Tutorial 10 (Game of Thrones)
Program: Photoshop CS3
Difficulty: Medium
Translatable: No
PSD Included: No
0. Crop
and resize your picture.
I cropped the picture and resized it to 100x100.
1. Sharpen your picture (Filter - Sharpen - Smart Sharpen)
The degree of sharpening depends on your picture. (Don't overdo it.)
2. Create a new Brightness/Contrast Layer (Layers - New Adjustment - Brightness/Contrast)
Brightness: + 15
And again, the level of brightness depends on your picture. The darker the picture, the more brightness you will need.
3. Create a new Gradient (Layers - New Fill Layer - Gradient) - Set it to Overlay.
Gradient: Black,white - Linear - 90°
Since some parts turned out a little too bright (e.g. the face), I added a mask and erased those parts of the gradient layer.
4. Create a new Color Balance Layer (Layers - New Adjustment Layer - Color Balance)
Midtones: 10 | 0 | -20
Shadows: 15 | -15 | 5
Highlights: 5 | 0 | 0
Adding the color balance layer especially helps to emphasize the (red) background and the facial color.
5. Create a new Selective Color Layer (Layers - New Adjustment Layer - Selective Color)
Red: - 70 | 0 | - 50 | 15
Yellow: 45 | 0 | 15 | 50
White: 0 | 0 | 0 | 30
Grey: - 20 | 0 | 20 | 15
Adjusting the 'reds' will help to achieve the red-violet-ish background.
6. Add another light texture and set the blending mode to Lighten.
I chose a texture from terempaty.
I played around with different light textures and ended up with this one, for a nice 'light effect' in the background. Duplicate/erase parts of the texture, if needed.
7. Add another light texture and set the blending mode to Screen - Fill: 20 %
As with the other texture, it's up to you and optional to add another texture. I added this texture of mine to create another 'subdued' light effect at the bottom of the picture.
And you're done! Remember, depending on your picture, you have to play around with the settings. For the color balance and selective color layer it might help to lower the opacity. Enjoy! :)