Tuesday, August 19, 2008

A Little About Color: RBG vs. HSV

Most everyone who's worked in any media for screen would (and should) be aware of the importance of the RGB value system. While it is a concise system for describing colours, it is somewhat difficult for us to describe the nature of a colour by amounts of each channel by eye. So rather than describing the additive blend of colours, we can describe a colour with HSV which breaks colour down into more simplistic characteristics. Let's look at each of these in detail:

RBG
Defined by listing how much red, green, and blue is contained in a single value. Being additive, the more of each colour that is added, the brighter (and closer to white) it becomes:

While it's helpful to denote how much of each colour exists, it is not a very friendly system to describe a hue shift, saturation, or value/brightness). Try looking at a colour and try to arbitrarily dictate how much of each primary colour composes it. Not so easy right?

HSV
A colour system that describes a hue shift, saturation, and value is known as HSV:

Now that's a lot easier to describe colour with. Want a colour to be more turquoise? Scarlet? Plum? Just shift the hue slider until it hits the sweet spot. Need brightening without losing saturation? It does that too!

Natural Brightness
With colours having different natural brightnesses to each other, preserving luminosity when tinting with hue shifts poses a problem with contrast. When adjusting a saturation value in HSV, the value scale adjusts proportionately to maintain the same amount of brightness.

For example, take a look at the following diagram:

Yellow has a higher natural brightness than purple which sits on the opposite end of the colour spectrum (which is easily observed when looking at it in grey scale). What does this mean? It means that simply lightening or hue shifts destroy levels of saturation when controlling all channels. This is because the natural luminosity of red, green and blue at equal saturations differ significantly. To compensate the desaturation, the value/brightness needs to be scaled in HSV to match. It is important to maintain a strong contrast in brightnesses, so attention to natural brightness is helpful in picking appealing colour schemes and palettes.

Wrapping It Up
While amounts in HSV are not completely relevant for telling a display how much within each RGB channel is required, it creates a scale that describes useful properties of colour. And at the end of the day, it's returned as RGB or hexadecimal; merely a different way to break down colour components into locations within a given colour gamut.

The next time you are exploring your favourite image editor, make sure to check out the different colour slider modes:

Of course HSV doesn't scale to all digital colour spaces, but in most cases you should be able to flip over from the RGB scale. Being able to apply traditional approaches in picking and applying colour opens up a more fluid and natural work flow, which can assist the transition for traditional artists migrating into the digital realm. So HSV or RGB as a colour refining scale? Obviously HSV! Get into the habit of tweaking colour with the HSV sliders, and you will be able to control those all too often fidgety selectors and pickers in a breeze!

Thursday, June 14, 2007

How to Make a Matrix Effect?

IM SORRY FOR NOT POSTING FOR SO MUCH OF TIME ... BUT NOW I AM BACK WITH MANY COOL EFFECTS ...~~~~~~~~~ SO ENJOY~~~~~~~~~
step 1:

Start a new document of size 400x400 pix make sure u select the background as white and press 'd' to reset the colour to the photoshop defaults i.e. black foreground and white background.

step 2:

Now let us add some falling grains to the image for that go to
Filter>Texture>Grain and add the settings as



u will get this



Step 3:

Let's add some glow to it so what it shines more

Filter>Atristic>Neon glow



after adding u will get this



Step 4:

now it look a bit similiar isn't it. Let's make it a bit sharper so it looks better.

Select Filter>Sharpen>sharpen More

and our matrix effect is ready.
here is what i got.

Monday, June 4, 2007

How to create a Smiley!!

Start by creating an ellipse using elliptical shape tool.
Double click the layer to open layer style window. Apply settings as shown.

Create an elliptical selection using elliptical marquee tool. Create a new layer. Apply a black to white gradient in linear mode. Change the layer mode to screen. Keep this layer on top always.
Create an ellipse using elliptical shape tool.
Double click the layer to open layer style window. Apply settings as shown.



Create an ellipse using elliptical shape tool. Apply some bevel&emboss layer style. Apply some glassy look as we did on the main face ellipse.
Duplicate all eye layers. Press Ctrl+T. Right click and select Flip Horizontal and place on the other side.
Ctrl+Click the face layer thumbnail to get the selection. Create a new layer and apply B&W gradient in linear mode. Create a big elliptical selection using elliptical marquee tool.
Press delete.
Double click the layer to open layer style window. Apply settings as shown.
Change the layer mode to linear light.
Create two dots for the nose and create two triangles for the teeth using polygon shape tool. Warp the triangles to get a curve inside.
Using pen tool create a shape as shown below. Apply same layer style as we use for the face.
Create an ellipse using elliptical shape tool. Move this layer below all the layers in layer order in layer palette.
Select the neck layer. From layer menu select layer style>>create layers. Select and merge both the resulting layers. Using eraser tool erase the bottom right portion.
Using pen tool create a shape as shown below. Apply same layer style as we use for the face.


