DS11's Adjustment Layer Tutorial

[DeathSpawn11]

looking at my current WIP for Resistance, I realized how important the adjustment layers are on the front. so heres a tutorial on how to use them correctly :)

with adjustment layers:
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o136/DeathSpawn11/lookie.png
without adjustment layers: :eek:
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o136/DeathSpawn11/difference.png

First get your picture for your box and get everything set up, I'm using a wallpaper for Hellgate London. now first lets go to Layers>New Adjustment Layer>Brightness/Contrast.

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o136/DeathSpawn11/12-30-2007_16-42-38.png

Now a window should pop up, click "OK". My usual preferences are to lower darkness and raise contrast, so I'll do that. Though, when your using darker images, you might want to raise brightness, and then raise contrast just a little, not a lot. heres my result on what I did.

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o136/DeathSpawn11/12-30-2007_16-51-29.png

(odd, it shrunk it...)
looks good don't it?, now lets mess around with colors! now, we can do a lot of things here, I'm going to change the color scheme here from green to...say, orange. So go to Layers>New Adjustment Layer>Hue/Saturation, Click OK when that comes up. And now we edit. First drag the Saturation thing down to about -55 or anywhere near there you see fit, after doing so, click the box next to "colorize"

see the next post for the continuation of this

[DeathSpawn11]

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o136/DeathSpawn11/12-30-2007_17-00-46.png

Doin' Great so far :D
next, you should have a clean slate of things there (except for whatever is in the saturation bar), the -55 saturation is there, just not showing. so, since we're going for an orange color, drag the Hue slider to around 45 or so (I have 47 for this). Then give it a high saturation (but not too high). I'm giving it 80, leave the lightness at 0 you don't really need it much. results are below.


http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o136/DeathSpawn11/12-30-2007_17-14-17.png

good grief it's orange!! a little bit too orange if you ask me >_>
so lets change that, so go to your layers palette and change the blending mode to Hard Light

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o136/DeathSpawn11/12-30-2007_17-19-29.png

looks....not...good so I'm gonna lower it's opacity to 50

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o136/DeathSpawn11/12-30-2007_17-21-49.png

and you're pretty much finished (also odd, shrunk this one to...)

now obviously, you can do tons more with things like this using the other adjustment layers. Adjustment layers come in the form of layer masks, so lets say you want to have one thing colorized on there, but not another, select the thing you don't want colored using your way of selecting, then fill the area with black (with the mask selected). and that'll make the colorization go away in that area.

I hope this tutorial helps you. :)

DeathSpawn11 :cool:

[xIAMHUNTERx]

Thanks? I'm too lazy to read the whole thing, but it looks cool. :p

[Star89er]

:eek: You have CS3? God, your spoiled. :p I only have CS1...

[xIAMHUNTERx]

Wait... Never mind... Played around with it for a little bit, and... Holy schlong, that looks tight.

http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/4060/omfgblacksitebx9.png

[Ladykiller]

:eek: You have CS3? God, your spoiled. :p I only have CS1...

same here! high five*

DS11, dude that's real cool. Great image editing techniques :)

xIAMHUNTERx, that render is NICE!

[DeathSpawn11]

same here! high five*

DS11, dude that's real cool. Great image editing techniques :)

xIAMHUNTERx, that render is NICE!

thx dude, and if I'm not mistaken, I think that's my render that I posted in the simple needs forums, IAMHUNTER just edited it.

[xIAMHUNTERx]

Haha, yeah, it is.