#simblrsagainstai

★ = complete beginner ★★ = some understanding of photoshop

tutorials i've used incoming..

SHADING + HIGHLIGHTING + CORRECTING

dodge and burn tool explained + demo ★ simple dodge and burn technique ★★ contouring with dodge and burn ★★ mastering highlights (gel-like lighting) ★★ adding shine or light to anything ★★ liquify tool guide (can be used to correct clipping, sharp edges and facial expression) ★ clone stamp tool (can be used for tearing, clipping, removing objects) ★

COLORGRADING BASICS

mastering curves ★ camera raw filter explained ★

SHARPENING + BLURRING BASICS

how to use the sharpening tool ★ iris blur / shallow DOF ★

MISC.

layer masks explained (use this often in my editing for color correction, but this shows how it can be used in many ways) ★ blending modes explained (blend modes are used for overlays, or how layers interact with each other) ★

how i draw hair ★★

resources suggestions:

BRUSHES + OVERLAYS (FREE)

hair brushes hair brush 2 textured hair brushes eyebrow brush by katverse skin painting brushes dust/particle brushes lightbeam brushes sparkle brushes 10 light leaks dust and scratches

resources i frequently use - i use this set of brushes for everything, i'm not kidding (deviantart link) - elderwisp's texture & bokeh collection - texturelabs for other free textures (soooo many good ones!) - light leak textures (deviantart) i like a lot - i also just do this search frequently on deviantart when i'm looking for a specific type of texture! (i pay attention to dates so i don't run across any ai generated textures) (also, you only have 10 downloads a week, make em count!) - for my cigarette smoke i use this set of brushes, but i also like this site for all their resources! - a modified moonlight by @lavenfurs is the preset i used (however, i use reshade! still pretty.) - i use photoshop (2026) (there are plenty of tutorials out there on how to🏴‍☠ PS)

this tutorial is made on the basis that you know the fundamentals of layers (merging, moving, etc.) and the brush tool. if you don't know a lick about layers, here's a tutorial (photoshopessentials site) to get you started! with that said, i'm also not a professional and i might do things in ways you deem silly! please give KIND constructive feedback if you must <3

also, this is mainly how i edit my STORY POSTS. i'll do a tutorial on my CAS/Non-story posts later on.

after opening my image into PS, the first thing i do (usually), is crop it. if you're unfamiliar with the crop tool it's this lil guy here:

i pretty much only use the 1:1, 2:3 and 16:9 presets. if you want to crop without dimensions make sure to hit the clear button.

since i'm not cropping this specific image, i'll be skipping this step.

the next thing i do, is my curve adjustment, which you can find on the right side of your PS interface (usually beneath color). Click the 'Adjustments' tab, then 'Single Adjustments' beneath that.

you should see something that looks like this! (in-depth tutorial on curve adjustment) (tumblr link)

my goal with curves is usually to get my color saturation balanced nicely with the deepness of the shadows. when i've achieved a look that i like, i move onto brightness/contrast. you can find it in 'Adjustments,' 'Single Adjustments.' It's the first option (and is two to the left of curves).

you should see something that looks like this!

across most of my posts i favor higher contrast (here it's set to 50) and only minor edits to brightness (set to 20). and actually if i want a scene brighter, i prefer to use the exposure adjustment (specifically the gamma correction), which you can find under 'Adjustments,' then 'Single Adjustments' (one to the right of curves).

you should see something that looks like this! (couldn't find a great tutorial for exposure...just play around!)

as you can see, the change is super minor (set to gamma correction 1.11)

that's it for the adjustments tab. something i do to make my life a little easier, is i'll make sure to select all adjustment layers and then i go back to the adjustments tab and hit this

and it'll save all of those adjustments (with your img as a preview) as a preset for you to use at a later time with a single click! i have 23 VERY VERY slightly different presets currently (24 by the end of this ;))

i then merge my adjustments onto my Background (my image) layer!

