Some sample pages from Getting Started with Painter.

About a month ago, I published my first book (”Getting Started with Painter”), first as an ebook, soon followed by a paperback version. The ebook was priced at $19.95, and the paperback at $29.95. These prices were a bit higher than I had hoped. After some research and basically getting more familiar with the whole publishing process, I’ve been able to bring the prices of both editions down–a lot.

The eBook version is now only $9.95. The paperback is just $19.95, which is low when you consider it’s a full-color book and nearly 90 pages long. The ebook and the paperback are nearly identical to each other in content (there are additional instructions for downloading the images and brushes with the paperback, while the ebook download contains those files.) The book is an anthology of the best beginner tutorials for Painter, as seen here in Digital Image Magazine from 2008 to 2010. Click here to go to the ordering page. Here’s a summary of what’s covered.

Intro: Would Leonardo Have Used Painter?

Getting Started With Corel Painter

Painter Brush Basics

Create Your Own Custom Brushes

Basic Portrait Painting Techniques

Put Life Into Old School Portraits

Colorizing Vintage Photos

Painting Shiny, Curly Hair

A Watercolor Bridal Portrait

How to Paint a Cloud

Quick and Easy Photorealistic Water Drops

Create Realistic Texture with Painter’s Papers

Pet Portraits in Pastel

Working with Layers

10 Tips for Turning a Photo into a Painting

Another sample from the book. Click on it to order

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Learn how to use layer masks to get the dramatic side lighting look of the studio shot on the left.

I admit it: I love layer masks. Layer masks rock. For adding darks and lights to an image, nothing beats an Adjustment Layer with a Layer Mask. If you’re a diehard Dodge and Burn addict, I hope to sway you away from, er, the Dark Side. The main advantage of layer masks is they are non-destructive. You can continue to tweak and adjust as much as you like, and the main image pixels are never touched. On the other hand, once you’ve dodged or burned the original pixels, the only way back is via the Undo command. Well, instead of ranting away here on my soapbox, let’s just dive in and take a look at how layer masks can be used.

The photo above, on the left, has dramatic side lighting, created by the lighting setup in the studio. What if you wanted to get the same effect with the photo on the right, which is evenly lit? You guessed it: Layer Masks to the rescue. With the method I’m going to show you, you can add dark shadows to one side of the face, without a single pixel of paint. We will darken the existing pixels (non-destructively, of course) using a Curves adjustment layer. Then, we’ll remove the darkening from the left side of the face with a layer mask. The photo I’m using in this tutorial comes from Deviant Art member Katanaz_Stock.

After opening your image in Photoshop, insert an adjustment layer. The easiest way to do this is to click on the icon in the middle at the bottom of the layers palette. It looks like a circle that’s half white and half black. Click on the icon to get a drop-down list of adjustment layer types, and select Curves. This gives you a new layer with Curves and a layer mask all ready to go. In the Curves dialog, grab the curve a bit below the middle, and drag it downwards. As you do this, keep your eye on the right side of the face. Drag downward just until the side of the face (our right) is barely visible. (See below).

At first, the whole image is affected. We'll fix that in the next step.

Now we’re ready to do our layer mask magic. There are some keyboard letters that are useful for this. First, type the “D” key, which changes the background and foreground colors to the Default, which is black and white. The other letter to keep in mind is “X”. Typing “X” causes the foreground and background to switch places, which is easier than doing it with a mouse or tablet.

Over in the Layers Palette, activate the layer mask by clicking once on it. An anemic little line appears around the layer mask to let you know its active. If you begin painting with white, let’s say, and the image is turning white, you are not on the layer mask: you’re on the image itself. Just undo and activate the layer mask, and all will be well. By default, the layer mask is white, which means the mask is not masking anything. All the pixels changed by the Curves are coming through. We need to block the left side (our left) of the face. Make sure the foreground color is black (use “X” to switch it from white, if you need to). Set the brush opacity to 50% or so, flow to 30%. Now start painting on the image itself. This is the weird part, I know. You feel like you’re painting black on your nice photo, but you’re not. You’re actually painting on a separate channel Photoshop has created for you, which contains the mask. Click on the Channels palette to see the mask channel, if you’re curious. As you start to paint, the image gets lighter where you paint. Notice that in the layer mask icon over in the palette is no longer all white, but has a mini-version of your mask on it. If you hold down the Alt/Option button and click on the layer mask icon in the layers palette, your image changes: now you’re looking at the mask channel itself. This is what you’ve been painting.

This ghostly image is the Layer Mask Channel. Spooky! You can paint on it directly, if you like.

If you find an area is too light, just tap the “X” key to switch back to white as the foreground color, and paint to bring back the dark. Easy as pie. This is what I love about layer masks. It’s like you’re painting with an image adjustment. In fact, you could have started with an all-black mask (just fill with the paint bucket), which would have hidden all the Curves darkening. Then, you could reveal the dark by painting with white. You will find yourself using both approaches, depending on the image you’re working on. In this case, it’s less work to remove the dark from one side of the face, and leave it everywhere else. You’ll notice that I do paint a bit on the dark side of the face. This is too give the jawline a bit of “rim light”, and to let the cheeks show more. I also paint in the eye to help it stand out. I use a heavy black stroke on the right side of the iris, to make it glow. But this isn’t quite enough. So I added a final empty layer on top, and painted with orange-brown (just a bit) to bring out the iris color. Here’ the final result:

Quite a dramatic change! And the original pixels are still untouched.

