Let's upgrade (enhancement tutorial)

**Dragonram**

Here's my attempt with one of my own pics. It's definately not my best work lol.

Darn I forgot to put the Ð on it Ah well, I'll add that and put it in the rotator hehe.

- Ð

**Mobyias** · 11/05/2006 21:03:23

heres my attempt.

still needs the wavy ripple effect thingy, but oh well

**phi**

BulletTime is basically created by changes in air pressure causing distortions in the light.

Shading is inferior to MY S3x0R METHOD! XD

Photoshop Tutorial: BulletTime ripple effect [Lots of images!]

Here's a sample from the tutorial:

25.jpg

And here's one I prepared earlier (just after the release of CR2.0):

Enjoy.

Pyraci · 01/11/2007 07:42:01

Excellence, Phi. SMILEY

Very useful tutorial indeed.

Skin Tutorial - Part 1

This will be a three-part tutorial focusing on pulling out the realistic skin textures that already embedded within our RSI's though our artwork. Please note that with most things in art and photo/screenshot manipulation, lighting is fundamental and will be addressed first. That said, I(personally) take screenshots without overbright and green tint settings on. I also set my screenshot capture quality settings to 100. For more information on useropts.cfg and options.cfg files, please see Bayamos' More Useropts Options thread.

I've taken a shot of my friend Betty and placed her RSI on a new layer (In this case, a white background to focus on the RSI rendering).

For darker screenshots and night time shots like this one, I usually use Image-adjustments-curves (ctrl+m) to brighten the image without losing too much of the texture information.

For instance, I used this setting:

Yielding the following result:

*keep in mind that the intensity of the curves tool will differ depending on the amount of light desired. (i.e. much lighter or daytime shots may need little to no curves adjustment.

Next, we're going to try to bring the texture and contrast out in the skin tone. That will be done by using Image-adjustments-Hue/Saturation (ctrl+u). I've found that setting the saturation down to about -30 or so gives as suitable effect.

Now the textures are starting to come out, but leave the overall image dull.

Now I use Image-adjustments-Brightness/Contrast to make the image more vivid:

*Note that this again is a matter of personal preference and composition of the image, and steps 3 and 4 can be done repeatedly as needed if initially unhappy with the results.

This should get you ready for trimming the excess around the RSI(If not done so already), as well as other revisions/refinements.

The next part of this tutorial will deal more with hue and pigmentation of the skin.

**ShiXinFeng**

Awesome work Py, as usual.

Sorry to 'break' your tutorial, bu I have a couple of questions: why use Curves to adjust the image, instead of simply using Contrast/Brightness adjustments? What does it do differently? And, what feathering do you have your selection tool set at? Or do you manually select pixels?

Thanks!

Pyraci

Oh, questions like these are encouraged with my tutorials. Better to ask questions as we move along, I say. SMILEY

I tend to use curves to be more subtle in bringing the image out, so to speak. This way, I can brighten an image without overexposing it and removing some of the texture. Notice the transition with curves is a bit smoother than the one with Brightness/Contrast. That and I also try not to saturate the colors(which Brightness/Contrast tends to do) until I make the adjustment with Hue/Saturation. I've found that it gives me more control over the texture as a whole. Also, the pixels selected for this part of the tutorial were done manually with the rectangle marquee to quickly isolate the image. I am currently taking away the excess part with the background and softening the polygonal edges for the next part.

**PBlade**

Pyraci, my good man. We're on precisely the same wavelength. I employed the exact same method on this image.

However. I tend to have Green tint on ingame, and simply remove it with Color Balance in Photoshop.

After that, I desaturate it a bit, then alter the contrast.

That usually leaves me with the base image that I go to work on. And the outcome became:

Havocide · 01/11/2007 09:30:01

PBlade, that final shot is much better than the version you showed me,

The necklace and shirt dont look as jagged, and if im honest i didnt even see it like i did on the other one,

The contrast settings aswell give it a really nice touch i think, dark...bit like a machine

Awesome work dude, its a nice imporvement well done

Pyraci

PBlade, my friend. You've given me an idea to use here, with the color balance adjustment. SMILEY

Part 2

At this point, I’ve gone back and cleaned the image up a bit by removing the excess pixels and smoothing some of the outline out.

Now that we have the pigmentation of the skin that we want, let’s add a little warmth back into her skin tone and her clothes in this case by duplicating the RSI layer and using Image-adjustments-Color Balance. (ctrl+b) Doing this on a separate layer will allow for blending changes and more flexibility with the tone than applying it directly.

Here is an example of the color balance settings used. I did the same for shadows, midtones, and highlights. Again, this must be used with some discretion, as the skin tone desired may be different in some compositions.

Once the desired tone is reached, change the layer’s blend style to hue, settling the tone of the skin and clothes where they need to be. Merge the layers.

This frees us up to work on the finer points of the skin like shading, which will be covered in the third part of this tutorial. At which point, the smallest things can affect the image greatly. Just look at an eye overlay does to this:

**Aquatium.**

Nice work on that guide, I will point out that balance of clothes colors as well as skin tone based on color balance can be an issue because of the complete edit it does on the whole picture. I can't stress enough to practice firstly seperating all the layers to edit them independantly, sure its a longer process, but the results yeild can make a big difference. Im my RSI edits I tend to have several layers, Skin , Front Hair, Back Hair, Eyes, Clothes, etc etc. Then you can manipulate the image settings based on each layer, and history tool is great to connect everything flawlessly.

Pyraci

hehe Yes, good point. This last part is where I do my layer work. As Aquatium said, a masterful enhancement will usually have extensive work done to several parts separately and thus, need separate layers in the process. I'm going to demonstrate a process I call "folding" that utilizes this technique in the third and subsequent parts of RSI enhancement.

HostileIntention

Excellent as always, Pyraci.

- Check your PM's. =P

**GoDGiVeR** · 03/04/2007 05:44:57

Pyraci, I need the third step of your awesome tutor! :-O

P.S.: What's the "hue" blend style? I have the german version of PS and reading through english tutors is sometimes cryptic o.O

narrakan · 03/04/2007 06:41:34

GoDGiVeR wrote:

P.S.: What's the "hue" blend style? I have the german version of PS and reading through english tutors is sometimes cryptic o.O

Haha, well that's problematic.
I highly suggest reinstalling Photoshop and choose English instead, most of the tutorials on the internet are in english.

If not, here's the "hue" blend style:

I'm guessing it's in the same position just in german.

Also, nice tutorial Pyraci.

Pyraci

Thanks

Man, I need to get back to this one...