mini-note #1: if you double click the corresponding symbol on the layer to the adjustment (i.e. brightness/contrast = sun, curves = line on a graph, etc.) you can adjust the adjustment (hah!) at anytime!~

next, sharpening!

head on over to my second favorite area in photoshop, the filters tab which you can find at the very top left of the PS window, between select and view.

i use two different sharpening filters in a SPECIFIC order. smart sharpen and unsharp mask (in that order). maybe it's how strong i like my sharpening, but if i do it in the opposite order smart sharpen doesn't do what i want it to! you can find them here!

mini-note #2: if you DIDN'T merge your adjustments, make sure you're not sharpening one of them as nothing will happen (ask me how i know....)

my smart sharpen settings. the only one i (usually) change is the amount. i, personally, like it in the 150%-200% range.

my unsharp mask settings. i use this to make my highlights really pop. i play around with the amount, but usually keep it between 80%-150% (relight LOVESSSS unsharp mask!)

next. i'm going to add a new layer and fill it with black using the paint bucket tool (right click on the gradient tool to find it).

next, i'm going to drag in and resize the texture i want to use. for my apocalypse au i like textures like this one! but, since this scene isn't quite as dire as eden's...i'll probably pick something more like this!

mini-note #3: save those textures as big as you can! you can always resize them for your images later, but this way you preserve quality!

make sure your texture is ABOVE your black layer. merge them! now this is one of my favorite parts (I LOVE TEXTURES MOREMOREMOREMOREMOR-)

play with your blending modes! find them here!

make sure your TEXTURE layer is selected when you do this. here are some examples of what it COULD look like, depending on the blending mode!

i go through the blending modes for EVERY picture. experimentation is the greatest gift you can give yourself! i decided i liked the screen at 100% opacity the best for this image, but just one thing....i don't want the texture on EITHER of my sims, so they stand out. so im going to add a layer mask! (in-depth tutorial on layer masks here) (tumblr link)

i'm gonna real messily use my brush tool with a black color (make sure your opacity is set to 100% and your brush's blend mode is set to normal...) to paint over my sims on the layer mask, which gives me THIS result

now, i'm going to repeat this same process with a couple more textures until im satisfied! (note: i've been LOVING this texture for my zombie au...js)

after that, i merge EVERYTHINGGGGG and resize my image (this bad boy is 6000x3375 (16:9), thanks to SRWE). idk why but whichever number is higher i just make 1500...which means almost all of my landscape shots are 1500x844 and all of my portrait shots are 1000x1500. here's what i ended up with!

now, i'm gonna use the burn tool from the left-hand toolbar to deepen my shadows (remember, i like contrast).

i set my range to midtones and my exposure LOW like 4%/5% and i just go over areas where i want the shadows deeper, or if i have injuries like bruises, cuts, etc. i'll use this tool to make them more noticeable! (i just use a hard round brush or one of the brushes from the set i linked at the start of the tut!)

mini-note #4: zoom in on your photo for this part! it just makes life easier.

the changes are subtle (for this picture) but i still find it satisfying!

then i just add my text (for my story posts i currently use the RL Limo font) (warning: adobe link), which i'm not going to show bc it'd be a spoiler for my au hehe! here's the final comparison!

and that's it :D i think it's a pretty straight-forward process that can lend itself well to different styles of editing bc its pretty basic but i hope someone out there learned something from it :)

please feel free to follow this tutorial to literally the letter and let that be your editing style. i'll never point the copy finger, as everything i do in photoshop is easily learned and (i'm sure) not unique in the slightest!

if you DO USE THIS and you're not uncomfortable, you should tag me. i would love to see your edits <333 TRULY TAG ME I MEAN IT IF YOU DONT ILL-

hehe i'll see you seen for a more wacky, creative idea edit tut

i can’t believe i started my simblr five years ago! or at least my oldest post that i can still find is from five years ago in march of 2021, back then i was solely focused on decades gameplay and sharing that, taking inspiration from @pixelnrd whose langston legacy was the blueprint for about two and a half years of my blog!

