#tutorial sort of

First I like to lighten up the cap, and I do that either through curves (pull the curve up until it’s to your tastes), brightness/contrast (brightness slider all the way to the left, contrast slider all the way to the right), or a copy of the base layer set to screen (sometimes blurred), or even a mix of those.

After that it’s time to bring back some contrast, also with curves (S shaped curves on the rgb channel work best for contrast), levels (use the preset “darker” or “increase contrast”, adjust the tiny arrows on the bottom until you’re satisfied), or a copy of the base set to soft light on top of all the other layers. In this last case, you can try coloring only this layer (changing hue/saturation, lightening it up with curves, painting specific areas, using topaz in this), and start building up on your coloring from this point.

Then vibrance! Vibrance is awesomeballs, use one or two layers in either the “normal” or “color” mode!

Solid color layers can be used for a lot of different purposes. You can work on skin color, for example, selecting a color from light peach to brown and setting it to multiply. You can also pick a darker color set it to lighten, which softens your coloring a bit. Or Soft light so alter your color slightly or harshly, depending on the color you choose :)

I like to work on specific colors/areas with the brush tool (usually hair, clothes, backgrounds) Create a new, transparent layer, set it to soft light or screen, and paint blobs of a saturated version of the color you want to bring out. You can either use the gaussian blur filter on that layer or not, it’s your pick, and play with the opacity of the layer to your tastes. You can use the same color blobs for lighting, but with white and black (this works wonders on face shadows, usually blown out by all the initial lighting)

Selective coloring is also your friend, I usually go for the neutral channel and lower the “neutrals” a bit.

Gradients are rad for lighting too, you can use a black-to-white one, bottom-to-top (or diagonal) one and set it to soft light, or even a colored one if you’re feeling daring (brown or dark blue to light peach looks great!).

If you feel the need, you can use some topaz on soft settings to better define edges and clear image/coloring noise,but do it on a clone stamped copy of the layer and set it to lighten to make it less obvious. 

In photoshop, created a new layer, get the brush tool, pick a color from the background (orange for Kira, green for Scott in this case), and draw some hair strands in the lighter areas of their hairs, sort of following the hair direction (or not, if you're feeling punky).

For some depth I varied the colors (darker oranges, yellower oranges, lighter greens, some blue too) and the brush size (5px, 3px, 2px mostly). The catch is that I used a graphic tablet, it's got a little pen you can use instead of a mouse, and needs some (debatable) eye-hand coordination, and it's the most fun tool if you're into drawing.

Honestly that's it, that's the tut, I'M SO SORRY! :(( but if I can help you in any other way, my ask box is forever open ok. :)

Firstly I got a forest picture from… somewhere? Google? It was probably flickr, sorry. Because the theme was “nature colors” and you can’t get anymore nature-y than a forest. And I wanted something green and blue, with trees and the sky and all. So I found one that looked usable, uniform ennough to be built upon but still… forest-y, and put that as background.

Then I got myself a pretty Allison cap and colored it a bit. For that, a curves, layers to lighten it up a bit, a blurred copy of the base set to screen & a normal one set to soft light, a black & white gradient map (might have been a dark blue to tan one, I’m not sure) also set to soft light, adjusting opacity in all of them. Then I dabbed a bit of a hot pink tone on her lips and set that to soft light. Then I (terribly, it’s embarassing how bad this cut-out is but I was lazy ok)) extracted her from the background, resized (probably used the paint daubs filter to sharpen and topaz clean to clean it up a bit), and slapped her around the middle of the canvas.

There was *too* much background for me, though, so I used a texture go gain some white on the canvas. I’m not sure, but I think it was this one by accio-glow, inverted, flipped vertically and set to screen, and erased in the right side, specially over her face and the background. The cloud thing you see behind Alli A on the left side is actually a part of the original forest photo.

