Enhanced Images Tutorial

Hello folks. I'm bringing this tutorial to you in hopes that you may benefit from it somehow. The tutorial encompasses how I make my images/signatures 'enhanced' looking. You'll have to excuse the image quality of the tutorial steps (irony is so evil), though once you fire up Photoshop and do as I instruct you'll be right as rain.

Step #1

Open the screenshot that has what you want and crop it. The first vital element to every enhanced image is the way giant screenshots can be cropped and condensed into a smaller resolution. What this means basically is that when you crop a full 1024x768 pixel area as a 600x450 picture you'll effectively be making the quality to your full-sized image two times fresher and smoother looking. For this tutorial I chose to use a smaller portion of a 1024x768 screenshot.

Step #2

Now that we've established the area of the picture we are satisfied with we'll need to duplicate the background layer. You can do so by going over to the Layers/Channel/Paths window (You may need to open one up in you PS workspace by going up to Window on the taskbar near Help and selecting Layers) and right-clicking on the Background layer to see the available options as shown above.

Step #3

Now comes the fun part. Go up to Filter and search in the Blurs until you see Gaussian Blur. Make sure you have the duplicate layer (Background copy) you made earlier selected.

Step #4

You'll want about 3.0 or more for the radius of your blur.

Step #5

After you have blurred the copied layer, change its opacity to somewhere between 50% and 90%. I like 70% for no apparent reason as seen above. Now we're starting to see some improvement! Good deal. This is the basics of the basic right here; however it acts as like a foundation of sorts. Now let's move on to even more good stuff.

Step #6

These steps you don't have to follow in order, but I'll briefly explain what each one does and how it is done. Here we will be using Adjustment Layers. These types of layers are vital for any sane Photoshop user, and et, many people don't know about them. Here we see contrast/brightness being selected.

Step #7

Mess around with the slides until the picture looks more glowy than before. The key is to keep the contrast and brightness near each other on the scales which means don't forget about either of them when it comes to increasing/decreasing.

Step #8

Mmm, saturation.

Step #9

-40 is a really good choice for the amount of saturation you'll need. If you're feeling crafty you can try something else, but -40 is what I always use.

Step #10

Looking sexy. Now it's time for a little help from Mr. Eraser Tool. He'll put a smile on your face. Or wipe it off... When erasing certain spots of the copied layer you'll want to get it as tight as possible. Which means no going overboard with the eraser and possibly erasing blurred sections you might not want gone. Remember that there's always Edit > Undo. Generally the face of the subject in an enhanced image should be crisp, so erase the spots of blur on the face and the hands and details on the clothes (like buttons and pockets).

Step #11

Now's the time for another adjustment layer. This step should only apply for screenshots that are taken when the game settings have Green Tint turned off.

Step #12

25 Green and -10 Cyan ALWAYS do the trick when you want the perfect Matrix-esque green tint without the in-game lag.

Step #13

Almost there, folks. Now we're just going to seal the deal on the image part and open the floor for other things, such as text or further enhancements.

Step #14

If you followed the tutorial step-by-step for the first time and got a great looking Matrix-esque image then: Congratulations! Enjoy. If not, please feel free to post in this thread any questions or comments.



But remember: This is just a guideline of rules. Some can be bent. Others can be reinvented... It's all about the strength of your, what I like to call, inner eye and having fun while training it.

I WAS RIGHT!

Heh, excellent Tutorial Sykin, you're teaching the future generation! :smileytongue:

Great job on the tutorial, i will try this on my screenshot and other pictures for sure.

Good stuff. Sykin, have you ever messed around with "Screen" and "Overlay" layer modes? You can get some great glow effects with those, and the reason I like them is because they also help bring out the colors, too. Now, I notice you go for a desaturated style, but there's a lot of possibilities with heightening the colors, as well.

Also, something Traxada pointed out once that I thought was cool was making a cutout version of the foreground figure using the Polygon Lasso Tool. This can get you a nice clean black and white silhouette of the figure--then blur that layer, and use it with various degrees of transparency, especially on Overlay mode, and you can really punch your characters forward from the background.

I also found that playing around with Curves could create some really interesting colour hues.
The Curves applet defaults to RGB, but you can pick out Green on its own and fiddle around with the curve to create some really pronounced greening effects. It looks great on some images depending on the style you're going for.

For example, going from this to this.
Did a lot of other bits to it as well of course (including adjusting the Levels) to get that green effect.

Message Edited by [CoZ]LostProphet on 01-30-200610:45 AM

I used your method on this

I played around with a few of the numbers to suit my preferences a little :smileywink:

Using Sykin's method:

Original:


Edited:


Not quite up to standard with your and others, but it looks improved over the original.

Thanks heaps Sykin. Such an awesome tutorial.

If you don't mind me asking, how do you do your text? (like font and editing to it). I wouldn't mind using that (or something similar) for the storyline documents I've been compiling. If you'd like to keep it a secret or don't want to explain it though that's cool. I'm still really happy just to have this tutorial

The brightness is the background I like, Aquatium. but its a bit grainy on his chest and jacket dont you think? I'd have to blur it again :smileyindifferent:

i agree , i did it to show what i meant , i remember seeing coolice first use that style ;P, but yea using "duplicate" layer and apply scree on the layer, copy that then apply soft light in a 30% opacity really adds brightness to an image, have a play with the styles , you ll have some fun!

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Aquatium wrote:
i agree , i did it to show what i meant , i remember seeing coolice first use that style ;P, but yea using "duplicate" layer and apply scree on the layer, copy that then apply soft light in a 30% opacity really adds brightness to an image, have a play with the styles , you ll have some fun!

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Doing what you said, and then a little more :smileywink: I updated it to this

Either way I think its a vast improvment on the original

Thank you Sykin for the tutorial.

I gave a go using this Niobe picture, however when it came to using the eraser nowhere seemed to work with it, so it remains rather blurry.

Gave this a shot...



And the full sized image, if anyone cares to see it.

<3 Sykin. Nice tutorial, I learned some things that I managed to completely miss while playing with photoshop before.

[Edit: Photobucket didn't like the full size image... lets try something else.]