Minor Illustration Project

My four minor project photographs and basically how I created them. The fog and rain are effects added to my existing photos. Push-Pull and Tony are realistic blending of two or more images.

Fog – Above your image create a new layer and fill it with white using the paint bucket. Set Opacity to 90-95%. Create a Mask by Select > Load Selection to select the layer content, then Layer > Layer Mask >Reveal All to create a mask for all layers. Remove the selection with Ctrl+D. Select the Gradient tool and fill layer with linear black and white gradient (light on bottom to dark on top). [In some circumstances you can use a soft brush with low opacity and the Eraser Tool to remove some of the fog in areas.] Fog needs to be irregular. Set colour to black foreground and white background. Create a new layer and apply Filter > Render > Clouds. Change layer mode to Screen and reduce opacity to about 40%.

Rain – Added new layer and filled with 50% tray. Then Filter > Render > Fibers. Adjust variance and strength click Randomize until get a balanced look. Double click layer and in Advanced Blending drag the This Layer black slider to the amount of rain desired. Hold Opt key to drag one side of slider to soften transition. Create new layer above rain. Shift-click rain layer to select it with the blank layer and then merge the two layers Cmd+E. Change Blend to Soft Light. Can also add small Gaussian blur wit slight vertical Motion blur and lower opacity of rain layer.

Push-Pull – Original photos of the two cavies were on a green mats being show at a guinea pig show. This left a strong green tinge on the bottom edge of the cavies hair when they were extracted from the background. Using the rectangle marque tool I selected a small portion of the carpet and setting feather to 0 used the Edit > Define Pattern and saved the pattern to create the background. For the cavies I did a refined selection of each of only their front halves. Used the free transform to get the area they were to connect to be the same size. Used the Soft Light to blend them. 

Tony – Balloon layer is background. Selected two images and extracted singer. Free Transformed singer to fit the balloon size and rotated as needed. Used Soft Light to blend singers into the balloons and reduced the opacity and fill. Added text to the two balloons and again reduced the opacity and fill.