I had never seen a Nano Lopez sculpture until my recent visit to St. Augustine where the James Coleman Gallery had it displayed- this piece is called Little Davian. I shot this beauty through the front window in bright daylight so it took a lot of cleaning up to get rid of the reflections . I thought that the dragon was singing into a microphone but he is actually eating a “Dragon Berry” ice cream cone! Need to check out all Nano’s work – it is amazing! I will give you a quick run down of what was done to the image, but many steps were involved to get an effect I liked. First the dragon was run through Lucis Pro (no longer available) to get the edges defined better – it does not really sharpen but gives a similar look. Then PS Select and Mask command was used to extract the dragon from the background. To get the interesting cyan texture on the right side, a grunge type object created in Corel Painter was placed behind the extracted dragon, set to Soft Light and 52% layer opacity. A Hue/Sat Adjustment Layer was clipped to the layer and set to a Cyan color. A Darken/Lighten 50% gray layer was added. Nik Viveza 2 was used to adjust the color and tone throughout the image – this helped fix the glass reflection problem. Topaz (see sidebar for website link) Clarity was used on just the dragon. A Spotlight Layer set to Overlay blend mode was used on the dragon head. 4 Light Leaks were used on the edges – top and bottom set to a little dark red color, right side cyan and left side a warmish orange. 2 Lil’ Owls (see sidebar for website link) Color Bokeh Grunge Set – overlay 6 was set to Divide blend mode at 40% layer opacity to darken the edge of image. The font is called Chiller. Last step involved adding Topaz Detail 3 – just gave the overall image some sharpening and emphasized the background texture. Obviously my image does not do justice to the actual beautiful piece created by the artist, but it was a joy to work on the image!…..Digital Lady Syd
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Light Dawning in the Forest
Just created this little image for fun. I started image by opening up the Tree Generator in Photoshop (Filter -> Render -> Tree – not available in CS6 unfortunately) and created a 16 Young Robina tree and just playing with all the fun sliders. If you have not tried out this fun little sub-program inside PS, you should give it a spin – lots of fun! Behind the tree one of my Corel Painter textures was placed and the Hue adjusted with a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. The bird is from some clip art that I had and it was painted and liquified. The flying birds in the background are a free download from Jai Johnson. Not much to this image. I liked the colors that resulted…..Digital Lady Syd
The Red Lion in the Tower
Took this image recently in St. Augustine of the back of the Alcazar Hotel (Lightner Museum) showing one of the beautiful red clay lions. Henry Flagler had these lions placed over both this hotel and the Ponce de Leon Hotel (now Flagler College) exteriors. To begin in PS, a free action by Chris Spooner called Engraved Effect Medium was used on the whole image. Lots of clean up with a mask. Then Topaz (see sidebar for website link) Impressions2 using a Van Gogh preset was applied and the effect was painted off back in PS on the lions face. Melissa Gallo’s Painted Textures Mist on the Lake (no longer available)) was applied twice – one set to Normal and one to Linear Burn at 55% layer opacity. A Hue Saturation Adjustment Layer was used to adjust the color. Then a stamped layer was created (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E) was placed on top and taken into Topaz ReStyle using the Cream and Plum preset (one of my favorites) was applied to the image and set to Hue blend mode at 76% layer opacity. On another stamped layer Nik Viveza2 was applied to adjust the contrast just right. Last step added just a simple line border. That was it. I love these beautiful clay lions – they are so striking!…..Digital Lady Syd
Hitching a Ride
This image was taken at the Jacksonville Zoo – this little guy was hitching a ride across the large field for the Lowland Gorillas. The image was first processed in Lightroom using Seim’s Magic – Harsh Sun Fixer preset and then adding Dave Delnea’s Backlight 002 Horiz preset to it to give the interesting lighting effect. Dave’s preset was adjusted before sending the image to Photoshop. Adding this kind of lighting can really pop a boring image. In Photoshop Topaz (see sidebar for website link) Detail 3 was applied using my Little Med Large Detail preset – added a black layer mask and painted back the detail just on the back of the gorilla and the little gorilla. On a stamped (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E) layer, Nik Color Efex Pro 4 was added using these filters: Darken/Lighten Center, Color Effex: Vintage set to Film Type 2 and 82% overall opacity, Brilliance/Warmth set only to Warmth at 32%, and Glamour Glow to soften the image a little. Nik Viveza 2 was used to adjust the lighting on the gorillas. I love post processing and painting images from the zoo!…..Digital Lady Syd
