Tutorials

Stock Images

As for stock images, I suggest reading Vrya's tutorial, she both makes art and explains better than me As for my collage... well:

1. I chose three main caps, resized and positioned them onto very dark blue background, then masked the parts I didn't need:


2. Then I felt I needed a vertical line, so I added it (using someone's texture/background, only I don't remember who it was Probably Tre).
I desaturated the texture (ctrl+shift+U), set it on soft light and masked the edges. Then I added some colour using my beloved gradient maps:

(By the way, this gave me what to start from with the texture; that's why I didn't clean the caps up.)
Here's the result:

3. Then I opened my 'Stock' folder and threw all I found there on the canvas between the gradient maps:
- a key to represent Dawn (on soft light, because it was too bright)
- two pics of raindrops on window to symbolize tears (soft light)
- a cracked tombstone because of Joyce' death (soft light, opacity 41%); you can't actually see it... but you see the cracks, which are also symbols of dying in my very own system of symbols
- a pink sunset which just had nice colour to it (soft light)
- a piece of greenish cloudy sky because it had lovely pattern; I use this pic a lot lately to add 'worn' look to texture - soft light
- a road sign because of the words on it and because I had to fill empty space at the top - soft light
- I'm not sure about English word, in some clubs, there are big balls hanging from the ceiling and covered with pieces of coloured mirrors - a close-up of this ball, only I blurred and desaturated it. I added it because of interesting shadowy pattern it created. (Soft light)
- and finally one more cap of Buffy (screen, opacity 14%)
I masked the edges of all these pics with big soft round brush.
Here's the result:

And screenshot of my layers palette:


4. The bottom of the pic was too dark, so I added some light with soft round brush (first layer on screen, second one on normal):


5. And one more screencap (Dawn's room) on soft light, to made the texture on the bottom more interesting:

Also I added family photo (on screen) and the pic of light going through a Venetian blind (on soft), and the text:


6. I flattened the image and sharpened it with Sharpen filter. After that, I added this self-made texture (soft light, 29%) and masked it over the faces. Then I created new layer and pressed ctrl+alt+shift+E, sharpened the new layer again, and masked overfiltered parts (text etc.).

7. I felt like big Buffy and Joyce were competing, so I pressed B, chose soft round brush and faded Buffy down a bit (I described the method already in this thread):


8: This is the final result:


800


The piece took me two evenings (approximately 6 hours), because I was trying to find the best placement, texture and colours, and made many wrong things before I got what I wanted (as usual ).

Caps are from Nocturnal Light. Stock pics come to my folder from many places, I don't remember exactly, sorry; my usual sources are http://www.sxc.hu/ , http://www.freeimages.co.uk/ , http://www.stock.b-man.dk/ , http://www.freefoto.com/index.jsp . Gradients are from www.freephotoshop.com and mine.
Hmm... I think that's all If something wasn't clear, feel free to ask