| Redecorating the Caveman's Den!
This is Kai Yee, AKA the "techno-caveman" and welcome to my den! The fireplace is really great for roasting newbies! Actually this isn't my home . . . much as I wish it was . . . and all newbies are my honored guests! But for now this is a good picture for demonstration purposes. This technique that I'm about to teach you is great for visualizing a new look for your home or just about any environment. You can change your mind without spending a dime! If you want to follow along, right-click on this link to down load the native .psd source file (select the "save target as" option.) Right-click here to download the .psd file In this lesson, we'll demonstrate the Magic Wand Tool, Layer Masks, Quick Mask, Layer Fill and the Blending Mode. I'm presenting a lot of material so without further ado let’s get started.
Bonus lesson – I also want to show you one other blending mode, which is the soft light mode. I start this process by adding on a solid dark color and multiplying it to give it a night look. I also added a gradient layer to give it some depth. This gives the illusions that it’s night time at home.
I recommend that you all practice these really very powerful techniques that I use everyday on the job as a graphic designer. For those of you who are students and would like to have a working copy of Photoshop CS2, Adobe's fantastic new update, click on Academic Superstore. The Academic Superstore is a great education software store that always has the items I need. The academic versions of an application are exactly the same as the retail version but at just a fraction of the retail price provided you have a legitimate student ID from a school or university. Adobe products are 75% off the list price!!! Please keep on practicing and practicing to keep your competitive edge! OK, until next time, Kai Yee Copyright © 2005 Worldwide Market, Inc. All rights reserved. |
Hi, Everyone, 
Step 1- First, I started by
selecting the Magic Wand Tool. The Magic Wand is really great
for selecting uniform flat colors. If you raise the tolerance,
it becomes more and more liberal as to what it selects as a similar color.
Also you can go to the Select Menu and then select Similar. As you can see,
it did an OK job but it didn’t get all the colors for the wall. 
At this
point you can turn on the Quick Mask tool, which are a set of tools that's
directly below the hand tool. If you click on the right icon
in the Quick Mask tray, you’ll see a red film on your image.
The red color indicates
areas that are not selected and the clear areas that are selected.
The Quick Mask is a tool that I use quite often. It offers a stable
way that you can work with your mask. If you want to add on to
the red mask, all you have to do is to click on the brush tool
and make sure that foreground color is black and if you want to
subtract, you can do the same thing using the eraser tool. 
Step 2 – After
working on the Quick Mask, I’m happy with the selection,
I click on the Quick Mask tray again and click on the standard mode which is
the icon to the left. This you can see turns the selection back to the “crawling
ants” selection that we're accustom to seeing. 
Step 3 – With the wall selection still active, click on the layer fill
icon at the bottom of the layers palette. This is the fourth icon from your
left, which looks like a little half-moon icon. Scroll up until you select
the “Solid fill” option. Choose a friendly yellow color. This will
be the new color of the wall. 
Step 4 – You’re
probably asking yourself right now . . . is that it??!! The colors looks a
really flat and a bit harsh! . . . 
Step 5 - Oh . . . but
this is when the fun begins! In the layers palette, with the warm yellow color still
selected, go to the upper left, click on the blending mode box which the box
on the upper left of the palette menu. It should say “Normal” at
first. Click and scroll down to “Multiply” 
Step 6 - This option mathematically
multiplies the base color with the color above. This gives you
a very natural look as though you gave the wall a fresh coat of paint.
All the shadows and the highlights look perfectly natural. You
can certainly change the opacity of the layer if you think the color
is still a bit raw. Usually I prefer to change the color itself
because it gives the color a more definite look (that's why I chose
the layer fill instead of the bucket fill tool so that I can change
my mind on the fly). The sample below show you 2 other very different color
treatments for this room and yet they all look perfectly believable!
I started by
selected the bezier tool. I drew a cone of light and fill it with white. Next
I blurred the edges. When the dialogue asks if you want to flatten this layer
answer yes. This shape just looks like a fuzzy cone on top of this picture
right now but if you change the blending mode to soft light, it will give you
the effect of a beam of light, kind of light track lighting on this scene.
This trick ordinarily would have taken hours and hours to set up using as 3D
software, like 3D Studio Max or Lightwave. A light bulb flashed on the top
of my head when I discovered this little trick (please pardon the pun!)