Final Image

In this tutorial I will be walking you through how I created my digital piece, “Mother Nature”.  This is a simple photo manipulation of a few stock photographs and some brush work.

What you need to get started

You will need to gather your stock images and for this piece I used the following photographs and the brush set for the bokeh.
Female – http://mjranum-stock.deviantart.com/art/May-Queen-S-11-117077616
Butterflies – http://Shoofly-Stock.deviantart.com/art/Butterfly-Stock-4-36155021
Leaves – http://godsmonster.deviantart.com/art/wall-eeq1-86517794
Brush Set – http://m-ajinah.deviantart.com/art/Night-Lights-Brush-Set-106015559

Step 1

Open a new document with the document’s width set to 1200 pixels and the height set to 1920 pixels.  The background color of the background layer is irrelevant, as we will be covering it up with a gradient, but I set it to white for now.

Step 2

Now go to the bottom of the layer palette and click on the little circle that is half white and black to create a new fill or adjustment layer and select gradient.  When the dialog box pops up make sure dither is checked, align with layer is checked, the scale is 100%, angle is 90, and the style is a radial type.

Now click in the gradient box to set our gradient that we will use as the main background’s colors.  On the left side the green color is #a4c456 and the far right green (the darker one) is #021a02.  Click ok on both dialog boxes.

Step 3

Now open the stock image of the female and we are going to do a quick photo fix. We will be correcting some of the tonal values in the image before we start.  Go to “Image > Adjustments > Levels” and set the 3^rd box(white point box) on the far right to 228.  This will allow the image to utilize the full tonal range of its histogram and not look so washed out.

Step 4

This will be the most tedious part of the whole process, as you will need to outline the female with the pen tool or the lasso tool.  Use whatever is easier for you, however the pen tool allows for better control and smoother lines.  Once you have outlined her as you like copy and paste her into your canvas.  Now make a new group folder and name it “woman”.  Move her into that folder so you can keep your layers organized throughout this project.  The image below is how I outlined her and what I kept and didn’t keep on her body.  I cut out a lot of the hanging leaves/grass stuff hanging off of her arms and around her hair.  I felt they were too distracting to my final image, but you are welcome to keep it how you like.  I also used some of the healing and clone brush in combination with outlining her to clean up some of that extra grass and leaves.  Once she is pasted into your canvas go to “Edit > Free Transform” and size her accordingly to fit on your canvas.

Step 5

We will now sharpen the female a little.  Now duplicate the woman layer by dragging her layer to the new layer button at the bottom of the layer palette or pressing ctrl+J (windows) or command+j (mac).  Set the layer blend mode to overlay and 40% opacity.  Go to “filter > other > high pass” and set it to 1.5 pixels and hit ok.

Step 6

Now go to the little half black/white circle again at the bottom of the layer palette and select hue/saturation.  Enter -20 for the saturation and leave the rest at 0.  Then go to “Layer > create clipping mask” to apply it directly to the just the female layer.

Step 7

Now we are going to do some brush work to make some of her stand out and pop more.  Command+click or ctrl+click on the woman layer to create the selection of the woman.  Create a new layer and fill it with 50% gray and deselect the selection.  Now using your dodge and burn tool go over the layer in spots that you want to enhance by darkening and lighting the female.  Use a lower opacity dodge/burn brush set to midtones and go over it till it looks good.  Here is how my layer looked like after I got done with it (I changed the blend mode to normal so you can see where I burned/dodged the layer).

Here is a before and after of what my dodge/burning made her look like.

Step 8

This next step is optional, but it will add a nice subtle touch to the female.  Duplicate the original woman layer.
Then go to “filter > stylize > glowing edges” and use these settings.

Edge Width as 1
Edge Brightness as 13
Smoothness as 15

Now go to “image > adjustments > levels” and use the following settings.

Set the layer to screen and drop the opacity to 50%.  Some of the lines make the female look odd and are distracting because the edges are glowing purple and blue or just some random colors we do not want.  So make a layer mask for this layer and using a soft brush with black as the foreground color brush away some of the lines that is distracting.  I brushed around the edges of the female and around her chest area on her dress.  Duplicate this same layer and change the blend mode to overlay and drop the opacity to 10%.

