Tutorial: Sam Winchester (!!!!)
So, my beloved
lasamy asks, and I comply ;) and beware, I'm sharing my super-secret-technique or whatever! XD
Today we'll be going from this:
to this
I think it's only for PS since it includes curves, selective coloring and photo philters. Anyway.
So, here we start with our base, cropped and whatnot:
First thing of all, we must make it less dark. So, go on Layers, New Adjustment Layers and then Curves; then on the RGB settings:
Input 36
Output 76
(I stole this layer from this tutorial by
gabilha , but I swear it was the only thing ;) )
Now, if the picture is very dark you need to duplicate that layer, while if it isn't you can have only one; since this one is kinda dark, I duplicated that curves layer again, then set it to screen 63%.
Don't worry, it's going to get better. Now, duplicate your curves layer again and set it to color burn 100% or, if you prefer your image darker, to linear burn 100%. Either is fine ;)
That's better. Now, it's a little too yellow for me, and so I made a new selective color adjustment layer with these settings:
Reds: -55, 0, 58, 12
Yellows: -25, 0, -33, 13
Cyans: 100, 0, 0, 100
Whites: 0, 0, 0, -23
Neutrals: 8, 0, -7, 9
Blacks: 0, 0, 0, 11
Then it was a little bit too reddish and so I made a new adjustment layer again, but this time it was a photo filter layer. The filter I used was the Cooling Filter 82 at 25% opacity. Then, after making the layer, drop the opacity to 33% or around that.
And you're done!
This is the same icon with the middle layer on linear burn instead of color burn:
Then, if you want to see how many base curves layers you need, I suggest to go at the beginning with just one normal layer and then the color/linear burn one; if it's good, you'll need only one, if it isn't, duplicate the base curves layer and play with the opacity. Now, this works with 85% of the pictures I use but remember that 1 it may not work on everything 2 if you just copy there's no fun ;) 3 you choose the filter only if you need to work on the selective color layer and of course you can also choose another one instead of the one I used.
And remember to work around your settings ;)
Ok, that's all. If you have results, I'd love to see what you come up with!