Calvin Seng’s Blog

Recently, I have done vectorising an image of a korean actress to digital format. Though the outcome was not too pro yet, but quite nicely done. However, practise makes perfect, brushing up my skills during holiday is something good, I believe. The whole transformation took up to 3 days time, but roughly 5 hours per day spent on it. A cumulation of 16 hours is the correct time to complete the work. The whole vector image consists of 170 layers, which is something I feel kinda a lot. Ha, besides pen tool used that made up the digitisesed actress, vector mask is often used in layer to achieve a fading effect/shadow on some parts of the body. Anchoring layers is also a very efficient way to cover some unwanted parts up. What do you all think about it? 

This is one of my recent assignments that I have designed. Most of my friends love this wallpaper and are curious how it was done. Nevertheless, first time in my life, I’d decided to create a tutorial on how I designed this wallpaper. Feel free to learn.

1. Download these two photos. Then open SN203704.jpg using photoshop.

2. Adjust the level by pressing ctrl + L in windows then start adjusting the value to somewhere near to the settings in the image.

3. Adjust the saturation value to -100 to achieve a greyscale by pressing Ctrl + U.

4. Adjust the brightness and contrast accordingly to make the fern leaf into black and white. (Beware of too much of brightness would distort the image)

5. Press W, or select the magic wand tool, and remember to set the tolerance to 50, and then start selecting the outer part of the leaf and start hitting the delete key to remove the rest of the image, since we’d like to remain the leaf itself only.

6. You should be seeing something like this after you’d removed the white space.

7. Open the _MZS0365.jpg in photoshop, and then hit Ctrl + U to bring up the hue/saturation pop out, remember to tick “Colorize” then only start adjusting the value accordingly. The result should be as shown in the image.

8. Create a new document with the dimension of 1280 x 1024 px, 72 dpi, then bring the color palette out and click somewhere between dark grey and black, then fill up the background with that color.

9. Create a new layer and then drag the colorized _MZS0365.jpg into the new document that had been created. Rotate 90 degree Clock Wise then apply blending mode - Multiply, so that it would naturally blend into the background color.

10. Download the watercolor brushes set from HERE. Then start painting using 200 px ~ 300 px, with different colors, brush types and brush settings to achieve something like what I had done in the image. (A very good way to tilt the brush angle is to alter the brush angle from the brush tip shape. Brushes panel could be brought up by hitting F5.)

11. Enlarge the brushes you had drawn to the example I give and place them somewhere around the center.

12. Apply gaussian blur to the brushed layer. A value somewhere 150 is good enough to spread and fade the layer to dim.

13. The result should be something like what I’d shown. Duplicate the brushed layer by hitting Ctrl + J, then setting the blending mode of the duplicate layer to “Color Dodge”

14. Group the two layers into one and name Aurora, then duplicate the group and name Aurora 1. Select the color dodge layer in Aurora 1, hit D to bring the color back to default, select a brush with 300 px and 0% hardness, then start brushing around the layer, creating something like what I had did, then move the whole group to the top-right corner of the canvas. Duplicate the Aurora group and name the duplicate group as Aurora 2, repeat the same brushing process, and then move it to somewhere above the center, towards the right. Now we could see the light flowing from center to the top right.

15. Now, bring the cleaned fern leaf into the canvas, and remember to set the blending mode to “color dodge’. You’ll be seeing there’s some white uncleaned space in the fern leaf, do not worry, hit the W key now to select Magic Wand Tool, then start select those tiny white spaces and clean them one by one.

16. After that, hitting D to bring the color back to default, press on the layer, start brushing over the outer part of the fern leaf, with the same brush settings as said previously. 300 px, 0 hardness, and black color. You would achieve something as shown in the image.

17. Duplicate the fern leaf layer to brighten up the fern leaf. Ensure that the blending mode is set to color dodge.

18. Duplicate the fern leaf layer again, but this time insteading of overlapping the fern leaf layer, drag it down, positioning the duplicate layer beneath the first fern leaf layer. Apply the radial blur effect, drag the amount to somewhere around 70, not too much, else the blur effect would not be seen, and then press OK. Then change the blending mode from color dodge to lighten. Ensure the opacity of this layer is set to 50.

19. Double click the radial blurred layer, to bring up the layer style. Set the value of inner shadow and color overlay accordingly.

20. The fern leaf is quite beautiful right now, but that’s not the end of the tutorial yet. I would like the leaf to glow more.

21. Duplicate the radial blurred layer, and then create a vector masking on it. Drag the layer to beneath the radial blurred layer, use brush with the same settings as mentioned, click the masking layer and start brushing over as shown in the image. Then, double click the layer to bring the layer style again, untick the inner shadow, and press OK. Set the blending mode to Linear Dodge(Add). This is the main key to make the glowing effect apparent. Swoosh, it’s beautiful but it’s not done yet.

22. Bring up the color palette and start picking the color to somewhere light blue and press OK. As you can see, the center part towards top left corner is kinda lack of blue color. So let’s create a new layer and brushed somewhere around there and then apply the gaussian blur effect to somewhere around 170 pixels. Not too much, else the effect would not be seen.

23. Set the blending mode to Vivid Color to make sure the color transition is smooth and naturally blended into the background.

24. Hit f5 and set the settings accordingly to the images. Remember to ensure the brush blending mode is normal, opacity and fill are 100%. Then you could start picking different colors and brushing from the inside towards the outside to create as if every leaf is faded into pixel.

 

25. Last but not least, download the font Avant Gardfe Bk Bt from HERE. Set the character settings accordingly to the image I’d shown you. Then select the text tool and click on somewhere near to the right, but aligned horizontally and equally balanced from top or bottom. Type in whatever you would like to type, then change the blending mode to Overlay. It’s finished!