how to create a posh bird in photoshop...
in digital art

Today I'm going to show you how to create a hybrid photo manipulation of an old oil painting and some interesting animals. The piece I'm going to demonstrate to you is called "Parrot Lady".

The tutorial is going presume some prior knowledge to Photoshop and will use techniques that can be researched outside of this tutorial if need be. I will give you the correct terminology so it shouldn't be too difficult to find some background reading on some of the things I use.

At present I won't be making the images available to download as this is a guideline on how to create your own fantastic piece, not just carbon copy of mine.... where's the fun in that? You can follow this tutorial with your own ideas so you have an original piece at the end.

Right, here's how to do it! '')

First thing to do is to choose a base picture, which you will build upon. I used an old oil paining of Anna Pavlovna as I liked the red hues and it had some real estate above the head so I could replace it with something else.

Now crank up Photoshop with the image you are going to use. Firstly, add a levels adjustment layer to darken the image to give it more pop, then add a hue/saturation adjustment layer to cool off some of those red hues. Last thing to do is add another layer to add a few highlights to the arms and dress. To add the highlights use a simple brush and lower the opacity to something really low like 1%-5% with a soft edge. Then use your pen/mouse to build up highlights in the areas you wish. Please note there isn't a hard and fast rule for this, this is where your artistic skill is needed ''). You can see the various stages below.

Your layer tab should now have two adjustment layers called "levels" and "hue/saturation" and it should also have a layer named highlights.

You can use adjustment layers directly on the image's layer itself, but this will be destructive as it permanently changes its propities, meaning you won't be able to adjust the settings later on if you so desire.

For this reason use the adjustment layers available at the bottom of the layer tab (black and white circle). This creates a new layer and will only affect the layers directly below it's own. Another good tip is to clip the layers to the layer you wish to manipulate. This can be done by right clicking on the adjustment layer then selecting "create clipping mask" from the menu. If you look at the layer now you will see a little arrow pointing downwards.

This might sound a little confusing, but if you look at the image below you will see what's been done. If you're still stuck, I suggest you look up how to use clipping masks '').

The next part or the tutorial is to do is the cat's eyes on the right hand side of the image. I wanted the eyes to have the effect of starring out of the darkness so I got a picture of a cat's eye and erased all the other detail around it. I did this without using the eraser tool, which is destructive to the layer. So how, may you wonder, do I erase without the erase tool? Read on...

To erase parts of an image without being destructive to the layer you need to use a vector/layer mask, which can be found at the bottom of the layer tab. It is a small icon and is represented by a grey rectangle with a white circle in the middle. Highlight the layer you wish to erase parts of then press the little icon. This will create a little white box next to the layer. To make adjustments you will need to click on the white box to highlight it.

Note: when you create an adjustment layer from the menu a layer mask will be there ready for you to use automatically.

Right, this is the neat part. Select the white box next to the cat's eye layer in the layers tab box then press "b" on the keyboard to select the brush tool. Make sure you've got the colour black selected and start erasing the bits you want to get rid of in the image. If you make any mistakes it doesn't really matter as you can always correct them later. This is a good way of roughly cutting something out to see if it will work with the image you are creating. If you had spent hours with the eraser tool cutting something out then at the end of it thought better of using that image, then that's a lot of time wasted '')

Ok, so you've cut it out pretty well, but you would like to adjust a few bits where you have made some mistakes. No problem, just press "x" on the keyboard and this will switch the brushes colour to white. Now just start painting in the bits you've missed and they will reappear again. Wicked! Once you're done duplicate the eye's layers and move it into position,

Note: make sure you have black and white set as the foreground and background colours.

As you can see from the image below I have attached a layer mask to each eye and adjusted the hue so that the eye has a more red colour. This is to help match up to the overall tone of the picture.

The next stage is to put the parrot's head in the image. I usually take the image I'm going to use and roughly erase (using the layer mask technique) the parts I know I don't want. I then position and size the image where I want it. I quite often, at this point, use the warp transform tool to shape the image a little better so that it matches up with the underlying image. The end result, when refined, can be seen below.

