making cloud effects for black and white icons...
I'll just show a simple texture usage tutorial for black and white images.
This is quite a bit of a procedure. However, they're all optional, except for the layer blending options; it's really just for adding touch-ups. I'm simply altering an image to use as a texture for another image. It's a simple effect, but it's effective.
to
Tutorial: texture usage
Program: Photoshop CS3
Colors: black and white
Difficulty: easy
Uses: selective coloring, brightness/contrast (both optional)
1. Choose your image. Crop, resize and sharpen/blur as you wish in order to make any touch-ups.
2. Desaturate your image (Ctrl+Shift+U). Mine is already close to desaturated. :P
3. Grab an image of a cloudy sky off of google, flickr, or whatever. What you want to think about is having a balance of skies and clouds. You don't want one that's flooded with too many clouds. Imagine the sky image only had the clouds with no blues and you placed them on top of your original image. The blues are basically your "blank canvas" so too many clouds will cover up too much space. I got mine off of google. This sky image will be edited to apply as a texture.
4. Desaturate the sky image (Ctrl+Shift+U).
5. Highlighting the whites of the cloud is important to create contrast. By making the grays darker and the whites brighter, there's more contrast.
To do this, create a new brightness/contrast layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contast). I used this:
Brightness: +10
Contrast: +70
That will bring out the whites, but the darker colors need to be highlighted as well. Create a new selective color layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Selective Color). I used this:
Whites: 0, 0, 0, -20
Neutrals: 0, 0, 0, +5
Blacks: 0, 0, 0, +10
6. Since some photographs of skies are not at their best quality, use the blur tool in order to blur out any anomalies. It doesn't have to be completely gone, and any other touch-ups you want to apply to the image is fine as well. The sky image is now going to be used as a texture.
7. Now to put them together. Select the whole texture (the completed sky image) using the rectangular marquee, and copy merged (Ctrl+Shift+C). Paste it on top of your original image.
8. Set the texture to Lighten 100% for the cloud/fog effect on your original image. Move the texture around to your liking. Use the blur tool to blur the clouds if you think it looks better.
And it's done. (:
Additional things:
- You pretty much only want light/dark grays and whites in your cloud texture (assuming you look at it with a normal layer blending option at full opacity). If there's any part that's black, try covering it up with a gray color (pick a gray color from your texture with the eyedropper tool, then use the brush tool). It gives a nice silhouette effect to darker tones of your original image if there's no blacks on the texture.
- If you want to lower the intensity of the clouds, set the opacity of the texture layer to a lower percentage, or invert the texture (Ctrl+I). Of course you're going to have white clouds in the original texture, so if you invert it, it technically turns black. Refer to the first additional tip about removing blacks. You may also want to move the texture around to make it more suitable.
Other example(s) using this tutorial:
Original livejournal post:
at my journal.
This is quite a bit of a procedure. However, they're all optional, except for the layer blending options; it's really just for adding touch-ups. I'm simply altering an image to use as a texture for another image. It's a simple effect, but it's effective.
to
Tutorial: texture usage
Program: Photoshop CS3
Colors: black and white
Difficulty: easy
Uses: selective coloring, brightness/contrast (both optional)
1. Choose your image. Crop, resize and sharpen/blur as you wish in order to make any touch-ups.
2. Desaturate your image (Ctrl+Shift+U). Mine is already close to desaturated. :P
3. Grab an image of a cloudy sky off of google, flickr, or whatever. What you want to think about is having a balance of skies and clouds. You don't want one that's flooded with too many clouds. Imagine the sky image only had the clouds with no blues and you placed them on top of your original image. The blues are basically your "blank canvas" so too many clouds will cover up too much space. I got mine off of google. This sky image will be edited to apply as a texture.
4. Desaturate the sky image (Ctrl+Shift+U).
5. Highlighting the whites of the cloud is important to create contrast. By making the grays darker and the whites brighter, there's more contrast.
To do this, create a new brightness/contrast layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contast). I used this:
Brightness: +10
Contrast: +70
That will bring out the whites, but the darker colors need to be highlighted as well. Create a new selective color layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Selective Color). I used this:
Whites: 0, 0, 0, -20
Neutrals: 0, 0, 0, +5
Blacks: 0, 0, 0, +10
6. Since some photographs of skies are not at their best quality, use the blur tool in order to blur out any anomalies. It doesn't have to be completely gone, and any other touch-ups you want to apply to the image is fine as well. The sky image is now going to be used as a texture.
7. Now to put them together. Select the whole texture (the completed sky image) using the rectangular marquee, and copy merged (Ctrl+Shift+C). Paste it on top of your original image.
8. Set the texture to Lighten 100% for the cloud/fog effect on your original image. Move the texture around to your liking. Use the blur tool to blur the clouds if you think it looks better.
And it's done. (:
Additional things:
- You pretty much only want light/dark grays and whites in your cloud texture (assuming you look at it with a normal layer blending option at full opacity). If there's any part that's black, try covering it up with a gray color (pick a gray color from your texture with the eyedropper tool, then use the brush tool). It gives a nice silhouette effect to darker tones of your original image if there's no blacks on the texture.
- If you want to lower the intensity of the clouds, set the opacity of the texture layer to a lower percentage, or invert the texture (Ctrl+I). Of course you're going to have white clouds in the original texture, so if you invert it, it technically turns black. Refer to the first additional tip about removing blacks. You may also want to move the texture around to make it more suitable.
Other example(s) using this tutorial:
Original livejournal post:
at my journal.