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My Bubble Office with my Creative Assistant

Adobe Firefly AI image of a workspace

Yes Sophie, my sweet tailless feline, has come to my rescue this time and suggested we create this whimsical office that we both would love as a workspace. Note, she still can’t keep her eyes off the birds! So how was this image created? Using the Photoshop Beta version, an image was created with this text prompt “Office space in an office with windows high up in a building​” using Special Effects Sketch and Watercolor. The variations that did not work were deleted keeping just a similar version as above. On a duplicated Smart Object Layer, the Parametric Filter (which are only available in Beta at the moment) Spherify was selected (set to Medium, Close Up, Size 1, Image Scale X:2.69 and Y3, Sphere Scale X:1.9 and Y:1.18, and Background Color White). On separate layers lots of clean up was done. Put some of my cartoon images on the computer screens. Sophie’s image is from a generic cat picture placed in Topaz Studio 2 – used the Impression filter to give her a painterly look. To get the soft sunny background effect, the cleaned up image was taken into Anthropics Smart Photo Editor and settings called Beach by InoculateIT were used. The final step was to add a few birds into the sky with a brush Bert Monroy teaches how to make. This was a lot of fun to do!…..Digital Lady Syd

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Holiday Card

Merry Christmas to everyone – hope this Holiday brings you much good cheer! I enjoyed making this candle card – pretty simple and lots of fun. Basically ran from the Contextural Task Bar a prompt saying “Lit Yellow candle in the middle of the image with no decorations around it” – Cinematic and Cartoon Effects were check. Took 4 Variation runs to get the one I liked, but finally did. To get the pretty greenery, just followed Jessica Johnson’s Behance video called Creating a Stylized Holiday Holly Illustration in Photoshop & New Brushes. By using a simple Pointed Arrow as a brush tip, many different kinds of fern-like greenery can be created. Most of them were Pattern Stamp brushes with different color swatch patterns used to create the interesting colors in the branches. Mixer used to paint the berries and a little gold dazzle using a gold layer style. She has lots of info on how to do this on her website. I found it was a lot of fun to create this card and make some new brushes. Happy Holiday!…..Digital Lady Syd

Believe!

Image of a Believe Santa Christmas Ornament

Just enjoyed doing Christmas Cards this year. This ornament is one I bought years ago at a Cracker Barrel restaurant and I have always loved it! Thought I would share. The image was not real sharp, but I used an older version of Topaz Sharpen AI and it still does a fantastic job! Used an Iridescent Pattern Stamp Brush from Jessica Johnson (she is a Photoshop Pattern Stamp Guru!) and a silver glitter pattern from Chris Spooner ages ago to create the garland. (The patterns can easily be made by following my Fun Photoshop How to Create a Glitter Texture blog from a while ago.) Added some more greenery around Santa using the brushes made by following Jessica Johnson’s Behance video called Creating a Stylized Holiday Holly Illustration in Photoshop & New Brushes. The Merry Christmas font used is called Baroque Script. That was about it! Happy Holidays to everyone!…..Digital Lady Syd

Hawaii Dreaming

AI image created of Hawaii with a sunset and surfer

Created this image using Adobe Firefly AI – created a layer and clicked on the new bottom icon that says “Generate an image using a text prompt.” Used the prompt “surf shack at the beach at sunset, with surfboards. Silhouetted surfer holding surfboard looking at sun.” I got the above basic image with an ugly surfboard so another a selection of it was made. Ran another Generative Fill with the prompt “Hawaiian flowered surfboard” and got the above variation. Had to select the surfboard and do a Free-Transform (CTRL+T) for it to fit over the original ugly surfboard. Added in some birds and a little clean up to get a very nice Hawaiian scene. The font is Zahra Inline Grunge. This was actually a lot of fun to do!…..Digital Lady Syd

How I Am Feeling ATM

Drawn image of a portrait in the Mark English style.

I like Mark English‘s work a lot and decided to try it again to get my creative vibe flowing. Not sure this is exactly a “self-portrait,” but I do think it represents my recent feelings. For info on how I discovered his art, check out my Masked Tidbits Blog with more info on this. No AI was used in this image – all digitally drawn and painted in Adobe Photoshop 2024. Just a couple things make this image unique for me – I created a brush to give a really heavy texture feel to the image. In a 50-pixel Chalk brush, I added a texture pattern from Jessica Johnson – she uses this pattern (TM-6) a lot in her brushes (see Texture section of brush to download-check the little + sign on right of pattern), but I did not use her Pattern Stamp brushes, just the texture. Since Transfer’s Flow Control Panel was set to Pen Pressure only, it can be painted over to get a more dense effect if needed. Used the same texture pattern in a layer style for the hair with the Pattern Overlay set to Opacity 17 and Scale 93 – layer was set to 46 Opacity and Fill 0, and just the hair was painted over on the layer. Otherwise just the same workflow for drawing. Lots of fun to create this…..Digital Lady Syd

