Introduction

The premise for this photo manipulation and poster design was inspired by stories such as The Borrowers and Tom Thumb. The concepts used are not new, but I don’t think they’ve been explored nearly enough, especially digitally.

There’s a broad range of techniques to use and ideas to employ.  Following this tutorial should enhance your skills with paths, layer styles, smart objects, filters and of course lighting.

Images Used

Following along? You’ll need these.

• Walkman Player
• Motherboard Circuit
• VHS Cogs
• VHS Circuit
• Image of a Tape
• Woman Cleaning Thanks to Ingorrr
• The workman on the dustbin
• Man Cleaning a Bus Thanks to Elsie esq.

Thanks to the artists who provided these, please remember to follow their rules and credit them where appropriate.

Preview

As always, here’s a quick preview of the design we’ll be creating.

Step 1

To start off, fire up Photoshop and place this walkman player image into a new document.

Step 2

We need to change the contrast, so we’ll add an adjustment layer – go to the half black and white circle at the bottom of the layers palette and click it to bring up the Adjustment Layers tab. Adjust the settings to: Output 21, Input 33.

Step 3

Create a new layer and grab a soft brush, set the flow to 15%, and the color to a light blue. Brush over some of the walkman like the image referenced below. These areas are going to act as guides so we know where to add cut-away sections. This step is very helpful, but optional, we’ll end up turning this layer off later in the tutorial.

Step 4

Now, we’ll use the areas that we brushed in the previous step. Draw a shape like in the following image, using the pen tool. It’s important to make sure the pen is set to paths, not shape layers. You can use the freeform pen tool to draw paths; this is especially good when you have a pen tablet. I spent some extra time making sure these had nice curves with no jagged points.

Step 5

In the paths palette, double click the path to save it (otherwise you can lose it if you create a new path) – and rename it something memorable.

Step 6

Using the Pen Tool, draw another shape on the right side of the Walkman. Again use the blue brushed area as a guide, save the path by double clicking it in the layers palette.

Step 7

To select the two paths at the same time Ctrl click one, then holding Ctrl + Shift click the other. The little pointer has a square in it and this should have a cross when you press shift. You can also press alt to get a minus and take away a selection.

Step 8

With this selection still active, create a new layer. Press ‘D’ on the keyboard to set the foreground and background colours to black and white. Then press ‘X’ to swap them around. With white as your foreground colour fill these shapes. Hit Ctrl + D to deselect them. Then, just below the opacity bar you’ll find the fill, reduce it to zero for the previous layer. We do this so that we can add a layer style (you can’t add a layer style to a selection). Now double click to the right of the layer to bring up the layer styles window and add a 1 pixel white stroke.

Step 9

Place this image of a motherboard circuit into the document below the stroke outline we just created. Look at this image for reference, we want the circuit on the left outline positioned so the edges of the circuit’s are at the same angle as the walkman. Lower the layer opacity so you can do this accurately.

Step 10

Ctrl click the first cut out shape to select it.  Now with the area we want selected, we can add a layer mask to reveal the background. To do this, click the circle in a square at the bottom of the layer’s palette. The reason we use layers masks is because they are non-destructive, they can be edited again and again as opposed to deleting parts of the image.

After deselecting you should end up with the following image.

Step 11

Now duplicate this layer and set the original blend mode to Multiply and the copied layer to Colour Dodge. You should have an image like below. This gives the X-Ray cutaway a much more interesting effect, and leaves the shine on the edge of the walkman.

Step 12

Select all the layers you have so far and press ctrl+ G to put them in a group, being organized helps us to find things when we need to. Now for the right hand outline at the front we’ll repeat steps 10 and 11,  using the same image motherboard circuit. Arrange the image under the stroke where you think it works best, like the following image. Then Cltr click the stroke layer and add a layer mask, duplicate the layer, change the original layer’s blend mode to multiply and the copy’s to colour to dodge. This is what you should have.

Step 13

Now we’re going to draw the 3 main cut-away outlines where the tape goes. We’ll call this the ‘tape area’ and these the ‘tape outlines’. Draw the paths with the pen tool or freeform pen tool. If it helps, turn off the visibility of the first group. You should end up with 3 shapes like the images below that will make up the tape area.

Step 14

Go through each path on the tape area and stroke it like we did earlier in this tutorial. Create a new layer for each new stroke and fill. If it looks different than how you expected it to go, delete the layer, back to the path and edit it, then stroke it again.

Step 15

To begin the tape area we’ll start on the left, the far left and middle areas will be covered with the same image. Place this image ‘VHS cogs‘ into a new document in Photoshop. As you‘ll notice if you hit Ctrl + Alt + I it’s fairly large which is perfect for the detail we need in our image. Now cut out a similar area with the Marquee Tool and copy it to a new layer (Ctrl + J). Then deselect and drag it (holding shift) into the X-Ray document.

Step 16

Add a Curves Adjustment Layer to this new circuit layer with an Output 44 and Input 188. This is just to take the shine off the flash I used when I took the picture.

Step 17

Now we’ll move the circuit into place. To do so press Ctlr + t to bring up the Free Transform Tool. Now, rotate the image counter clockwise. A useful tip is to press the arrow key (or enter) every time you’ve moved the image into a difficult position. This way you won’t have to go back over things. Next bring up the free transform tool again, then right click and hit distort and move it into position. I like to think in terms or 3D. If you just think the circuit image is a 3D plane with a texture on it (which it is), you simply have to lower the back end to place the image into the correct perspective. Remember the images were taken from directly above so quite a bit of manipulation is required.

