Postwork Tips (Formerly: Using Photoshop Brushes (like those by Deviney) in Postwork)
Joe Cotter
Posts: 3,259
Using Photoshop Brushes (like those by Deviney) in Postwork
There have been many requests for tutorials regarding using photoshop brushes like those Deviney creates/sells in postwork. Here is an interesting one on YouTube by Aaron Blaise that some might find helpful. The first 5 minutes can be skipped as it's about using a tablet, etc...
A couple things of note are that he is working on a separate layer over the image itself rather then directly on the image (always a good practice) and how he uses the warp tool to shape the texture to the image. Working on a separate layer makes adjusting the brush effects to create the highlights he is referring to much easer as the only thing effected is the brush stroke/stencil. He also has the brush toolbox handy to adjust things like the angle of the stamp.
A couple of things that usually aren't mentioned in tutorials like this is that brushes in photoshop aren't always brushed but rather often act as stamps. I know it's obvious to some, but ages ago when I was first learning this it wasn't to me (of course there weren't the YouTube videos available back then so...) Another point is that the brushes are a greyscale image with alpha (transparent areas) such that when stamped on top of an underlying image it produces the effect we see in the tutorial. We don't need to leave the brush greyscale when we stamp it, but it will always be a single color of varying levels of luminance along with the associated alpha areas. When doing something like fire, we will often stamp with various brushes over top of each other with different shades of orange, yellow, blue... The varying levels of opacity and luminance will cause just a few base colors take on a very rich and dynamically colored effect.
I hope this is useful for people who are looking to use brushes in post work. A little knowledge and a bit of playing can go a long way. G'luck and have fun. :)
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Here's a speedpaint by the same artist which shows his techniques in a more complete image, thus demonstrating it a bit more completely (sans explanation.)
Oh, and in case anyone is wondering who the artist is, here is his short intro video.
Thanks, Gedd!
Wow! I never thought to use the brushes like those. I'm still just learning how to use brushes in Gimp and this was amazing. I've bookmarked it and will have to look later to see what else he has. Thsnks for the heads up!!
I decided to rename this thread (from the first post's title to it's current title) so that I could built on this topic.
You mioght want us to transfer it to the Art Studio Forum as well.
Here's a tutorial on How to Color, Brighten and Sharpen Eyes in Photoshop from Phlearn that shows some artistic concepts beyond many of the typical 'select and increase saturation' types of tips. It's a good example of how photographic techniques translate into other formats for postwork and how understanding certain artistic principles aid in adding a finishing touch to images that can make the difference between an average image and one that stands out.
@Chohole, sure... didn't think of that but it might be more at home there. ;)
OK moved over. Threads don't get lost so often either in the dedicated forums.
Here's a tip on Creating Beams Of Light From Nothing In Photoshop, again from PHlearn. This particular type of postwork is not only good because people often want to create an effect like this but also because it points out an area where doing something in post is much faster then doing it in render, which is a good reason to consider post vs in render. To create this type of effect in render can multiply the render time quite a bit just to get the image to come out clean, and if it's not right, then tweaking and re-rendering... well you can see where this is heading. Doing an effect like this in post means that it can be tweaked infinately without any hit on render time as it's all done afterwards. And yes, professional studios do exactly this for exactly this reason.
Btw, if you notice I'm pulling many from Phlearn there's a reason. They have some great tutorials and a lot of them, so I recommend that people take the time to check out their site and even consider buying some of their product if it's appropriate to your needs. It is the large amount of tutorials that can be challenging though, so I am picking out specific ones to highlight specific aspects of post work related to 3D. As I go, I should be posting from other sources also, but Phlearn is one of my goto's for postwork tutorials.
Another great resource for post work is Andrei Oprinca. Here he does an interesting tutorial on Fantasy Lighting in Photoshop. What we see in this tutorial is how different artists approach getting a given effect. Watching Andrei's tutorials gives a good understanding of his approach to achieving his particular style/look.
One of the interesting thing Andrei shows here is using Layer Styles with the brushes. The trick here is to use the brush effects on their own layer, then right click on the layer to bring up the Styles menu (as seen in the video at 26'30" aprox.) There are a raft of options, too many to mention, that will open up a whole world of creativity for you if you've never used them. Layer Styles will effect the whole layer that the style is applied to so make sure you separate out the parts you want the Style to effect. There are a lot of tutorials on Layer Styles so do a YouTube search or just look through through the sites mentioned here. The trick is to take the techniques shown and refit them to the 3D postwork you are attempting to do.
Good tutorials, Gedd. That first video shows something that most people don't realize and that is tailoring teaxtures ti follow the volume and direction of the object to which they apply their textures whether by brushes or any other means.
I love the Phlearn channel on Youtube. I always learn something new and most of it can be translated to Gimp which is what I use since I don't have Photoshop. The only things that can't are those nasty proprietary things and I just don't watch anything that might have those parts in it since I can't use those techniques. I think almost half of the videos I've bookmarked to learn Photoshop techniques are a Phlearn video.