But then it was too empty (I’M INDECISIVE OK) so I added a second, smaller and full-bpdy image of Allison to the side, again erasing the background, and this time desaturated through a purple&white gradient map. (I also edited her hair a little because I thought her head looked odd?????). Then it was too full again so I used another texture by bitten-by-flies on the bottom left. I’m also pretty sure there was a “root” or “branches” or probably “lightning” inverted texture somewhere near the text but I have no idea what the texture is and I can’t find it in my folders oops

ANYWAY I was in a text mood so I wanted some BIG SPANKING TEXT and used some song lyrics (Neko Case - Wild Creatures, it’s a fucking Allison song ok, check it on TWWL's Allison playlist. Or youtube idk). After a lot and a lot and a LOT of fiddling I came out with the setup you see. The font is Manualito Flo, and each line is a different layer so you're more free to play around with size, letter spacing and positioning.

The text wasn’t very legible over all those layers of texture, tough, so I needed something less busy behind it. To make it so, I used a couple of splatter & paint brushes (I don’t remember wih ones exactly, but look for “watercolor brush”, “splattered paint brush” or similars at deviantart and you’re bound to find a nice set) in different tones of blue and blend modes. I’m sure there’s a dark blue brush around Allison’s shoulder, and a large light blue one underneath it, set to normal, then lighter blues and purples set to overlay and soft light over those, in different sizes and positions. Those brush sets usually come with more than one brush so you play around with them. They are behind the text layer and over the image layers, so you can see them interwining between small!Allison’s legs - for that I erased some parts so it looked like she was walking between the textures and the text and the forest and her other self or… something…

The text still needed some ~BOOM~, though, so I started coloring and painting it in different ways but nothing worked??? After a lot of more fiddling I settled with copying a part of the colored background , pasting it on a new layer, selecting the transparent area around the text in the text layer (make sure to uncheck “contiguous” in the tool options menu above), and using that selection to create a layer mask over the background-copy layer. If you uncheck the link symbol between the layer and the layer mask, you can move them independently, so I moved the layer around until it matched nicely enough with the actual background while still being readable. I most likely also used the brush tool to paint some parts blue, green and even a bit of yellow there, there was also flipping and rotating and let’s be honest here I had no idea what I was doING OKAY??!

After all of that I clone stamped everything and did a bit more coloring, with vibranceeeeeeeee (my favorite in the world) and selective coloring, taking out reds and adding blues and cyans and yellows (for the greens), and most likely lowering the “neutral” in the neutral channel and probably the “yellows” too. Probably upping the “blacks” a bit on the black channel.

For greener greens and bluer blues, create a new transparent layer and with your regular brush tool paint over the greens with a more saturated and yellower green, and a cerulean (not cyan please) blue over the blues, set that layer to soft light, and those colors will pop in your image. But her hair looked a bit weird after that, so I creater another transparent layer and painted brown over her hair, setting that layer to color, and a lighter brown over the light areas, setting it to soft light. Always always ALWAYS adjust the opacity of your layers to your image ok, please and thanks. I do distinctly remember using a dark blue dab of the watercolor brush in a huge size, over the entire image, and setting that to soft light, because it was totally a mistake which came out nice enough yay.

Then more vibrance. Then a bit more, because I can, probably setting that layer to color and erasing it over big!Allison’s face. Then there was probably most likely a grainy(ish) texture set to screen in a very low opacity, to finish things up (probably this one, also by accio-glow)

To finish finish finish, clone stamp everything (ctrl + shift + alt + e) go to Filter > Other > High Pass, use a setting from 0.2 to 0.4, and set that layer to soft light to sharpen things a bit. If you want it even more sharp, clone stamp again and use Paint daubs, at filter > artistic > paint daubs, brush size 1, sharpnes 1, and lower the opacity of the layer as wanted.

And banga banga there’s yo mama. I’m sorry for the long sized everything, I tend to ramble??? And sorry for being so terrible at explanations too, omg. I’m not sure exactly what you want to know about the graphic, so if you (or anyone reading this) have any other questions or if there’s anything specific and/or not mentioned here, feel free to leave me a message either anon or under your username and I’ll happily answer! My ask is always open :)