Step 18

Once it’s in a position you’re happy with Ctrl + click the stroke outline (or path) like we did before. Hold down Ctlr + Shift to get the cross on the finger curser and select both the tape outlines on the left. Add a Layer Mask to those 2 selections.

Step 19

Duplicate this layer, like we did before and set the original layer to Multiply and the copy to Overlay. Now we need to add a layer with white, beneath the strokes and circuits in the tape area. Ctrl + click the 3 shapes we’ve drawn on the tape area and fill them with white. This helps bring a light to the circuits we are going to add, this can be seen clearly if you turn this layer off once the circuits are in place.

Step 20

Group this left side of the tape area and label it something applicable, this makes it easier to toggle the visibility on and off without forgetting which layers we are using. Now we’ll do what we did earlier, open up this image of the ‘VHS circuit‘ in a new document, make a cut-out similar to the image referenced below. Use the marquee tool and Ctlr + J to copy it into a new layer. Then deselect it and drag it (while holding down shift) into the X-Ray document.

Step 21

Once in the X-Ray document, add a curves adjustment layer with Output 43 and Input 59.

Step 22

Position the circuit similar to how we did it in step 17, using the image below as a reference. Use the Free Transform Tool (Ctrl+ T) and distort it (right click) into position. Also resize the image, but remember if you make it smaller than you’d like and you have to enlarge it later you’ll lose quality.

Step 23

Now Ctrl + click the right tape outlines and add a layer mask. Duplicate the layer and set both the layers to multiply.

Step 24

Place this image of a tape into the document right below the strokes for the outlines, but above the circuits. Resize and position it using free transform and distort. Make the edges line up, for the tape and tape area. Lower the opacity so you can see clearly where to put it.

Step 25

Now cut out the outside of the tape using the pen tool, aim to be accurate however we’ll refine the edge later on. Double click the path to save it, and then Ctrl click it to bring up the selection.

Step 26

With the selection active add a layer mask. Click Select->Refine Edge, at the bottom you can scroll through how you want the preview to be. Use the values shown here, however if you need to remove more increase the feather value. Then press Ctrl + Shift + I to inverse the selection and erase away the extra.

Step 27

With the layer mask selected, Ctlr + click the tape outline strokes (or paths). Fill this selection with black to reveal the layer below. Then deselect using Ctrl + D and you should have the following result.

Step 28

Again, to create a pseudo X-Ray effect we’ll duplicate this tape layer & put the original blend mode on Colour Dodge and the copy on Lighten. Then reduce the copied layer’s Opacity down to around 24%.

Step 29

Bring in this image of a woman cleaning into a new document. First off we’ll extract her out using the pen tool. It shouldn’t matter too much if you make mistakes as we’ll be reducing the size quite a bit. Now, use the Lasso Tool (holding alt) to isolate the end of the mop. With the end selected change the colour from blue to white. Then click Image->Adjustments->Hue/Saturation and input the values shown below.

Step 30

Next bring the mop figure into our working document. Put it into a group and place it above all the other layers. Add a layer above the mop woman and clip it to this layer. This will be the shading that blends the figure in. Use a linear gradient set from black to transparent and draw a gradient from the top left hand corner of the figure to the lower right hand corner then lower this layer’s Opacity to around 35%.

Step 31

On the figure layer add a Satin Layer style and use the settings below. Also change the Contour to Half Round. This makes the areas in the light glow and the areas in the shadow darker. This adds to the realism of the figure. If the effect is overbearing, lower the style’s opacity.

Step 32

Open up this image of a man standing near a fence. Extract him out using the pen tool. As you can see the fence overlaps his legs, so isolate this area and add a light grey/blue fill in a new layer. Use the eye dropper to sample from the trouser area. Change the blend mode to until the colour merges into the trousers and the fence disappears. Then merge the layers with Ctrl + E. Use the Refine Edge Tool to soften the edges, try to get as much light away from the edges as you can. Place the figure into the X-Ray document, resize it and position it so that he is looking at the controls. Then add a Satin Layer Style so the lighting fits in with the overall scene. Put in these values and set the Contour to Half Round again.

Step 33

Now we’ll create the shadow for the figure. Create a new layer below the figures layer; you can Ctrl + click the new layer icon to do this. Make a selection of the figure by Ctrl + clicking it and fill the selection with black. Lower this layer’s Opacity to 31%.

Step 34

Add a Layer Mask to the shadow layer, choose a linear gradient that goes from black to white and drag it across the shadow. It should be faded, try to copy the shadow on the walkman as closely as you can.

Step 35

Right click the Layer and choose Apply Layer Mask. This merges the Layer Mask with the shadow layer itself. Then right click again and choose convert to smart object. Now go to Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur and enter 1.6. The great thing about converting the layer to a smart object is now the filter’s are smart, so we can go back and edit them very easily. To do so, you can double click on the filter below the layer.

Step 36

Next download this image of a man cleaning a bus . Then it’s more of the same, extract him with the pen tool, refine the edge and place him into the X-Ray document. Resize him so he is in proportion with the other 2 figures. Now add a Satin Layer Style with the following settings.

Step 37

Now, repeat steps 33 – 35 to add a shadow to this figure.

Step 38

Carefully cut out the walkman using the pen tool. Inverse the selection and copy this to a new layer. Now we have the background table on a new layer. Desaturate this layer (Ctrl + shift + U) and change the blend mode to Multiply. Lower the opacity to 38%. Make sure this layer is beneath all of the small people and circuit layers. Now add a Gradient Fill Adjustment Layer on top of all the layers. Begin with #006e2e and end with #006e05. Ctrl + click the 5 outlines we drew earlier, inverse the selection and fill those selections with black so that the green only covers the cut out areas. Change the blend mode to Hue and drop the Opacity to 70%.