In this close-up, you can see that the photograph still retains all the pore structure and detail. We didn’t use opaque paint. We selectively applied a Curves adjustment, using a layer mask.

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In part two, we'll create the jewel and its setting, to complete the piece.

In part one of this tutorial (available here), we used a variety of Photoshop’s Layer Styles to turn a black and white drawing into a convincing full-color piece of gold jewelry. The Layer Styles used created a three-dimensional look, with a little bit of Drop Shadow and Inner Shadow. The gold color comes from a Layer Style called Gradient Overlay. The gold texturing is achieved with Bevel and Emboss, along with a Texture. Here’s where we left off, at the end of Part One.

Notice the empty oval area in the middle of the butterfly. That’s where we’ll add a jewel. We’ll use the shape of that oval to create the jewel, first by creating a “setting” for it, and then the gemstone itself. Take a look at the Line Art layer, below. We’ve added four Layer Styles to this layer, but the actual line art itself is unchanged. It’s still black and white.

The Line Art layer and its four Layer Effects.

Let’s zoom in on the oval area of the line art. To see it without the Layer Styles, right click on the Layer Styles section of the Line Art layer. A pop-up menu appears. Select “Disable Layer Styles”. The line art we started with is once again visible. The Wing Coloring layer is still visible, so now we have a kind of stained glass look, which is pretty cool. Make sure the Line Art layer is active, and then click once inside the oval with the Magic Wand tool.

A close-up of the line art, with the Layer Styles turned off.

What we have now is an oval selection. This can be stroked (a term that goes back to pen and ink days), which will form the basis of our setting. First, we’ll need a new, empty layer. Then, from the Edit menu, select Stroke… Set the width to 13 pixels, and the color to solid black. Click Ok, and now we have a black oval on the new layer. It will seem to blend into the existing line art, so click on the eye on the Line Art layer to turn it off temporarily. Now you see the black oval. Deselect the oval with CMD+D or CTL+D. We’re ready to give this oval the gold treatment.

With the new gold setting layer active, we’ll use the “FX” icon again at the bottom of the layers palette, with a difference.

The gold setting created by applying a Gradient Overlay to the black oval.

Bevel and Emboss and (inset) Contour Layer Styles for the gold setting.

The setting is done, so now let’s create the jewel that goes inside it. Once again, we’ll use the Magic Wand tool to select the inside (white) area of the oval. Make sure the Gold Setting layer is active, NOT the Line Art layer, or your oval selection will be too big. Insert a new empty layer above the Gold Setting layer. (We’ve created a selection using the contents of one layer to use on another layer. Selections “apply” to whichever layer is currently active.) With the Gradient tool (which is nested with the Paint Bucket), draw a dark to light gradient. (Use the Linear Gradient mode). You can use whichever color you like. There are just two stops in this gradient: near-white and a good dark, solid color, on opposite ends from each other.

Since the light part of this gradient is on the left, it will begin with that color. If you want it to be dark on top, start drawing from the bottom.

Insert a new layer above the gradient layer, and call it “dark overlay.” Choose the gradient called “Black to transparent.” Instead of Linear Gradient, use the one next to it, Radial Gradient. Draw from just below center to just beyond the top edge of the selection. If it’s dark in the middle, check the Reverse checkbox in the Property bar, and try that. It should be dark on the outside, and white in the middle. Here’s what it looks like with the color layer turned off.

Change the blending mode for the Overlay Dark layer to Overlay. Now it should look good and round, with a deep coloring, like this:

To finish the jewel, insert one more layer, choose a soft white brush, at high opacity, and add a highlight. You can add a star shape, too, on top of that, for extra pizazz. And that’s it! If you’ve followed this tutorial all the way through both parts, congratulations! If you got stuck, or something wasn’t clear, please leave a comment, and we’ll get it straightened out pronto.

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Using a simple black and white drawing, you can create images of jewelry like this.

A few weeks ago, I featured the work of Photoshop wizard Nathan Smith (here). Nathan creates images that seem to contain lots of hand-wrought gold filigree and gorgeous shiny gemstones, all against a brilliantly colored fractal backdrop. (That crude description doesn’t do his work justice. You really need to see it for yourself. His gallery is here.) As I mentioned in that article, Nathan has provided some nice tutorials on his Deviant Art page, showing how he performs his miracles. I decided to try my hand at it, and quickly realized the man makes it look easy. The butterfly, above, is one of my first attempts to create something using his methods. Eventually, I hope to put this to work creating jewelry for characters in paintings. As a man, I am handicapped when it comes to painting ladies in evening gowns, wearing all kinds of jewelry everywhere. I know nothing about this stuff (just ask my wife!) I figured Nathan’s tutorial was a good place to start.

