#cs6 tutorial

okay, step one for me is cropping to the right ratio. for the picspam i was working on, i wanted to use 500 x 275, so i cropped it just slightly, but did not resize yet. that's at the end! 

next i adjusted my curves (layer set to normal) and added a black and white gradient map and set that layer to soft light. adjust the curves to suit whatever cap you edit, but for this one i used input: 26 and output: 92. as for the black and white gradient map, i just use that for contrast, and to take a little of the redness out of the overall tone, usually. now it looks like this:

it looks a little dark but we'll fix that later! next, i'm going to color her hair. for this part i'm going to select my curves layer (so that the new layer is added beneath the dark gradient; all my coloring layers go beneath that layer, but i add it first to get a better feel for the end result) and go to layer > new > layer. this adds a transparent layer, which i'm going to set to overlay. 

this is where the palette comes in! the colors i was working with are #be6a75 and #ff8a7c, and for the hair, i'm going to use #be6a75. using a soft brush, i'm going to color in her hair. i won't tell you how big to make your soft brush or what hardness to set it to, because it varies per cap, and i often actually change the size of my brush, but i did color her hair entirely on 0% hardness. i usually do hair on a 0% hardness because it has soft edges.

side note: if you don't know what the soft brush is, it's the paintbrush icon on the side! to change the size go up to the top left corner. 

paint carefully over all of her hair and don't be afraid to really work at it, but also don't be afraid to color over tiny spaces between locks of her hair either? notice how the color goes on some locks, but not fly-aways. now it looks like this: 

next step is to color her cardigan! since this is a palette, i wanted to get as much use out of the palette colors as possible, you know? so i used the same pink (#be6a75) but different settings. creating a new layer on top of the one i just used to color her hair, i set it to screen mode and used a soft brush again, 0% hardness still, to brush over her cardigan. remember to play with brush side and the eraser tool to get in those tight corners! now it looks like this:

now both of these colors are a little too bright and unnatural for me? so i'm going to play with their opacity until i find what i like. in the case of these two layers, i used 76% opacity for the layer with her hair, and 61% opacity for the cardigan/sweater whatever. now the cap looks like this: 

next i'm going to color the background! for this i'm going to create a gradient map and use #be6a75 for the foreground and #ff8a7c for the background, so it looks like this: 

next i'm going to mask it off of lydia's actual person. gradient maps come with the layer mask already, so all you have to do is make sure you're painting with the black layer and use your soft brush to get it off of lydia. we're not worrying about edges yet -- we'll fix those in a moment -- so for now just get it off her and don't worry TOO much about staying in the lines. my cap now looks like this:

now i'm going to go in with my soft brush set to small and switch the brush color to white, meaning i'm masking the color back on, in order to fix my edges. i find this easier than worrying about the edges on the inside. once i go in with the smaller brush (set to 0% again because it's small and i'll still get hard-ish edges). when i'm done it looks like this:

that background is also a bit too dark for me; it doesn't show any texture behind her or anything. so i'm going to change the opacity of that too, in this case i went with 58%, which turns out to be:

now for the final touch, to brighten things and bring the color together, i'm going to use the same gradient map from before (#be6a75 and #ff8a7c) and set it to screen mode.

but that's way too light and washed out! so opacity to the rescue once more, this time on 47%.

however, looking at it now i am realizing all of my mistakes, which is the best part because now i've done all the hard work and i get to edit it! there might always come a time where you realize "shit, that's way too dark" or something similar, but you can always go back and edit stuff (well, almost always). in my case, i don't like how dark the background still is, and the hair is a little too light for me, so i'm playing with opacity again (it's my best friend, trust me). now my hair layer is on 90% and my background is on 33%: 

but it's STILL too muted for me, so i decided to adjust curves as well. now, on input: 22 output: 90, i feel a bit better:

once that's done it's the final stretch. i'm going to stamp a new layer (as a PC user this means selecting my top layer and pressing ctrl + alt + shift + E, but you can google for mac users!) and set it to multiply, because i want to bring out my colors and some contrast.