Step 39

Add an Exposure Adjustment Layer with the following settings. This is just to reduce the glare and shine in the image.

Step 40

Add an Adjustment Photo Filter (cooling filter LBB) lower the Opacity to 33%. Then crop the image so that the large dark bar at the top is removed. Also cut away the right side so the image so it’s more proportional. Here is my final result.

Conclusion:

Thank you for reading this tut. I hope you enjoyed it and learned something from the techniques used. With some more effort you could take this idea in many different directions. I had an inclination to change the background – perhaps to a giant hand to make the image even more surreal.

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Matte painting plays a major role in today’s films. The first known matte painting shot was made in 1907 by Norman Dawn (ASC), you can see how the traditional matte painting evolved from “The Wizard Of Oz” to the ground breaking “Avatar”. In this tutorial I’m going to show you some techniques in matte painting to create a distressed surreal cityscape.

Notes

• This tutorial is for Photoshop users with intermediate to advanced skills
• All the keyboard shortcuts are mentioned within ( )

Resources

If you are following along, you’ll need to grab the following resources.

• Buildings
• Distressed Buildings
• Destroyed Building 1
• Destroyed Building 2
• Destroyed Building 3
• Destroyed Building 4
• Clouds
• Fog Brushes
• More Fog Brush Options

Preview

Before we begin, check out a quick preview of what we will be creating.

Step 1

Just like every construction needs a blue print, so do matte paintings. Here’s a little sketch I created to map out my project. The numbered sections shown here will be used as a reference throughout this tutorial.

Step 2

I found this pic which is a perfect fit for the blue print. Open it in photoshop, and remove the clouds using the Magic Wand (W) tool, or whichever pixel cutting technique you are most familiar with.

Step 3

In this painting we could do without any green foliage, so turn the plants in the foreground into pigmentless plants. Select the Lasso Tool (L) and roughly draw around the bushes as shown, and set the Feather Radius to 60. Then alter the curves to approximately what is referenced below.

Step 4

This step requires some decision making on your part. Choose which portion of the building you’d like to destroy. Then use the Lasso Tool (L) to roughly make your selections. Lastly, erase the edges using the Eraser (E) tool.

Step 5

Next, darken the building by using the Burn Tool (O) with a rust brush. It’s the perfect tool to distress the buildings like what is shown below.

Step 6

Now lets add some rubble and gutted patches to the buildings. Start in the sequence that was layed out in the blue print. I found this pic suitable for the section marked as ‘B1′. Cut out the portion required, and name it (B1 Grid).

Step 7

Now paste that piece back into your original canvas and blend it with the prespective of the building. Select the Free Transform tool (Cmd + T), then with the Move Tool (V) selected while holding (Ctrl) move the edges to match the prospective.

Step 8

Once you are settled on the prospective, duplicate the layer untill the gap is filled. Then merge all those (B1 Grid) layers and erase some parts of the grid to show it’s broken.

Step 9

Now adjust the curves to the following output. Red 150, green 122, and blue 95.

Step 10

Next, apply similar destroy and burn techniques that you used in steps 4 and 5. We will come back to this layer for more details later in this tutorial.

Step 11

Lets start to work on the B2 section. Choose the best pic for B2′s destruction, I used this image. Now, repeat the same steps you followed in step 7 while aligning the B1 Grid layer. Be sure to take your time with any of these perspective steps, getting them wrong will be detrimental to the entire effect.

Step 12

Change the Exposure values to the following: Exposure: -0.63, Offset: +0.0061, Gamma Correction: 0.94.

Step 13

Grab this photo to be used for the middle of ‘B2′ and name the layer ‘Broken Floors’. The floors in the middle of B2 need some attention. We should concentrate on the perspective. First, draw some lines matching the perspective using the Pen Tool. Then use the Free Transform tool to adjust the floor lines with the building lines.

Step 14

Change the exposure values to: Exposure: -1.22, Offset: 0, and Gamma Correction: 1.00. Then select the Burn Tool (O) and use your creativity to make it look old and destroyed.

Step 15

Now it’s time to let your creative juices flow. In much the same way as the previous steps begin filling in the gaps with distressed buildings. Remember this is a surreal destroyed cityscape, so you can’t go too wrong, as long as you’re creative and maintain consistent color, perspective and shadows. The steps I used are referenced in the sample pics below.

Step 16

Now lets add some details to the ‘B1 Grid” layer. Add a new layer, then select the Lasso Tool (L) and outline some hanging grass. Fill your selections with the colour #5d6e5e. Again select the Lasso Tool (L) and add shades to the grass with colour #3a413a.

Step 17

Every abandoned building needs some broken windows, so lets add a few. Select the Brush Tool (B) and choose the colour #0c0d11, now start painting some random boxes which represent the broken windows. When it comes to painting details, your creativity is what makes the difference between a beginner and a professional.

Step 18

Now add some clouds to the backdrop which suits the environment we created. Drop them into our cityscape behind all the building layers.

Step 19

Grab some fog brushes and make the scene more realistic by brushing some fog where it’s needed. Be wary not to go overboard with this step.

That’s A Wrap

That wraps up this tutorial on matte painting. Let us know what you think, drop a comment using the form below.

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we can start by using any one of a number of different extraction methods (in this case, I used channels, which is another article all on its own).