Any black and white line art, like this, can be used.

To start, find or create some good hard-edged line art. By that I mean, you’ll want clean edges, not jagged and rough. Line art that originates in Adobe Illustrator or the free open source program Inkscape is a perfect, though you can also create it within Photoshop, using the pen tools. Photoshop can import vector art, converting it to bitmaps. I exported the following from Inkscape, at 300ppi. High resolution helps, too. Keep in mind that all this line work is going to become gold filigree in a just a bit. The smoother the lines and curves, the better. You can also use good quality clip art. Just be aware that if you scan something, it’ll most likely need cleaning up. Zoom in at 200% or more and check the edges. You can download the butterfly line art here and follow along.

Since we’re going to be using Layer Styles, our black and white art needs to be on an empty layer (see above). The surprising part of Nathan Smith’s method, to me, was that the shiny gold in his images starts out as black. Once you have your art on an empty layer by itself (not surrounded by white or other colors, that is), just the art and the checkerboard pattern, you’re ready to go. In the Layers palette, click on the icon at the bottom that looks like “fx”, or double click on the layer itself. This opens the layer styles palette. Here’s what it will look like when we’re done. Notice the check marks on the left side. By clicking on the name of each of these items, the middle area changes, so you change the settings for that item.

When the Layer Styles dialog first comes up, usually the main “Blending Options: Default” is active. We won’t be changing anything here. Click on the words “Gradient Overlay.” This changes the middle area to the gradient overlay dialog. It also puts a checkmark next to “Gradient Overlay” for you. If you decide you don’t want this gradient overlay stuff later on, you can just uncheck it, and the effects here are cancelled. But you do want to see some gold, so let’s leave it on. Let’s take a look at the middle area.

The only option we’ll change here is the gradient. Click on the little triangle next to the gradient, and a drop-down of your currently-loaded gradients appears. None of the delivered gradients create a gold effect, so we’ll have to make it. Double-click right on the gradient image itself, and the gradient dialog opens.

See those colored squares (stops) running underneath the gradient? That’s what you change here, nothing else. To start, click and drag the existing stops away, and they are deleted. You’ll be left with two, one on far left, one on the far right. When you click on a stop, the color drop-down below is activated. Click on the color there to get the color picker. Change it to a color similar to what I have here. Add stops in-between by clicking once in a blank area under the gradient; change the color of each as you go. It’s not easy to understand at first, but trust me, it does make sense after a while. Once you have something resembling the gradient shown above, click okay, and you’re returned to the Gradient Overlay. You’re done here, too, so click on Ok, to see the result so far. Your black and white line art should look something like this. (Keep in mind that the white is on a separate, bottom layer. The artwork and layer effects are on an empty layer above the white layer.)

Double-click on the word “Effects” over in the layer palette, to bring up the Layer Effects dialog again. Next we’ll add that crinkly look. (I know nothing about jewelry, so laugh all you want, you jewelry people!) In the left-side column click on the words “Bevel and Emboss.” Change the settings to match the screenshot below. The result should look like what you see here. Sort of like stamped gold foil. (I hear you people laughing and I’m ignoring you.)

Okay, time for the crinkly part. Stay on the Bevel and Emboss dialog. Notice the Texture option sort of nested below? Click on the word Texture. In this Texture dialog, click on the drop-down there in the middle. You should see a list of textures. (If not, click on the triangle to open the Load dialog, and go find your texture files.) You can use any of the standard textures that come loaded with Photoshop. Try them out and see how they affect the gold surface. Find one that looks “real” to you (I thought mine looked good, but what do I know?). Set the scale to 75% (though you can adjust that for different looks). Set depth to +100%. Here’s what it should look like now.

Crinkly close-up. We've struck gold!

Well this is certainly turning into a long tutorial! I’ll need to break this into two parts, I guess. Let’s look at one more thing: the wing color. Next week we’ll create the jewel and the setting. To create the color, I used a combination of texture files. The main was Textures_121_by_Inthename_Stock on Deviant Art. Here’s the link to their page. I mixed it with a layer of deep blue, and then combined the layers. Then, I set the layer blend mode to Linear Light, which I’ve never used before. It works great for this! Put the texture on a layer below your artwork, and it will appear in the holes, like stained glass. Use your eraser or a layer mask (the better way) to remove all of it except what’s behind the gold. Here’s the color layer by itself, so you can see what it looks like.

eBook update: The paperback version of “Getting Started with Painter” is now available on Amazon! Visit the “Books from Digital Image Magazine” page for details, and take advantage of the 15% discount code when you order. The book came out quite nicely. The printers did a great job. If you’ve been waiting for the “hardcopy” version, wait no more!

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Learn how to take a black and white photo and turn it into a full-color painting.

