fiftysix: I'M A SWEET MESS TUTORIAL COVER
yuuten requested a tutorial for the cover of this mix! So here we go, kiddies! And please remember - if you have any questions, feel free to ask!
Program used: Photoshop
Okay. First we start out with this image (found via WeHeartIt.)
D: It's so grainy! But, we'll fix that. Go to Filter>>Blur>>Surface Blur. My settings were this:
radius: 5
threshold: 15
Now open a new image. I like all my covers to be 480px by 480px. But, it's up to you X) Copy and paste the image into the new picture. As you can see, our picture isn't nearly as wide enough for the new canvas, but we'll fix it with a few tricks later.
Next I put the image where I want it - I hid part of the taller girl's face. Then I copied that layer and made it black and white. You can do this by going to Image>>Adjustments>>Desaturate; or can click ctrl+shift+u if you have a PC. The second layer is now black and white.
I also flipped the black and white image so it show some contrast to the first. I did this my right clicking and hitting free transform. I right clicked again and hit flip horizontal. The black and white image is now flipped!
I then moved the black and white image down a bit and to the right. It's not vertically even with the colored picture, but it won't matter in a bit.
The black and white image doesn't have enough contrast so I duplicated the image and set the duplicate to soft light at 65%. It should now look like this:
NOW we're going to fix our unevenness problem! And it's super easy! Just make a border! XD On a new layer, I used the selection tool to make a long rectangle on one side and colored it black with the brush tool. Then I reclicked the selection tool and moved my selection to the right as they would be the same size. I also colored it black.
D: Hey wait - we can still see that lame dude's face! This is a chick mix! We only want to see the sexy girls! So make another border that separates the colored image and the black and white image. It also hides the dude's face a bit too.
It now looks like this:
I then added this texture by chuyr0x; found here I set it to screen, though you didn't really have to.
MMmmkay. See this by vikyvampirs90 (found here btw)? I am obsessed with it. No lie. Flip this baby and set it to lighten on the left side of our cover.
This part can be a bit tricky, so I'll try to explain it best I can. We will now use this texture by lemon_snail; here.
Copy this image and set it to screen @ 100%. It doesn't look like it is tall enough to fit, so I just erased the top light texture that looks cut off and left the other areas alone. I then copied and pasted the texture again and set to screen. This time I moved it to the left top so you can't see the cut off area and erased the rest of the texture.
Alright! We're practically done! Kind of. Now we will be using THREE paper textures from this pack by yunhe; one, two, three. For the second texture, I used the paper half on the left side. But I don't think it matters.
Using the wand tool, I deleted the background behind them. It will look pretty jaggety and unclean, but it will be fine when we resize them. After I copied and pasted them into the cover, I right clicked and resized and rotated them using free transform. This can be tricky - if you want your image to have the same proportions while you resize it, hold down the shift key. This will make it easier.
Mmkay.
I thought the paper textures looked kind of bland. So I used another texture - this one by innocent_lexys from here.
Layer wise, this texture should be inbetween texture two and three. Set the bird texture to a clipping mask; you can do this by right clicking the texture in the layers box and click create clipping mask. I then used a brush to color in whatever the bird texture didn't fill of the paper texture. This was easy because the background of the bird texture is just one color.
I then set the bird texture to multiply at 100%.
LAST TEXTURE! Woot! I used this texture by insanefray; found here and set it to soft light at 100%.
And I added some text - the font I used was called Small Fonts.
And thus, we have our end result:
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For previous tutorials, check out the tutorial tag :)