shadows

Deke's Techniques 054: Turning a Photo Into Line Art

Deke's Techniques 054: Turning a Photo Into Line Art

If you scroll to the bottom of the home page and click on the last » button, you'll be taken to the first test articles I created for this site, "Creating a Photo-Realistic Line Drawing, Part 1," and the same, "Part 2."

Frankly, I love those techniques so much that A) I wrote them up as an exercise in my book Photoshop CS5 One-on-One and B) I have long felt a persistent desire to document them in video. Which is precisely what I do today.

Here's the official description from lynda.com: Read more » 

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Photoshop CS5 Extended One-on-One: 3D Scenes Goes Live @ lynda.com

Although Photoshop has the word "photo" in its title, a remarkably small percentage of Photoshop users identify themselves as photographers. In contrast, more than half call themselves designers. (In case you're wondering who the heck else uses the program, think realtors, medical practitioners, lawyers, law-enforcement professionals, insurance investigators, scientists, and anyone else who makes for good TV drama.) If you fall into this superhuge "designer" bucket---which includes all walks of visual artists, btw---there's nothing better you can do to get a leg up on the competition than learn and eventually master 3D in Photoshop CS5 Extended. Why? Because 3D is exciting, liberating, and outlandishly powerful. Not to mention, no one else in your immediate vicinity has a clue to how it works.

Which is why, just yesterday, I released the Part 3 of my 4-part Photoshop 3D series in the lynda.com Online Training Library. Titled Photoshop CS5 Extended One-on-One: 3D Scenes, this nearly 9-hour video course takes you to the far reaches of 3D, including scene building, lighting, shadow casting, camera manipulation, and stereoscopic imaging. Below you see me introducing 3D lighting. Note that I'm taking the topic so seriously that I'm wearing a jacket, even though the temperature on the set is roughly that of the sun. And I'm so bulging with 3D info that my left arm (the one on right) looks like I borrowed it from the Michelin Man.

Photoshop CS5 Extended One-on-One: 3D Scenes intro

I should mention that the live-action illustrations and many of the 3D models hail from Paul Roper, an incredibly talented guy at lynda.com.

Meanwhile, here's an illuminating chapter-by-chapter description of this transformative and, I freely admit, life-affirming course. Read more » 

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Deke’s Techniques 012: Creating a High Key, High Contrast Effect

Deke’s Techniques 012: High Key, High Contrast

Hey gang,

As seems to occur every Tuesday, I have a new free Deke's Techniques video for you, produced by lynda.com. And it's a zinger! (Am I allowed to say "zinger" over the Internet?) In just 9 minutes, I show you how to turn an untreated studio photograph--generously provided by Jason Stitt of the Fotolia image library--into a high key, high contrast image, with ultra-black shadows but not so much as a single clipped highlight. Read more » 

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Deke’s Techniques 011: Masking Highlights and Shadows

Deke’s Techniques 011: Masking Highlights and Shadows

This week's 7-minute video shows you how to isolate the highlights and shadows from one image and blend them with those of another. It's quick, it's easy, it's effective. Read more » 

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Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Advanced Goes Live

Some of you have been asking when my Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Advanced series is coming out. And I was all prepared to tell you this Friday. But lynda.com, being the incredible juggernaut of a video publisher that they are, began releasing it today. Chapters 13 thru 18 are up this very second. That's more than 100 movies, so it should keep you occupied for now. (If not, I totally suck.) The remaining Chapters 19 thru 24 will be up in 10 days.

Here's a live-action frame from the series. My director told me that, in retrospect, my spendy Elie Tahari shirt "looked a little disco." Let me assure you that this is one of the best shirts I've ever owned. It's a matte forest green with some excellent under-collar and inner-sleeve highlights. In the video, I don't look disco, I look positively wet. Meaning that I glisten. Like someone is misting me. Which is not necessarily what you want in a training video. But it's what you get.

 Advanced

That said, who gives a tinker's gumph what I look like? Read more » 

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