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tamaraR — Photomanipulation walkthrough
Published: 2012-05-04 11:46:49 +0000 UTC; Views: 19471; Favourites: 421; Downloads: 0
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Step 1: Idea (message, composition)
You decided that you want to make a photomanipulation. But what to make? There are so many photomanipulations already out there and mostly with the same theme. So you decide you don't just want to stick a pretty girl onto a beautiful background. No you want to be original and have your manipulation portray a message everyone can relate to.
Think of things that are important to you, that lay close to your heart. They can be emotions (love, hate, sadness, anger) or experiences, hobbies (art, sports etc), things you are struggling with. Or they can be global themes like (beauty, money, economy, eating disorders, war, relationships etc.)
Of course if you choose to portray something as love there are many ways to do so. Do you want it to be a surreal depiction of love, or dark, fantasy, sci-fi, conceptual, humourous... your choice will of course decide the whole 'feel' of the image.
So choose wisely as they say.
Now that you have your theme you need to know how you generally want your manipulation to look. This will help with picking the right stock. I know if I don't do this I endlessly wonder around DA looking through stock pictures.
You can do that too and get inspired by a photo you see. That's a different way of approaching it.
So your composition should be interesting a real eyecatcher.
How to make an interesting composition -
Great articles by
Know your Basics - Composition (the manip way)The Rule of Thirds is another one of those expressions that you have probably heard before somewhere but aren't quite sure what it means. This article strives to shed some light on this rule as well as on how to use lines and shapes in your compositions to lead the viewer's eye to the important bits. There are some compositional rules and pointers that no artist should go without knowing!
The Technical Part
Rule of Thirds
Thankfully this time, there are no hours upon hours of dry reading to be done because the Rule of Thirds itself can be explained rather easily:
"The Rule of Thirds states that an image should be imagined as divided into and
Know your Basics - PerspectivePerspective comes in different forms, the most obvious & basic of which is the use of the word in relation to the appearance of relative orientation in a three dimensional space. At first, it may seem irrelevant to photomanipulators, (because, hey, the photographs already are perspectively sound,) but putting more than one photograph in context requires that you learn to see what makes sense and what doesn't.
The Technical Stuff
Perspective (from Latin perspicere, to see through) in the graphic arts, such as drawing, is an approximate representation, on a flat surface (such as paper), of an image as it is seen by the eye. The two most
More:
Composition explained ~ Conceptart tutorial about composition ~ Phil Straub composition tutorial ~ composition tips ~ landscape composition rules
Creating a grid of the rule of thirds ~Golden Ratio grid extension PS ~ Golden Crop extension for PS
Keywords here: light, shadows, perspective, placement, colors, contrast, framing, focal point, rule of thirds
Step 2: Choosing stock (and prepping stock images)
So now that you have an idea for your photomanipulation what are you going to do next? Search for the right stock. This is a very important step.
So let's just say you are going for the theme love and the story you came up with is a parting between two lovers at a train station (cliché I know, but it's just an example, bear with me)
First of all when searching for stock try to get the most high quality stock you can get. Try to avoid, blurry, noisy etc. images. Of course when you find a stock which is perfect but it is grainy or the light isn't right you can use the following tutorial to fix that:
Fixing low quality photo's www.darrenhoyt.com/2007/10/10/…
So about the sites you can get your stock from:
1. DA browse.deviantart.com/resource…
2. MorgueFile morguefile.com
3. Dreamstine (paid and some free) www.dreamstime.com/
See
Great Free Stock Image WebsitesSo, I figured I'd post something useful as opposed to being my usual outrageous self. ;) I've been collecting links to the most useful free stock sites on the Web, and I wanted to share them with my fellow photo-manipulators. :heart: I tried to order these from strictest rules of usage to least strict. Generally speaking, modifications of the images on these websites are allowed and can be used for most purposes SO LONG AS the original image is not "reasonably identifiable." Still, you should always check the terms of use of each individual website before downloading their images.
Attribution (and sometimes permission) Required:
Sxc.hu http for more handy sites (plus all the information about commercial use) and commercial stock use on DA use
Commercial Stock UseGreat stock providers :dalogo::camera::gallery:
Before you go any further, be aware that these are the current rules of these stock providers and they have the right to always change them in the future. So be sure to always check the rules before you start using the stock for a commercial project.
