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Classic Florida

B&W image of a place in Florida

Had an HDR image that I took a while ago and decided to convert it to a black and white HDR image by following some of the advice from a YouTube video by Joel Grimes called How to Edit a Picture of a City – Cityscape vs. Urban Landscape Tutorial. Since this is not exactly a building type image, a few different setting were used in Lightroom before opening the document into PS. One of the things I did do in PS was apply Luminar Neo (apparently this is using more AI than their other programs) using the Enhance Accent AI slider and Mystical tools only. I have always enjoyed the Mystical effect that Skylum has had for years. Ran Blake Rudis’s High Pass Sharpen Action on the image (this puts the layer set to Linear Gradient mode and a Fill of 30%) – it ends up with a black layer mask so only the building was painted back to apply the sharpening. A couple parked cars were removed and that was it. I love how the clouds look with the Mystical effect applied. It was fun to do a black and white image for a change……Digital Lady Syd

08/27/2022 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Just a Bird Buddy

This image was actually created while trying out some of the new Spring and Summer 2022 brushes by Kyle T. Webster (that come with PS). This bird was drawn from one of my camera pix taken at the Jacksonville Zoo of a Verreaux Eagle Owl. He was a pretty good size with huge eyes and appeared to be a rather calm kind of bird. I decided to have some fun and give him a different color palette and background. The rough and refined drawing brushes were created using one of Aaron Blaise‘s drawing tutorials (check out any of his YouTube tutorials to see how he does this – pretty easy). The underpainting effect used his Color Brush. The tree was created by making a selection of a tree with the Lasso Tool, then painting with Kyle’s Spring 2022 Woodchuck Joey brush over it using a couple different colors, and removing part of the right side of the tree using the Tilde (~) key (acts like an eraser but uses the brush currently selected). The skin texture was made from Kyle’s Summer 2022 Pellet CS brush with different colors. The little flowers used the Summer 2022 Soft Spat 1 brush also in different colors. The tree leaves were from Kyle’s Spring 2022 – Shrubbed brush. The rest just involved some lightening and darkening. The hardest part was painting the beak – this owl does have a very colorful beak. It was a lot fun just to try out new brushes!…..Digital Lady Syd

07/21/2022 | Categories: Photoshop Painting | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

St. Andrews Golf Shops & Hotels

St. Andrews Old Course image

Enjoying watching The British Open at the Old Course in St. Andrews for the next few days (yep, I am a golfer) and decided to find an image I had not post processed when I was there several years ago (I believe this is the 18th green). Had to do a bit of cloning on the sidewalk area – turned out better than using Content-Aware Fill. Still had a little Chromatic Aberration in this image even after using Lightroom to remove most of it. Therefore a duplicate image was created and a Gaussian Blue was set to Radius of 6.0 – then set layer to Color Blend Mode, added a black layer mask (press ALT+Layer Mask icon to create), and painted out the aberration colors. Worked like a charm! On a stamped layer, Topaz AI Sharpen Filter was set to Out of Focus with Auto settings to sharpen up the whole image. On another stamped layer, my favorite stand-by filter that is no longer available, Lucis Pro 6.0.9 was applied – love the effect! A Color Lookup Adjustment Layer was added and a free Sparkle Stock LUT set called Beautiful Day using Carnival 02 LUT. Last step involved adding New Layers for Darkening and Highlighting part of the image – used Sam Peterson’s technique to do this (see my blog A Few Photoshop and Lightroom Tips and Tricks – No. 2). That was it – wish I was there but I am enjoying the memories by working on this older image……Digital Lady Syd

07/14/2022 | Categories: Photoshop Tips | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

Uber Driver in Venice

Painted digital art of a Gondolier and a canal in Venice

Just had fun with this one mainly trying out different brushes to see what would happen. The really cool texture effect for the orange buildings came from Kyle T. Webster’s Winter 2022 set – using the Winter BG Variant on the orange buildings. In the Spring 2022 set from Kyle, The Marshall was used to create the bridge and The Marshall Var was used to create the white church building. The Tilty Pencil Soft and the Tilty Pencil Variant were used to create a few of the black sketch lines in the image. In the 2022 Spring Set Tree Leaf Mess Alt and Fresh Leaf were used to create the leaves in the tree and plant. Just used a pencil brush I created to paint the Boat and Gondolier – pretty rough sketching here. Three textures were used: Kim Klasson’s Womandweathered (Soft Light blend mode at 50% opacity), 2 Lil’ Owls Mosaic Set Celeste (Linear Burn blend mode at 23% opacity), and Adobe Paper Texture Pro Villa Adriana (Overlay blend mode at 40% opacity). Had to blend out some of the shadows with a Mixer blender brush. That meant I had to go into the Camera Raw Filter and add some grain in so it did not look too smooth. Overall it was cool to try out some of the new brushes. ….. Digital Lady Syd

