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
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
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
Just enjoyed posting an image a Bonobo Monkey at the Jacksonville Zoo – needed some wildlife post-processing practice! Used the Remove Tool, Sharpen Tool, a texture, Liquify Filter, layer for filling in hairs by painting using Coyote Mange animal hair brushes (still the best out there for this), Viveza, Lighten and Darken layers, Exposure Adjustment Layer for the eyes, Red Channel Curve Adjustment Layer, Luminar Leo Filter using my favorite Mystical effect, and Color Efex Pro Filter (an oldie but goodie for me). These are all techinques I have discussed on my Fun Photoshop Blog or my Tidbits Blog here at some time or another. As you can see, I still use them a lot. …… Digital Lady Syd
Just had fun with this one. Took a very blurry snapshot from an old colored short video of the streets of Paris. I actually wanted a copy of the dress one of the ladies was wearing in a different segment for drawing, and thought this interesting cafe image would be fun for try out. Just good ole’ Topaz plug-ins were used on this image. On a duplicate layer Topaz Studio 2 was opened and AI ReMix Crinkled Portrait preset was used changing some of the Brightness and Color sliders in the panel. Then on a New Layer above, Topaz ReStyle was opened to add the final effect using a preset called Midday Hay Fields. A Black & White, Color Balance, Levels and Selective Color Adjustment Layers were add and some text using the Broadway Engraved BT font. Enjoyed going back to my basic filters!…..Digital Lady Syd
My AI Generated selfie has found herself surrounded by snow and wildlife creatures in her own winter wonderland. For this image I wanted more of a painterly effect, so mainly painted with Kyle’s Thinner Oil brush from his Winter 2024 set. Since I have covered just about everything I do with my selfies, I will only add a couple new tips. First off, on this image an Airbrush set to Opacity 100%, but Flow at only 18% was selected – softens a lot of the hard edges that the Thinner Oil brush left on her skin. Can use any brush tip for this brush (set Size Jitter Control to Pen Pressure, Transfer Opacity Jitter to 92% and Control to Pen Pressure, and Build-up and Smoothing checked on). The other tip I thought I would mention is that it helps a lot to do some screen shots of faces that have make up applied and would look good on AI the face. If you have used the AI Generative command at all, you know there are always bad variations created. Many of them are created and deleted to get something as nice as this variation, and then it can take several hours to get the painterly effect wanted, as in this case. The background was created by selecting the Selfie and inverting the selection, then in the Generative Fill prompt type “digital oil painting of wintry park scene.” The deer was taken from a different variation in the group (just used the old Apply Image Trick; selected the deer and copied it onto its own layer, and then moved into this image – see my Fun Photoshop Blog Placing Any Photoshop Generative Fill Variation on a Layer Easily). The other brushes used were the Painterly Smudge Brush and the 36% Blender for face from Grut’s watercolor Late Never brush. For settings on these brushes, see the bottom of my Fun Photoshop Blog A Few Selfie AI Tricks.) Hope you enjoy her!…..Digital Lady Syd
Will keep this short! On my original Selfie image, first ran Dave Kelly’s AI action at 70%. Then used the Quick Selection Tool to select just the background and hair from the whole selection created by Dave’s action. Last step was to invert selection to run Generative Fill Prompt: Digital oil paint glamor look. Chose a variation and selected the resulting layer mask. On Generative Fill panel clicked the Invert Selection so background and hair were selected and ran Generative Fill again with this prompt: Digital Oil painting with fancy hair and wintry background. From these results, created a stamped layer and duplicated it as a New Document with just this layer (right click on layer and choose Duplicate Layer – then in Document drop-down select New). This was the starting point of this image and how I usually work with these AI results. From here created different layers on top and painted over the face, hair, coat and background. Used these brushes – Kyle T. Webster’s Winter 2024 set Thinner Oil (see Skiing Selfie blog for settings used with it – definitely a New Favorite for painting especially skin) and Right Angled for the background, his Summer 2018 Ocean Brush (for hair), and Fay Sirkis’s Short Streaky Detail Blender (not sure it is still available anymore), but any small detail mixer brush would probably work for the little edges of the hair. Used Viveva to pull the whole look together….Digital Lady Syd
