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A crow peering at a shiny object seemed a natural for this week's Illustration Friday topic. I'm quite fond of crows, having had one as a pet when I was a wee girl back in Indiana. For the crow, I searched for Creative Commons images on Flickr. Wow, are there a lot of photos of crows! I'm always interested in how something is created, so I thought I'd show you the raw material, i.e. the photos, that went into this composition and explain what I did. Here is the crow photo I chose from Sean McCann's Photostream.
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After I was satisfied with the crow, I searched for a ring photo from Stock.xchng . I cut the top ring out of this photo, ran the Find Edges filter on two copies, one set to Multiply at 50% opacity, the next to Color Burn at 100% opacity, both over the top of the ring photo. And, of course, all three layers have a mask so the ring is "caught" on the little stubs of the tree branch.
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Finally I put a yellow gradiant glow on a separate layer – Color blend mode, 68% opacity – above the ring to focus attention on it. Underneath it all is a solid white layer. The title Shiny was done using the instructions for metallic type in an old Photoshop book on type effects.
Okay, if anyone who doesn't do Photoshop read all that, I'm sure you're yawning by now.
I think crows are really beautiful. They are incredibly smart too from what I hear.
ReplyDeleteThis is so great looking Julia! I have Paint Shop Pro XI but I cannot do that level of work. Your crow and background are beautiful.
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