A while back (in this article), we looked at how to use Painter’s composite methods (layer blending modes) to colorize an old vintage black and white photograph. While that method is good (and fast) for applying fairly realistic color to a photo, it doesn’t really result in a painting. In this tutorial, we’ll look at how to use the original photo as an underpainting, adding color to layers above it to achieve an honest-to-goodness painting. This method takes a lot longer (for me, at least), and is much more challenging, because you need to create realistic skin tones by mixing colors. No simple color cloning this time!

A contemporary oil portrait of Sherman.

To begin, I searched on the internet for Civil War photographs. There’s a lot on the government’s archive site, and you can find this rather high-resolution photo of Sherman here.

The sepia toning works as an underpainting.

Once you’ve got your image sepia-ized, you can open it up in Painter. (I use Photoshop for the usual photo adjustments, and the great number of things that it is much better at than Painter. You can make color adjustments in Painter, as well.) To get started with the painting, I used a Color layer (a layer with composite mode switched to Color — see this article if you need a refresher) to begin changing the sepia tone into a skin tone. I also used a Colorize layer. But then I dropped the layers back to the Canvas. Now it was time to start applying opaque paint. For me, this is still the hard part. Learning how to paint skin tones is a huge challenge for me, and a lot of people. There is a tutorial in two parts, available for free download here and here, put together very nicely by artist Lauren Cannon.

Here I've finished the Color and Colorize layer work, and am beginning to lay down opaque color, on a layer above the canvas.

My goal here is to come up with a ruddy, fair-skinned complexion, with freckles (I can see them in the photo). Before I go any further, I’m going to put the background in. I really should’ve done that right from the start, since the background colors will affect and interact with the flesh tones. Back in Photoshop, I use the Quick mask and a black, soft-edged brush at 100% opacity to cover the entire figure. When I turn off Quick Mask (press Q), the figure is selected. I copy it, and paste it, which puts a copy onto a new layer. Now I have the General by himself on a layer above the bottom layer, which is now my background. Working quickly, I cover the background with a subdued olive green, which will help the skin tone to pop a bit. This background is rather dull, and so I open a texture file. This is nothing more than a photograph of some interesting texturized stuff. Here’s the image I used:

A simple grungy-looking texture from somewhere in cyberspace.

Here’s how you use such a file. Select all, then copy the grungy image. Switch to your portrait. Click on the bottom (background) layer. Do CMD+V or CTL+V to paste. This creates a layer with your texture on it. We’ll need to make it bigger, most likely, to fill the image size. Go Edit > Transform > Scale, and drag the handles to make it fill the image. Now, turn the Layer Blending Mode to Overlay. That’s the secret bit that these sort of tutorials usually leave out. Overlay causes the texture to lay on top of the background you painted. You see them both at the same time. Adjust the opacity as you see fit. Too much texture can be distracting. In my case, I ran two filters on the texture layer: Paint Daubs, and then Ocean Ripples. This took some of the detail out without softening it too much. Here’s what the layers palette looks like at this point.

Notice the Overlay blending mode, and the Opacity setting.

The General’s uniform is next. It’s not brown, it’s blue. So again, press Q for Quick Mask, and, on the Sherman layer, paint with black to cover his uniform. Press Q again to bring up the dancing ants. Now insert an adjustment layer, pick Hue/Saturation, and slide until he’s in his Union suit. You can drop the adjustment layer when you’re done with that. Okay, so we’ve managed to kill some time, and avoided actually painting the dreaded skin tones. Now there’s nothing for it, Mr. Frodo, as Sam would say. We must enter the land of Mordor…er, start the skin painting. Ready?

Have you ever seen a portrait tutorial, and they have these little swatches of color that seem to be right on the painting? And they never tell you what those are (at least not the one’s I’ve read). I finally figured it out: the swatches are on a layer by themselves. You pick your skintones and place them in swatches on a layer, and then lock it so you don’t accidentally paint on it. You want to throw that layer away at the end. To come up with my skin tone swatches, I found a photo of a guy with similar skin and hair color to the General: Kirk Douglas in “Lust for Life.” He’s very ruddy, no? And looks like he’s been drinking the paint thinner, too.

Vincent Van Gogh and General Sherman. What a team.

At this point I worked for three or four hours, on a layer above the Sherman layer, slowly working up the painting. The tutorials on skin tone, mentioned above, may be very helpful, so check them out. She explains better than I could what colors to use where, etc.

A close-up, showing the wrinkles and freckles, etc.

At the end, I used an Airbrush, the Fine Spray variant, turned down to barely a trickle, very low opacity, and just tap-tap-tapped on the General’s forehead to give him freckles. I did this on a separate layer in case I screwed it up. Also, that way I could turn down their opacity if need be. The other note I would make is, notice how I lightened up his hair. It’s brownish red, with highlights. I think the General should fire his barber, don’t you? Oh wait, back then, the barber was also the doctor… Never mind. I hope you found this helpful, or at least interesting.

“Getting Started with Painter,” my first eBook is available, as mentioned last week. Click here for more info. I’m working on a paperback version, which should be available very soon. You’ll be able to buy it on Amazon. Sales of the eBook have been very disappointing, I’m afraid. Do you think $19.95 is too much? Please let me know. I thought there was interest in a book, and it’s looking like there really wasn’t. I’d be interested to hear from you.