I will be updating this journal from time to time.
:daprints: DA print allowed
:bulletgreen: Commercial use unrestricted
:bulletorange: Commercial use with restrictions
Main stock focus legend::hesitation: Model
:house: Objects
:rose: Background
:frog: Animals
:bulletorange:Commercial use with restrictions:iconfaestock::hesitation::daprint
Always read terms and conditions on how you may use the stock and properly credit the owners of the photo's.
These are only a few but I know these get used most often.
What I usually do is type in a keyword (on DA stock images) like train, or station. You get all the stock that have to do with that word. You can select a sub categorie to search more accurately.
Sometimes the choice of words can make a big difference. For example if I type in wave (because I want someone waving) I get a bunch of sea waves. So I decided to select model.
Than I only get models with the word wave. But the word wave still gives me a lot of water pictures.
So I use the word waving instead. Play around with different words and subcategories to get the right images.
I usually save all the stock I want to use for one manipulation in the same folder. For example I name the folder "love - train" and place all the pictures I want to use in there so it is easy for me to find.
Another great tip from XilaPhoenixArt is to bookmark all the dA stock links into a folder that's called "PS materials" so you can easily find back the links and post them in your credits.
Step 3: Cutting out your stock
I usually start with a large canvas size in Photoshop (usually the size of the original photo or A4 for printing purposes).You can decide your type of canvas here (long, wide, square etc). For a square piece I like to work around (2000px or 2500px) <-- Please see
Canvas sizes - inches and dpi and pixelsThis is a sort of guide on canvas sizes, inches, dpi and pixel x pixels.
when it came to canvas sizes, I always kind of assumed that inches belonged with dpi and pixels were just pixels and that everyone knew that; but i read a whole bunch of comments on a tumblr blog where someone asked about canvas sizes, and SO MANY people were replying with things such as, "4000x4000 px at 300 dpi" or "2000x2000 px at 200dpi".
and I guess not everyone quite understands what dpi's really used for xD.
DPI = Dots per Inch. It means how many dots will be printed per inch.
DPI is actually used for printing purposes. It shows the printer how much pixels to . psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/too…
Now how to cut out your stock. I always use Quick Selection (W) in photoshop because it saves time and because you work with masks you can always bring parts back if you make a mistake.
Here are some really good tutorials to get you started:
The basic tool and how to use them: www.surrealpsd.com/core-skills… www.surrealpsd.com/core-skills… www.surrealpsd.com/background-…
For those troublesome hairs... ~ ~ ~
How to cut out those pesky trees:
How to make complex selections
Step 4: Blending stock
Matching up colors and hues in different stock is important. You need to do it so that all stock images look like they are part of one picture. You can do this with color balance and hues and saturation option that you can find in the "create adjustment layer" in the layer menu see www.binary-artist.com/photosho…
I would highly recommend working with "clipping masks" psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/too… "groups" www.photoshopessentials.com/im…
Clipping masks make sure that only the direct layer underneath is effected by the change in for example color or brightness. And groups can be used to place layers and clipping masks into them so you can move them around your canvas all at once.
Another good way to match colors of each stock with each other is with match colors
One of the best tutorials out there:
Great tutorials: :thumb179801967: :thumb179802103:
How to fix overexposed images: www.photoshopsupport.com/tutor…
How to fix underexposed images: www.photoshopsupport.com/tutor…
But not only colors should match up but also the light. Make sure your background and your model have the light coming from the same direction.
Use "lens blur" www.signaturestop.com/tutorial… in the foreground and background to put focus on your subject. For instance blur out twigs in the foreground and the background so only the model stands out. Make sure to copy the background before you do so and use a layer mask on the lens blur layer so you can make the floor around the models feet as sharp as she is.
