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
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
Just downloaded this week’s free brush from GrutBrushes – each Monday he gives you a new one some of them are fabulous. He has some great brushes (I love his cloud set for starters!) This week’s brush is an ink brush called Citrose and I really like it! Everything painted or draw in this image used this brush. For example, just for sketching the brush was set to 13 pixels. The Color Tones were added with the brush set to 70 pixels which made a very smooth color. The water was set to 400 pixels, white splashes and birds were set at a very small size. The only extras were a Gradient Fill Adjustment Layer used on the background at 76% layer opacity, and a Texture layer using Pro Casanova from the Adobe Paper Panel (not sure it is available anymore but try this link if you are interested) set to Overlay blend mode. The font is one called Zahra Inline Grunge – has a stroke layer style added and set to the outside. I was not going to do an image with the brush, but it turned out to be such a nice brush so I started doodling and came up with this crazy image using it. …… Digital Lady Syd
This image was taken at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm. The sky was bright and clear so I decided to try adding some fog into the image. It was actually a lot of fun – just followed Glen Dewis’s video called Try This for Adding Smoke, Fog, Mist and Clouds into Your Pictures Using Photoshop. It is a pretty simple technique. Also, to get the color I wanted, a Color Lookup Adjustment Layer using the Late Sunset preset set 88% layer opacity was used. On some of the areas that did not have blur on them, a large soft Mixer Blender brush was used (could have used a Smudge Tool instead) to paint over, and then immediately after stroking, went to Edit -> Fade to bring back some of the detail from underneath. Really helped balance out the fog spots. The font is Argentina Script…..Digital Lady Syd
Am I the only one who photographs mannequins – yep this guy was in the gift shop at Universal Studios-Orlando. They have some wonderful displays if you look around. Of course, he was not exactly a pirate – I added the hat, hook and map from PixelSquid to make him look authentic. Otherwise pretty normal post-processing. Topaz Sharpen set to Out of Focus was used to really sharpen him up. Sam Peterson Shadows and Highlights layers were used first to even out the lighting (See My Fun Photoshop Blog A Few Photoshop and Lightroom Tips and Tricks, Tip 2 for info on how to do this). Then Viveza was used for adjusting everything. Three textures were added: Kim Klassen’s Pinitonly and Stay textures (not sure these are still available), and 2 Lil’ Owls Workbook texture from forever ago. Some of the texture was masked out using Kyle’s Megapack Drawing Box-Shady Graphite Fat Dry brush – really nice for when you want a little grain. A Color Lookup Adjustment Layer was added using On1’s Urban Explorer preset and set to 83%. PS Camera Raw Filter was used to create a slight vignette effect. The Font is called Fratello Nick. That is about all that was done. I have a couple other images like this one for a set……Digital Lady Syd
Just a short blog – I thought I would show you the results using this drawing I created of a lioness turned into a painted image using Kyle T. Webster’s Spring 2022 brush set. The drawing is one I did following Aaron Blaise’s Digital Painting for Photoshop – Getting Started-Sketching in Photoshop video. (See my recent Fun Photoshop A Little Aaron Blaise Digital Drawing Practice blog for more info on this.) I used one of Aaron’s resource images – it is not an exact representation but I felt he should get credit for the original drawing idea. Then, just following Kyle T. Webster’s YouTube called Illustration Masterclass: Draw Stylized Portraits with Custom Brushes to paint the lioness. This video used many of his newly released Spring 2022 brushes, which can be found in PS by clicking on the Hamburger icon in the top right corner of the Brushes Panel and clicking “Get More Brushes” – if you have any recent version of PS and are on a monthly plan, it will be listed at the top of the page, after logging if needed. There appear to be 37 brushes in this set. If you want to see how each works, watch his Brush Hour with Kyle T. Webster: Check Out the Spring 2022 Brush Set! video. This image mainly used his Woodchuck Joey, Pellets and Old Blue brushes with a few other ones thrown in. I actually changed the Pellets-Alt brush to a Spacing of 98 and a smaller size of 45 pixels to get a really nice texture effect when the stylus is pressed lightly and really smooth when pressed hard. To select the colors, a color palette layer was created by following Kyle’s video called Illustration Masterclass: Choosing the Right Colors for Your Digital Illustrations which is very helpful when trying to get colors that blend nicely. The splatter effect is a PNG overlay file that was downloaded from Creative Market in a set called 48 Subtle Grunge Textures Vector by Anastasia Autumn. It has PNGs, JPGs, ABRs PS brushes, and Vector AI files with the 48 textures in each file format. By adding a layer style to the PNG texture 01 layer and in Layer Styles selecting the Gradient Overlay, all these colors would be added (not sure which gradient, but it had a lot of horizontal gradient colors in it). It was set to 59% layer opacity. Major Cool! Viveza was used to fine tune the final image. Overall, this was just major fun to do!…..Digital Lady Syd