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Here it is! As promised, our very first eBook.

A while back, we ran a reader’s poll, to see if there was any interest in a eBook. A few hundred people responded, and 80% or so indicated that they would be interested. So I got to work. At first, I was going to include every tutorial from the last two years, but I soon realized that would be too much. I decided, instead, to make this first eBook just about Painter. Most of the tutorials written in the last two years have been about Painter, so it seemed logical to start there.

If you’d like to learn more, there is now a link at the top of every page on the blog, called “eBook”. That’ll take you to the ordering and information page. Or, click here. Next to that, there’s another new link, for a new page containing the five videos I’ve produced so far. If you like the videos, you’ll be especially interested in the book, since it includes the same lessons covered in the videos.

Most of the content in the book comes from the blog, which you can access for free, here on the blog. One problem with blogs, however, is that older material gets buried quickly, and can be hard to find. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been wanting to gather the best Painter information together into book form. It’s in a logical, progressive order, while my weekly posts are not. If you want all of the best tutorials at your fingertips, in a searchable PDF file, or if you’d just like to help contribute to the site, then by all means, order a copy. There’s also a new chapter about how cloning works (companion to the first video) as well as how to set up your workspace, and how to create a custom palette. Most of the tutorials are about how to turn photographs into paintings, as well as how to use Painter.

Here’s a look at one two-page spread:

Ordering is safe and secure. You can use your debit or credit card, or a PayPal account. You can download right after the purchase. I look forward to hearing what everyone thinks of “Getting Started with Painter.” If there are other topics you’d like to see in a future book, please leave me a note in the comments section. Thanks again for your support and encouragement!

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In this close-up of my painting of Merlin, note the engraved markings on the wall behind him. Photoshop makes it possible to create detailed 3D effects from 2D line art.

You may have noticed some digital paintings that have some very detailed passages in them, and thought: gee, that must have taken forever. Often, what you’re looking at was likely created using layer effects or a similar method. You can simulate some very complex textures very quickly, using Photoshop and some black and white line art. The engraved area above, for example, started out as a line drawing I found on the Internet. With Photoshop layer effects, I was able to create the detailed area above in minutes. The most common use for layer effects is adding drop shadows to type, or making type look three-dimensional. Today’s tutorial, however, shows a little-used method for achieving a carved or engraved look: the Lighting Effects filter. (By the way, you can see the full-size version of Merlin, along with other recent work, at my gallery on deviantArt: http://bnolin.deviantart.com/.)

Spiny Woodland Hopper, a painting by Anne Stokes

See the nice stone carving in Anne Stokes’s painting, above? In this tutorial, I’ll show you, step by step, how to achieve that look in your own work. There are many steps, but each one is simple. I just didn’t want anyone to get lost, and since there are a lot of little steps, there’s a bunch of screenshots. Don’t let them intimidate you, though. If you feel at all comfortable with layers, you’ll ace this. Let’s get going.

Select a circle from a good stony texture file. This is from Inthename_Stock on deviantArt. Isn't it wonderful? It's good enough to hang on the wall!

Open a good stone or smooth rock texture image. There’s a ton of good ones on deviantArt. Just do a search for “stone texture.” With the ellipse tool, draw a perfect circle selection (hold down the shift key while dragging). Copy it (Cmd/Ctl+C).

Notice that the pasted-in circular selection is on an empty background. This will allow you to use a layer effect on it.

Create a new file (Cmd/Ctl + N). The new file dialogue comes up, and the sizes are based on the selection you just made. Add fifty or so pixels to each dimension, to give it some breathing room. Select OK. Then do Cmd/Ctl + V, to paste your circular selection. This creates a second layer with just the circular selection on a transparent (checkerboard) background.

Double-click on the top layer (the new one with your copied circle) in the layers palette to bring up the Layer Effects dialogue, as shown above. Click on Bevel and Emboss, and use settings similar to those you see here. This will create a beveled edge to the circle with shading and lighting.

Circular line art on a single layer, black on white.

This is another file containing the line art I came up with for this lesson. You can use anything that fits inside a circle, as long as it is black on white.

The new channel icon.

Back on our stone circle, we need to open the channels palette. Usually it’s next door to the Layers palette, but if not, you can find it under the Windows menu. As you can see, in the lower right of the palette, there’s a icon to create a new channel. Click on it once. A channel is added, named Alpha1, and it’s completely black.

Make sure the new channel is active (highlighted) in the channels palette. Do Cmd/Ctl + A (select all). Make white your background color (hit the D key to reset the foreground/background defaults). Then, hit the delete or backspace key. This should replace the black with white. If not, use the handy paint bucket to fill with white.

Copy and paste your line art into the new channel. It’s just like pasting into a layer. Just make sure it’s active, and hit Cmd/Ctl + V.

When you clicked the “new channel” icon, it added a channel named Alpha1, AND it made your circular stone disappear. That’s because it automatically turned off (the eyes) next to the channels for your art. To make them come alive again, just click on the eye next to RGB. It should look similar to the above. Your Alpha1 channel line art is now red, and your stone is back.

