I like being able to talk about whatever strikes my fancy. Not sure if I will be able to do that once things are moved over. So, here is some stuff that I have been meaning to talk about. Think you can follow along without images?
Photoshop lingo because that is what I use.
Embossing is pretty cool. Very common text affect. Or is it text effect? Which ever one it is, embossing text is common. But there is far more to embossing when do it manually. That is, the base technique has far more uses.
How do you emboss manually?
- Start with random photograph.
- Copy to new layer.
- On new layer:
-- Invert
-- Set Opacity to 50%
- Nudge new layer a few pixels
Nudge: grab Move tool and use cursor keys to move layer 1 px at a time in given direction.
You just did an emboss.
Now, try it with a bump map. Say, a console with grooves and buttons. Make one real quick using shades of grey. Just fill some random rectangles and drop in some circles, buttons, and things. Just a quick doodle to play. Then do the above emboss. You just did faux lighting. Coolios.
Well, some where in there you are going to have to use your favorite method to copy merge and paste. Personally, I use
- ctrl + a
- ctrl + shift + c
- ctrl + v
I've been doing that combo for so long that it is faster for me than ctrl + shift + j or whatever that one combo is. Ctrl + shift + e? Heh.
Then from there, try different blending modes over the original or something. Let the happy accidents happen.
What embossing like this relies on is _differences_. The trick is in the differences. In the above manner, the difference is between neighboring pixels. When you nudge the top layer, you are comparing pixels with their neighbors.
But who says that you have to nudge? Photoshop comes with several options for moving pixels around. For example, the Smudge tool allows you to kind of paint the emboss, which kind of looks like random/artistic High Pass. There is also Edit > Warp and Liquify. With Liquify/Smudge, you can kind of paint the faux emboss lighting in directions.
Okay.
Lots of folks paint wrinkles using highs and lows. One thing that plays a big part in this is imagining the lighting direction. What I am suggesting is something a bit different. Paint your wrinkles as a bump map. Set up the layers for manual embossing, then go into Liquify. Use Liquify to move things around. And, if you know your way around Show Backdrop, you can get a live preview.
But maybe try with Smudge first. Just use Smudge in the imaginary light direction. Which is really cool because light isn't always relatively the same on a 3d model when you are looking at UVs, right? Heh. For example, the light on the abs would probably more of a vertical up. But it would kind of twist around to the side as you got closer to the armpits. Think you could paint like that with Smudge tool?
Something to think about and play with.