07/05/2022 | Categories: Just Being Creative, Textures | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

The Tiger

Drawn and painted image of a tiger in digital pastel

Watched the Kyle T. Webster (the Adobe Brush Evangelist) video called Brush Hour: Digital Pastels. I thought he would go over his various pastel brushes he has created for Adobe Photoshop, but instead he demonstrated how to create a relatively interesting pastel painting using just a few. This was my first attempt at trying a pastel painting, but it was a lot of fun – and a little bit challenging. The tiger is the actual sketch created using an Aaron Blaise tutorial (see my A Little Aaron Blaise Digital Drawing Practice Fun Photoshop Blog). I also adjusted one of my own pastel brushes to get the nice pastel background effect as I had trouble getting the correct pressure with Kyle’s brush. It has been a long time since I used traditional pastels and doing this digitally is definitely a lot less messy!…..Digital Lady Syd

06/24/2022 | Categories: Art Tidbits, Just Being Creative, Photo Art | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

Turtle and Child Sculpture

Digital Art painting of a sculpture of a turtles with a child swimming along.

This image was taken on the Big Island in Hawaii at a small shopping center near Waimea – I wish I knew who did the original piece of sculpture as it is quite striking and beautiful. The photo background was very busy so I decided to try some digital effects to the image. It really is a faux digital painted image as the background painted effect used Topaz Studio (AI Remix – 0.69 opacity and Normal mode, Velvet Abstract preset set to Style Strength High, Brightness 0, Contrast 1.00, Sat 0.75, Hue 0, Smooth Edge 0.20, Sharpness 0.47, and Suppress Artifacts 0; Impression – 1.00 opacity and Normal mode, Type 16 Stroke, Number of Strokes Med, Stroke Length 0.56, and Painting Progress 0.16 – painted out the turtle and child and Texture – and Background Type Original; and Precision Detail – 1.00 opacity and Normal mode, Overall Small 0.60, and Lighting Midtones -0.47). Then on various layers in PS, different parts were painted using PS brushes to add more defined strokes and to clean up some of the Studio stroke overlap. One brush used was Kyle’s Real Watercolor-80 Round brush set to Normal brush mode to paint the face and body of the child. Black & White, Curves, and Levels Adjustment Layers were added on top. The Sharpen Tool was used on a separate layer to sharpen up the eyes a little. A Color Lookup Adjustment Layer using On1’s Loyalty Reward for May 2022’s Fun in the Sun6 LUT was added and set to 27% – really brightened up the image. Last step involved adding darken and lighten layers using Sam Peterson’s colors and brush to draw attention to the boys face. (See my Fun Photoshop Blog A Few Photoshop and Lightroom Tips and Tricks – Step 2 for info on this – really easy to do and look great on images!) That was it – it was really fun and relaxing to do!…..Digital Lady Syd

06/02/2022 | Categories: Photoshop Painting, Topaz Studio | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

The Lifeguard

Cartoonish image of a Lifeguard

Just downloaded this week’s free brush from GrutBrushes – each Monday he gives you a new one some of them are fabulous. He has some great brushes (I love his cloud set for starters!) This week’s brush is an ink brush called Citrose and I really like it! Everything painted or draw in this image used this brush. For example, just for sketching the brush was set to 13 pixels. The Color Tones were added with the brush set to 70 pixels which made a very smooth color. The water was set to 400 pixels, white splashes and birds were set at a very small size. The only extras were a Gradient Fill Adjustment Layer used on the background at 76% layer opacity, and a Texture layer using Pro Casanova from the Adobe Paper Panel (not sure it is available anymore but try this link if you are interested) set to Overlay blend mode. The font is one called Zahra Inline Grunge – has a stroke layer style added and set to the outside. I was not going to do an image with the brush, but it turned out to be such a nice brush so I started doodling and came up with this crazy image using it. …… Digital Lady Syd

05/09/2022 | Categories: Photoshop Painting | Tags: , | 1 Comment »