My line art could use a little resizing. Right now, it’s dead center in the middle of the stone. I’d like to enlarge it without it leaving the center. Piece of cake. Go Edit > Transform > Scale. The resizing box with handles appears. Hold down the shift key (constrains to perfect circle) AND the Alt/Option key (keeps it centered). Now grab a corner handle and pull outward to make the line art larger.

Make sure you go back to the Layers palette first!

Now, let’s return to the Layers palette. Please don’t stay on the Channels palette for this, or you’ll be cursing me and throwing things in a minute. Go back to the Layers palette and activate the stone layer. Are you on the Layers palette? Just checking. Okay, now you can open the Lighting Effects filter dialogue (Filter > Render > Lighting Effects).

This is the Lighting Effects dialogue, with suggested settings. You may find other setting work better for your particular stone. Notice one very important setting, down at the bottom: the texture is assigned to a channel, namely Alpha1, the one with your line art in it. In the preview window, you should see it engraving your stone. Checking the “White is high” on or off makes the engraving turn into embossing.

So here it is, ladies and gentlemen: our engraved stone. Doesn’t look quite as nice as Anne Stokes’s, though, hm? Why is that? If you scroll back up and look at her painting, you’ll notice that the carved areas are darker than the stone. We need to do the same thing to our stone.

In the Channels palette, click on the leftmost icon at the bottom.

Okay, now we need to go BACK to the Channels palette. At the bottom, click on the leftmost icon, and the dancing ants will appear. Channels are where Photoshop stores selections, so we have activated the selection (the white areas) in our Alpha1 channel. This isn’t quite what we want, but we’re getting there.

To invert the selection, go Select > Inverse. Now the ants are dancing around the black line art. Let’s turn off the red from Alpha1: click the eye off next to that channel.

I really hope you are paying attention, because now we need to switch back to the Layers palette. Activate our Stone art layer again. Go to Image > Adjustments > Curves, and drag the curve down slightly to make the carved area darker. Make it as dark as you like. You can also use the Hue/Sat dialogue to change the color, if you like. I didn’t do that here.

The final result. Anne Stokes eat your heart out!

And there we have it! A passable carved stone. For those of you willing to go just a bit further, here’s the extra credit assignment. This will make your stone look terrific. Terrifically old and moldy, that is. Insert a new layer on top of the stack. Find a good mossy stony sort of texture file (I have a big collection of such files). Copy and paste into the new layer, and set the layer blending mode to either Overlay or Soft Light. (see below).

If you stayed with me through to this point, give yourself a big pat on the back. Hell, go get yourself a double mocha latte or whatever. You deserve it. Because now you know how it’s done! Any question or comments, please let me know in the comments section below. Thanks for reading!

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Enough seriousness already! Let’s take a look at some top-notch digital art that’s not about dragons, war, space battles, elven waifs, zombies, apocalyptic visions, or any of that serious stuff. Today’s gallery is nothing but lighthearted and whimsical. Funny, even. Most of these paintings were executed in Painter and/or Photoshop, though one is a 3D illustration. Nearly all come from the top award-winners on the Computer Graphics Society website.

 

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Where's everyone going? They don't seem to be in much of a hurry.

Digital Art Revolution is a Photoshop book written for traditional media artists who want to begin using Photoshop. Unlike most of the three bazillion Photoshop books out there, it’s not written for photographers. Actually, it’s kind of hard to describe just how different this book is. It’s not industry specific (gaming, commercial illustration, film, etc.); rather, it’s audience is pretty much anyone who wants to create images. Starting with basic design principles, the book delivers a thorough introduction to Photoshop. Absolute beginners may find the book moves a bit too fast, but I’m not sure. It’s hard for me to evaluate that, since I know Photoshop quite well. On the other hand, the writing is clear and concise, the illustrations and screen shots are helpful and large enough to see, and it just may be the best introduction to Photoshop ever written. It’s a big book (250 pages, 11×8.5″), but it’s still amazing how much information it manages to cover.

First-time author Scott Ligon is a frequent lecturer, digital artist, and director. He is the coordinator for the digital foundation curriculum at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he teaches art. The author’s fine art background and orientation lend a fresh and exciting flavor to the book. The work of 44 artists is showcased throughout, but the examples here are not the usual commercial digital fare flooding the internet. This isn’t another Photoshop eye candy book filled with speed paintings, vampires, and gun-toting, barely-clothed buxom babes. And that’s a good thing. If you spend much time (as I do) browsing the work on Deviant Art and such sites, you start to see how much artists are mimicking each other. Ligon encourages us to bring forth our own unique vision, rather than trying to copy what’s popular or trendy. According to Ligon, this is the beginning of the Golden Age of Digital Art, and everything is possible. “Take advantage of this time when anything can happen,” he says. “There are vast areas of possibility that have never been explored. It might as well be you who explores some of them.”

I hope that introduction gives you a feel for where this book is coming from, and how different it is. Here’s a breakdown, chapter by chapter, of what’s in the book.

