Mask Overlay & Paint

This section of the blog is more by way of inspiration than in-depth tutorials. The idea is to give you the means to replicate these effects, but more importantly; inspire you to work your own ideas and discover your own techniques through playing with the tools. This is what will make your work uniquely your own, and where all of the fun working ideas comes from.

(Please note: this is not a beginner’s tutorial. To understand the settings outlined in this post, you will need to have a good grounding in Photoshop.)

Step one: I created a sketch, which was imported into Photoshop (CS4). I then created a mask to paint on the image. I messed around with the sketch using the charcoal filter (thickness 1 / detail 2 / balance 84), and the pencil tool (disolve – opacity 100%).

Step two: Painting in the horses, and part of the background. For this I used a watercolour brush with 100% opacity and 80% flow. I then accented the edges  (edge width 2 / Brightness / 46 / smoothing 5). I then used the cut out filter to break up the strokes (levels 5 / edge simplicity 2 / edge fidelity 1).

Step three: The rest of the background (as step 2) and contrast for the foreground. For this, I used a watercolour brush with 100% oppacity and 50% flow. For intensity I used the dark stroke filter (balance 4 / Black intensity 7 / white intensity 3). For more contrast, I created another mask and intensified the image further with the sumi-e filter (stroke width 10 / stroke pressure 2 / contrast 16).

As with all personal Photoshop projects, the possibilities for different finishes is endless, but I decided to end this one here. It achieved what I wanted, which was a hard edged sketchy foreground, with a soft background.

See also: Mask Overlay & Contrast

Tags: art, masking, overlaying, photoshop