At the moment it looks like one of those photo-manipulation bodge jobs you see everywhere. The contrast is wrong, the colours are too bright and it just looks rubbish. We need to make the parrot's head look like it was always part of the image. We do this by using our nice, non destructive, adjustment layers I keep going on about ;).

First of all let's tweak those bright colours. Simply select a hue/saturation adjustment layer from the tab icons at the bottom of the layer tab and clip it to the image. Then adjust the overall saturation so that the colours look more in line with the image in the background.

Once you're happy with that use a photo filter adjustment layer and set the overall hue to a bit of an orange/red colour so it matches the overall hue of the image. Don't forget to make it a clipping mask.

At this point the parrot is looking a bit washed out. It's not got much contrast compared to the rest of the image. To correct this add a levels adjustment layer and tweak the settings until the contrast matches the background. Then use a black brush with low opacity (on the levels layer mask), and brush out some of the highlighted areas that the levels made too dark. This should make the parrot pop well with the scene.

The last thing to do is create a couple of empty layers above the adjustments layers (remembering to clip them onto the image) and call them highlights and shadows. Then use a brush to paint them in in their respective layers. Remember to focus on the highlights in the eyes as this can sometimes make or break a piece.

Note: A similar result can be achieved by using the dodge and burn tools. And yes, I know a non-destructive way of using them, but I'll save that for another tutorial ;)

Please remember this is not a set of rules to live by, but shows you how I got to the results below without being destructive to the image.

Next up are the wings, which are actually from a swan. Cut these out using the same techniques described above and size and place them where you think they look best. Once you've decided on the final size and position move the wing layer behind the parrot layer so that the wings are behind the subject.

Note: I did initially make them larger, but the image looked like another one of those angel style fantasy pics you see everywhere. That's way I made them a bit smaller and lady like, as if they are for opulent decoration not actual use :).

As you can see they look ok, but the lighting is wrong and they have a bit of a yellow hue so they don't look right.

To sort this first of all clip a hue/saturation adjustment layer onto the wing and reduce the master saturation down to zero. This will remove the yellow colour and any unwanted colours that came with the original image. Next add a photo filter adjustment layer and set this to the red/orange colour of overall image.

Finally create a blank layer called shadows (remembering to use the clipping mask) and using a low opacity dark coloured brush paint in the shadows. Focusing on just behind the arms where there would be less light.

The last thing to do is to duplicate the wing layer with all it's clipping mask layers and flip the copied wing horizontially. Once this is done simply move the other wing into postion on the other side and use my layer mask technique to blend the wing.

The next stage is to put the little bird on, which the cat's eying up. I chose a green bird as I thought it would be a nice complementary colour to bring into the picture and it also ties up with the stalks of the strawberries, which we'll do next.

To make the bird fit the scene use similar techniques described above to get the result you're looking for, make sure you concentrate on the highlights for the beak, back and eye. The only other adjustment layer I used at this stage was contrast and brightness, which was used in a similar way to levels to get the image popping with the rest of the scene. Of course this will depend on what image you've used.

You can see from the image below the difference these techniques have made to the bird.

The last photo to add to the scene is the strawberries. The reason I added them was for a bit of foreground interest and I thought the red of the strawberries would go well with the red tones. And as you might have guessed you use similar techniques I have already shown you to bring them alive in the scene. You can see from the image below the difference this has made to the original picture.

To finish the piece off you might want to give the overall look a bit more pop and create more highlights and shadows. A way you can do this is by adding a levels adjustment layer at the top of the stack of layers and changing the settings so the overall image is darker. This will affect the whole image including all the previous layers created. You can then use a low opacity black brush on the levels layer mask to remove the unwanted darker pixels created by the levels adjustment layer. If done correctly this should give the final piece some real pop.

That's it. Hope this has helped some of you guys wondering how this kind of stuff was done and hopefully you've created something pretty interesting on the way. Please leave any comments you wish, keep em nice, and post links to your own "Parrot Lady" images. Would love to see em...

Cheers

Rob

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