[Foreword]
Recently I saw someone asking how to express texture and light. This is a good question. It shows that everyone is starting to pay attention to some real principles of skills, rather than just skills for the sake of skills. This is of great benefit to the real improvement of PS. No matter how familiar the menus and panels are, why can't they produce cool effects? I think this is a question that beginners often confuse.
Let’s use a metaphor like this. Everyone knows what one word, wonderful, means: wonderful. When everyone sees this word, they think of the feeling of "wonderful". However, this word is composed of the letters w, o, n, d, e, r, f, u, l. Memorizing these letters alone is boring, isn't it? And it means nothing after separation. What does this indicate when compared to PS learning? It shows that simple menu commands are boring and meaningless, and have no special functional skills, but only when combined well can we create good works.
It seems that the combination is a mystery. Yes, the key to using PS well lies in the combination of small skills. So what is the soul of the combination? In other words, how can one come up with such a combination? Derived from various principles in real life. How can I get it? observe.
Don’t take it for granted. Here’s a question. Do you know the fuzzy command in PS? (I know~) Okay, that’s a quick answer. Do you know the relationship between light and dark of a sphere? (Know a little bit), where does the dividing line between light and dark come from? (Okay...) Reflection? refraction? Caustics? Diffuse reflection vs metallic reflection? What does reflection imaging look like? (…)
This is also the reason why I have always wanted to write something that uses PS to express texture, but I find it difficult to do so.
Because expressing texture is really a matter of thought. If you know this thing is like this, just use any tool to express it. To put it bluntly, it has nothing to do with PS. I was afraid that I would go off topic, so I delayed writing.
So don’t have too high hopes for this article, thinking that it will produce some exaggerated effect just by reading it. In fact, it is not the case. Frankly speaking, I spent an entire afternoon writing this article, and the examples are also made up on the fly, and they are definitely not some cool or dazzling effects. But I want to tell you that freezing does not last for three days. If I teach you to fish, I can only give you one big fish at most. I have to teach you how to fish so that you can learn how to build a net and catch fish.
Therefore, in a word, don’t dislike examples. This example is definitely a good teaching material that combines very subtle principles/operations. It will definitely be of great benefit if you learn to do it step by step.
[Basic Techniques for Texture Expression (1)]
Software: We are using ps7.01 simplified Chinese version.
Material: Blank document, we want to make something out of thin air.
OK, ready to go, let's get started. No, at first everyone wanted to see the recent effect. Although it doesn’t look very good (as mentioned in the preface), it is indeed worth learning. Let’s upload it first.
OK, after seeing the renderings, everyone knows that it is a glass vessel. Why get such a random vessel? Because I don’t want beginners to fall into endless basic operations at the beginning, and these basic operations are time-consuming exercises, so feel free to get started.
1. Path tool. I won’t say much about the path tool. Let’s go find Zhao Peng’s “Path Termination Tutorial”, which is very worth learning! We create a new document, then use gray as the background, then create a new layer and use a pen to draw a closed curve shape. As shown in the picture:
2. Press ctrl+enter to convert the path into a selection, then fill it with a dark cyan color, cancel the selection, and lock the transparency of the layer.
3. One source of people’s sense of three-dimensionality is the ability of the human eye to distinguish distance from objects, and another is the change in light and darkness of light. For most objects, the side that is illuminated by light is bright, and the side that is not illuminated by light is dark. Let's describe the dark parts first. Use the Pen Tool to draw a path that covers the dark area we need (we assume the light source shines from the upper left to the lower right).
4. After converting it into a selection, we are ready to darken this part. But darkening is a transitional change, not a blunt change of color. How to do this? We hope that the area where the constituency plays a role can be transitional. what to do? We think of "feathering." Feathering a selection will naturally produce a transitional selection, and applying a darkening operation to it will naturally be transitional.
5. The selection is feathered, and we need to make it darker. Use coloring? No, it's too inconsistent with our habits. We should say: you make it darker, so it goes darker. What operation can do this? ctrl+u, hue and saturation command.
6. As you can see, the three parameters are in line with our thinking. Hue is color. I say this orange is red. If it is not yet ripe, it is green. This change is a change in hue. When it gets dark, the orange becomes grayer and darker, which is a change in brightness; saturation. ? Think of this with paint. Adding a little white to red will make it lighter. In other words, it will be impure, which is usually said to be "pink". This is a situation where the saturation decreases.
We first need to lower the brightness (it needs to be darker, right?). When it becomes darker, it will look gray (black and subdued, of course, the saturation decreases). Generally speaking, we still want the picture to be brighter, so we increase the saturation appropriately. Spend.
7. As you can see, the transition is very good. Generally speaking, in order to increase the three-dimensional effect, we need to make the edges of the object darker. Load the selection of this layer, as shown in the figure:
Then we invert the selection and feather it. The feather value can be smaller, such as 10, because we don't need too many transitions. And then it's the same hue and saturation operation.
8. The dark part is basically completed, and the brightness is outlined using the same path.
9. First adjust the general highlights. What we need is a large-area transition, so the feathering value should be higher, maybe 20.
10. When adjusting the hue and saturation, remember to increase the saturation so that the color can be correct, otherwise it will turn white.
11. After the big highlight is a small area of highlight. Also use a pen to mark a small area.
12. Remember that there will always be reflection in the dark part. When it is caught with the bright part, it will form the dividing line between light and dark of the object. Therefore, we need to select the reflective areas in the dark areas.
13. Repeatedly feathering, adjusting hue and saturation.
14. Trim the shape to make it look like there is an opening.
