japanese garden

The first part of the tutorial I created a new layer and sketch what I think should go behind the people I wanted to erase. Its always a good idea to sketch the background out when there is a good amount of details.

The second part I use the marquee tool to select the upper part of the door and pasted down, than use a soft eraser to blend it in. You can use this to help you align the doors by moving the copied layer around until it fits.

Next I used a solid color for the small area on the bottom next to the door. When the area is small it's ok to use a solid color but don't over do it or it will look fake.

Finally I use the clone stamp to finish the rest of the image, when you first activate the clone stamp you will need to "sample" an area on your photo by holding the Alt key and clicking on a area that you want to clone, than you start painting over the area that needs to be covered.

This is a 2 part video tutorial that teach you how to add special effects and lightning through adjustment curve. Here is the original photo

and here is the after

Please leave a comment if you have any question regarding this video and let me know what needs to change so I can improve on future videos, thanks!!

Here is the video of the sketching process, you can read below for details.

I start with a grayish background for mid tone and just start sketching the shape of the face.

I didn't really sketch everything in detail because I will leave that for later, but for now I blocked in some of the shadow areas to make the shape more three dimensional.

Next I blocked in some highlights and the basic shape of the hair. At this point I have a better view of what the final picture will look like, so it is good to start make some major changes before its too late such as the shape of the head, position of the eyes and so on.

Than I added some streaks of hair to show the direction of the hair flow.

After you are done blocking in the basic shapes and final positioning of the facial features you can start defining the detail on the face.

In the final picture I brighten up the drawing and even out the tone and added fine streaks of hair.

Here is a video of me painting Iron Man in Photoshop. Again its probably pretty fast but you get the idea, comments and critiques are welcome!!

I sketched it out with plain black line than shade it in to get a feel of the volume. After I am satisfied with the volume I went in and painted the details including the reflections. Once in awhile I will tone down everything using the level tool so I can add more darker shades and brighter highlights because I often get carry away with using too much highlights and shadows. You will notice that I did not really color it, instead, I changed the color using gradient adjustment, I colored one layer to red and a second layer to gold because thats pretty much all the colors he has, than cut it out so I get two different colors. Than I use dodge and burn to bring out some of the back lights. So as you can see, you do not need to paint everythin, Photoshop can help you get to where you want faster.