6 replies to this topic

[Spam]

Welcome to the second photoshop tutorial in this article my aim is to expand on the basic knowlege of layers that we learned in the first installment, and the introduction to effects and how we can use them to shape our shots and add realism.

Righ then, jumping straight in, were going to tackle shading first, this should expand your knowlege in the use of layers and blending effects.

hers our stock picture taken at LAX on the tarmac, im going to apply some of the basic proceedures from the last tutorial and crop it and play with the curves to get a nice working base image.







Ok, first off im going to make a new layer and double click on the 'layer 1' it now gives me the option to rename the layer (very handy) this shall be named 'shadowing'.

I now go to the toolbar and right below the marquee tool i see the polygonal lasso tool. You need to select this. there are variations of the tool like a freeehand one, and a magnetic one, experiment with them they all have their uses   The object of these toosl is to draw a shape and end it where you started giving you an area to fill in, pretty simple. lets try...



Ok so my area is red, the reason for this is to demonstrate the effects that are available within the layer pallette.

At the top of the pallette theres and opacity bar have a play with it slide it from 0 - 100 % the effects should be pretty self explanitory  . Also to the left of it theres a drpodown that says normal, these are your layer blending effect toggle through them and note how they react with the aircraft underneath. when your done press delete and your filled in shape should be gone, just deselect the area and your layer is as good as new.

Time to do some real editing with what we just learned, my task now is to create a wing shadow coming from the underside of the wing to the engine, i use the lasoo tool to highlight the areas which i want to apply my 'fill'. The only way to learn where the shadows fall are to look at real aircraft and you slowly gain a sense of where they should go.



The red area is my lasso area (yours should be black!)now ive refilled it black and lowered the opacity until i decide that the effect looks about right. black and white are 'null colours' and the blending modes only work with shades of colour so we just stick to the opacity selector for this.



my final task is to take the rubber brush and with a soft tip star to erase some of the sharp edges around the cowling, this gives it a nice transition form dark to light.



Heres the masking with the base layer hidden and with it complete.



Our next taks is to creat a new layer and name it highlights and change your colour selection to white.

and mask the areas which light will shine from, you can make a good guess based on where FS puts the highlights. concerntrate on sky facing surfaces.



Once your happy with your selection were going to do somthing a little different, you see shadows tend to cast sharpish edges, but highlight shading is very soft, so make sure your highlights layer is selected and go to the filter > blur > gaussian blur, then as before lower the opacity until you find a happy medium, I also used the overlay blend to get the more realistic look i was going for.



All thats left to do is use the rubber tool again to remove any places which seem unatural or overdone, in this case the top of the fuselage. Remember your not limited to one shading layer! If you get a good result with one opacity but need more for another part, just make a new layer and use that with less opacity  




And voila! shading is complete! obviously the more time and effort you put in to all the little details the better the outcome  

[Spam]

Ok continuing on, heres another picture thats already cropped, shaded, and colour balanced.



heres the pic, with the mask showing.




Now its time to add the Heat blur coming from the engines, duplicate your base layer! incase you make a mistake you can revert back (the reason we do this is becasue theres only so many times that you can undo an action). You now need to get your lassoo tool i use the freehand one for this part, when you close a lassoo section hold SHFTand a plus sign will appear right by the tool pointer, this indicates that its ready to 'add' new closed sections (ALT turns it into a subtract lassoo sections) , and carefully trace everything behing the aircraft not including the aircraft in the path of the heat, like so...Oh and don't colour it in! thast for you to see what ive masked  




Next bring up the gaussian filter again, and add blur to the selected area. We will now use a new filter, Fliter > Distort > Ocean Ripple. This will bring us the heat shimmer we desire ( many people skip the first gaussion bluring and the shimmer ends up being like glass. It might need to have another blur depending on how it comes out, experiment and remember that less is more. im going for an idle thrust setting, use the rubber tool to blend high thrust into a more subbtle trailing shimmer for great effects!






After your happy you may be looking at artifatcs due to the distortion...simply use the rubber tool to carefully remove these and bring your SS back to a realistic look, your now rubbing through to the original picture so be careful.





Finally if your brave and you want to go one step further use the smudege tool ( it looks like a finger, or a water droplet if its set to that, click it to change the icon to the finger) This acts to smudge and blur to a rather extreme extent so be careful using it, control the sensitivity where the brush opacity slider is. You want to use this tool to add small smudges to the background scenery to give the illusion of fast moving gasses.



To finish up in going to border it and add some sharpening, and show you one last little colour corection trick   once your scaled down and sharpened, go to Image > Adjustments > Variations. You will see this box appear, i love this tool for final mood setting, i tend to use the more subtle fine changes but experiment.




Here we are complete!

[jetblast787]

Surprised no one commented on this! great work mate, think this should replace the only other jetwash effect in the KB which isnt really useful due to the image sizes. exactly what I was looking for after a long absence of screenshots

http://www.flightsim...lur-Effect.html

[jetblast787]

Just one question, How do I make the edges of the Jet blast softer? As in not to look out of place in some screenshots as though it suddenly just stops or have a gradual decrease in the haze until its barely noticeable

[Spam]

Thanks! I do find it a very nice way to get a jetblast. To answer your question, when you make your selection with the lasso tool, go to select > feather then select the pixel width of the feather  

[Jetset]

Any chance of a PS Elements version.?

[Spam]

I don't own ps elements i sorry