nik ainley digital art studio near me in new

zorich42757 May 01, 2023 Comment

In this tutorial Nik Ainley walks us through the process of making a spectacular image. This tutorial focuses on the big picture steps taken to create this image. You'll learn some incredible techniques in this tutorial, and get a view into how Nik creates beautiful photo-manipulation based images. Let's check it out.

Hello everyone, before we get down to actually starting any Photoshop work I thought I would say a few words. Since this is a fairly long article, there are some points I need to make on what to expect from it, how it differs from the majority of tutorials, and my philosophy on tutorials themselves.

First, and most importantly, I should state that this is by no means a tutorial for beginners. I would say that at least an average level of Photoshop knowledge is needed, as well as a fairly good understanding of Photoshop terminology. I will explain how to do things, or give keyboard shortcuts for the less common commands, but won't be explaining how to run a Gaussian blur, or how to select a layer. If you need to know how to do these things you are reading the wrong tutorial!

Meet Nik Ainley & His Screensavers, Prints & Digital Art

Basically, the idea behind this tutorial is to document the process I used while making this image from start to finish. Now this probably means it doesn't qualify as a traditional tutorial at all, as I had very little idea of what the end result would be when I started. Consequently, there are steps taken to produce effects or changes that might not actually be included in the final image, as I decided to remove them at a later stage. I might also seem to do things in a rather odd order. This order is just how things occurred to me, rather than every step having been planned prior to getting started.

Realistically, it would also be almost impossible for me to record every single action I make while producing an image. Not just because it would result in about 5000 steps, but also because it would completely disrupt my working process trying to note everything down. I'm sure like me, you would find it very difficult to create a cohesive image if you had to keep stopping every couple of seconds to write something down! I have however included all of what I consider to be the important steps and techniques.

Another way in which this article might differ from a more traditional 'recipe' style tutorial is the lack of precise instructions. You won't find much like 'now add a glow of this exact color, this size, this opacity' or 'now run a filter with these exact settings.' There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that I think this approach is unsuitable for an image like this that utilizes many different techniques. It's fine for a method on how to reproduce an exact text style, or icon , but not here.

D Text Pdf

Secondly, I feel that many decisions such as what color to use, how light something should be, or how blurry is really down to individual artist's taste. I could tell you the exact hex codes of every color I've used, but I'm sure that everyone would have different ideas of what they think looks good. I try to give instructions where I think they are needed for the process being discussed.

So in summary, this isn't the sort of tutorial you can follow like a cookbook and end up with the same image as me. However, I hope that by explaining my methods you will be able to pick up some Photoshop skills, and learn about parts of the program you didn't know before.

Since, during the course of producing this image I will be using similar methods repeatedly, I will only give a full explanation the first time. Rather than repeat the steps I use for e.g. photo extraction ten times, I will describe them once, and from then on simply say 'extract the photo.'

What Does Digital Artist Do?

Anyway, it's time to start thinking about creating this image. Here is the photo I started with; I got it from iStock. I will be combining this with other photos which I will show as I introduce them.

With a photo-manipulation based image like this, finding good photos to work with is absolutely key. I can look at up to 10, 000 photos just to find the right one that I am willing to pay for, which is of good quality. It doesn't matter how fancy your Photoshop skills are if you are working with poor photos. Spend the time here and it will show in your final image. If you need somewhere to find photos, I find this site excellent for all sorts of graphic resources: Bluevertigo.

Chances are you will need to do some work to your photo before starting, even if it is of high quality. My photo is of a good size to use as my canvas, so I am happy to just open it up in Photoshop and work on it directly. Its size is 2912 x 4368 pixels. Working at high resolution gives greater control, and will allow the image to be printed at a decent size in the future if needed.

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The first thing that strikes me is the image is too dark. To sort this out I run a shadows/highlight adjustment on it to bring out the dark sides of the face without completely killing the contrast.

Next I want to neutralize the color cast of the image slightly, so I perform a color balance adjustment. I add some more blue, cyan and green into the image until I find the skin tone a more pleasing color. Since I will be getting rid of the background, hair, and clothing, the face is really the only part that I am concerned with here.

The final thing I do is to clone tool out his few freckles/spots. I find them distracting and unnecessary. Use the healing tool if you like, but I find the clone tool a lot more reliable.

The New Way To Create 3d Text

Now for the almost inevitable step that every photo-manipulator hates, extraction. I want to cut out the background so it doesn't distract me. I can replace it later if necessary. Now there are endless ways to extract an image, and which one to use really depends on what you are trying to cut out. In this case, I have a fairly irregular shape but nothing overly complex. That means I can't just do it by hand.

First, I create a layer behind my photo and fill it with a bright color (yellow here) that contrasts sharply with it. This is so that when I start cutting him out I will see very easily which pixels I am hiding. I then add a layer mask, zoom in, and start tracing around his face with a small brush. Since I plan to cover up the hair and neck, I just roughly cut these out for now. No point tracing carefully around something that's going to be hidden anyway.

For a bit more detail on this method of extraction, here's a very old tutorial of mine that should still be helpful: Extraction

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Once I had extracted what I wanted, I changed the yellow background layer to black as I wanted this image to have a dark background. The face is leaning a bit so I wanted to rotate it to a better alignment. To help I added a couple of guides. Then I lined up the eyes and nose with them as best as I could.

I also wanted to turn the face to look at me so it is more symmetrical. To do this I used a warp transform to pull the face into a better alignment.

Now although I don't want the face to be perfectly symmetrical, I did find the right (his left) eye a bit too closed. I decided to replace it with a reflected version of the other eye. To do this took a few steps.

Chizube Onuorah (nigeria), Digital Contemporary Artist

First, I duplicated the face and reflected it horizontally using the transform tool. I then dropped the opacity down and aligned the reflected eye over the one I wanted to replace before putting it back to 100% opacity. I then added a 'reveal none' layer mask (hold down ALT while Clicking the add layer mask icon). Then, using a big soft brush, I brushed white onto the mask over the old eye to reveal the new eye. This way I made sure the new eye blended in nicely.

PS I have added a gradient to the background here. There was no particular reason to this, just one of the many little things I do while making an image depending on how I feel. You'll notice more small irrelevant changes like this throughout the article.

I also decided that his eyes were a little too puffy, and so smoothed the skin out just below them. To do this took a few steps as well.