Poppy Daydream

Tutorial by Michelle Johnson

During these cold winter months, it’s fun to pull out some spring and summer flower pictures and refresh a bit! Seeing the vivid greens and pinks and oranges sure gets me in the mood for spring. It also gets my creative juices flowing! I love to play with color and texture, so I thought I’d put together a fun tutorial to brighten up the gray winter days! Come learn how to create a dramatic effect using the Color Balance tool and textures!

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Preparation:

                Before we begin, you will need to download the photo, texture and photo veils.

Tutorial Materials:

                Poppy Photo

                Texture: Stucco

                Simplicity Photo Veils: Brave and Serenity

                Poppy Daydream Set – Download

 

Let’s get started!

Step One – Open up your photo, texture and veils into Photoshop. We’re going to start with the Poppy photo, so make sure you have that one up and ready. First, we’re going to give the photo a bit of a boost in contrast and color. This is one of my favorite tricks to “de-fog” my images! Click on the black and white circle at the bottom of your layers palette and select Levels. Take the left slider and slide it to the right just a little. Then grab the right slider and take it to the left a little. Then click OK. It just takes a little to make the image pop!

Step Two – Next we’re going to have fun with color! Click on the black and white circle at the bottom of your layers palette again and select Color Balance. Make sure that Midtones is selected. Click on the top slider and move it to the right, about a third of the way to Red. Then click on the middle slider and nudge it to the right towards Green just a little bit. Finally, take the bottom slider and nudge it a little to the left towards Yellow. Click OK.

 

This is a fun technique to alter the colors in your photos! In our Poppy photo we created a mild effect, but you can really play around with the sliders to create dramatic effects! In Example One I added in quite a bit more red and less green than the Poppy photo. I love how it creates a soft, warm tone. In Example Two I dragged the top slider all the way over to Red, with the middle slider slightly towards Green and the bottom slider slightly towards Yellow. I just love this effect! It has a fun cross-processed look to it and I love the pinkish-red “almost” haze! Play around with the sliders and come up with some fun looks!

Step Three – Now, our photo looks pretty good right now! We could certainly stop here and not have to do anything else to it! But, I love playing with textures so we’re going to have some fun now! I have for you, in the set you downloaded, two sneak peeks from my “Simplicity” Photo Veils upcoming release at OpenScrapbook!  They are overlays of color that quickly and easily transform your photos so you don’t have to do a ton of post-processing!

We’re going to start with “Serenity” so open it up and move it next to your Poppy photo. Using the Move Tool, click on the “Serenity” photo veil and drag it onto the Poppy photo.

Step Four – You can close “Serenity” now and go to the Poppy photo. Using the Move Tool again, click and drag your “Serenity” layer so it fits neatly over your photo.

Step Five – Now set the blending mode to Soft Light and leave the Opacity set to 100%. I really love to use the Soft Light blending mode for the photo veils! It creates a natural color overlay without blowing out the colors. On certain photos I also like to use the Screen blending mode. It gives a fun hazy effect to photos! Experiment with your photos and see what you like!

Step Six – Next, we’re going to repeat steps four and five with the photo veil “Brave.” Using the Move Tool, click and drag the photo veil onto your Poppy photo.

 

Set your blending mode to Soft Light and leave the Opacity set to 100%. Isn’t this so fun!! I love the dark, dramatic effect that “Brave” gives to photos!

Step Seven – Now, “Brave” kind of made the pink in the poppy a bit too bright for my taste, so let’s mask some of that photo veil off. Click on the rectangle with a white circle at the bottom of your layers palette to add a White Layer Mask. Set your Foreground Color to black and, using a soft, round brush, lightly brush over the pink in the flower. That will take off the color of our “Brave” photo veil layer and tone down that bright pink.

Step Eight – Again, we could stop here and have a beautiful photo! But, let’s add a cool texture just for fun! Open up the Stucco texture and, using the Move Tool, move the texture onto our Poppy photo. We’re going to need to rotate the texture so it fits over our vertical photo. Up at the top menu, click on Edit > Transform > Rotate CW. Then use the Move Tool again to move the texture to fit neatly over the photo.

Step Nine – Set the blending mode to Soft Light and leave the Opacity set to 100%. I nearly always like to take some or all of the texture off the subjects in my photos, so let’s add a White Layer Mask by clicking on the rectangle with a white circle at the bottom of your layers palette. Set your Foreground Color to black and, using a soft, round brush, lightly brush over the flower and stem.

Next, let’s give the texture the effect of fading into the flower. We’ll repeat what we just did, only with a lower opacity. Up at the top under the menu, there will be an Opacity setting for the brush. Set that to around 50%. Then lightly brush around the flower to take away a little bit of the texture. 

The final image:

 

And that’s it! Now you have a dramatic Poppy piece of art! I hope you enjoy my “Simplicity” Photo Veils! I’m so excited for the upcoming release! Now go try these techniques out on your own photos! Post your creations in our gallery; I’d love to see what you come up with!

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