Vector Portrait of Me!

Just thought that I'd let you see the man behind the mask.... or at least the woman behind the blog!
I made the image a vector using illustrator, comment if you'd like to know how it's done!

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Artistic Effects on Photoshop

As an extension to my last post, I have also been experimenting with some of the other filters using the same photo, and made an interesting discovery: when i change the colours on the colour palette BEFORE using the filters, they can work out differently!!! Sometimes there is a huge difference to the final effect. I'll Illustrate by showing two images, both using the same filter, and the ONLY difference i made was switching the colours. Bear in mind that i only switched them, i didn't change them, so the foreground colour became the background colour, and vice versa. The original photo was shown in my  post here, and i made two variations of the coloured pencil filter.

Surprisingly, I achieved the pink version when the blue was the foreground colour and the pink was the background colour. The blue was achieved when the pink was on the front, and the blue on the back. I must say Photoshop still surprises me! :) keeps me on my toes i suppose!

Anyway to achieve this,  firstly, choose your colours (bottom corner of the tool box.) 

Be as experimental as you like, because chances are, you'll achieve strange results!

Go to Filter > Artistic > Coloured Pencil

You can experiment with the settings on the right, but I generally find that the default settings work well with this filter. When your happy, click ok and save as normal.

As per my previous tutorial, I would reccomend reducing the size of the preview image to allow for quick previews, using the + and - at the bottom of the image.

Please note that I have been using Photoshop CS5, but I don't think there is much of a variance in relation to my super simple tutorials. If you find any variances, feel free to share them as a comment!

Easy Halloween Photo Editing

I thought that I'd highlight the benefits of using filters for quick results, as i think they are often under appreciated. While some people can tend to over use filters, I think that, if used correctly, and understood, they can add a nice fresh dimension to photography and other work. I sometimes use filters to alter the appearance of my illustrations, and to make them look "more poster-like," but often i find a nice effect while just messing around with colour and depth settings. I'll show you a couple of things i found during my last experimentation. This is the original, unmodified file:

I took this in the west end, on a bridge over the river Kelvin. I think the combination of lighting and perspective make for an interesting image, but i wanted to give an added wow factor...

I thought the image would work well with a horror type theme. Turned out nicely. If you would like to achieve a similar result with a photo of your own, follow these simple steps:

1- choose filter > stylise > glowing edges.
2- experiment with the settings (on the left side) width, brightness and smoothness.
3- click ok when you are happy with the image.

I would advise reducing the image to about 25% on the preview screen (by using the + and - at the bottom) to allow for fast preview results. Follow my blog with Bloglovin