See what I mean here: and
How to work on the lighting:
www.psdbox.com/tutorials/manip… www.psdbox.com/tutorials/thing… www.psdbox.com/tutorials/simpl… www.psdbox.com/tutorials/dodge…
:thumb198706051:
:thumb196822958: :thumb183237130:
psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/pho… psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/pho…
Painted Look
Step 5: Details
Smoothing skins and fixing other body parts: sixrevisions.com/photoshop/26-… www.photoshoproadmap.com/Tag/s…
Sharpening: psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/too… www.photoshopsupport.com/tutor…
Hair:
painting hair ~ painting hair II
Special effects: effects.worth1000.com/tutorial…
Fire- www.photoshoproadmap.com/Tag/f… ;
Rain - www.photoshoproadmap.com/Tag/r…
Water - water tutorials 1 ~ water tutorials 2
Step 6: Mood and Finishing touches
Colors decide the mood of your work. Blue usually gives your work a sad feel while yellow gives a pleasant and uplifting one. I usually use Color balance from "create adjustment layer" menu ontop of all my other layers to set the mood. You can also do this with curves by adjusting the color level there or "gradient map" from the same menu and putting the layer to "hard light", "overlay", "color dodge" or "soft light" and bringing down the opacity. See what I mean here: fav.me/d2qmeuk and Color matching
See this great article about colors by
Know your Basics - Colour Theory (the manip way)Most of us have heard about Colour Theory - be it in school or on dA or as a term thrown about by someone somewhere. But what exactly is it? And how do you use it? This is what this article is striving to explain especially in regards to photomanipulation.
The Technical Part
Thankfully, there's tons of reading material about colour theory. Starting with the wikipedia article on the subject (which seems rather dry and boring to be honest) and ranging to tutorials written by deviants for their fellow artists. Those are the ones I'd like to recommend to you to get started in colour theory:
:thumb14617828: :thumb120798230:
Still too dry and t
There you go, your done.
Remember have fun and do lots of experimenting in PS!
Check out more great tutorials at:
Thanks for reading.
Be sure to 
If you have any tutorials or ideas how to improve this article please leave a comment.
My other walkthroughs:
Artist walkthrough
Coloring tutorial
Related content
Comments: 79
Thank You Broo ! i have translated it to arabic so i can help my freinds to be pro in that art
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Welcome.
It's a very fun and great art form.
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I'm just starting out --I have Photoshop elements 5 and Paintshop Pro 9--this older one I've used the most--I'm basically computer illiterate and I'm looking for very basic step by step tutorials--do you have any suggestions--i've found some on Youtube but they are really beyond me--I have a Huge gallery of 7500 photos & would probably only use my own stock--any help would be appreciated
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Hello there. Sorry for the late reply. I am not so familiar with doing manipulations with programs such as Photoshop Elements and Paintshop pro. I know there are very little tutorials around about them. But I tried elements and it does look similar to photoshop. I usually try to experiment or look at the adobe element site for helpful tutorials. I'll see if I can find something for you.
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thanks--they really are all very similar & I got Your note--
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I am interested in learning the techniques of photo improvement, and manipulation. I have Photoshop CS 2, but am a real beginner! I have other programs - Elements (an old version), Arcsoft photo studio, and others, which I find a bit easier.
Thanks for the tutroials
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Thank you very much for spending your time to make this awesome compilaiton. It will be of great help to me and many others.
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and I hope it will bring you further in your artistic abilities.
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wow this is a lifesaver O.o
let me love you?
my manipulations aren't the best they could be and hopefully this tutorial will help!
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This was very useful. Thank you for being such a big help in the community. I really appreciate your initiative in trying to help others through this.
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Thank you very much for your kind words. 
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One of the richest and most complete work on photomanipulation that many have seen not only on dA, but over the network. I was pleasantly surprised to find this great creative work produced by friends of which should be many more.
Congratulations, you made a really spectacular job.
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Dear Luis,
Thank you so much for the amazing compliment. 
Also thank you so much for featuring it in your group. I really appreciate it.
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Brilliant article! I wish more people would use art as a form of expression instead of making what they think other people want to see. Trends are a disease.
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Very true. You see a lot of trend followers. Can't say I'm quilt free. Sometimes I like to sneak something cliché and overdone in there b/c it's a nice way to practice my skills and sometimes I just really like that overdone idea. But creating artworks deep from within my heart are much more satisfying.
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Definitely, I've probably done it too. But that's not what I want to fill my gallery with, and not what I want to see in other galleries. To me, when art stop being self expression, it's not art any more. It's a copy or a trend thing.
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I'm really glad you like it. And thank you for the great tutorial.
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Awesome feature!
And thank you for featuring a few of my tutorials 
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Thanks for providing such great tutorials.
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Very helpful and informative! As a manipulator whose skills have been stuffed in a closet for a couple of years, this is just the refresher course I needed.
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Definitely going into my reference collection. Thank you!
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