Understanding "Advanced Images"

All text, images, and coding on this page were created by Lydia of Anomalyd

I'm sure you've seen those "advanced image" tutorials that are scattered across various tutorial websites. Most of the time, these tutorials come in batches of twenty or so and have authors that sneakily attempt to make them seem unique by giving them different names such as "Super Cool Warm Glow" and "Icy Frost Image". Don't be fooled by how different these tutorials seem, though, because I have a little secret for you: they all basically teach the same thing.

In Photoshop, it's fairly simple to make anything you want, as long as you fully understand how layers and several of the filters work. Once you have this understanding, you really don't need to look up specific tutorials that, for instance, tell you to set an image layer's opacity to 72.42% and use the exact color of #724234. The people that make these tutorials are trying to fool you into thinking that editing images is an exact science that requires precise opacity measurements and hex codes, but what they don't want you to know is that they probably just made the tutorials while fiddling around with Photoshop and messing with a few layers.

"Why would they want to fool me into thinking it's a precise science?" you ask.
It's simple, really. If a visitor sees a tutorial author using specific numbers and values in his tutorials, then the person will assume that he needs that person's tutorials to create the desired effects. And once this happens, the visitor will start to rely on the author's tutorials and, as a result, will be obligated to credit the tutorial maker because he followed them. It's all about the hits and recognition, people. It could just be a theory and nothing more, but in my opinion, it seems fairly plausible.

Anyway, whether the theory's true or not, the goal of this guide is the same: to teach you how to easily create your own image effects, so that later on, you won't have to rely on numerous tutorials to achieve the effects you want. Therefore, although this tutorial is fairly long, the time spent here will be (I hope) totally worth it, as it'll mean investing less time in reading other tutorials in the future.

» Let's get on with it

The image that I'll be using for this guide is by no means a great one; I took the picture in my backyard last year. It should serve this guide's purpose nicely, however.

Please copy and paste the following image into your Photoshop program so that we can stay on the same page throughout the guide:

» Method One

Here I will be explaining one particular method that happens to be useful but that at the same time, happens to be exploited and is used to make dozens of redundant tutorials.

After pasting your image into Photoshop, create a new layer (Layer > New > Layer) and don't bother renaming it. Then, take the paint bucket tool (or press "G" on your keyboard). Go over to your color palette, and choose any color you'd like (I chose a darker yellow). With the color you've chosen, go to your image and fill it in with the paint bucket tool, so you should see all of that one color.

Head over to your layers palette (if it's not visible, look to the top of the screen and go to Windows and make sure "Layers" has a check next to it). Once you can see your layers palette, click on the layer to which you applied the one color (if it isn't highlighted already), so that now it should be highlighted. Now, in that layers palette, change your blending mode to option "Overlay", and then (also on the layers palette) click the arrow next to "Opacity" and change the percentage to a good sixty or seventy percent--feel free to change the number as you see fit.

Your layers palette should look somewhat similar to this:

And this is my result:

It's that easy, really, and out of that tutorial alone, you can create an "icy" effect or whatever else you want, as long as you choose the right color. Therefore, the concepts that are used in these "advanced image" tutorials are a lot simpler than you might think.

Now, if you'd like to go on with a whole "sharpened" look, that's extremely easy to do. In your layers palette, click on the layer of the photograph we're using so that it's highlighted.

Then, at the top of your screen, head over to Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen, which creates this.

If you'd like the image to look a bit more lightened, never fear! Make sure that same photograph layer is highlighted, right-click it, and press "Duplicate Layer".

Then, drag the duplicated layer so that it is placed above the layer with the one color on it. To do this, click and hold the layer itself, and lightly move your mouse upwards until you can drop the layer above the colored layer. It's really simple to do but is somewhat difficult to explain. Your result should look a bit like this:

Then, while that new layer is highlighted, change the blending mode of that particular layer to either "Screen" or "Lighten". If it looks a little too extreme to you, go ahead and change the opacity of this layer so that it's toned down a little.

And my finished product:

I'll admit that the result looks a bit over-sharpened, but hopefully you get the idea.

» Method Two

This second method is, in my opinion, the most aimless and random one ever, which is why it amazes me that people think they can pass it off as "exact", for lack of a better description. Literally, it only consists of several layers that are plopped ontop of the original image and that only contain random colors set to random blending modes. There's no set "rule" to it--it's just a mishmash.

First, take the image I've given you, and paste it into your program:

Once the image is pasted, create five layers using Layer > New > Layer, and then highlight one of those layers. Put a random color into your color palette, and use the paint can (G) to fill in the image. Then highlight another layer, and do the same thing but with a different color--do it until you've done it to all five layers.

Once all the layers have single colors in them, click on each layer again and literally mess with the blending modes, choosing random ones. Change the opacities as you please. To get an idea for how crazy this is going to be, look at how I did it:

(Note: From personal experience, I've always noticed that modes like Color Dodge, Lighten, Screen, Overlay, Hard Light, and Soft Light and occasionally Multiply are most reliable. If you're having trouble finding a good combination of blending modes, you might want to give those a try.)

And my result:

If you mess with all the modes and opacities, and you still aren't content, just mess with them more, and you should eventually find a "sweet spot".

» Method Three

The third method involves editing the Hue/Saturation of the image and is also fairly easy. Simply copy the following image into your program like always:

Right-click the layer in your layers palette, and press "Duplicate Layer", as we've done in the past. Now, however, you must go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation like I've done:

A new screen should pop up. If you'd like, you can put a check next to "Colorize", but this is always optional. However, for this guide, this is what I'll be doing. Now simply move some of the arrows around until you reach a tone that you might like--I'm going for a bluish tone.

Now, in your layers palette, fiddle around with the blending mode of your newest layer, and, if you want, you can also experiment with its opacity. Here, I simply chose to set my layer to Hard Light:

My result:

There are probably thousands of extra techniques that I could show you, but I think that what I've provided already is sufficient for now. Today, I've shown you three extremely simple techniques you can use for image editing, so that when you eventually decide to give an image an added effect, it should be an easy task to accomplish.

But before you leave, however, please understand that experimentation is key. If you want, you can also experiment with filters in order to achieve even more interesting effects. To do this, I generally like to duplicate my base image and then apply some random filter. Then, I simply set my newest layer to "Overlay", "Soft Light", or "Hard Light", taking care to also change the opacity if I find it's necessary.

So as you can see, all the numerous "tutorials" we find all over the internet aren't really necessary. Since you have a few basic lessons under your belt, now you should be able to make just about anything you want, as long as you use good taste and a bit of common sense.