in the early days i tried starting a new legacy, the wellsley legacy, during my short lived alpha hair era, but i didn’t get beyond the toddler stage for my firstborn heir (i was not all that attached to the family) at that point i was in college playing on my mac and editing the screenshots on my phone using a combination of lightroom and picsart, though all i really did was fiddle with the saturation and contrast (apparently to lower BOTH)

then i got caught up in an ongoing writing project of mine, for my entire freshman year of college i was piecing together little snippets of a story about my character, peggy. wanting a more visual way of capturing the story, i made them in sims and decided to have them be the subjects of my life in pictures post, which took me months to make! i played around more with editing, trying to capture different styles of different eras, and though it took me a while to incorporate it into actual story posts i learned a lot about layering and color grading! this was also when i started leaning more into higher saturation, higher contrast images

THEN for the next two years (with a few intermissions) i was sharing my hayes legacy! i picked up an old decade's challenge in august 2021 and started posting it, and that was the first time i truly fell in love with sharing my gameplay on simblr! i made it through two and a half generations and in that time i learned a lot more about posing and storytelling. i was still on mac so i couldn't use reshade and i kept up editing my posts on my phone without changing much of my style (looking back i find most of my screenshots to be so washed out..) but as i got really, really invested in the five kids my 1930s heir had i focused a lot more on storytelling. it was still gameplay informed, but i started writing entire scenes to pose and planning things out ahead of time, and i even have a note on my phone with SO many ideas i had for future gens (i think if ts4 was still playable i would end up coming back to this legacy, but at this point i only use the game for storytelling)

it would be remiss of me to exclude the fact that reed and jerry have been lurking around on my blog since close to the start, i first posted them in november 2021 as an extension to my life in pictures post, they were a part of peggy's friend group and all of them were very much still in my head (you can actually find a lot of old reed and jerry content mixed in with peggy's stuff under the tag <3). i was still mostly focused on the hayes legacy, but kept coming back to these guys. i eventually made modern versions of the whole friend group, giving us our very first iteration of modern reed and jerry! (crazy how much they changed between 2022 and 2024/2026)

then i went on ANOTHER hiatus (after june 2022 i didn't get back to a regular posting schedule until wasteland babes started in 2024, though i came back a few times to drop some of the last hayes legacy posts to see the dash). BUT spring of 2024 was when i started writing reed and jerry's story into a novel, they were on my mind basically 24/7 and when i opened up sims it was to spin them around! this was also when i posted my first proper reed and jerry edit and started really playing around with the look of my screenshots! i still didn't have a pc so i kind of recreated my own relight by sizing down a ton of those plumbob lamps you get for having s3 expansions and hiding them in the furniture to create the warm light effect i wanted (genuinely unhinged behavior.. i still sometimes pull random lamps out of the walls of reed's room because i forgot about them) anyways i remember being really proud of how these came out, especially the way the light hit reed's face in this one.

continuing my era of side quests, in late summer i finished writing my book and shelved it to start on another (which is still a wip, but i do have a little edit in the works..), it's set in the 60s so that's what i got REALLY into, and this coincided with the release of the Poppy set (x and x), using one of my characters i created my most involved edit yet to show off some of the looks! this was SO much fun and it was when i realized that i can really play around with the editing and enjoy the process, not just the result.

then hallelujah! in november 2024 i finally got a pc, which means reshade entered my life ❤️ i first conceptualized wasteland babes around that time and in the year and a half since then i have made SO much progress! i was utterly entranced by @alxandergoth's occult legacy, without charlie and eli as inspiration i might never have even considered a story about modern reed and jerry. my first edits were rough.. despite having a pc i waited to try reshade because it intimidated me, but using some of rachel's resources i started playing around with psds and different editing techniques. i first started posting gameplay screenshots on a side blog, but got annoyed quickly and moved things back to my main blog (which worked in my favor because i could start the story with some flashbacks). at first i was basically just taking gameplay screenshots and putting a few psds over them in photopea without doing much to the actual screenshots.