Double click the layer to open layer style window. Apply settings as shown.
Finish the smiley by creating tail shape using pen tool. Apply same layer style as mentioned above.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Photoshop Tutorial - Make SRK a Zombie

Ok.....

...Together....we can, and we will make SRK a Zombie :wink_smil using Photoshop CS 2(any version of photoshop would do with none or minor changes)

--
Before we start, just a small point... When I say use a "softer brush", i mean when selecting for the brush reduce the " hardness....better to 0% or 4-5%


So , first we need a stock image....hmm....let this be the one




In the layers pallete, double click the layer's name to rename, and rename it to anything..say "Shahrukh original"



Too bright , too reddish.... So before we do something about it, press "Ctrl+J" to duplicate the layer. Its always good practice to make new changes on new layers. So you can discard the changes if something's wrong by just deleting the layer.. Ok now we are on "Shahrukh Original copy" layer..
Press "Ctrl U", and reduce the saturation



The pic will be less vibrant now



Still he looks like CineStar SRK.. Something should be done about that... Ok, select the "Burn tool"



Now select a soft brush



And now, make few brush strokes (just make it dark enough ..dont go overboard) on the parts of face I marked with Red



Now its more like it



Ok

Now its time to take some drastic steps.... We need a rough textured image to do the next step... The pic i selected is



Open it in Photoshop.. Press "Ctrl+A" to select all. Press "Ctrl+C" to copy..Then go to the Shahrukh's window we are working on and press "Ctrl+V"..

Now reduce the opacity of the pasted texture, so that you could get the SRK's pic as a reference. It doesnt matter how much opacity is reduced, coz its just temporary to get reference ...



Now select eraser tool.. Select a big SOFT brush and delete any part of texture falling on SRK's hairs, clothes and the wall behind. Also with a small brush , erase the texture falling on SRK's eyes... And increase the opacity of textured layer back to 100%...And change its blending mode to "Overlay"...Voilaaaa.... the evil SRK is very evident now...... But we are not finished now..



Now select the Brush tool, and with a soft brush, about the size of SRK's pupil.. And select a reddish color



Now create a new layer, by pressing "Shift+Ctrl+Alt+N" or "Layer-->New-->Layer".. Make sure this layer is above the textured layer. Now with the brush make red spots over SRK's eyes



Ok, now change the blending mode of this layer to "Color" .. Now you can see the devil's eyes :boxing:



Not evil enough?????? Well Okieee..... Find a rotten broken skull and open it in Photoshop..Here's what i selected



Now in the same way as the texture, select all, copy , paste it on the SRK's window..Here make sure this image (the layer the image is in, in the layer palette) is just below the texture layer.. If its not, then in layer palette drag the skull's layer below the texture's layer....



Now similarly as the texture layer, reduce the opacity , to see SRK's pic for refrence... Now this skull image maybe bigger or not in correct angle for our requirement.. So press "Ctrl+t".. A box would appear around.. Dragging corner points while pressing "Shift" will change the size proportionally.. Make sure the size of skull gets to the size of skull SRK may have .. Move the skull, and align the teeth of the skull with SRK's lips.. When its done , press the tick mark in toolbar (in Photoshop)..Now angle of the skull's image is also not matching SRK's face angle. So goto "Edit-->Transform-->Rotate", and again the box would appear..rotate it a bit to align with the face.. And press the tick mark to confirm...

Andddddd...Dont care the part of skull going outside SRK's face.. We are not concerned with complete skull anyway



Now pick the Eraser tool again. Select a soft medium sized brush, and start Erasing parts of skull..leave the teeth and the dark blackish broken part of cheeck bone..erase the rest.. and Change the opacity back to 100%.. If you dont succeed at first, press undo and try again...And try to make the image look somewhat like this



Ok the teeth is too yellow... We need to reduce the yellowishness.... So press "Ctrl+U" and select yellow...and reduce the "saturation" to about "-75%"..Lowering yellow's saturation will also blend the teeth with rest of the face



YAYYY!!!! SRK has finally turned into a Zombie... Hehehehehehe



Now the red background doesnt create the environment...So select a dark background.. I selected a "Graveyard" ...



Open the image in Photoshop. Now in SRK's window, press "W" to select magic wand, and with "tolerance" (in the toolbar) of about 40%, click on the wall.. It'll select the wall.. Press "Ctrl+Shift+I", to select SRK... Now goto Edit-> "Copy Merged".. Now go back to graveyard iamge and paste (Ctrl+V) zombie SRK on it.. Place it well...And we have a dark zombie...SRK...




If you liked the tutorial, and learned something from it, I'll be presenting more tutorials for you ppl... If you have any problem implementing any step, i m here to help...


P.S : Dont ever, and I mean EVER, try to convert your Girlfriend's pic to a zombie.. It is injurious to Health and Life....