Posts made in June, 2009

Fantasy Art for beginners – mysterious moonlit night written by Lorelei and moved over from www.loreleiweb.com for technical reasons.

Believe it or not, but from a few ordinary photos and some primitive brushes, we will make this image (see below). OK, despite the rather impressive outcome, this is a very simple tutorial, you wont need more than a few brushes and a few pictures. Most of it is a mater of technique.

Start by creating a new canvas, 500*500 pixels, and fill it with dark blue colour, we used #060062.

Next, you need a beautiful, and preferably mysterious photo of a woman, this is what we started off with:

Copy the girl to your clipboard (Ctrl + C) and paste it (Ctrl + V) unto the blue canvas

Select the “Single Column Marquee tool” place the selection line on the edges of the picture, Press Ctrl + T to draw a line, and repeat the action from the other side as well. This is what this action will give you…

Duplicate the woman’s picture, and set BOTH layers to “Luminosity” blending option. This will turn both layers blue, as we have a blue background.
While the upper (duplicated) layer is selected, apply the Gaussian blur on it.

Select the eraser tool with a soft edge, and go over the girl’s silhouette, erasing the blurred layer from over the woman’s body. This is how it will look, but work your way with the eraser over her skirt as well.

After having finished to erase the blur over her body, this is what it will look like:

The trend to add glowing lines and stars seized the web design scene already a few years ago, but not as much as it is popular now. Now we can recognize the “glow” effect in many ways — digital art, HDR photography,  and many other ways, including, of course, web design graphics. During our life, we take hundreds of shots, most of which are rather dull and unappealing, we are used to the fact that photos, by default, never turn to be truly amazing, if they are taken spontaneously with non-professional camera and even those of us who are equipped with a pro-camera, are not always able to capture a breathless moment. Therefore, each time we see an image with beautiful glow effects, juicy and vibrant colors, great contrast and incredible use of proportion, what do we say? “WOW!”. Today I gathered a few photos for your inspiration, which will make you say “wow” and inspire you to aspire for taking better, vivid photos yourself! Here are a few examples of wise, neat and beautiful use of Glow effects..

Mild Glow Practice In Photography

Waianapanapa Sands – Maui photography

Purple Euphoria photography

If at first you don’t succeed…

August 18th 2008 – Inspiration pt2 photography

Summer Night City… At Home

Exaggerated Glow Practice in (HDR) Photography