Smiling Wolf
This is my attempt at drawing a wolf. It actually looks a lot like a dog so I am not sure what I was really drawing here. Used a tutorial in the Digital Painting Techniques book on Painting Fur by Richard Tilbury. First a thin black brush was used to the original sketch of the wolf on it own layer to begin the drawing. On layers underneath, the wolf was painted using the Pastel Scratchy Photoshop brush from Corel Painter Master Melissa Gallo’s Painting with Photoshop class to paint the hair. (Her class and PS brushes are terrific even though it is a few years old.) A couple of Fay Sirkis’s (another great painter and Corel Painter Master) Pet PS brushes were also used but they are hard to run down now – these are still some of the best around. (KelbyOne has her very good Four Seasons PS Painting tutorials with brushes to download if you are a member.) Topaz (see sidebar for website link) Impressions was opened and a preset created using the steps in a great video by Topaz Labs called RAW to Envisioned with Bobbie Goodrich (third example). The main text is Catalina Anacapa Sans from Creative Market and by Kimmy Design – a really nice clean font. The small text is in called Chiller. The last step was creating a border using a my Pencil Thin Vertical Lines brush (pencil lines were scanned and a brush was created – then in Brush Panel set the Angle to 90 degrees and Roundness to 12%) by changing the Angle and adding around the edges in a brown color. I will be practicing more animal drawings so look out!…..Digital Lady Syd
Who’s Watching Who?
This gorilla I have used in several blogs – he was very much aware of everything going on around him and all who were watching him. I believe he was concerned for the little gorillas that were playing near him. There was a lot of clean up done to get him ready for the texture and Topaz Impression filter used in the image. The Gorilla was separated from his background using the Select and Mask Tool. It was okay that the selection was not perfect since just this layer was going to be taken into Impression. But first one of Jai Johnson’s fabulous natural textures was placed behind him – one called Daily Textures Captured Light Sea 4 (free download if you sign up for her newsletter). A Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer was used to desaturate the texture a little and remove the warm gold color, and a Levels Adjustment Layer were used to make the yellow color even more white. Then a Color Balance Adjustment Layer was set to Highlights and Just the Yellow-Blue slider was set to +35 to add a little blue tone into the whites. After reading Jai Johnson’s Being Expressive blog, I decided to try the effect she described. On a Stamped layer (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E), the layer with both gorilla and texture was taken into Topaz Impression 2 where the Quick Sketch I preset was applied with these changes: Color Overall Sat -1.00 and Overall Lightness -0.52; Set to Hard Light bm at 54% layer opacity. The just some clean was done in PS and the texture was reapplied on top, set to Overlay blend mode and 52% layer opacity to add some warmth back into the fur of the gorilla. A Black and White Adjustment Layer was added and set to Luminosity to get the colors just right. Just took a lot of clean up but eventually it came out like I wanted it! I really liked the effect that Jai came up with – give it a try!…..Digital Lady Syd
Danger – Gang of Ferocious Fish
Just had some fun making this poster from fish that were in one of the old volumes from 1754 volume Poissons Ecrevisses et Crabes by Louis Renard. These fish apparently are all examples of fish in the Indian Ocean. I personally thought they looked a little ferocious. Not sure what came over me to create this but once again it was fun. It was all part of the experimenting I was doing for my How to Create Vintage Text for Images Fun Photoshop Blog. These fish were copied from a page in the old volume and converted to a black and white image. An abstract pattern from Deal Jumbo was used in a Pattern Fill Adjustment Layer to add the different colors. Just dragged around on the image and adjusted the Scale to make it look interesting. On a separate layer bubbles were painted on the image by using Grut’s (see sidebar for website link) FX IL Flick Tub brush (in the Inky Leaks Splatter Brush set) and turning on a Bevel & Emboss Layer Style. All fish eyes were turned to blue on another layer. Some text was added. A frame by Rotfuschs was added. It really was just a fun image to play with…..Digital Lady Syd
