Graphics Zone - Artistic Effects

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Quick and Easy, Artistic Effects in Photoshop

by BarryHilton, Adult NetSurprise

In this tutorial we'll be using Photoshop's filters to make a quick and easy artistic effect from a content photo. Ideal for a change of pace logo design! Start by saving the example photo we're using to your harddrive and open it in Photoshop...Click Here to Download the Example Photo and to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

When you're working with filters in this way, it's always best to save the original photo in a separate layer. Then you can always go back to the original if you don't like the results! So, we'll start by duplicating and naming our example photo...Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

Now, we're going to start our artistic effect... By using a Watercolor filter we'll create the base effect for our example image (Later you might want to try some of the other Artistic Effects, experiment and have fun!)... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions. The Watercolor filter produces quite a subdued, dull effect, we'll be using overlays to bring life to the image later.

Duplicate the Start (Watercolor) layer and name it 'overlay'... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions. This will be our first 'overlayed' layer and will start to brighten our example.

Change the layer mode from 'Normal' to 'Overlay'. This gives the effect of deepening the dark areas and brightening the lighter areas of the image (It has no effect on black or white). Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions. As you will see, the girl's skin is more radiant and more contrast with her hair.

We're going to add another 'Overlayed' layer... Duplicate the 'overlay' layer and name it 'overlay 2'... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions..

This time we're going to use a 'Screen' to lighten the image (darker colors have less effect, with black acting as transparent and no effect on the image layer below)... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

We want to return the hair color to very dark again... To do this we need to move our 'Screen (overlay 2)' layer below our first 'Overlay (overlay)' layer. This will darken the hair again, but keep the skin tones very light... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions. NOTE: Experiment with different layer mode overlays... you'll get completely different results, which maybe just what you're looking for!

Here's our completed Artistic Effect example... Click Here to view Sample.

Experiment and have fun!