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We gave 44 Photoshop artists the same set of crazy files, here is what they came up with

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Compositing is not easy, and having solid restraints make is even harder. A week ago we gave you a huge files package and asked to come up with something awesome. The first place reward, other than the obvious bragging rights, was a Wacom Intuos Pro and $2500 of textures goodness.

We have 44 submissions, and it took exactly 5 submitting till I knew I will have a hard time making the decision, so I pulled in the entire team from Rawexchange Germany for assist. If you like the results, thank them. If you think we chose poorly it is probably on me. So without further ado, here are the top winners from our composting challenge.

Coldplay’s – Up and Up is the ultimate video composite inspiration

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Composites are awesome, I just love it when a good composite comes together throwing me into an imaginary world. Doing good stills composites is not easy, but when you combine that with video, it looks virtually impossible.

Coldplay’s new Up&Up video is just that. a collection of composites featuring Chris Martin being in all sorts of impossible locations. Sit back and turn the volume up and dive into that imaginary world for your daily dose of image video manipulation inspiration.

P.S. I am totally not envious of the after effects artists who had to track all those scenes…..

We are giving away a Wacom Intuos Pro and a $2500 coupon to best compositor among you

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It is time for a mega contest and a mega giveaway. We want to give you a Wacom Intuos Pro and everything in our texture store (about $2500 worth).

But we are not just giving this away. We are going to hold a little challenge. Do you know our CC-BY sampler package? It is a package with samples of all our packages, that only costs $5, but you get $5 back. It’s really awesome if I may say so myself.

So, here is the deal, you can use anything in this package to create a composite, but make a really awesome one. Why? becasue the winner will get a $2,500 coupon that they can use to get everything in the store AND a brand new awesome Wacom Intuos Pro.

Wait, it gets better. We know that $5 is a lot, so we created a smaller package that costs absolutely nothing. We call it the Small ‘get it while you can’ CC-BY sampler. And… it is just as awesome as the original CC-BY sampler, only about half the size.

What you need to know about realistic photo compositing and image manipulation – a primer

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Creating realistic photo composites or photo manipulation isn’t as hard as it looks. The steps you have to take to create a good composite are actually all pretty logical. I will try to explain the steps and common mistakes many people make in the following article.

Don’t fall victim to “What ifs”

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Recently I was wandering around that Facebook thing because it is the ultimate procrastination tool. I can’t say I remember what I was putting off, but I’m so glad I was.  Through a series of countless random clicks on god knows what links, I wound up on an event page with an open invitation to a steampunk studio photography weekend at Omni Lens Studios.

“Hmm this seems interesting, ” (Robert thought to himself). “Oh dang, and it’s only half an hour from here…” I clicked the “I’m Interested” option which kept me in the loop without actually committing to anything. Then for the next several weeks I would check back in periodically to quietly stalk the various attendees, photographers, makeup artists, and models – you know, typical internet creepin.

Mater Suspiria – Creating a witching image from scraps

I’m affiliated with the Dark Realm Collective (DRC), it’s an art group that specializes in Dark / Horror / Supernatural subjects – the group was founded October 2014 by Matt Seff Barnes. As a collective, we release four ‘art packs’ a year; each pack has a title, and a selection of five ‘themes’ for the artists to choose from.

This easter we used witches as our theme. With a few theme-titles to choose from and to spark our imagination.

The steps I took to create the circus doll photo

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You know how sometimes you see a photo and just have to know how it was made. I mean not in the tutorial-follow-me kind of way but more in the who the heck did you make this kinda way?

This is how I felt when I saw Richard Wakefield‘s Circus Doll photo. It had something feeling very authentic, so I knew it had to have had a real photo behind it. So… I asked!

Richard was kind enough to share the steps taken to make the photo happen:

Take the transform tools to the next level

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So obviously almost every Photoshop novice has “transformed” something in Photoshop. As in, “I just dragged this image onto my canvas and it’s way too flippin’ huge. Let me make it smaller with the transform function.” But how many of you have really taken it much further than that? (Yes, I know there are exceptions; we are all at different levels of expertise.) Transforming seems like a pretty simple/straightforward thing to do in Photoshop – you’re just re-sizing something, right? Well with a little creativity, not only can you transform the size of something, you can completely transform a handful of random images of, say, lizards into a freakin baby dragon! WHAT!?!?

Tutorial: How To Create A Textured Face White Walker (From Any Portrait)

The year comes to an end and just before the busy days of watching StarWars and celebrating the holidays I’m rushing to finish some images and close this year off. One of the images that needed to be done was my contribution to the Dark Realm Collective – Black Christmas Art Pack.

I’ve been part of this collective since its conception and we’ve been making awesome dark images throughout the year, mostly themed around festive holidays and events. Naturally we needed to do a Christmas theme.

So for the Christmas art pack we had a few themes to pick from, the themes are more of a guide to get us started.

In the text below I am going to show you how it was done step by step. If you want to use any of the packages from this tutorial, the nice guys from the Image Manipulation Store agreed to provide a 20% off coupon (till Dec 30th), for any of the packages used here. Just use coupon code whitewalker4 on checkout.

Photoshop Power Tip – Using Screen Blending To Spice Up A Portrait

Here’s a quick, yet powerful, tip on how to move a portrait from great to awesome fairly quickly. While this method is quick the results can be very impressive if done right. You would need a fire on black pattern like the Fire Pack from the texture store (either the commercial package, or the CC-BY license, but then you have to link every image to the store) , a copy of photoshop and of course, a portrait, preferably on black.

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