Ellie from Jurassic Park

AI sketched image from Google's Image FX and digitally painted by me

I tried out Google’s ImageFX to see if I liked it as well as Adobe Firefly – thought it did a pretty good job but still not sure how to use the prompt to get exactly what I wanted. Only used one prompt called Sketchy – it created several beautiful sepia and black and white sketches. On this image a pencil outline of the original sketch was created. The various AI brushes from my other blogs were used to paint in the face and hair. Then took the image into Portraiture Pro and completed her face features. Went back into ImageFX and used the prompt “Dinosaur Open Mouth” and added the dinosaur in the upper left. A Selective Color Adjustment Layer was added to adjust his coloring. Made a Vignette using my Using a Levels Adjustment Layer for a Vignetting blog (great for precisely setting up the vignette on the image). The Font is called Lobster and used an Outer Glow Layer Style. Overall, I would say that ImageFX is doing a better job with faces, but it appears there are limited choices when a prompt is used (or I need to learn how to use it better). Anyway, it was fun to try out….Digital Lady Syd

Spanish Cay Lonesome Beach

Photo of a lonesome beach in Spanish Cay, Bahamas

Spanish Cay is on the northern edge of the Bahamas – in this image you can see the blue water from the Atlantic Ocean outside the little cover areas shown. There are plenty of small beach areas that look wild and secluded just like this beach. This image was post-processed using Photoshop’s Sky Replacement panel as the sky in the original photo was totally flat (the sky is from a company that is out of business now); On1 Effects 2023 using the AI brush to select different parts of the image – used Dynamic Contrast on the dead branches, foreground water, and fence (see Getting Started with On1 Effects 2023 by On1 and How to Reveal Stunning Detail in Your Water Photos by Scott Davenport); and Camera Raw Filter (see The Photo Editing Trick Every Photographer Should Know! by Mark Denney). It was fun trying out all these techniques. …..Digital Lady Syd

Eastern Lubber Grasshopper

Image of a Southeastern Lubber Grasshopper

Had to get load my camera with my favorite 60 mm F/2.8 macro lens (with my Bower 0.5 x High Definition Wide Lens attached) to get some pix of this crazy (and major hungry) grasshopper. Never seen such a large grasshopper in my life. (I could actually hear him chomping in the garden)! He was playing peak-a-boo with me while I was taking the images. Topaz Sharpen AI did a fabulous job capturing all the beautiful detail on this insect. Then just some dodge and burn for more on his details (see my The Best Dodging and Burning Technique! blog), an Autumn Colors Lookup Adjustment Layer, Black and White Adjustment Layer to adjust the tones, added a highlights layers and a shadow vignette, and ended up with a Curves Adjustment Layer. He really is quite a spectacular kind of guy!…..Digital Lady Syd

Lighting up Piccadilly Circus

Image of Piccadilly Circus in London

Very classic view of Piccadilly Circus – added the Milky way to spice it up a bit. Decided to try out the new Lightroom Detail’s AI Noise Reduction Denoise Filter on an older image taken at night. It worked pretty darn good! If you have LR, check it out. It may take a while to process, but it will improve you image! In Photoshop used the Remove Tool to try to get ride of some of the more obvious people in the image and some distracting bright spots – worked fine also. Then added Serge Ramelli‘s Milky Way texture and set it to Color Dodge. By using the Blend If in the Layer Style (Current Layer black tab split and set to 0/96), it looked more natural in a city setting. A Color Lookup Adjustment Layer using Africa from Photo Focus – set to Screen blend mode. Used a Selective Color Adjustment Layer to adjust colors a little and that was it. Totally impressed how well an unusable turned out!…..Digital Lady Syd

Sophie’s Territory

AI image of a futuristic city with my cat

Just had some fun trying out the new Beta Adobe Firefly AI – used one of my drawn images of my tailless cat Sophie as a reference photo to create the cat items in this image. A new Generate Image was created using the prompt “A futuristic city.” Generate Image means a whole image is created at a higher resolution than the original Firefly 1 which is currently in PS 2024. For a square image, it now generates at 2048 px X 2048 px versus Firefly 1’s lower resolution square at 1024 pixels X 1024 pixels. For a really good explanation of all the new features, check out Dave Kelly’s YouTube video called Fire Image 3 Now in Photoshop Beta. Generative Fill layers were run for the 3 cat elements. The image did need some clean up and a couple Color Lookup Adjustment Layers were used. Lots of new things to try! ….. Digital Lady Syd