Digital Visualisation FdA

Jago Silver

Adobe Photoshop CS - Illustration technique

This is just one technique using one set of textures but hopefully you can apply the same methods with
different textures of your own.

1. To start, create a new file ensuring that you make the file large enough for your needs. Most
illustrations for print will need to be at 300dpi and at least 100% of their final printed size. It is usually
best to work in RGB mode in Photoshop as some features will not function in CMYK. However the
file will need to be converted to CMYK if it is to be sent to a professional printers. A good
compromise is to use the CMYK preview function (Ctrl+Y).

2. Open your scanned drawing and drag it onto the new file. Change the Layer Blend Mode to
Multiply. Now use the Free Transform tool (Ctrl+T) to expand the drawing to fill the page. Hold
down Shift while doing this to keep the image in proportion. Name this layer Drawing.
3. Create a new layer above the Background layer and name it Painting. With this layer active start
drawing a selection using the lasso tool and begin filling in the basic areas of your image with
colour. You can either use the Shift and Alt keys to add and subtract from your selection or simply
use a paintbrush and eraser to refine the shapes.

4. Once you have your whole image painted in some form you can hold the Ctrl key down when you
click on the painting layer to select just the area you have painted. This is useful for painting part of
your image a different colour without going over the edges (for example the beak of the bird
above).
5. Continue to paint the image adding as much detail as necessary.
6. One method for making your images seem more three dimensional is to add shadowing and
highlights to them. You can use selections to do this. First, using the Lasso tool, draw out the areas
of your image you think would be in shadow, try to keep them consistent with a single light source
(for example if the light was coming from above and to the right, the shadows would mostly fall on
the left-hand underside of the object).
7. With this selection active and your painting layer selected, go to Layers - Adjustment Layers - Hue/
Saturation. This will create a new Adjustment Layer above your Painting layer that only affects the
areas you selected. Play with the Lightness slider graph until your shadows look right. The Curves
and Levels Adjustment Layers can also be used for similar effects (PTO).
8. Adding textures - Open each of the texture files and drag them onto the image, arrange them in
order of their names, starting at the bottom. The file names also tell you which Blend Modes and
what opacity to set them at. Obviously you can experiment with changing these afterwards.
9. You can now start to refine the shadows and highlights using the Dodge and Burn tools. Start by
selecting the shape of your painting layer (hold down Ctrl and click on it). Then select Texture
Layer 03. You can now start to use the Burn tool to emphasise the shadows, using a fairly large
brush with a low opacity will produce a subtle effect. You can use the Dodge tool in the same way
to bring out the highlights. Remember to consider the position of these in relation to your light

10. You can now also start to mask off or erase areas of the texture layers that you do not want. In
the image above I have masked off the 1st texture layer for the whole of the bird as it was a little
too overpowering. I have left it visible in the background where it makes a good backdrop to the
image.
11. If you want your image to have a plain background an easy way to achieve this is to mask of
everything except the illustration. Simply select your painting layer (hold down Ctrl when you click
on it), then invert the selection (Ctrl+Shift+I) and create a layer mask above all your other layers.
12. Depending on how accurately you painted the original shape your mask might have some slightly
dodgy edges. You can clean these up easily with the eraser, making sure you have clicked on the
mask icon on the layer first. As this is only changing the mask it wonʼt be erasing any of your
actual image. If you accidentally erase more than you meant, simply switch the colour of the
eraser from black to white (or the other way around), by clicking the X key.