This is that article. Actually, it’s the first of two articles. It seems that there was quite a bit of interest in knowing more about channels and how I used them to extract the woman from the background in that previous article. Well, I’m more than happy to comply with that request. In this first article, we are going to cover some of the basic concepts behind channels. The follow-up article will be more of a tutorial-like piece, in which I will work through a channels-based extraction.

So let’s get started. For the purposes of this discussion, we’re going be using this simple image of an apple, which can be downloaded for free over at Dreamstime.

Channel Basics

Now, we’ll start with some of the true fundamentals. First, you can access your channels by opening up the Channels Palette (Window » Channels from in the menu). This is where we will be doing most of our work, both in this article and in the follow up tutorial.

In this case, we can see four channels – RGB, Red, Green and Blue. By the way they are laid out in the palette, they actually look a lot like layers. Don’t be confused, though. That is strictly a matter of interface. Channels and Layers are entirely different entities.

You may also notice that the channels seem to reflect the current colour mode of the document – which is RGB. This is indeed true, and leads us to another important point. The Channels Palette will change based on the colour mode of the document. This is because each colour mode uses a different method for defining colour, and at their most basic level channels are simply a programatic way of displaying the interaction of basic primary colours, which combine to create a much larger range of full colour.

The Big Two: RGB and CMYK

I’m sure that many of you are familiar with basic concepts of how colours are mixed, but since this is one of the fundamental building blocks of how channels work, let’s quickly review our two basic colour structures.

First, we have RGB, which is the colour mode of all things like your monitor, television and various handheld devises. RGB makes use of concepts of additive colour, combining tiny bits of red, green and blue lights in varying degrees in order to create a full and rich colour gamut.

On the other hand, we have CMYK, which is what is used for print. With this kind of colour, a printer or press lays down tiny dots of cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks, which blend together to create the illusion of colour. While pixels on a monitor actually emit coloured light, the tiny dots on a page absorb coloured lights, reflecting only the colour that you see. As more ink is mixed together, more light is absorbed. That’s why it is called subtractive colour – because less and less gets reflected as you add more ink.

I should also note that when you’re working in CMYK your screen is still displaying in RGB – Photoshop is simply approximating CMYK colour for display. If you want to learn a bit more of the science, read about additive colour and subtractive colour on Wikipedia.

For our purposes, the important thing to know is that each of these colour models require different sets of colour information, which are reflected in their types of channels. Let’s examine this a bit more closely.

First, open up the image and then pop open the Channels palette. When downloaded from the internet, the image should be in RGB mode by default, so you should see four different channels. Actually, there are three channels (Red, Green and Blue), and then an automatic, and uneditable channel (called RGB). Each channel visualizes the three different streams of colours that compose the document, which we can see by taking another look at our previous screenshot:

The Photoshop default is for each channel is actually represented by a simple greyscale image (though we’ll look at how to change that). For example, here is the red channel for our apple:

It may seem odd that the apple itself actually seems washed out, rather than strong and vibrant, which you might expect given that the fruit itself is also red. There is a good reason for this. Within an RGB channel, any white pixel will be at its maximum brightness for that colour – red in this case. In other words, it will emit the maximum amount of red light. Conversely, wherever it is black, the pixel will not emit any light of that colour. So, because the apple is red, pixels that make up that part of the image are actually quite light.

Conversely, if we convert the apple image to CMYK, we will see something quite different. We now have five channels, one for cyan, magenta, yellow and black, as well as the automatic combined channel.

In this case the channels work somewhat differently, because we are working in a colour space that is intended to mimic the workings of ink on paper. As such, you will find that wherever a pixel is white, it is meant to represent blank, unprinted paper. Wherever a pixel is black, it is meant to represent an area where the paper is covered with the maximum saturation for that particular colour.

Let’s look at the magenta channel as an example. To create red with ink, we can actually combine magenta with yellow. So, if we printed our apple image, we would expect there to be a lot of magenta ink used. This is accurately reflected in the magenta channel.

Notice that the areas of the deepest red are the most saturated with black, whereas areas that contain relatively little red (such as the reflections and the yellow area near the top of the apple) remain much whiter.

That’s really the basics of what channels are. They are simply a way of splitting apart the different colour information in a document, giving you the ability to make tweaks and adjustments on a colour by colour basis. A quick word of warning, though: using channels to make extensive colour modifications on a heavily layered document can be a bit tricky. Making a change in a channel will still only effect the current layer, so I would recommend doing some experimenting.

In fact, I always recommend experimenting! I’ve found that it’s the absolute best way to learn.

Seeing Channels in Colour

Personally, I prefer working with the default greyscale rendering of the channels. However, if you’re finding it difficult to wrap your head around how the colours are actually working, Photoshop has a little interface option to help make it easier for you. Select Photoshop » Preferences » Interface from the menu (PC: Edit » Preferences » Interface). In the dialogue box you should see a little check box with the option “Show Channels In Colour”. By default this is turned off, but try turning it on. In RGB mode, the channels palette and red channel should look something like this:

In CMYK mode, the channels palette and magenta channel should look something like this:

This little trick can be super helpful when it comes to visualizing the colour behind unique channels. However, when it comes to using them for extractions, it can make things a little bit more difficult. So, in the next article, I will have this option turned off again

The Other Colour Modes

While RGB and CMYK are the two most common colour modes in my experience, they are certainly not the only ones, and the other colour modes also change the way the channels work. The following is a brief summary of how some of the other colour modes affect channels.

