AN EXAMPLE OF PHOTO ART

One of the many capabilities of photoshop, is that of photographic manipulation of all kinds.  The aim of this tutorial is to demonstrate a particular kind of photographic manipulation - that of Photo Art.  You will need to download this picture for the tutorial.  (You can of course, use one of your own.  This technique can be applied to many different types of photographs).

Today we are going to use the 'eye'.

This eye came from a portrait contained within a collection of copyright and royalty free photographs, providing the photographs are not used for commercial purposes.  However, this is only a selection from the photograph, and the extent of the alterations we will make, will allow you to use the result as you desire.

Step 1

Duplicate the eye layer and shut off the eye to the original (this keeps our original intact).

Step 2

This involves making selections of the white of the eye, and the iris and pupil and pasting them onto their own layer.

(A)  You can either use the polygon tool to mark out the white of the eye area  or use can use the elliptical marquee and then erase the excess.  (It is ok to include the iris & pupil because this layer is going to behind a 'new iris & pupil' layer).  Edit/Copy and Paste into its own layer.

Repeat this process using the elliptical marquee to select and copy the iris and pupil.

(B)  Using the elliptical marquee mark out a selection for the iris and pupil area, Edit/Cut and Paste into its own layer.  Once done, turn off the eyes to these 2 new layers.

Step 3

Moving back to our eye (duplicated) layer, go to Image/Adjust/Desaturate.

Step 4

Create a new payer above the greyscale layer and change the layer mode to Color.  Select a paintbrush, size and color of your choice, Pressure 1001%.  Begin to paint around the eye, don't worry too much if you go into the white area, as we will be working with the copied white area later. (The colour used here was 1595F7).

Step 5

Create a new layer and set mode to overlay.  Select a contrasting colour (or two, lol) and give the edges of the picture some definition.    You dont need to stick with straight painting either, try using the airbrush and placing spots of colour here and there (lots to experiment with here). 

A mixture of pale pink and white was used in this example.

(If you want to experiment with this, you can try later using a variety of filters e.g. gaussian blur, twirl, wind etc to create different types of effects).

Turn of the eye to all the layers except the eye (painted) and second painting layer and merge visible (layer/merge visible).

Step 6

Duplicate the merged layer.  Select the polygon tool and mark out a jagged selection around the eye. 

Once satisfied with your selection, hit the delete key and hit Ctrl+D to delect. (I applied wave filter 3 times as an experiment).

Step 7

Double click this layer to bring up the layer styles dialogue box.  Check Bevel & Emboss and enter the following values.

Step 8

Next check Drop Shadow and enter the following values,.

You can of course, play around with all these settings as well as the gloss contour to experiment with different effects.

OPTIONAL:  You can go to Image/Adjust/Hue&Saturation, check the colorise and alter the color on this layer if you desire.  This depends on your initial color choice and filters used as to whether this will produce an improvement or otherwise.  (Having used the wave filter a few times on my layer, Hue & Saturation did not enhance the image).

Step 9

Turn the eye off on all the visible layer and turn on the eye for the white of the eye we copied earlier.

There are a number of things you can do with this layer.  You could apply some styles from your style window or you can simple use the paint brush.  If using the paint brush, create a new layer first (we will merge later).  In this example, on a new layer above the original 'white eye area', I first used the paint brush to fill the area with white

The beauty of using a new layer is that you can overlap the original eye area.  Once filled, while on newly painted layer, ctrl+click on original eye layer to make a selection.  Go to Select/Inverse and then hit the delete key.  This will remove the excess white.

Don' worry if there are some grey areas around the edges, you wont see them by the time we have finished..

Merge the original 'white of eye' and new painted white layers. 

Step 10

Select a colour and paint some spots or squiggles on top of the newly merged layer.  The go to Filter/Distort/Glass and Enter 5 for Distortion, 3 for Smoothness, and Select Tiny Lens.

Your white should now look something like this.  There is a wide variety of different effects that can be achieved, just by playing around with styles or with paint and filters.  Have fun experimenting.

Step 11

You might want to turn on your original painted eye layer and the duplicated 'cut out layer', and reposition the 'white of the eye layer' so that you can observe the effects of the next applications (you can resize to taste etc once you are finished).  Double click on this layer to bring up the layer styles dialogue box. 

Check Bevel & Emboss and enter the following settings.

Check outer glow (default settings) and inner glow (default settings).  Again, depending on what you are using you might want to play around with this to get the best effects.  Resize to fit original image once completed.

Step 12

Turn on the eye for the iris and pupil and move into place.  In this instance I decided to increase the size of the iris copy and make a new circular selection from it because it did not quite fit with what I had hoped for.  (All of this depends on the strength of the original image, I have some other examples below which will make this clearer for you).   This is where I got to on the left.

Go to Image/Adjust/Brightness&Contrast and up the brightness to about +45.    Go to Image/Adjust/Hue&

Saturation and check colourise box.  Choose your colour and depth. 

This one is starting to look quite 'angry' lol (look at the examples at the end, you can achieve a much softer look :O-)

Step 13

Go to Filter/Render/Lens Flare and add a 50-330mm zoom flare to the centre of the iris.

Well it seems we've ended up with something that is artistic and colourful, albeit it angry looking.  As I said before, it depends on what you start out with and how you apply colors etc., as to what you might end up with.  Impressive nonetheless, don't you think?  Below are examples of other attempts using a slightly different eye and different techniques.  These came out much softer.

Have fun experimenting with this one using different pictures (faces, landscapes, etc) and various filters and techniques.

Luv & Light - dreamcatcher