Mask Overlay & Contrast

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 randomised the sketch using the charcoal filter (thickness 1 / detail 4 / balance 73), and the pencil tool (disolve – opacity 100%).

Step two: Painting in the background. I chose not to mask out the horse, but painted it in with the background. For this I used a watercolour brush with 100% opacity and 70% flow. I then accented the edges  (edge width 2 / Brightness / 38 / smoothing 5). I then used the cut out filter to break up the strokes (levels 6 / edge simplicity 2 / edge fidelity 2).

Step three: Adding the rain effect, contrast, and rest of the background. For this, I created a new mask for the horse, and used angled strokes (direction balance 50 / stroke length 15 / sharpness 3). For intensity I used the dark stroke filter (balance 5 / Black intensity 6 / white intensity 2). 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). Finally, I added uniform noise @ 12.5%.

I decided to leave it there. Obviously, with the tools available in photoshop, it is tempting to work and re-work an image. Sometimes less is more though, and I think I managed to achieve the effect I was going after with this project.

See also: Mask Overlay & Paint

Tags: masking, overlaying, photoshop