From the course: Deke's Techniques (2011-2013)

080 Rendering a portrait in tile patterns

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2011-2013)

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080 Rendering a portrait in tile patterns

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So in the previous movie, I showed you how to render a face in type. In this movie, I'll show you how to take that very same portrait shot and we'll render it using seamlessly repeating tile patterns. And notice we have a kind of old-world-meets-new-world theme going here. Wherever we're working with organic details, such as the flesh tones and the whites of her eyes, I've applied this kind of blistered-paint pattern. And wherever we have synthetics, namely the fabric of her scarf, as well these shadow details under her eyes, we have this circuit-board pattern, and then in the background is a kind of intersection of the two. We'll start things off inside this flat image file from the Fotolia Image Library. I want to convert the image to an independent layer, so I'll double-click on the background item, there inside the Layers panel, and I'll name this new layer "face" and click okay. Now I want to mask away the background, and I'll do that by going up to the Select menu, just as we did in the previous movie, and choosing the Color Range command. With a default Fuzziness value of 40, I'll go ahead and click in the background if necessary in order to identify black as the key color for the selection, and then I'll click okay. All right, now I'll apply the selection as a layer mask by dropping down to the bottom of the Layers panel. And because I've got the opposite of what I want selected at this point time-- in other words, I have the background selected; I really want to select her and mask away the background--I'm going to press the Alt key, or the Option key on the Mac, and then click on that add layer mask icon, and that'll go ahead and mask away the shadow details and keep the midtones and highlights. All right, we need to clean up this mask, so go ahead and Alt+Click or Option+Click on that layer mask thumbnail there inside the Layers panel in order to view the mask independently of the image. I'm going to zoom out a bit here so that I can see the perimeter of the image. And I'll grab the Brush tool, which you can get by pressing the B key. Go ahead and make sure that white is your foreground color by pressing the D key, D as in default colors. Right-click inside the image window. I've got my Size value set to 200 pixels. My Hardness value is set to 100%. Then I'm getting go ahead and click and Shift+Click along this edge. Notice I'm not clicking directly against the edge, just near to it. And I will paint away that eye. Fortunately, most of this area is absolutely white. Now I'll press the M key in order to switch back to the Rectangular Marquee tool. I'll marquee the left portion of the image like so, and I'll press Alt+Backspace, or Option+Delete on the Mac, in order to fill that region with white. Then I'll press Ctrl+D or Command+D on a Mac to deselect the image and click on the image thumbnail there inside the Layers panel in order to see the masked image. All right. Now let's create the blistered-paint pattern by dropping down to the little black-white icon at the bottom of the Layers panel, press the Alt key, or the Option key on the Mac, and click on the icon, and then choose the Pattern command. And because you had Alt or Option down, that brings up a New Layer dialog box. I'll go ahead and call this new layer "side" and click OK. And that brings up the Pattern Fill dialog box. Now by default you don't have many patterns to choose from inside of Photoshop, but there's all kinds of patterns that ship along with the program. Just go ahead and click on this right- pointing arrowhead and then choose the Texture Fill library from the bottom of the list. Photoshop will ask you if you want to replace the existing patterns or append the new ones. Go ahead and click Append and then just a few icons in you'll find a pattern called Bark. Go ahead and select it and increase the Scale value to 200% and then click okay. And we're actually going to use this pattern in two locations: inside of her flesh and also in the background-- which means we need two copies of this layer. So press the Alt key, or the Option key on a Mac, and drag the side layer down to the bottom of the list like so, and that'll automatically create a copy. Now if you turn off that top layer, you'll see the side layer at the bottom of the stack. I went you to rename the top version of the layer "paint," and with that layer still off, go ahead and Shift+Click on the layer mask thumbnail in order to turn it off so that we're seeing the original photographic image. Then go up to the Select menu and choose the Color Range command once again. And this time around we're going to select the highlights, but I need to first increase that Fuzziness value to 100. And then I'll click inside the forehead, Shift+Click inside the whites in the eyes, you might go ahead and Shift+ Click on left side of the forehead as well, just make sure that you have all the highlights selected, and then click OK in order to create that selection. Now turn the paint layer back on and drop down to the bottom Layers panel and click on the add layer mask icon in order to convert that selection to a layer mask. Now let's change the blend mode from Normal to Multiply in order to burn in that texture. And then finally I'm going to double- click on an empty portion of this layer in order to bring up the Layer Style dialog box, and I'm going to press the Alt key, or the Option key on the Mac, and drag the left half of that white slider triangle all the way down until that value before the slash becomes 30. Then click OK in order to apply that modification. Next comes the circuit-board pattern, which we'll create as a custom pattern based on another image from the Fotolia Library. It's called Circuits.tif. Go ahead and open it up and then go to the Edit menu and choose Define Pattern, which brings up the Pattern Name dialog box. Let's just get rid of the .tif and click OK. All right, now switch back to the image in progress, go ahead and turn off the paint layer for a moment, click on the face layer once again to select it, and then let's select the shadow details by going up to the Select menu and choosing the Color Range command. A fuzziness value of 100 still works for us. Click in the background in order to select it. Then Shift+Click in the central area of this purple scarf like so, and then Shift+Click in the shadow region under one of the eyes, and that gives us the selection we're looking for. Click OK. All right, now let's create another pattern layer by pressing the Alt key, or the Option key on the Mac, clicking on that black-white icon, choosing the Pattern command. We'll go ahead and call this new layer circuits and click OK and then Photoshop will display the Pattern Fill dialog box. The circuits pattern should be selected by default because Photoshop always grabs that last pattern that you created. Go ahead and click OK to accept it, then change the blend mode once again to Multiply. Go ahead and turn on the paint layer now and then Shift+Click on the layer mask thumbnail for the face layer to go ahead and turn that layer mask back on. Now the result here in the background is an interaction of the circuits pattern along with that side layer. I want to infuse the background with some color, so I'll go ahead and click on the side layer to make it active, then click on the FX icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose the Color Overlay effect. By default, Photoshop makes the color red, which is not what I'm looking for, so I'll click on that red color swatch and dial in a shade of green by changing the Hue value to 90 degrees and then both the Saturation and Brightness values to 50% like so. Then I'll click OK in order to accept that color, and next let's change the blend mode from Normal to Multiply so we're revealing the blistered-paint effect in the background. Finally, I want to add some differentiation between the foreground and the background in the form of a drop shadow. So I'll click on the face layer to make it active, click the FX icon once again, choose Drop Shadow this time around. Assuming default settings, go ahead and change the Opacity value to 100%, the Angle value to 180 degrees, increase the Distance value to 50 pixels, and then take the Size value up to 200 pixels, and click OK. All right, now let's compare what we have here to the final version of the effect. Notice in the final composition I've managed to rotate that circuit-board pattern 45 degrees. So all the circuits are at an angle instead of being straight up and down the way they are now. Unfortunately, if I go ahead and double-click on that pattern icon in order bring up the Pattern Fill dialog box, you'll see that while we have a Scale value, we don't have a Rotate value, which means that we need to come up with a clever workaround, and I'll show you exactly what that clever workaround is in the very next video.

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