The next step to finish off the female is to add a curves adjustment layer.  Once again go to the little half black/white circle at the bottom of the layer palette and select curves.  We are going to up the contrast a little bit more.  So select “increase contrast” from the drop menu in the dialog box and lower the opacity of the layer to 30%.

Step 9

In the layer palette create another new folder and name it weeds.  This is where we will create the weeds in the image and will be up to you on how you want your leaves or weeds in the scene to look.  Open up the stock image of the leaves.  I used the portion of leaves in the front of the image along the wall because they were in focus and had a little bug on one of the leaves.

Using a soft eraser brush to erase away the leaves and weeds to your liking.  Place them around the image and transform them to fit your scene.  Now merge all your weed layers together so it is just one layer.

Duplicate the weed layer twice.  Using the first duplicated layer set it to overlay with an opacity of 40%.  Go to “filter > other > high pass” and set the pixels to 1.5 and hit ok.  Merge this layer down with the original weeds layer.  This will sharpen the weeds up for us.

Now click on the other duplicated layer to activate it.  Now command+click or ctrl+click on the layer to bring up a selection of that layer and fill the selection with 50% gray.  Set the layer blend mode to overlay.  Once again using your dodge and burning tools set to midtones and go to work on the weeds layer to make them stand out more.   View my image to see where I did some of the brush work.

Another thing I did was copy some of the dirt in the leaves stock image and place it underneath her feet as you see in my photos above.

Step 10

Now create a new layer and drag it above our gradient adjustment layer.  Load the brush set from the link at the top of this article.  Use the spot 007 brush (or whatever you like the best) and make your bokeh and set the layer opacity to 15%.

Step 11

Now you need to make another new folder on top of everything and call it effects.

Create a new layer and name it blue line.  To create the blue swirl I used the pen tool and wrapped the lines around her body.  After you make the lines with your pen tool select your brush tool and make sure you have your brush settings with a diameter of 5 and hardness set to 0%

Click back on your pen tool (p), right click and select “stroke path” and make sure “brush” is selected in the drop down box with “simulate pressure” unchecked.

Now use the eraser tool to erase certain parts on the blue line to make it appear as the line is wrapping around her.  I erased every other line so it looks like it is going in front and behind her.  I also used a soft brush and erased some of the end of the blue line to make it look like it was disappearing.  I could of used the simulate pressure command, but I chose not to because I didn’t want the end of the line to get smaller.  I just wanted it to look like it was vanishing towards the end.  Now go to the layer styles of the blue line layer (double click the layer icon) and go to outer glow and inner glow styles and use the following settings.

Do the same thing for making the green line and use the same layer style settings for the inner and outer glow except change the color to #00ff06. (the reason you see part of the green line erased is because that is where my butterfly will go in the next step)

Create a new layer and name it glow. Using the color #00ff06 for the green line and a soft brush, brush along certain areas of the swirl that flow across her body to make it look like the green line is glowing against her skin or dress.  Do the same with the blue line with the color #0012ff.

Now for the little wave like thing in her hand I used another brush I found on the Internet that was apart of an abstract brush set I found a while ago.  So I can’t remember the link to where it is, but search out some abstract brushes at brusheezy http://www.brusheezy.com/brushes?search=abstract and download some of them and use any that appeals to your eye.  I also applied an outer glow to this layer with the opacity of 41%, spread of 1, size of 1, mode set to screen, and color set to #12ff00, and everything else set as the program default.

Create one more layer and name it ball glow.  Using a bigger size brush with 0% hardness and the color of #99fa35 create a soft glow effect in her hand.  I also reduced the opacity of this layer to 50% so it wasn’t as strong.

Step 12

Now create a new folder on top of everything called butterflies.  Open the stock butterfly image and cut and paste each one of the butterflies into your image.  Arrange them how you want them to look around the image.

Now once again go to the little half black/white circle at the bottom of the layer palette and select hue/saturation.  Set the saturation to -19 and leave everything else at 0.  Go to “Layer > create clipping mask” to apply it directly to the just the butterflies.

Step 13

The last thing we are going to do to finish this piece off is bring the highlights up just a tad.  For the last time go to the little half black/white circle at the bottom of the layer palette and select levels.  In the far right box (the white point box) set the number to 250.

And that’s it!  Hope you enjoyed my first tutorial and if you have any questions post away.