Sunday, October 2, 2011
Monday, September 5, 2011
Retro/Drawn Photo experiment
I started by following a simple tutorial and then added a few tweaks. This began with a few adjustment layers (brightness, curves, hue/saturation) then a fill layer of yellow set to overlay and a fill layer of magenta set to screen. I stamped the result and ran a find edges filter, set it to overlay and masked out the skin and hand. I dropped an oxidized blue metal rust texture on top set it to soft light. I'm experimenting with the photo/drawn look. This is not quite where I want it yet... more experimentation needed.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
Roadtrip Barney
I took my dog on a short roadtrip along the coast of California. We found a rest stop near Pismo Beach and he posed on the train tracks for me. A few curves adjustments, some fill color layers, some sharpening and viola...
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Captain America
At ComicCon I took this picture of a guy dressed as retro Captain America. Using a halftone filter and a graphic pen filter I created the overlay effect. I added a sepia warming adjustment and blended a few textures to create the background, flag and paper texture. I like the overall effect but am not too happy with the bottom of the shield.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Neon Text Effect
Cool tutorial that was relatively simple. You have to look at the larger version to see all of the detail.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Commie Cosmonaut Pug
I found a fantastic (although long) tutorial to create this image. Using a series of stock images and tons of blending modes, I thoroughly enjoyed following this author's technique. I deviated a bit because several of the images he used were not available without a watermark (plus I had to work in an image of Barney :)
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Tech Fair Logos
After yesterday's SDCUE board meeting I started tweaking with a few variations on a logo for the upcoming Tech Fair.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Revolution Stock Image
I found this image on deviantart.com. I made some tone adjustments, tweaked with the vibrance and clarity of the image, high pass filter, some curves and color balance. Dropped a slight lens correction and called it a day.
Before
After
Before
After
Thursday, June 30, 2011
What's stopping you?
I ran across a cool blog post from Seth Godin (a marketing guru). I really liked it so I made a quick mini poster that I will hang in my class. The text is a little hard to read in the numbers so i may have to go back and rework that ... well maybe :)
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
The beauty of a '57 Chevy Bel Air
Text Effect (primarily a gradient overlay, stroke set to the opposite gradient, a bevel and emboss and an inner shadow). The drop shadow was created using an expanded version of the original text layer. The glossy outer stroke was an expanded version of the original text with a Ring bevel and emboss style. Drop a vignette, a scripted text font, and a flare and glowing line on the CLASSIC and call it done.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Barney G is Money!
I'm experimenting with displacement maps and bitmap halftones in an attempt to replicate the portraiture style found on our currency. Not too shabby but it would worked better with a lighter face (human).
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
I love Bacon!
I toyed with creating a Lomo effect action. After trying it out on several images, I found the bacon struck a cord with me. The action consists of a rough lasso selection with a 90pt feather, invert select and make a new layer mask. Fill new layer with black then crank up the middle levels change blending mode to hue and lower opacity to 40. Change Mode to LAB, select Lightness channel, apply unsharp mask then change back to RGB mode.
Here is the before image
Here is the before image
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Friday, June 17, 2011
Plantscape Text
Simple tutorial (nothing more than a few clipped paths and a texture). The Planet Kosmos font is one that I use in yearbook for some signage. I used a photo from the Hubble telescope. I dropped a high pass filter on the background image and then a light vignette. I added a light outer glow to the text and set it to Overlay.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Emma Frost Vector Effects
I used Illustrator and Photoshop to create a blend of vector and photo materials. Lots of blending modes, brush adjustments and layer styles. In the end I'm not overly excited by the final results. Ah well :)
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Long Island Mike's New Menu
Here is the redesigned menu for Long Island Mike's Pizza. (Did I mention before how good the food is? :)
Logo Fix
I donated some time and redrew the low resolution version of their existing logo for a local pizza shop (Long Island Mike's). The pizza is fantastic and the owner is a really nice guy. We had our end of the year Yearbook party there and he took good care of us. I also gave him a couple of experimental versions.
Here are the various color tweaks he asked for:
Here are the various color tweaks he asked for:
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Pin Up Effect
Using one of my favorite characters on TV (Joan from MadMen) I created a vintage pin up style effect from the following image:
Here is the after (Check out her hair and dress for the smoothed out, painted effect):
Tutorial Link
Here is the after (Check out her hair and dress for the smoothed out, painted effect):
Tutorial Link
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Dragan Effect
I stumbled across the bizarre photography work of Andrzej Dragan some time ago. Recently I found a tutorial that attempted to simulate his technique. I deviated a bit from the tutorial in order to generate the background for the portrait.
Here is the before
and the after
Tutorial link
Here is the before
and the after
Tutorial link
Monday, May 30, 2011
Vintage Sports Card
This was a fun way to create a retro sports card. I used a photo I took at a Serra Football game. I wish I would have had a picture of our stands to use instead of the generic one I found.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Football Grunge
I really like the original picture so I tweaked with it again. I found some really cool old paper textures, tweaked with the color balance, high pass, texturizer and sharpening. Fun stuff.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Text Portrait
Time consuming process of creating separate brushes for each word. Posterized then select black and brush words individually with size variations. Create another layer and fill with a pattern of the same words. Expand selection around words to get the outline of the letters. Repeat steps for the Dark Grey areas, then again for the light grey. Add color. I then added two additional copies of the original posterized image, adjusted the blending modes to bring more of the original image out.
Tutorial Link
Tutorial Link