6.1 Creating a Sun Flare

Hello, welcome back to lesson 17 of Creating a Fancy Book Cover. So in between lessons I did add a few more flamingos and I also placed a ostrich over here on the left hand side in the water. I didn't do anything to it, the shadow worked perfectly. And it still looks like he's in the water. On the right hand side, I added two flamingos. And I did this off screen and not shown you because it's exactly the same way I added all the other items, all the other objects. I just placed them on there. I masked out the feet. And I added a new layer above attached to it. And then used the yellow brush, and just went over it and and lowered the opacity. That's all I did to do it to make it blend in with the scene. Okay, so for this lesson we're gonna be working on the color correction and the overall color correction. Now I advise you, if you could, if you wanted to add a lot more animals, you know you could add lots of stuff in here like boats. Do whatever you like to do. I'm not going to, but it's up to you if you're going to be doing that. It's completely fine. So, the first thing we're actually gonna do is create the reflection of the sky in the water. As you can see, the water is reflecting like a blue sky. So what we want to do, is either make the water the same sort of color as the sky, which would be the same effect, or try and place the sky on to the water, let's do that instead. Duplicate the actual sky layer. We're gonna actually apply the mask. So let's rasterize it first, so right click Rasterize. Apply the mask. We're gonna hit Ctrl+T. Now this anchor point here, this needs to be at the bottom, just on the horizon. So hit about there. Then go to Edit> Transform> Flip Horizontal. Then Edit> Transform> Rotate 180 Degrees. So that's a complete reflection of the sky and it's in the right place. Okay, click the tick. Change the layer style to Normal. Now what we're going to do, is actually hide that layer for a second. Go to the actual river layer. Now you could go to Select Color Range and pick the different colors of the water. I'm just gonna go to the Quick Selection, I think that's the best option, the Magic Wand tool, sorry. Click on the water. As you can see, it selects most of the water not around to the front here but it doesn't matter. We don't need to be there. And you go back to the sky, make it revealed again, click on the eye icon. And hit on the mask. As you see, it's just added it to the water parts. So it's not done the greatest job as you can see. But we're gonna fix that. So right click on the mask. Go to Refine Mask. Now all we're going to do is just bring out this feather a little bit. That should fix our problems, quite a lot actually. So I wanna get rid of this edge. That edge has gone now look, that's fine. Click OK. As it made a bit blurry around the edges and it's gone up into the sky, so you need to get rid of that. You're going to want it in the front, really. So let's actually get rid of most of this. So go to the rectangular micro key tool. Go over all the sky and just reach the edge of the water. Okay, so I got this rectangle marquee tool over the mask. Now you want to go on Quick Mask. Go to Filter> Blur> Motion Blur. Bring the actual angle down to 90%. Or minus 90. And then bring this distance up. So you can see, it's just blurred the edge so that we're not going to get a straight edge when we delete it. Okay, so then get off of the Quick Mask button. Then we've got the selection and we'll get your brush. Big brush on black, so hit D on your keyboard to go back to black. Full opacity and in full flow and just go over the edge on the mask, make sure it's on the mask. And it will get rid of that haziness above the pyramids. Okay, zoom in to see if there's any errors. We don't want any sharp edges when we've finished the piece. Okay, I'm looking at that and it looks good. Yeah, that's fine. Move a bit over here. Okay. Okay, so now we're actually gonna change the color of the water directly. So on the actual swamp lake layer, let's go and add a hue and saturation layer above it. Attach it to the swamp lake image. Now go to your blue channels. Click on the eyedropper and then select on all the blues you can find. So we don't want any of the oranges in there, otherwise it will change the grass color as well. So basically, just get all the blues in there. None of the greens, make sure it's none of the greens, just all the blues. Get all the blues there, okay. And then let's change the hue to more of an orange tone. So you see here, for instance, going to purple, so let's try and get to the orange value. As you can see, it changed the grass way too much, so we've got too much green in there. Let's make sure we take that down like so. Let's continue to try and change the color of the sky until we get sort of an orange there. It's quite orange looking now, but let's change the saturation slightly. We don't want too bright. Something like that, maybe bring up the lightness. I'm thinking that looks good. So something like that, it's got a nice orange glow to this actual river as well. Turn off and on, see if it got a good effect. As you can see, it's worked well onto our scene. Might want to lower the opacity slightly. Bring through some of the blue. Just to make a little bit more realistic like it's water. So I'm thinking, just a slight improvement. Something about 60% and that should be fine. Okay, so now you've done that, we're going to add in a sort of sun flare. Now there's multiple ways you can do this. I'll show you one way but I'm not going to use that way. I want show you this way anyway, because it's a really great way of using a sun flare. So what we're going to do, is go down to Adjustments> Gradient. Change the style to Radial. Click on the gradient. Go to this purple to orange. Change the purple to white. And then bring the orange to about halfway. Add a black color to the end. Change this orange to a nice subtle orange so something more like this. Bring that down. Add another color above it, add a dark brown. And then you have a flare, as you can see. Now rasterize this. Apply the mask. Change the layer style to Screen. And you have a nice looking sun flare. It's too heavy for me, I think it's a bit too bright. But kind of a nice effect on your character as you can see on the edges. So that is one way to do this, if you want to use that. You could make it really small, like so, or however you want to use it. That's one way to use it. But now I'm actually gonna do it differently. I'm just gonna use the brush. So make a new layer. I'm gonna get a color of the sort of sky layer color. A bit brighter though, a bit more of an orange. So something like this. Now I'm going to hit a few times on a big brush so click, click. I'm using the brackets to make it a bit bigger. Click. Not too many. Make this a bit brighter now and in the center. Bit smaller. Start again to click a bit bigger click, a bit bigger click. Change this color to a nice orange. Click. Click. You get the idea. And then maybe a