The book begins with “Welcome to the Revolution,” an extremely eloquent and intelligent introduction to just what digital art is, and how it is a huge leap forward in the ongoing history of art. Ligon: “Digital technology offers the single, greatest advancement in the possibilities inherent in art-making since, well, art-making began.” It isn’t that the tools are new and cool: it’s that they enable us to do things that weren’t possible before. (I wrote a similar, less-elegant piece here, mostly in defense of 3D art.)

Chapter One – Understanding the Visual Language is, as Ligon admits, a “crash course” on the principles of visual communication. These are the elements of design and composition (line, shape, value, balance, repetition, etc.).

Chapter Two – Meet Photoshop gets you grounded in the basics, from opening a file to learning what a pixel is, to file types, color modes, and the Photoshop GUI (graphical user interface).

Chapter Three – Photo Basics introduces you to photo editing in Photoshop: selecting, cropping, color and contrast adjustment, blurring, brushes, the spot healing brush, the clone stamp, the Liquify filter, and the patch tool. That’s a lot! Katrin Eismann has written two whole books on these topics, so obviously you’ll only learn so much from a single chapter. Still, the amount of material covered here – and covered well – is impressive. It’s a great introduction. There’s nothing more intimidating sometimes than a 1200-page doorstop with a title like “The Big Humongous Uber-Bible of Photoshop CS5.” For beginners, this is the way to begin.

Chapter Four – Compositing: The Illusion of Reality dives right into creating an image composed of a large group of photographs, combined to give the illusion of a real scene. (A scene full of zombies, by the way, which may make up for the lack of vampires mentioned earlier.) The next section shows how to use the Vanishing Point filter to place a mural on a wall, and how to use the transform tools to modify perspective.

Now that the basic Photoshop material is out of the way, it’s time to make some art! (There are exercises included in the chapters preceding this, but so far the emphasis has been on mechanics. The remainder of the book is much more hands-on.) Chapter Five – Expressive Nonrealistic Photo Art is about creating images that evoke feelings without concern for being photographically realistic. Ligon creates a composite image, and explains his thinking every step of the way. This makes a good transition from the “tool” chapters into the “art” chapters, showing the tools put to use. The chapter ends with a project Ligon assigns his students.

Chapter Six – Painting with Pixels is about digital painting with Photoshop’s brushes. First, you’ll learn how brushes work and how to modify them. Next comes controlling the color panels. Last is a demonstration showing how to adapt digital tools to Renaissance methods, with a sepia tone underpainting.

Chapter Seven-Painting with Shapes shows how to use selections as shapes, how to fill them with the gradient tool, and combine shapes into a composition. Again, it’s very helpful to follow along with Ligon, to understand the decisions and problem-solving that goes on. Next, learn about the Pattern Stamp tool, vector modes, tools, paths and layers, and the infamous Pen tool.

Chapter Eight-Mixing Paint, Photos, and Everything Else is about bringing objects from the real world into your images, via scanner and camera. Ligon has left discussion of the Filters till now, when you’re ready to use them as a tool, not an image-making device.

Chapter Nine-Finding Your Own Voice is like having coffee with a wise mentor, talking about how to develop your work, find a style, and what you want to say. It’s a chapter to spend quiet time with, reflecting, and coming back to now and again.

Chapter Ten-Into the Real World is about the various ways of sharing your work with the world, via print, monitors, galleries, and others.
Also, there’s a demonstration showing how to start with a real-world pencil sketch, and end bring into the digital realm for painting. The chapter concludes with a look at how some artists combine their digital work with real world materials, such as encaustic medium and varnish, or found objects and containers.

This book surprised me. I honestly did not think that the academic world had “gotten” digital yet, and that maybe they never would. I’m glad to see I was wrong. This is an excellent book, especially for those just beginning their Photoshop journey. For all artists, there’s plenty of food for thought here, about process, method, and technique, especially when working digitally. If you want to stop copying the ideas of others, but don’t know how to start creating your own work, this book is a wonderful guide.

You can read excerpts from the book on Scott Ligon’s website. Additionally, the publisher has provided this little viewer, to page through the book:

And lastly, here’s Scott Ligon’s YouTube promotional video.

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You never know what sort of bargains you will find online.

1. Just because a site is free, if no one sees or buys your work, it’s pretty much useless. Just as in a “brick and mortar” art gallery, you need to attract interested buyers. Just because a site has lots of traffic doesn’t mean they’re visiting your particular gallery. Do some searching on the site. How hard is it to find, say “Pink flowers in a field” or “kids blowing bubbles”?  If a site has a good search built in, and uses lots of categories for browsing, it will increase the chances that your work won’t get lost in the digital crowd.
2. If you post your work to a site and then sit back, waiting for the money to start rolling in, you’ll most likely be disappointed. You need to help people find you. So, along with traffic numbers, this comparison lists any marketing tools offered to help you get the word out.
3. To help you compare apples to apples, we list the base price charge for common print sizes. Your profit is whatever you charge above the base price.
4. There are some important considerations that are harder to quantify, such as print quality, customer service, and turnaround time. To get a handle on these, it’s a good idea to check out a site’s user community forum before committing yourself. If the users are complaining and angry, you may want to look elsewhere.
5. If you plan to sell work from your own website, you’ll need to consider shopping carts and that sort of thing. Some sites allow you to customize a gallery page on their site so that it looks just like your site. This way, customers don’t know they left your site to buy, which is a good thing. Other sites give you shopping cart code to add to your site.

