Typography as Texture

This week's assignment is to use typography as texture --- use some text as a typography texture for a picture that's related to the text.

The text I choose is:

The sapling that bears our mark of love has grown into a big tree, 
but our once fervent love is lost forever in the wind. 
The little mark has become a scar. 
When the wind blows, we hear the sigh of the forest... 

And I especially create a picture to match this text. Here are the pictures I used:

Tree

Girl with Umbrella

Stained Paper Texture

Grass

Tree Bark Texture

Sky

Leaves

1. Create a new document.

2. Select part of the sky from the Sky picture, and drag it to the new document.

3. Open the Grass picture. Copy a layer, select the parts you want, refine the edges, and set it as Difference mode.

4. Open the Tree picture. Copy a layer. Select the picture, make it inverse. Add a Threshold adjustment layer as clipping mask. Open the Tree Bark Texture picture and drag it on top of the Threshold adjustment layer and set it as Multiply mode. Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to lower the saturation of the Tree Bark Texture's color.

5. Draw a rectangular black box as part of the ground.

6. Drag the selected grass on top of the black rectangle.

7.Add a Level adjustment layer as clipping mask to darken the grass.

8. Add a Hue/Saturation layer as clipping mask to lower the saturation of the grass.

9. Drag the Tree picture on top of the ground and flip it vertically.

10. Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer as clipping mask to again lower the saturation of the tree.

11. Select the girl from the Girl with Umbrella picture and drag it on top of the new document.

12. Make a copy of the Sky layer, Average Blur it, and set as Soft Light mode, then put it on top of the Girl layer.

13. Add some leaves.

14. Make a comp layer and make a copy of this layer, and use the burn tool to burn the white edges.

15. Make another comp layer. Put the text on. Set the layer as Difference mode and lower the opacity. Add a layer mask to mask out some of the text.

16. Open the Paper Texture picture, drag it on top of the text layer. Set it as Overlay mode.

Finally...

Knowledge, Nature, Time

I found this tutorial on StumbleUpon.com, teaching us how to make a story book come to life. But I don't want to do the same thing as the tutorial does. So I follow some of the steps, and created something different on my own.

For more details regarding this tutorial, visit:

http://photoshoptutorials.ws/photoshop-tutorials/photo-manipulation/make-a-story-book-come-to-life-in-photoshop.html

As I was thinking about what concept I am going to use for this picture, I thought about the recent earthquake in Japan. And a question regarding human's knowledge, nature, and time comes to my mind. Does human's knowledge help us to overcome the disasters of nature in a certain amount of time? Or does human's knowledge assist the nature to destroy the human culture over time?

The photos I use in this picture are:

Hour Glass

Book

Earth Crack

Stormy Sea

Here is the way I do it:

1. First, create a new document in Photoshop.

2. Open the Stormy Sea picture. Select the sky with Rectangular Marquee tool and drag it to the new document. And rescale it.

3. Open the Earth Crack picture. Select the ground with and drag it to the new document. And rescale it.

3. Add adjustment layers of Hue/Saturation, Photo Filter, and Color Balance as clipping mask to make the color of the ground look more suitable to the sky.

4. Open the Book picture, select the book out and drag it to the new document. And rescale it.

5. To make some shadow under the book, create a new layer, and put it under the Book's layer. Use a black brush to brush the ground area around the book. And the Burn tool to brush the area on the side of the page. 

6. Since the book looks too yellow for the whole environment, I add two adjustment layer (Hue/Saturation and Photo Filter) as clipping mask to adjust the book's color.

7. To add the sea onto the page, I select the sea from the Stormy Sea picture and drag it on top of the book, and resize it. Change the Opacity of the layer as 40%, so you can see where the edges of the page are, and select the page out. 

8. Make a layer copy after selecting the page. Remove the visibility of the previous layer. And make the current layer Opacity as 100%. Then, liquify the middle part of the sea layer to make it blend in with the book's shape. 

9. Open the Hour Glass picture, select the hour glass, drag it on top of the new document, and rescale it. Use the Eraser Tool to erase the lower part of the hour glass, so it looks more like in to the sea. Also erase the glass with a light opacity brush, so you can see through the sky and sea in the back.

10. To make the hour glass look more suitable for the environment, add adjustment layers (Hue/Saturation and Color Balance) as clipping mask to adjust the color of the hour glass.

11. Make a comp layer. In order to the lighting of everything consistent, apply the Dodge Tool to lighten the area that the light shines on, and the Burn Tool to darken the area that supposed to be shadow. 

12. Make a copy of the layer. Fix the rest of the highlight areas with the Burn Tool. Also add a vignette with Lens Correction.

13. Add some Color Fill layers, Gradient Map layer, and Curve Adjustment layer to enhance the colors of the whole picture.

14. Sharpen the whole picture, so it has more dramatic feeling to it.

DONE:

Avatar with texture and blending modes

In this one, I am just blending the texture with a portrait. Since the procedure is pretty hard to explain, I'll just make some screenshots to show.

Here, we have our two original pictures:

http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs16/f/2007/145/e/7/Texture_50___Icy_Texture_by_ro_stock.jpg

http://www.markdelong.com/beauty/FB42.jpg

1. We start off by turning the portrait into threshold:

2. Drag the texture layer on top of the image, add a mask and use brush to get the black parts out:

3. Get a background copy, add a black mask, and brush out the shadow:

4. Add a level adjustment clipping mask to adjust the darkness of the shadow:

5. Add a blank layer set it into color mode, and brush some color into the shadow, so it blend in with the whole picture's color, and adjust the opacity:

6. Make a comp layer.

7. Add a white fill layer, put it under the comp layer.

8. Add a mask to the comp layer and brush out some missing white parts on the arms.

FINAL: