DIY | Photoshop Art

Tweet this!

The more time I spend in Photoshop, the more I learn how to do. I'm trying to share the knowledge here by showing you a few of my projects :)

A few weeks ago, for Valentines Day, I gave Justin four pieces of art. Each one includes a silhouette of us from actual photos against textured backgrounds. Here are the final pieces, which I just sent to the printer this week...


Pin It
You Can Stand Under My Umbrella...
The above image was the first in this series. I had to add the umbrella in Photoshop (I'll post a tutorial later this week). If you enlarge the image (click the image to enlarge), you'll notice the texture of the rain. My favorite part of the image? Underneath our umbrella, there is sunlight. Hmm. How would that ever happen in real life? I love the contrast. In college, I truly think I could have written an entire paper out of that right there (Liberal Arts students out there, can I gettan AAAmen?).

There are three more! :) Check them out!

Pin It
Back to back...
You may have to enlarge the image to really get a good feel for the texture (Click the image to enlarge). The above image, for example. has a lot of intricate mosaic texture on the bottom green half of the background. The top half has a wood-grain texture.

Pin It
I wish I may... I wish I might... First star I see tonight...
This one also has a lot more texture than meets the eye. The full size version, for example, has white dashes randomly strewn across the blue background, meant to mimic stars in the sky. If you enlarge the image and zoom in, you'll find them.

Perhaps more importantly, you might notice that the "Moon" also happens to look a bit like the Death Star on Star Wars. No, this was not intentional... but yes, as soon as I had added the effect, I was immediately convinced of this similarity and thus was immediately convinced I had to keep it this way.

Pin It  
Walking...
This one is a shot from the beach over Thanksgiving Weekend that Justin's mom took. My favorite thing? If you enlarge it (to its true size, actually, so I guess it's not exactly an enlargement!), those green dashes actually end up looking like floating dandelions... the ones that are old and look like green stems topped with fluffy white cotton. So the actual image has a surreal feeling of walking on a stone path through a field full of aging dandelions floating through the air... Lovely, right?

We grabbed a few (well, four) black Ribba frames at Ikea 2 weeks ago, in anticipation of getting these suckers printed.

Then, this week, I ordered these puppies in print form off of Zazzle. I played around for a few hours and found various prices at UPrinting, Shutterfly, and a multitude of printing and poster websites... but, in the end, the fact of the matter is that (1) I don't know for sure how they will look, and thus (2) I am not willing to shell out a hundred buckaroos just to test how they look. At the end of the day, I ended up spending $35 total at Zazzle, including shipping and four 12x16 prints. Fingers crossed hoping they come in ASAP!


A few tutorials are on their way to help you create the same effects:

• How to cut out silhouettes easily in Photoshop (in all images)
• How to create wood grain effects in Photoshop (in "Back to Back")
• How to create rain, umbrellas, etc in Photoshop (in the first image, "You Can Stand Under My Umbrella")

Get excited :)