I originally purchased this stock photo along with some others to help in advertising my novel Shadowed Hawk.
This is the orginal masking work. He's in a ruined stone building that passes nicely for a castle but in this case I cut out the wall and the katanas at his side have to go as well.
If you've seen any of my WIP folders you'll notice my fascination with the Color Range Previewer.
Step 1 - Using the Color Range selection tool, I have the preview on grayscale. Sampling the colors rather than selecting "Highlights", I had an easier time grabbing them. It's not the selection that I want it's the image that begins to appear in the preview.
Steps 2 & 3 - Now the previewer looks really cool in it's grayscale but the problem is that I can't save that particular image. It's just a color code so to help folks vizualize what is selected. Since there was no way to save that preview, I used the snipping tool and saved the image that way.
I found out quickly to reduce the colors of the transparent backgorund in preferences. As you can see in in the samples above, the colors are quite dark. Because I used the snipping tool, it caught the background as part of the image. That was a pain to clear but I used the Color Selection tool again and that worked pretty well.
If you check out the linked WiP you'll see how the "pencil sketch" developed. Using layer masks and a variety of brushes, I was able to reveal parts of the image in a variety of ways. This image above is "almost a final" but not quite.
Detail shot of the areas I wanted to remain as a pencil sketch.
Some might be familiar with the phrase, "he seemed to materialize out of the shadows", that's the premise I had in mind. I wanted him to look like he was walking into our dimension. That's why I purposesfully kept the "pencil sketches" light. He seems as if he's materializing but not all at once. On a lark, I hit Filter/Render/Clouds, and I liked the results.
Of course, I then had to try the Difference Clouds too. This one turned out with a bit of a sunrise or sunset feel.
I also have a some gradient colors that look like rays of light streaming into the room and obscures the character just a little.
And why not make a vampire shot while I could?
The images below are inverted from the Color Selection preview I captured, and I did something completely different with this - the highlights give a sort of "foil" effect. All of these were done with transparency and blending modes.
Initial layer blending mode set to Multiply.
The second layer blending mode stays on Normal then added a Curves Adjustment layer using the preset Cross Process.
Duplicated the layer again and set the blending mode to Difference.
And this is the final image that resulted.
I just want to make the colors pop a little more so I'll see what I can do with it.
Well - that was as easy as duplicating the final image a couple of times and setting the blend modes to Linear Dodge. lol! Plus I fixed a couple of tiny issues that were bugging me.