Just playing with another selfie that came from the Generative Fill variations in Photoshop 2024. Original prompt for image was “Oil Painting of beautiful woman with larger gold loop earrings and a white coat.” I was not sure if I liked the original crop but decided it added a modern art feel to it so it was kept. Used Escape Motions Rebelle 7 to metallic paint for the jewelry – cool new feature in this program. This image was so cleaned up it looked sterile. Therefore I took a stamped layer into Anthropics Smart Editor and added a Line Drawing effect to it which turned the layer black and white. It looked nice so the layer was set to Screen blend mode at 44% opacity. Then took another stamped layer into OnOne Effects 2023 where the Honky Tonk filter was applied which give it a bit of poster look. Used some new brushes from Kyle T. Webster: a new Winter 2024 brushes called Staccatto Ink for some edge lines, and Ocean Brush from the Summer 2018 set for painting- both are nice brushes to experiment using. Otherwise just the same process as before. Love these ladies!…..Digital Lady Syd
Flipped my selfie to give a little different look here. The selfie bathing suit was generated in Photoshop using the prompt “digital oil painting bathing suit.” This time, the background was generated in Adobe Firefly using the prompt “digital oil painting ocean beach scene with people in the background” and using the styles of Art and Acrylic paint. It was saved as a jpg and brought into the selfie file as a layer underneath her. The selfie blocks the people that were on the beach. The red palm tree over her head was generated in Photoshop afterwards. By using Apply Image and using a layer mask, it could be added to the Firefly layer. Otherwise it was just the usual brushes. Wish I was in this scene!…..Digital Lady Syd
Had fun creating a different type of image. I found a video from Marty at Blue Lightning called How to Transform Photos into Stained Glass Windows in Photoshop! Marty has been doing PS videos for a long time and has some really nice ones. This video has a lot of steps but overall it is pretty easy. The main filter used was PS’s Filter Gallery-Stained Glass filter in the Texture group. I did need to add some clean up layers underneath the stained glass layer where some of the colors were off. Also had to adjust the layer styles to fit the resolution of my image so the stained glass leading looked right. The bird is one I drew (see my Tidbits American Goldfinch blog for how this was done) – just used the drawn bird and not my original background. This background is from a photo taken of the Halifax River (International Coastal Waterway or ICW) in Ormond Beach, Florida (see my Fun Photoshop Painting Effects – Which Ones to Use? blog that used this photo.) PS’s Filter Gallery-Glass filter in the Distort group was used on it. Overall just enjoyed trying a new effect. …..Digital Lady Syd
Check out AI Gigapixel stand-alone software for upsizing your images. It’s incredible! And it can now be used as a plugin when in Photoshop. Also Topaz Labs Photo AI has some great sharpening and denoise tools along with Photo Video AI.
GRUT BRUSHES – Photoshop Brushes for Digital Artists
Click here to visit GrutBrushes.com
And be sure to check out his Free Brush of the Week and Brush Sampler! These are the best brushes you can find!
Topaz Studio 2 and Legacy Topaz Labs Filters
Unfortunately Topaz Studio 2 and other Topaz Lab filters are no longer available for sale as of 2020. If you had bought these filters and would like to put them back on, here is a link to the Legacy Apps where they can be downloaded again. Below is an example of the wonderful Remix AI Filter from Studio 2. The wonderful Impression still works fine in Photoshop right now along with Adjust (all versions), ReStyle, and even PhotoFXLab!
Please note that I do make a very small commission on purchases made if you click through to the websites using the links above – it helps me keep my site going. Thanks for clicking.