I’m Just a Little Kitty Cat
I just love to photograph the big cats – they are so interesting and beautiful! This tiger image had fencing all over it and the Healing Brush in Topaz Studio (see sidebar for website link) actually took almost all of it out of the image – I was totally surprised. They have just recently added it into the program. For me to get it to work well a very small size of 0.03 was used and by dragging the brush first over the color that you want added in, it tends to fill in with that color. Then just a Curves Adjustment Layer for color adjustment and then a Levels Adjustment Layer for contrast correction for a bit of a vintage matte feel. A Color Look Up Table set to the TealOrangePlusContrast preset and the opacity to 29%. Topaz Detail was used to sharpen the face. A Red Luminosity Curve was used to add a little more contrast. A left side yellow-orange light leak was added to the image to lighten it up a little. Created a composite layer on top (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E), made it a Smart Object (right click on menu and select), and opened the Camera Raw Filter. Went to the HSL sliders and adjusted mainly the orange and yellow colors in all the sections to get the tiger color and background just right. Last step was to add the text – used the Streetlight script font. What a cool tiger!…..Digital Lady Syd
Night at the Museum
Had some fun creating a night scene out of this image. The image was darkened in Lightroom using Serge Ramelli’s American Night Darker preset to start and adding radial light effects on all the different lamps. Once in Photoshop the cat was added from an image by Graphics Fairy and then his outline was smudged to give it some hair effect. Some whiskers were drawn in and a shadow was added underneath his body. Some text was added using the Green Light Bold Inline Grunge font. A 50% gray layer was added and set to Overlay blend mode where the lights were painted in at 20% layer opacity to get the correct flare effect on the walls behind. That was it. A lot of fun to do!…..Digital Lady Syd
Just a Pretty Flower
This pretty flower is from an old album called Illustrations of the New Zealand Flora (Plate 139) published in 1914. It was just a black and white line drawing and I added the color and texture. The image was removed from a page on the downloaded PDF file using the steps in my How to Create Vintage Text for Images Fun Photoshop Blog -just go towards the end for steps to pull images. I am afraid I took a little color liberty here as the volume says the flowers are actually white, but I liked the pink color. The flowers pink color was created by using a Curves Adjustment Layer’s individual Red channel with the layer mask filled with black (CTRL+I in the mask) – just painted in the pink on the petals – layer was set to Color blend mode. On a separate blank layer under the outline, painted in the green textures using Grut’s I Qwillo (I love this brush for drawing and painting!) and a Mixer blender to paint in the leaves and stem. Below that but above a white background layer a texture was painted – just experimented with a couple of my brushes and took just the texture layer into Topaz Studio. The Radiance filter was applied so the fine lines showed up – I thought it matched the line drawing effect of the flower. The font is Viner Hand ITC and an Outer Glow layer style with a Contour change was used to make the text stand out. The original outline was set to 15% layer opacity at the top of the layer stack. That was it. Lots of fun. I really enjoy looking at the old volumes of animals and plants. ….. Digital Lady Syd
Topaz JPEG to RAW AI
Check out JPEG to RAW AI stand-alone software for converting JPEGs to DNG/Tiff files for RAW post processing technology. Subtle but wonderful and works great with phone images!
Topaz A.I. Gigapixels
Check out A.I. Gigapixel stand-alone software for upsizing your images. It’s incredible!
Aurora HDR 2019
Aurora HDR is also now available for Windows OS. Click here to visit Aurora for more info.
Topaz Studio
Topaz Studio 2 with the fabulous Remix Filter as seen below – give it a try!
On1 Photo Raw
Topaz ReStyle
French Kiss Collections