Early Morning Tree Jumping

Image of an egret flying

This image was taken at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm. The sky was bright and clear so I decided to try adding some fog into the image. It was actually a lot of fun – just followed Glen Dewis’s video called Try This for Adding Smoke, Fog, Mist and Clouds into Your Pictures Using Photoshop. It is a pretty simple technique. Also, to get the color I wanted, a Color Lookup Adjustment Layer using the Late Sunset preset set 88% layer opacity was used. On some of the areas that did not have blur on them, a large soft Mixer Blender brush was used (could have used a Smudge Tool instead) to paint over, and then immediately after stroking, went to Edit -> Fade to bring back some of the detail from underneath. Really helped balance out the fog spots. The font is Argentina Script…..Digital Lady Syd

04/26/2022 | Categories: Just Being Creative | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

The Pirate

Image of a pirate at Disney World

Am I the only one who photographs mannequins – yep this guy was in the gift shop at Universal Studios-Orlando. They have some wonderful displays if you look around. Of course, he was not exactly a pirate – I added the hat, hook and map from PixelSquid to make him look authentic. Otherwise pretty normal post-processing. Topaz Sharpen set to Out of Focus was used to really sharpen him up. Sam Peterson Shadows and Highlights layers were used first to even out the lighting (See My Fun Photoshop Blog A Few Photoshop and Lightroom Tips and Tricks, Tip 2 for info on how to do this). Then Viveza was used for adjusting everything. Three textures were added: Kim Klassen’s Pinitonly and Stay textures (not sure these are still available), and 2 Lil’ Owls Workbook texture from forever ago. Some of the texture was masked out using Kyle’s Megapack Drawing Box-Shady Graphite Fat Dry brush – really nice for when you want a little grain. A Color Lookup Adjustment Layer was added using On1’s Urban Explorer preset and set to 83%. PS Camera Raw Filter was used to create a slight vignette effect. The Font is called Fratello Nick. That is about all that was done. I have a couple other images like this one for a set……Digital Lady Syd

04/18/2022 | Categories: Photoshop Filters, Textures | Tags: , | Leave A Comment »

Living in the Abstract

Image of a lioness drawing and then digitally painted in PS

Just a short blog – I thought I would show you the results using this drawing I created of a lioness turned into a painted image using Kyle T. Webster’s Spring 2022 brush set. The drawing is one I did following Aaron Blaise’s Digital Painting for Photoshop – Getting Started-Sketching in Photoshop video. (See my recent Fun Photoshop A Little Aaron Blaise Digital Drawing Practice blog for more info on this.) I used one of Aaron’s resource images – it is not an exact representation but I felt he should get credit for the original drawing idea. Then, just following Kyle T. Webster’s YouTube called Illustration Masterclass: Draw Stylized Portraits with Custom Brushes to paint the lioness. This video used many of his newly released Spring 2022 brushes, which can be found in PS by clicking on the Hamburger icon in the top right corner of the Brushes Panel and clicking “Get More Brushes” – if you have any recent version of PS and are on a monthly plan, it will be listed at the top of the page, after logging if needed. There appear to be 37 brushes in this set. If you want to see how each works, watch his Brush Hour with Kyle T. Webster: Check Out the Spring 2022 Brush Set! video. This image mainly used his Woodchuck Joey, Pellets and Old Blue brushes with a few other ones thrown in. I actually changed the Pellets-Alt brush to a Spacing of 98 and a smaller size of 45 pixels to get a really nice texture effect when the stylus is pressed lightly and really smooth when pressed hard. To select the colors, a color palette layer was created by following Kyle’s video called Illustration Masterclass: Choosing the Right Colors for Your Digital Illustrations which is very helpful when trying to get colors that blend nicely. The splatter effect is a PNG overlay file that was downloaded from Creative Market in a set called 48 Subtle Grunge Textures Vector by Anastasia Autumn. It has PNGs, JPGs, ABRs PS brushes, and Vector AI files with the 48 textures in each file format. By adding a layer style to the PNG texture 01 layer and in Layer Styles selecting the Gradient Overlay, all these colors would be added (not sure which gradient, but it had a lot of horizontal gradient colors in it). It was set to 59% layer opacity. Major Cool! Viveza was used to fine tune the final image. Overall, this was just major fun to do!…..Digital Lady Syd

04/15/2022 | Categories: Photoshop Painting | Tags: , , | 2 Comments »

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