Sunday, March 08, 2015

CoffeeShop "Robin Egg Blue" Photoshop/PSE Action and Texture Tutorial!


I have been on an action-writing whirlwind this last week and I have written four beautiful new actions that are perfect for your spring images.  I will be posting them within the next week and two as I put together the tutorials. If you can't wait, they are already uploaded to my action pack.  

Today I am really excited to post one of my newest free actions called CoffeeShop "Robin Egg Blue". "Robin Egg Blue" has three different artistic enhancements that remind me of the color of a robin egg.  They are all completely adjustable and I am going to show you how I added a texture to create a beautiful piece of art.


It always helps to start with a perfect image, and for this tutorial I used this beautiful photo from Jill Wellington (FacebookBlog).  I love this image as-is, but it is also a perfect image to artistically embellish.

CoffeeShop "Robin Egg Blue" Photoshop/PSE Action And Texture Tutorial:


Run the "Robin Egg Blue" action. Then turn on the edit of your choice; either "Robin's Egg Blue Luxe", "Robin's Egg Blue", or "Soft Robin's Egg Blue Haze".  All of the layers have layer masks so you can selectively remove the enhancement from skin if needed.


This image is "Soft Robin's Egg Blue Haze". This layer has an auto-mask and I didn't have to paint on it.



This image is edited with "Robin's Egg Blue".  I didn't have to use the layer mask for this edit.


This image is edited with "Robin's Egg Blue Luxe".  This layer is very blue and looks lovely on still-life images, but I usually use a soft black brush with a lower opacity to brush some of the color off skin and hair in portraits.  

I noticed that her pink dress was slightly blown-out in this edit, so I will show you one way I would fix that.


I added a Levels adjustment layer on top of "Robin's Egg Blue Luxe" (I didn't link it) and I moved the midtone slider to the right from 1.00 to 0.55 to darken the dress. I made the layer mask black and just painted the effect on her dress to recover the pink color and highlights.  

I am going to go one step further and add a texture.


I used the Flypaper "Calendula Haze" texture from the Pastel Painterly Pack to add some texture and additional color to this image.  I usually desaturate textures if I am applying them to an image where I ran a color-enhancing action, but in this case I wanted to add the warm tones along with the texture.


I dragged the texture on top and free-transformed it to fit.  I put it in overlay blending mode at 65% opacity and used a soft black brush at 100% opacity to remove the texture off her skin and dress.



I wanted to add a bit more of the texture and color coming from the top right, so I copied that texture layer and put it Overlay at 50% and added a new white layer mask.  I grabbed the black to white gradient tool, clicked on the white layer mask to select it, then dragged the tool from the bottom left to the top right.  This masks the second texture layer from everything but the upper right.  

I did noticed a bit of texture on her face from the second texture layer and I didn't want to paint it off the layer mask as it would also remove the texture color from her skin.  To remedy this problem, I simply clicked on the texture to select it, then used the L tool to select her face, then gaussian blurred the selection.  This way the texture is gone but the color remains. Nifty trick!


Here is my final edit.  I love love love this version and I think it would be gorgeous printed on canvas.  I hope you enjoy using "Robin Egg Blue".  Please let me know what you think about it in my comments below and post your own "before and afters" on my Facebook page!

 Download the CoffeeShop "Robin Egg Blue" Photoshop/PSE action. You can also download it here.

Do you want to download my favorite CoffeeShop PSE/Photoshop Actions and Lightroom Presets or Design Elements in one convenient zipped file AND help support this blog? Just click here for my action pack or here for a download of some of my most popular design elements, storyboards, and textures.

For complete info on installing all of my actions, click here.

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Rita