the first project i really put some effort into was the character page, at this point i installed reshade and used a preset (i think my og preset was Saule by Intramoon), then in photopea i played with the camera raw filter settings and the oil paint effect to make them look more defined and less simmy. for the first time you really see that low exposure, high contrast look coming through, but it was still a relatively basic edit

as i kept posting gameplay i realized i wanted to focus more on the story and the characters, so i decided to make some flashbacks to give more context into reed and jerry's relationship and reed's background. this was the first time i got back into posing and storytelling through sims! i had been so burnt out from the hayes legacy that i didn't think i'd want to do this again, but seeing other peoples' stories made me want to capture things with more intention. these were also some of my first story posts with reshade, and you can definitely see the difference!

most of the original summer arc was predominantly gameplay driven and very much visually inspired by other simblrs! i was still learning how to use psds and reshade and trying to find ways to translate gameplay into story posts. looking back i don't really like the content i was making, but i was experimenting a lot and figuring out what suited my simstyle and how i wanted to share my story! almost a year later i went back and re-created the summer arc with planned posts, my own poses, and all the new editing techniques i had learned. putting some of these moments side by side i can really appreciate how far i've come! at some point along the way i fell in love with making my posts really vivid and dramatic to look at, i like for the shadows to be really dark and the colors to really pop in comparison (maybe i'm subconsciously trying to correct how bland the game looks without any filters or effects)

after i started sharing wasteland babes my simstyle was shifting pretty much month by month as i tweaked my reshade settings, learned more editing techniques, and started to figure out how i wanted my story to look. i also had the honor of being invited to a discord server where i was able to get relight and photoshop! not to mention being able to chat with some incredibly talented simmers whose content has been inspiring me for years! the biggest change to my story though was when i started making my own poses! i made one set the old fashioned way (using ea rigs) before watching @surely-sims tutorials on using vyxated's rigs and the ww posing system (also shoutout anne for saving my butt so many times when i couldn't get props to work right)

at some point i settled on a reshade that i liked (a highly tweaked version of ophelia), started feeling a lot more comfortable making my own poses, and developed a pretty solid editing routine! i consulted a LOT of tutorials in the process, taking inspiration from my favorite simmers and going through their resources, asks, and tutorials (some of my faves are this texture pack, this editing tutorial, and this light leak tutorial from @elderwisp, this light leak tutorial from @flovoid, this editing tutorial by @asphaltwhims, and @uhsaya's editing tag). i also started planning every screenshot out before i took it and developed an outlining method that helped keep all my ideas organized (i can absolutely go into detail if anyone is ever interested but that would be its own post!). at that point i was really unhappy with how chaotic and amateur the beginning of my story was, so i decided to completely revamp the summer arc with scripted posts in my updated style! i also started putting more thought into the framing, color grading, and lighting of my shots

that mostly brings us up to date! at some point during my summer arc i got a handle on srwe (genuinely don't remember what post i first used it on) and switched to mostly using immerse ultimate relight (which minimizes weird shadows on my sims, but is its own challenge), and i've started incorporating a border which makes it feel more cinematic! i still play around in editing and am always incorporating new things, but i'm so impressed with how much my editing has changed and transformed! now i am bringing my visions to life in a way i could only imagine a couple years ago, and even though it's slow going i have a routine for story posts that has me enjoying every step of the process

thus we reach the end of my ridiculously long ramble! all in all, simblr has been a place where i have been able to experiment with my storytelling styles and how i express myself. i wouldn't say i have a particularly unique simstyle, or that i'm creating the best content i am capable of, but life is a game of chutes and ladders and i'm definitely climbing some ladders! overall it is so important to appreciate the art and storytelling that comes from people, not ai. if you're doing little more than writing a prompt and pressing a button to create 'art,' then you're not really creating it, and i have to wonder why bother? people who put time and effort into their work do it for a love of the process and satisfaction of a final result that is their own creation, if you're letting ai do the hard work then what is it really for?