Lab Mode

This colour space is significantly different from either RGB or CMYK because it is not device dependent. In other words, it is not designed to mix colours, either of ink or light. Instead, it is designed more to emulate human perception of colour, by actually separating the lightness values from the colour values.

There are basically three channels. The first is the Lightness channel, which controls the relative lightness or darkness of a particular pixel. The other two channels (called a and b) contain actual colour information, by determining the relative saturation.

By far the most complex of all the colour modes (at least in my opinion), trying to explain the entire Lab colour model would be an entire article onto itself! It might even take several articles. For the most part, though, it appears to be used primarily for post-production work in photography, so it could be helpful in terms of establishing a proper colour balance. In terms of actual extraction, though, it’s probably not going to be all that useful.

Multi-Channel

As the name would suggest, this one definitely makes use of channels. Basically, though, it amounts to an unmanaged CMYK. Sort of. If you convert to multi-channel right out of RGB, the channels will be converted into CMY, with no black (K). However, if you convert out of CMYK, you will keep all four channels.

The primary difference, though, is that you can actually change the colour of a channel. So, instead of having a cyan channel, you could have a channel dedicated to a unique Pantone colour. This can make for some interesting effects and can be beneficial when preparing a Photoshop design for printing with alternate colours.

From an extraction perspective, it doesn’t really offer anything that is not already available in CMYK mode.

Indexed

An index image is basically just that, an index of colours which are defined across a grid, which represents the canvas itself. Each pixel is essentially given a simple and static colour value from the index of 256 colours. This is the kind of technology that is used in image formats such as GIF.

It is useful for maintaining small file sizes, but makes no real use of channels. If you look in the Channels Palette, all you will see is the actual index itself. This means that indexed mode is completely useless when it comes to channel based extractions.

Greyscale

This colour mode is exactly what it sounds like, and really isn’t a colour mode at all, since it contains no colour. In this mode, the image is basically reduced to values of lighness and darkness, as represented by white, black and a full range of greys.

It can be useful in some circumstances, such as preparing a design for simple one colour print, but is not really all that useful for extraction purposes.

Bitmap

This is the most basic of all colour modes, and is comprised entirely of black or white pixels. There is not even any shades of grey. Again, it has only uses a single black and white channel and has no real use for running extractions.

Duo Tone

Duotone (and the related tritone and quadtone) is kind of like a fake colour mode, insofar as the main image remains primary a greyscale, with highlights, midtones and shadows. You set a colour for each “tone” you choose and then adjust that colour’s levels to dictate how you want it to effect the various tones in your image.

It’s a very different way of working with colour, and is primarily used for adding interesting colour treatments to a black and white photograph – such as creating a customized sepia effect. Since it only has a single greyscale channel, it really isn’t much good when it comes to extractions.

Command-Clicking Channels

Well that’s a basic run down of channels. There’s a lot more we could talk about, but that should cover most of the basics that you will need to know for creating extractions. We’ll get into the nitty gritty in the Part 2 tutorial!

For those of you who just can’t wait though, here’s a little preview. To create a selection from a channel, all you have to do is Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) on the preview for any given channel. A selection will be made based on the black, white and grey pixels for that channel (with white being fully selected and black being unselected).

Pretty simple right? Well yes – and no. It would be incredibly rare for a default colour channel to be ready for a perfect extraction. It usually takes a bit of tweaking and modifying, and that’s exactly what we’ll get into in Part 2. Be sure to subscribe so that you don’t miss it!

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‘Tis the season for snow and ice in the northern hemisphere, so I decided to create some cool ice cubes (please excuse the pun). In this tutorial we will go through the steps needed to create realistic ice cubes inside 3ds Max and add some finishing touches in Photoshop.

Step 1

To begin, open up 3ds Max and create a chamfered box shape with the same dimensions for the length and width, and about two thirds of that for the height. To do this, go to the command panel and under the create tab select extended primitives. The chamfered box enables you to have rounded corners and edges like on a real ice cube. The fillet should be set to around 2.7. Use 6 for the Length, Width and Height segments so there are plenty of vertices to play with.

Step 2

Now we’ll convert the box to an editable poly. Select the box, then right click and find, ‘convert to editable poly’. This allows you to move the separate parts of the box, such as the vertices that make up the points of the shape.

Step 3

In the command panel under the modify tab (with the editable poly selected) highlight vertex, so you can now edit the vertices.

Step 4

Now in the images change the points of the middle and corner vertices to match the shape of an ice cube. You could use a modifier, however I prefer these results as they are more accurate and controllable. Use the move tool (W) on the keyboard to move the vertices along the axis. (The axis gizmo will turn yellow for their respective plane).

Step 5

Keep going until the entire box looks like an ice cube.

Step 6

Now we only have one ice cube but we would like about 4. So, select the chamfered box we just edited, right click, and select clone and choose copy. The copy will be in exactly the same place as the original, so move it into place (W). Select both cubes using CTRL and copy and move them again so you have a total of four cubes.

Step 7

Now we’ll move them into position, use the axis to move them up or down and back and forth. Get them stacked on top of each other so they look more realistic.

Step 8

Now the cubes are all in line, however they still look unnatural so use the rotate tool (E) on the keyboard to rotate them into a position that matches ice cubes. Take your time, I like to spend a decent amount of time getting this correct.

Step 9

So now that the general shape of the ice cubes is finished we can progress. Press F9 to render out a version, as you can see the background is black, but we need white.

To change this go to Rendering and select Environment (8). In the environment and effects tab click color to bring up the colour picker. Drag the slider on the left down to change the color to white.