With all this in mind, here’s our list of sites currently offering exhibition space and POD (print on demand) services, with some information on each to help you decide. If we’ve missed any, please add them in the comments sections.

Back in 2008, when we reviewed Deviant Art, the site had over 7 million members and was hosting nearly 60 million images. It doesn’t look like they post those numbers anymore, but we must assume that the numbers have only gotten even more amazing in the last two years. Deviant Art is ten years old this August, so it’s looking like they’re going to be around for awhile. It takes a lot of effort, community involvement, not to mention talent, to get noticed on Deviant Art. It’s free to join, and everything that gets submitted is accepted (unless it breaks the rules, of course). This means there is just a ton of work, and the number just grows every minute. In the Alexa list of top websites, DA is currently number 115, and Compete.com says they had 4,565,415 unique visitors in May 2010. There’s a lot of traffic here, no question, but there’s a lot to see, too. Fortunately, there’s a deeply categorized browsing system, which is helpful for finding particular types of work. There’s also a search function, but strangely it doesn’t find member names, only image titles (”deviations”). Your ranking within a category is determined by the number of Favorites (votes) your image has received from other members. Deviant Art charges $79.99 for a 16×20 gallery wrap canvas print, so you’ll need to charge more than that to make a profit. Through the paid option ($29.95 a year), you get a Portfolio, which is showcase website, better pricing options, as well as other perks.

Imagekind was purchased a few years back by Cafe Press. They are known as a high-quality, top-notch publisher. Their current Alexa rank is 16,137. In May 2010, there were 193,862 unique visitors. You can upload an unlimited number of images for free on Imagekind. A paid premium account ($94.99 per year) comes with a customizable website, called a Storefront, including shopping cart and credit card handling. This will help build your professional image. You can make your Storefront match your existing website, if you have one. Base Pricing: Pro Matte Canvas, gallery wrapped, 16×24, is $95.99. You set your markup above this to turn a profit.

Since we first wrote about them in 2008, Zazzle’s reputation within the digital art community has grown. Zazzle’s Alexa rank is 1174, and during May 2010 they saw 3,704,331 unique visitors. There’s no rule saying you can only choose one of these sites to work with, of course, especially since they each service different markets, to a point. Zazzle and Cafe Press sell posters, which retail for $15 or less. This is much lower price point than the framed giclee prints on Imagekind, or wrapped canvases on Deviant Art. Zazzle’s a good place for popular fantasy and sci-fi art, which is the type of work that wouldn’t necessarily do well under glass anyway. There is no charge to join Zazzle, and no paid premium option. You can completely customize your store page so that it looks like a page on your website. Marketing tools include storefronts for MySpace and Facebook. There are over 350 products just waiting to be printed with your artwork, everything from ties to tees. Just keep in mind that your work will be part of a huge crowd of BILLIONS of customize products and posters.

Cafe Press and Zazzle are quite similar, in that they are all about printing on products, especially t-shirts. Cafe Press, however, charges $59.95 per year for a customized store front to match your website (and to lose the Cafe Press branding, as well). Another difference is that Cafe Press does framed prints in addition to posters (though I couldn’t find information on base prices). The Alexa rank for Cafe Press is 1372, and 4,149,532 unique visitors stopped by in May 2010.

FineArtAmerica.com has both fine artists selling originals and digital artists and photographers who need POD services. FAA charges $30 per year to join the premium program, which includes POD printing and framing. The base pricing is explained at length, but at first glance it’s quite confusing. I think a 16×20″ stretched canvas would be around $50-60, but don’t quote me. FAA, as we mentioned in this review, offers a bunch of options at the free level which other sites don’t offer at any level. The list includes email marketing, event promotion, a shopping cart you can embed into your existing website, customized sales page on the FAA site (and a full website with premium membership), a blog, and others options. FAA’s Alexa rank is 8880, and in May 2010 there were 637,213 unique visitors. When visitors look up artists, they’ll find the artists who live near them listed first, which is quite unique. The site’s own data (as of September 2009) shows that there are 25,000 members.

If you’re living across the Pond, Artybuzz may be for you. Shipping charges for your European customers will no doubt be less than the other, American sites listed here. Prices are listed in British Pounds, but the base price list does show that a 16×24″ canvas print (not sure if it’s wrapped, stretched, etc.) is $105.52USD, quite a bit more than any of the other sites. There are no fees for joining or using Artybuzz. You decide how much mark up to add to their base prices. Artybuzz’s Alexa rank is 912,309, and had 167 unique visitors in May 2010. To be fair, though, the site has been up for less than a year.

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