Love how this beautiful Iguana looks up close – he lives at the Palm Beach Zoo in Florida and I think it may be a juvenile since it was so colorful. It took a lot of manipulating to get this image post-processed, but I really like the final results. Two images had to be stacked and aligned in Photoshop as some parts were more in focus in one image than the another. A black layer mask was added to the top image and just the parts needing to be sharper were added painted back in. Topaz Sharpen AI was tried on a stamped layer, but some bad haloing appeared so this filter was removed. On a stamped layer the Iguana was selected using a layer mask. On a duplicate stamped layer placed underneath the subject layer, the Tilt Shift Filter in the Blur Gallery was applied to smooth out the background. I had to reload PS2021 as the pins were not showing for these filters on my computer in PS2022. Not sure what the issue is here! Used Viveza to sharpen up photo and the new Spectrum Neo for the lighting-love the relight effect in this filter. Then a Color Lookup Adjustment Layer and two Levels Adjustment Layers (one for a vignette) were used to finish up. It took a while, but well worth effort……Digital Lady Syd
Just had some fun creating a little atmospherics image. Following Aaron Blaise’s Digital Painting videos – these are from 2017 but they are still really relevant. One of the sections is called Creating Atmospheric Perspective using Layers. It was a lot of fun to do and pretty easy. Just used a Hard Round PS brush with Transfer on for the mountains layers and with a lighter color added using the Gradient Tool for atmosphere layers. Can make as many mountains and as much atmosphere as you want. The foreground flowers are from Maddy Bellwoar Hand Painted Gouache Brushes Plant and Flower set – Wildflower Stamp 9 – really nice. The deer shape is from a Photoshop set by Timoes Animal Shapes from 2002 and the grass reeds were created in Aaron’s class. Lots of fun. And Aaron has just released a new digital class but I have not tried it yet. I am sure it is also great!…..Digital Lady Syd
Just had some fun using the Unsplash photo to create an interesting portrait effect using the Photoshop’s Art History Brush. If you have not tried this, you should as it can give some really nice results without really painting much. I will admit that I used my sketch brush to clean up her eyes and mouth especially. The background texture is from Kim Klassen called Hellodecember-0312. If you want to learn how to use the Art History Brush, follow a 5-minute YouTube video by Brady at Texturelabs called Ultra-realistic Sketches in Seconds! He gives you a link to the two Art History brushes that were used on this image. (If you are interested in more of Brady’s info and some more free brushes, check out another excellent video called Anyone Can Create Incredible Paintings in Photoshop with a Single Tool.) I recommend you give this type of painting a try if you want to try something different on your image…..Digital Lady Syd
Yes, these two rather vicious looking lionfish are probably friends. I had one for several years that was very tame. He would follow me around the tank when I was in the room. Who knew? (Check out Ray Hunziker’s book on Marine Aquarium Basic Setup and Maintenance on pg. 67 – he had similar experiences!) Had to take some pix of my Leo the Lionfish relatives when I had the chance. Since they were both moving and the tank itself gave some pretty weird shadows, it was a challenge. Using Topaz DeNoise AI and Sharpen AI totally saved the image – that is why it was never post-processed before due to the high level of noise. Many steps were involved, but probably the most important thing was the lighting on the two fish. Overlay and Multiply layers were used to create the shadow and highlight effects…..Digital Lady Syd
Check out AI Gigapixel stand-alone software for upsizing your images. It’s incredible! And it can now be used as a plugin when in Photoshop. Also Topaz Labs Photo AI has some great sharpening and denoise tools along with Photo Video AI.
GRUT BRUSHES – Photoshop Brushes for Digital Artists
Click here to visit GrutBrushes.com
And be sure to check out his Free Brush of the Week and Brush Sampler! These are the best brushes you can find!
Topaz Studio 2 and Legacy Topaz Labs Filters
Unfortunately Topaz Studio 2 and other Topaz Lab filters are no longer available for sale as of 2020. If you had bought these filters and would like to put them back on, here is a link to the Legacy Apps where they can be downloaded again. Below is an example of the wonderful Remix AI Filter from Studio 2. The wonderful Impression still works fine in Photoshop right now along with Adjust (all versions), ReStyle, and even PhotoFXLab!
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