Press F9 again to render out a version, and now you can see the background is white.

Step 10

To alter the materials to an ice effect we have to change the renderer from the default scanline renderer to Mental Ray. To do this go to rendering and select render setup, scroll down to assign renderer. In the assign renderer tab next to production, click choose renderer and select Mental Ray.

Step 11

Go to rendering material editor (M) to assign a material. Click the standard button and choose Arch & Design (mi) at the top of the list and hit ok.

Step 12

In the BRDF rollout select by IOR, hovering over this you can see this defines how the reflectivity depends on angle known as ‘Fresnel Reflections’, best suited for dielectric materials such as water and ice.

Step 13

In the advanced rendering options rollout uncheck skip reflections, this saves time rendering as these reflections are weak. Check solid, this means light refracts through the object.

Step 14

We’ll now set up the material change, the IOR to 1.33, for water. A good tip here is if you need to look at how settings appear, hover over it and the guide appears; here it is the index of refraction. In the refraction box change the transparency to 0.90 and leave the glossiness at 1.0. Also change the values in the reflection box, the reflectivity 0.7 and glossiness to 0.95. Change the diffuse level to 0 and color to black, it’s always good to set the diffuse color to as dark as possible with materials that have reflections and refractions such as these.

Step 15

Now that the material is setup we can assign it to our ice cubes and render out a copy. Select all the boxes and in the material editor click assign material to selection.

Then hit F9 to render out a copy. Keep rendering and changing the viewport until you find a view that you think works best.

Step 16

Save the image by clicking in the save icon the top left corner, choose to save as a Tiff file and check the store alpha channel. The alpha channel saves a channel around the objects so it’s already cut out when we go to edit it in Photoshop.

Step 17

Now we can begin the finishing touches in Photoshop. Open up the Tiff file in Photoshop and add a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer. I set my brightness to –59 and contrast to -2, play around with these settings until you get something that works best.

Step 18

Hit Ctrl + Alt+ C to bring up the Canvas Size dialogue and increase the canvas by 200 pixels for both width and height.

Step 19

Go to the channels palette (if its not visible you may have to go to window in the menu and select channels). Ctrl click the’ Alpha 1’ channel to make a selection around the ice cubes.

Then go back to the layers palette and create a new layer. Inverse the selection with Ctrl + Shift + I.

Then create a gradient from black (#000000) to dark grey (#45494d)  and holding shift drag a gradient from bottom to top.

Step 20

Next well add a gradient fill. Go to the adjustment layers in the layers palette, and select gradient. Start the gradient from a light blue (#2084e2) to transparent at 90 degrees. If this seems too strong, lower the opacity.

Step 21

Now we’ll add some bubbles in the ice. To do so, download these bubble brushes. Once installed, create a new layer, then select black and brush some different sized bubbles on the ice, remember to be subtle with this effect.

Step 22

Now we’ll add the shadow. Create a new layer and select the ice by Ctrl + clicking on the ‘Alpha 1’ channel, fill this selection with black. Press Ctrl + T to free transform the shape, choose distort, and drag from the top down and to the right.

With the shadow in place Ctrl + click the alpha channel again to get a selection of the ice. Inverse the selection and add a layer mask. Then selecting the layer, not the mask, and apply a gaussian blur at 8.2 pixels. Finally lower the opacity of the shadow later to 24%.

Step 23

Now we’ll create the reflection for the ice cubes. Find the original ice layer, select the alpha channel and hit Ctrl + J to copy this selection to a new layer. Select free transform and flip this ice vertically. Then holding shift drag the ice half way down the original ice.

Lower the opacity of this layer to 11%. Add a layer mask to this layer, and with a black to white gradient fade the bottom of the reflection out. Duplicate this layer and apply a gaussian blur of 6.2 to it and finally lower the opacity to 11%.

Step 24

We are nearly finished, all the ice cubes need now is some melting water. So create a new layer and draw out the shape of melting water with the pen tool on an ice cube and fill this path with light grey.

Next bring up the layer styles options and put in these values: select Drop Shadow – change the values to opacity 20%, spread 5 and check anti–aliased.

For the Inner Shadow change opacity to 20% and leave the rest as the defaults.

For the Inner Glow change the color to black, set the blend mode to multiply and lower the opacity to 28%.

Finally add a Bevel and Emboss with depth at 83%, size to 10px, shadow mode to vivid light and colour to white.

Lower the fill to zero, create 3 more melting shapes and copy the layers style by holding alt and dragging to the melt layer.

Conclusion

I hope this tutorial was useful to you, you should have a good handle on materials and how to use some advanced rendering setups to get effective and realistic results. Im sure you definetly know how alpha channels work with 3ds Max now having covered these a lot.

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I know that a lot of people find the clipping mask to be something of a mindscrew, but I’m going to try to make this as simple and as painless as possible. So let’s get to it.

About Masks

First, let’s establish a working definition of what a mask is. Basically, a mask is an entity which controls the behavior of a collection of pixels. Generally speaking, this control centers around the relative transparency, or opacity of a given layer or collection of layers. Wherever a mask is active or “on”, a pixel becomes transparent. Where a mask is inactive or “off”, a pixel remains opaque. Moreover, a mask can be either active or inactive to varying degrees, allowing for a wide range of partial transparencies.

When combined with Photoshop’s ability to stack different layers, masks become an incredibly powerful tool, which helps grant a designer or digital artist with extremely precise control over the interaction between the different layers. For example, let’s take this beautiful image that I picked up at Dreamstime.