Just came across this. some great tips and have subcribed to both channels. I really really liked the tips on the elephant skin brushes, that was super helpful.
Basic adjustments to an image often include increasing or decreasing contrast. Beyond that, people will discover the Dodge and Burn tools to have a more localized adjustment of the shadows and highlights in an image but these tools are a bit crude. The next stage abandons the built in Dodge & Burn tools and uses a more sophisticated process to achieve the same results only more controlled and with a much more natural effect. It is this third method that is shown here.
Btw, if you like the information on this thread, you might find my Facebook group page The Creative Image of interest which covers 2D art and photography. I also have a page dedicated to news on 3D and related called The 3D Dimension.
I'm glad people are getting something out of this. The comments are good feedback for when something is helpful. :)
Gedd, that link to the beams tutorial is incomplete...
Thanks, fixed.
I second this - even though they focus on photography and photo retouching, almost all of the things they teach in their 100's of free YouTube videos can be applied to any digital art as well. If you like the style of them, the paid tutorials are the same but they go into way more detail and spend a lot of time discussing the thought process and why's of what they do. I bought a couple of their effects videos and they are fantastic (plus they came with a tutorial on using the pen tool, which would almost have been worth the price by itself - over a decade using Photoshop and I never knew how useful that one tool could be!). They have pretty regular sales too.
Also @Gedd - thank you so much for that link to the Aaron Blaise video - it was really interesting and I lost a big chunk of a day watching his other videos.
Great stuff, thanks so much.
Thanks for the posts Gedd, been a fan if Phlearn foir a while now but those links to other artists are very much appreciated.
Here's a tutorial where Serge Ramelli covers How to Create a Hollywood Look with Lightroom CC Presets. Now the tutorial itself is interesting but it also serves as a good example of a type of look/effect that one cannot get right out of a camera or render engine and by doing so serves as a very good example of why post work is essential at times for video or still images if one want's to produce certain effects.
Here Serge Ramelli shows using textures combined with blend modes to create artistic effects with an image. These techniques are also used to modify textures used on our models to creatively add wear, dirt, rust, etc...
Something else to be aware of regarding this and the previous tutorial is that these effects can be used in compositors like After Effects, Natron, Blender's built in compositor, etc... to add effects to still images or video. This means that learning these skills (along with blend modes) are a foundation for advanced compositing work. Because much of the techniques and concepts are standard regardless of the tool (just the particular implementation differs,) it is likely that they will come to IRay at some point. Currently IRay doesn't have a post processing compositor, but it is pretty common among advanced render engines so I'm guessing it's a matter of time.
Edit: I forgot to mention that Deviney has textures in many of his packs so this tutorial directly addresses the use of these.
NPR renders are a favorite topic for some and so with that in mind, Topaz makes an inexpensive Lightroom/Photoshop plugin called Simplify which does some very interesting stuff. If you are into NPR, take a minute to check this out.
What a great thread! Thank you so much for sharing all these tips, Gedd!
I'm glad you are getting something out of it. :)
Even if I'm not posting, I am following the thread and watching the videos as I get time. So, keep posting them as I'm finding them very useful! Thanks for keeping it up.
I hope you don't mind me adding to this, but IgnisSerpentus has a few of her own tutorials up on Youtube as well, such as painting feathers and hair which are a good watch.
https://www.youtube.com/user/DamageInc3D/videos
Contributions are good. ;)
On the subject of contributions, I post examples of techniques that I think are relevant to what artists here might use in their work along with how/why I think it's relevant. In doing so, I try to pick tutorials that explain the technique or topic well. Since there are now thousands of tutorials typically on any given topic the idea is to post ones that stand out, but of course the number of tutorials I've personally seen on any given topic will be limited. So with that in mind, if anyone sees a tutorial/link I've posted and feels they have one that covers the topic in a better or even just different/relevant way, feel free to post as that's one of the benefits of having a community. ;)
Here's an interesting tutorial on Turning Day Into A Rainy Night that covers not only what's mentioned in the title but adding a motion blur and using the info panel for placing effects, along with a couple other tricks. One of the benefits of doing these types of effects in post is that the render time to do all of this in the render engine goes up drastically. Another is that the exact amount of each aspect of the effect can be tweaked individually to allow us to fine tune a given effect, which doing in render would make that level of fine tuning impractical. A third reason is that we can expand our perspective to allow us to consider basic shots that can be repurposed to a variety of images.
All of this adds up to an expansion of our ability to visualize possibilities and see the artisitic potential inside of something that in itself might be so-so. This vision for me is at the heart of what it is to be artistic. Which leads us to another point. People who believe postwork is cheating are potentially stifling their very growth as an artist as they are focusing on the wrong things, technique vs the end result. To be artistic is to create. We develop our technical skills to allow us to be more creative, not to be bound by them.