  obviously that's way too dark! so i'm going to bring down the opacity to 47%:

there! i think i've got it. now i just have to resize and smooth. first i resized (image > image size) to 500 x 275. now, to smooth it out; since i like my caps to be smooth, i'm going to stamp another new stamped layer and use the reduce noise filter on it (filter > noise > reduce noise). play with these settings for every cap you use, because different lighting creates different noise. my settings on this cap were strength: 6, preserve details: 14%, reduce color noise: 0%, sharpen details: 13%. now it looks like this:

What You'll Need

Two pictures - A [main] picture and a [background] picture.

A Photo Manip Program - I'll be using CS6

Some fonts, textures, psd's, anything you need for creativity!

Step One

Open both of your pictures. We are going to work with our main picture first, so put your background picture aside. With your main picture, I can say that it would be a lot easier to have a picture with a solid background. It doesn't matter about hair and what not, but it's still good to have single color background. First thing is first, cut out your main picture from the background. Over on the layers board, unlock the background so we can delete stuff easier. There are a few different ways you can cut your picture: you can use the [pen tool]. Or if you want to risk it a bit, you can select pieces of the picture, use the [eyedropper] tool to select a background color, go Select > Color Range... and try to get the background as close to white as you can, then erase if some of your main picture is selected. This is what I have now. Some other things I did was resize it to 500px (w) by 200px (h), rotated the image, and sharpened it.

Step Two

Now, head over to your background image, and crop/resize it to 500px (w) by 200px (h). This will allow it to look great on Tumblr. Now that this is looking good, we are going to blur the background just a bit. Go to Filter > Blur > Field Blur. The Blur PX is up to you to decide what looks good and what not. I like to keep mine under 5px, but that is just personal preference. The reason we are blurring this picture is because we want the main picture to really stand out. Now this is what I have for my background.

Step Three

We have to put it all together now. Drag your main picture onto your background picture. For this step, we are going to be messing with the main picture to get it how we want. What I did was resize it with the [mover] tool, with the [show transform controls] selected. I hit shift and just dragged one of the corners until it was where I like it. I really wanted  to have the lightening look like it was going through the crystal ball. And this is what it looks like now.

Step Four OPTIONAL

So, I was looking at the picture, and I really wanted to do something with the crystal ball. What I did was select only the ball, copy it, deleted the ball, and paste it into a new layer. Now, I messed with the layer mode until I got it to where I like it. I decided on Color Burn for the layer settings. Now, back to the tutorial!

Step Five

Now that we side stepped from the main tutorial, let's get back to what we were doing. On your layers board, go back to the hand layer (or whatever your main layer is) and right click > blending options > drop shadow. Your settings will be up to you, but here are my [settings] for my drop shadow. I also enhanced the drop shadow on the ball with these [settings]. Woot, we have that done. This is what you should have.

Step Six

At this point, you can add textures and PSD's however you want. I suggest, when it comes to your textures, to put it under the main picture and mess around with the layer settings. I decided to add these things to my graphic; [texture 1] [psd 1]. Doesn't it look pretty cool? I think so!

Step Seven

Let's add some text now! I want to add a background for my text, just because it will help the text really stand out. This is another point of creativity. You can draw shapes, use PNG paint smears, whatever you want! For this, I am going to use a PNG paint smear to the graphic. I resized it right on the graphic, and moved it to be just above the background image. Now it looks like a cloud! You can add a drop shadow/stroke or whatever you want to do. After you do that, we are going to add some text!

Step Eight

Once you have your text written out and where you want it, right click > Blending Options > Stroke and Drop Shadow. I really like the look of a straight font that is small and used for the like "header" stuff (see below for example) with a hand written or cursive font as the "main" title.Make sure to put it above your layers. And that's it! You're done. I hope you found this tutorial helpful, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask me anything!