Now suppose we want to extract the woman from the background. To accomplish this, we can start by using any one of a number of different extraction methods (in this case, I used channels, which is another article all on its own). However, instead of destructively and wantonly deleting the unwanted pixels, I simply hid them with a mask.

The missing pixels aren’t actually gone. I’ve just made them invisible. Now, I can actually place the woman onto a completely different background, which I created using textures from a couple of my own texture packs, which you can check out here and here.

So that’s the basic concept behind masks. Now let’s take a look at the Layer Mask and Clipping Mask and how they each accomplish this same basic premise.

The Layer Mask

A Layer Mask is a one-to-one masking technique, by that I mean that a single mask is applied to a single layer. It’s possible to replicate a layer mask and apply copies to other layers, but each layer ultimately still has its own mask.

Layer masks also exist strictly as masks, and serve no other explicit purpose. They are a way to control the transparency and opacity of a single layer, but they don’t do much beyond that.

To create a Layer Mask, open up the layers palette and select the layer that you want to work on. Then, click on the mask button to create a new, blank mask. If you do this with an active selection, the selected pixels will be set to visible while the unselected pixels will be set to transparent. Any partially selected pixels will become transparent in direct relation to the degree of their selection.

In our previous example – extracting the woman from the dark background – I used a layer mask. Here is a screen shot of my layers palette.

Notice how the black and white layer mask thumbnail appears beside the layer thumbnail (or icon, if you have your palette set to display icons). This is an excellent visual representation of how the Layer Mask is actually attached directly to the layer itself.

This preview also gives you some useful functionality, which I thought I might let you in on while we’re on the subject. Try Command-clicking (PC: Ctrl-click) it to create a new selection based on the mask, similar to the way you would create a selection from a channel. You can also Shift-click the preview to quickly turn the mask on or off and Option-click (PC: Alt-click) to toggle between preview mode and the mask mode, in which you can actually see and edit the mask itself rather than the layer it’s applied to.

The Clipping Mask

The Clipping Mask, on the other hand, is an entirely different sort of beast. Where we can think of the Layer Mask as functioning as a one-to-one type entity, the Clipping mask functions more as a one-to-many type entity, in that it can actually effect multiple layers at the same time.

A clipping mask is also, by its very nature, multi-purposed. While a Layer Mask exists as a modification to a layer, a clipping mask actually is a layer, which interacts with one or more of the layers directly above it. This has some interesting “stacking” implications, which we will get to in a bit.

Personally, I still find creating a clipping mask kind of counter-intuitive. First, select the layer that you want to have masked. If you want to have multiple layers masked, select the desired layers (they must all be in direct sequence). Right click and select Create Clipping Mask from the contextual menu, and watch what happens.

The selected layers all appear indented and are masked by the first layer immediately beneath them. Maybe it’s just me, but this seems awfully quirky. I always want to create the mask by clicking on the layer that I want to become the mask (which is the first layer beneath the indents), even though I understand why that would be programatically problematic. Still, I have gotten used to the functionality over time.

Here’s a practical example. Suppose we want to “insert” the full photograph into a vector frame. The easiest way to do this in Photoshop is to fake it, using a clipping mask! First, open up your vector file and import it into Photoshop. There are a number of ways of doing this, but I usually choose to import it as a Smart Object. Since we are here on MyInkBlog, I chose to use an ink splatter vector shape. I combined several different shapes from Franz Ghori’s Spray Paints, (which I downloaded from Vecteezy) to create this splatter.

With this shape inside of the document, I can simply activate my photograph and drag it directly above my new shape layer. Then, I simply right click and create a clipping mask. Immediately, my photograph is cropped to the masking shape!

It really is that easy. Now, if I wanted to, I could select and move either the photograph itself or the clipping shape, and the mask would be update immediately. In fact you can actually see the masking change as you make alterations to either of these two layers.

Pixel Controls

One of the key differences that I want to focus on is the way that the masks actually work, by which I essentially mean the way in which they they control the transparency of the masked pixels. It’s important to understand the difference here, since it will have an impact on the way that you create your masks.

The Layer Mask is based entirely on a greyscale image. In a sense, the Layer Mask is a greyscale image, which is superimposed over the actual pixels of the layer itself, and used to calculate the effects of the mask. The relative blackness or whiteness is what controls the behaviour of the pixels. Wherever a pixel in the mask is black the corresponding pixel in the layer is set to transparent. Conversely, wherever a pixel in the mask is white, the corresponding pixel is set to opaque (or solid).

Here is the greyscale mask that I used to extract the woman from the background:

Clipping masks, on the other hand, work more upon an inheritance model. All of the layers effected by the Clipping Mask actually inherit the transparency values of the clipping layer itself. This means that a completely white layer and a completely black layer would have the same effect if used as clipping masks.

So, let’s assume that we want our ink splatter woman to be about 75% transparency. With a layer mask we could do this by using a lighter grey colour. To achieve this with our clipping mask, we can just adjust the transparency of our shape. If we take it down to 75%, our masked image automatically inherits the same properties.

The Layer Stack

There’s probably some sort of official and technical term that I am unaware of, but one of the other differences between Layer Masks and Clipping masks is something I like to call “stacking”, or the way in which the layers fall on top of each other. We’ve already discussed the way the Layer Mask works almost as part of the layer, and how the Clipping Mask is actually a layer which works to mask one or more of the layers directly above it, but what does this mean, in practical terms? Well, think of it this way – because the Layer Mask is actually attached to the layer itself, it exists outside of the layer stack (in other words, the order of the layers). When you move a layer, the mask moves with it, just as you might expect.

