From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

732 Enhancing your crazy space porthole

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

732 Enhancing your crazy space porthole

- [Instructor] In this movie, we're gonna take our crazy space portal so far, which is a little bit flat and drab, frankly. We're gonna do a better job of blending it into its environment with the help of a couple of additional layers and layer effects. In the end, we'll achieve this glowing work of art. The first thing I'm gonna do is grab this variations layer right there and I wanna create a copy of it by pressing Control + j or Command + j on a Mac. Now I'm gonna turn off the original. Notice the duplicate layer is clipping that adjustment layer above it. I'm gonna go ahead and change the blend mode associated with this layer to hard light so we get this nice blend between the rings and the stars. Now we need to reinstate some of the original luminesce., so I'm gonna turn that original layer back on and I'll select it as well, and I'll change its blend mode to luminosity just so that we have that original detail. Just so we can see what we're doing, I'll turn that duplicate layer off for the moment. I'm gonna go ahead and right click on this layer mask, the one for the original layer, and I'm gonna choose apply layer mask in order to render all of those formerly white pixels transparent. Next, I'm gonna add a layer effect by clicking on the FX icon down here at the bottom of the layers panel and choosing drop shadow. Notice that I've set up my drop shadow so it's a kind of directional glow. Just so you can see the color, I'll click on this color swatch right here. Notice inside the color picker dialog box that I'm going with a hue value of 20 degrees, which is orange, a saturation of 50%, and a brightness of 100% so we end up with a pale version of that orange, at which point I'll click OK. I've changed the blend mode to the brightest mode there is, which is linear dodge add. I've taken the opacity value down to 50%. The angle is negative 135 degrees so that the shadow is getting cast up and to the right. Then I set the distance value to 20 pixels. I increased the size value up to 100 pixels. Notice that the spread is set to 0%. You also want this checkbox to be turned on, layer knocks out drop shadow because if you turn it off, then the shadow will show through your art work, which is not what you want, so go ahead and leave that checkbox on, and then click OK. Now notice if I zoom in here, that we've got some pretty harsh transitions. I wanna soften things out dramatically. I'm gonna go up to the filter menu, choose blur, and then choose gaussian blur. And I came up with a radius of value of two pixels, which believe it or not, is gonna do a great job of bolstering the detail associated with the rings. At which point I'll click OK. I'll go ahead and rename this layer, slight blur, let's say. Now notice if I were to zoom back out and turn on that variations layer once again, now we have this nice glow and we have some decent detail, as well. But I wanna reveal more of the stars in the background. Ultimately, I wanna take the opacity value down to 30%, but if I reduce the opacity value by pressing the 3 key, in this case, which is gonna work great, assuming that one of the selection tools is active up here at the top of the toolbox, that reduces the opacity of the drop shadow, as well, which is not what I want. I'll press the 0 key to reinstate an opacity value of 100% and then I'll press Shift + 3 to take the fill value down to 30%. Notice the difference, if I press Shift + 0 for a fill value of 100%, we have this nice bright drop shadow, but we can't really see the stars that well, whereas if I press Shift + 3, the drop shadow remains nice and bright, but we can see through the rings. So again, we're looking for an opacity value of 100% and a fill value of 30%, at which point, notice how very dark the rings are getting over here on the left hand side. I wanna brighten them up by once again clicking on the FX icon, and this time I'm gonna choose inner shadow. Just because the effect is called shadow or glow doesn't mean it has to be one. It's just that the glows, both outer glow and inner glow are omnidirectional, whereas the shadows are directional, so they can go, in our case, up and to the right. In any event, I'm gonna go ahead and choose inner shadow and notice the settings I came up with. The color is white, by the way. I set the blend mode to screen and the opacity value to 66%. I'm sticking with an angle of negative 135 degrees so that the shadow is going up and to the right, all be it starting down here in the left hand portion of the image. I've set the distance value to 100 pixels, choke is 0%, and size is 150, at which point I'll click OK and you can see that that makes a big difference. This is before with the dark rings and this is after with the much brighter rings. Now I wanna neutralize the highlights a little bit. I'll go ahead and load this layer mask as a selection outline by pressing the Control key or the Command key on a Mac and clicking on it. Next, I wanna create a new layer at the top of the stack. I'll click on that boost layer because it's currently the top layer and then I'll press Control + Shift + n, or Command + Shift + n on a Mac to bring up the new layer dialog box and I'll go ahead and call this guy whiteness because I will be filling this selection with white, at which point I'll click OK and then I'll tap the D key to ensure that I have my default foreground and background colors, which are black and white, respectively, and then I'll fill this selection with the background color by pressing Control + Backspace, that's Command + Delete on the Mac, and then I'll press Control + d, or Command + d on a Mac to de-select the image. Now obviously, I don't wanna cover up all of the rings with white, so I'll go ahead and double click on an empty portion of this whiteness layer to bring up the layer style dialog box and then I'll bring back the darkest colors by dragging this black slider triangle that's associated with the underlying layer slider and I'll go ahead and take this guy up to 50. You can see that value changing above my cursor. And then, so that we have a softer transition, I'll press the Alt key or the Option key on a Mac and drag the right half of this black slider triangle all the way so that that value after the slash is 200. So what we're seeing at this point is anything that's 50 or darker is gonna force its way through, anything 200 or brighter will get covered in white, and then everything in between is becoming gradually more opaque. And then I'm gonna take the opacity value, notice that it's highlighted, down to 77%, at which point we achieve this effect here. Now I'll go ahead and click OK. You can see that made a big difference. This is before with those absolutely opaque white pixels and this is after. So you can see, if I turn this layer off, that it's doing a nice job of neutralizing those highlights so that they're not that distracting shade of bright yellow. That's at least one way to enhance your crazy space portal so that it better blends into its environment, here inside Photoshop.

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