, Brightness 0, Contrast 1.00, Sat 0.75, Hue 0, Smooth Edge 0.20, Sharpness 0.47, and Suppress Artifacts 0; Impression – 1.00 opacity and Normal mode, Type 16 Stroke, Number of Strokes Med, Stroke Length 0.56, and Painting Progress 0.16 – painted out the turtle and child and Texture – and Background Type Original; and Precision Detail – 1.00 opacity and Normal mode, Overall Small 0.60, and Lighting Midtones -0.47). Then on various layers in PS, different parts were painted using PS brushes to add more defined strokes and to clean up some of the Studio stroke overlap. One brush used was Kyle’s Real Watercolor-80 Round brush set to Normal brush mode to paint the face and body of the child. Black & White, Curves, and Levels Adjustment Layers were added on top. The Sharpen Tool was used on a separate layer to sharpen up the eyes a little. A Color Lookup Adjustment Layer using On1’s Loyalty Reward for May 2022’s Fun in the Sun6 LUT was added and set to 27% – really brightened up the image. Last step involved adding darken and lighten layers using Sam Peterson’s colors and brush to draw attention to the boys face. (See my Fun Photoshop Blog A Few Photoshop and Lightroom Tips and Tricks – Step 2 for info on this – really easy to do and look great on images!) That was it – it was really fun and relaxing to do!…..Digital Lady Syd

06/02/2022 | Categories: Photoshop Painting, Topaz Studio | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

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