bit more brighter now as well. So let's try and get a bit more of an orange in here. It's looking a bit pale. Okay, there we go. That's a bit more of an orange there. Maybe I can make a new layer for this, then change the layer style to Overlay. And add in that nice orange glow. This is a bit different than doing the other effect, but I think it looks a bit more realistic and a bit more dramatic. Go even closer now. That's a bit too orange in the center there. I want it to be sort of creamy, but also white like the sun would be. Cuz when you look at the sun in the sky, it's not actually orange, it's actually white. Okay, something like that. Let's zoom in, see what it looks like. See that looks good. Maybe stretch this out a little bit. Place it there. I think that looks really good. Okay, so I'm pretty happy with that. Let's actually group these layers into a group. Let's call it Sun. Now I think the pyramids are standing out way too much now. So let's go on to the pyramids. Add an exposure layer above it. Attach it to the pyramids. Bring down the Gamma, bring up the Offset. And bring down the exposure a little bit as well. That's going to little bit more hazy. That's good. Okay, so if you need to do the same to the right-hand side ones then please do. Make them a bit more hazier. Okay, so now we're actually gonna highlight certain areas which the sun will have an effect on. So make a new layer above the sun group. Go to Shift+F5, add black or go to Edit Fill. Change the layer style to Color Dodge. Zoom in a little bit, and set to color up on the sky. I think the color we got now is right. So, it's E8D9AA. Okay, and now actually, we're gonna get the selection of the character, but let's do the pyramids first. So on the pyramid itself, low opacity and low flow. Just gonna try and highlight certain areas just to, Bring the highlights out a bit. But zoom, I want to make a selection using the Marquee tool, make a square selection like this, or a triangle. Inside just highlight a little bit, not too much, maybe bring the flow down even more. Just add a bit of highlight, just so the sun has an effect on it. Just something like that, as you can see. The same thing to the other pyramids. You don't have to keep it on one layer. You could actually attach it to each of the objects that might make a bit more non-destructive for you. I'm happy doing it directly on all the layers. Something like that. And on this other pyramid as well. Okay, so something like that, just a little highlight. And I'll do the same to some of the animals. So I'm gonna do that to this animal here, this ostrich. Like I said, if you want to do it on its own layer that'd be probably advisable just because if you want to move these ostriches later on, you'd have to actually redo this. Cuz you can't move the dodge layer with it. So something like that, just a little bit of a highlight. You can add some highlight in the water, as well. So where the sun would hit, so somewhere over here and over here at the back. Not too much though, or it'll make it a little bit burned. Something like that, you can see the highlight there. And on these animals in here, as well, so on the edge. So like that. Bit more of a highlight. And this one over here and that bird, as well. A pelican, okay? Okay, so for the actual character, let's actually go into the character group. Now first of all, we've got this 50% gray layer that we've added before, let's try and highlight the edge a bit more than we've already done. So go to our Color Dodge and let's just try and brighten up the edge here already, so that'll make it a bit easier for us. Touch on this foot there as well, and his leg, a bit brighter there. Like so. Okay, now, go to a add a new layer above the character. Apply it just underneath the 50% gray. On this layer, go to, we could try the color dodge layer, but I think using the overlay would be better. And just with the same brush color, so click the sky. Just add a nice highlight around his body, like so. Just a subtle highlight. Okay. Go on to his belt there. So something like that. You can see, it would add nice glow there. And then just with the gradient tool, with the same color, just go from the sun to him, past him a little bit, add a bit of a nice glow and to see if that does a good job. So yeah, it's done quite a good job there, but let's change the layer style to a different style. So maybe Soft Light, see if that looks good. It's not too bad, I don't like what it's doing on the rock though. Let's delete from the rock. Erase it here. Okay. Now for the rock, let's add a new layer. And with the brush, just go around the edge of the rock. Like this. Add a few highlights here and there where it would actually appear on this rock behind where I've got the vulture as well. Something like that. Let's see what layer style we could use to see if that looks good. So thinking maybe screen might be good, or lighting. Let's try lighting and lower the opacity to 0. Bring it up slightly. Right click, Blending Options. Then just lower the underlying layer. Bring back some of that black, as well. And the highlights, as well. Something like that. This is a little bit of an effect on there to make it a bit more bright. Okay, so now we've done that, we'll add a bit of a fog around our character and behind him. So first go underneath the character. So make a new layer above. Let's call this Fog. Get our brush. It's the the same color as the sky, just click on the sky, a nice, low opacity. I'm just gonna make a few strokes just behind him just to separate him a little bit from our scene. So add a few onto the left as well. Maybe lower the opacity. Just to make a bit more of a foggy look. Something like that. Not too much. Okay, now do it in front of him as well. So above all the layers. Call this Fog, and just do it in front, as well. A little bit on the edges here, as well. As well as above him. So it just makes him not stand out so much, but also looks like he matches into the scene. So something like that, on the left here, as well. Something like that looks good. Okay, now we can actually color correct the whole image. So what we're gonna do is make a new levels adjustment. We're going to bring up the midtones. Bring up the shadows, and then bring up the highlights. Not too much, otherwise you'll blot out the sun. Also gonna go just below the character. Add another levels adjustment, just to correct the background a little bit more. Then bring up the midtones, as well, so it separates him from the scene a little bit more. Let's go quite deep, actually, for the moment. Let's try and bring down some of the shadows and the highlights that will take away some of that sun. Okay, a bit more midtones. Something like that, a bit more highlights. Okay, so I'm pretty happy with that. We've got a few more things to do before we can call this finished. And we're going to go into InDesign as well, in the next lesson and work on how to make this a print ready file. So please join me in the next lesson to continue the course.