Not so with a Clipping Mask. In fact, this tool is actually dependant on the stack, because it involves one layer directly effecting another in direct proximity. Changing the order of the layers in the stack not only effects their interactions through transparencies and blending modes, it can actually have a significant effect on the Clipping Mask – adding to it, subtracting from it, or in some cases completely undoing it.

For example, it’s important to be aware that, if you duplicate the layer that is doing the clipping, the mask will actually be dissolved. It’s not really a huge deal, since a clipping mask can just be reestablished, but it can be a bit starling and annoying if it happens when you’re not expecting it.

Combining Them

It’s also important to note that clipping masks and layer masks don’t have an either/or kind of relationship, in which you would have to choose one or the other. They are perfectly capable of playing very nicely together, which can allow you to achieve some really great effects!

To illustrate this, let’s try combining the two different examples that we have been looking at throughout this article. Let’s suppose we still want our woman to be framed in our ink splatter, but that we also want to remove the dark background from the photograph and replace it with a nice, rich pink colour to match the thick streaks in her hair.

The first step is to use a layer mask to extract the woman, just as we’ve already discussed. Once we have the background removed, add in a new colour fill layer, and sample the colour from her hair. I perfer working with fill layers, rather than just using the paint bucket to just fill a normal layer with colour. This way, I can always go back and easily change the colour.

Next, we need to position our ink splatter under our other two layers. Then, with the photo layer and fill layer selected, we just right click and create a clipping mask. Both layers will be clipped by the shape and, after adding in our textured background, we have something like this:

Both the clipping mask and layer mask are integral to achieving this effect, each performing a different role. This just goes to show how easy it is to make them work together! Now, just for fun, we’ll just refine the design with a bit of extra work in Photoshop.

Conclusion

Well, I hope that this article has been of use to you, and that you’ve learned a thing or two about clipping and layers masks, and the differences (or similarities) in how they work. Both are powerful tools, and I guarantee that if you use Photoshop for anything beyond simple photographic touch ups, mastering these will make your life so much easier!

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Step 1

Fire up Photoshop and open up your picture. I’m using this photo that I found on Flickr.

Step 2

The easiest way that I could think of to create this style mesh overlay is through the use of a custom made Photoshop pattern. Create a new document, sized at 3px by 3px, and select ‘Transparent’ for the Background Contents. Zoom in to 1600%.

Step 3

Now, create the pattern shown below. Use the rectangle marquee tool (‘M’) to make selections, and fill those selections with black by clicking Edit->Fill and choosing black. Then choose Edit->Define Pattern.

Step 4

In this step we’ll add our custom mesh pattern on the photo. Go back to the original photo you opened. choose Layer->Layer Style->Pattern Overlay. Select your custom pattern you defined in the previous step, and drop the opacity of the pattern overlay to around 60%.

Step 5

That’s pretty much it for creating the mesh pattern overlay effect, but I think the image could benefit from a subtle vignette effect. Add a new layer to the top of the layers palette and grab the gradient tool (‘G’). Change the left side of the gradient to transparent and the right side to black. Drag out a gradient from the center of the image out to a corner. Change the blend mode to Overlay and the opacity to around 20%.

Step 6

In this last step I added a white background, and some text just below the vignette layer. Lower the opacity quite a bit, then add your text. I used Aldo for the font.

Parting Thoughts

I hope you enjoyed this quick tip. The potential uses for patterns are numerous, experiment with different ones, and different layer styles.

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In this post I would simply like to show you a quick and easy way to accomplish a similar effect. I’ll use this photo I found on Flickr to illustrate the effect, but you are welcome to use whichever photo you’d like.

Step 1 – Open & Duplicate

Open up your photo in photoshop and duplicate the background layer by selecting it in the layers palette and pressing ‘cmd + j’.

Step 2 – Gaussian Blur

Add a gaussian blur to your photo with a radius of about 5 to 10 pixels. To do so, click Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur.

Step 3 – Layer Mask

Add a layer mask to the blurred layer (Layer->Layer Mask->Reveal All). Then grab the Elliptical Marquee Tool and draw out a circle of the area that you’d like to highlight. For a perfect circle, hold down shift as you drag out your selection. Double check that you have the layer mask selected and fill your selection with black by selecting Edit->Fill then choosing black.

Step 4 – White Stroke

Don’t deselect the circle selection just yet, you will need it for the stroke and shadow. If you have deselected your circle, the best way to redo the selection is to ‘cmd + click’ on the mask, then select the inverse (‘shift + cmd + I’). Add a new layer to the top of the layers palette (Layer->New->Layer). Now click, Edit->Stroke. Choose a width of 4px, and a color of white, then click ok.

Step 5 – Shadow

Add another layer, and place it just below the white stroke layer you created. Add another stroke, this time make it 6px, and black.

Step 6 – Blur The Shadow

Add a gaussian blur to the black stroke to soften the shadow. You can go through and add the gaussian blur through the filters, or just hit ‘cmd + f’ to repeat the last filter (which in our case was the gaussian blur). I hit ‘cmd + f’ twice to make the shadow quite subtle.

Step 7 – Finishing Touches

In this last step, I added a sketchy arrow and some text. I also added a very subtle drop shadow to both. Here is the final result.

Parting Thoughts

As you can see, this is a very simple way that you can add some interest to blog images, and focus the readers attention. Don’t hesitate to drop me a comment and let me know what you think of the effect, or make mention some other techniques that you use, or that you have seen in action.

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