Argyle Ladybug Photoshop Tutorial

I was looking at a picture of a ladybug the other day, and I started thinking man, this little guy is just not very stylish. Ladybugs need a bit more variation in their wardrobes. And so I offer you the opportunity to dress your very own ladybug in some sartorially-conscious argyle:

Ok, so not really. I just like argyle, and I like ladybugs. I'll take you step-by-step through the process that I used to create this guy.

1. The first step is to collect the files that you'll be using. You can import them into Photoshop now, or just leave them in a handy place so that you can find them as the need arises. I used this ladybug from this website:

By LittleMissParasite

This leaf from here:

And the argyle pattern from this tutorial (you could make your own in Illustrator - it's an excellent tutorial - but I used the final product that he posts on his website): 

2. Once you've got your files assembled, open up Photoshop and create a new file. I'm using a canvas size of 1366x768 so that I can use it as a desktop background, but you can make yours any size you want (within reason - keep the resolution of the leaf and ladybug in mind). Import the ladybug file and give it its own layer. Title the layer something appropriate.

3. The next step is to extract the ladybug and leave the leaf behind. I suppose you could skip this step and just use the background as-is, but I found a leaf I liked more, and I didn't particularly like the border around the edges. For this particular extraction, I used the quick mask mode. You might be able to get away with using the magnetic lasso, but I didn't like the result. Your other option is the pen tool, but I think that the quick mask gives the best results - you just have to be a little bit patient. 

Enter the quick mask mode by pressing "q" on the keyboard or selecting the circle-inside-a-rectangle icon below the foreground/background selection swatches.

 Select a round brush with 100% hardness. Make sure that the flow and opacity are both set to 100%. 

3. Double clicking on the click mask icon will bring up this window: 

Use approximately these settings. The color is important - quick mask defaults to red, and a red mask on a red ladybug won't go very well. I also bumped the opacity up to 70%. I thought 50% was a little difficult to see. 

4. Start painting over the ladybug with a fairly big brush. I started with a very large brush - 300 px or so - to cover the majority of the ladybug's shell. 

5. Using progressively smaller brushes, start painting over the more detailed parts of the ladybug. A helpful keyboard shortcut here is using the "[" and "]" keys to change the size of the brush. Don't go too crazy - you can skip painting in the little hairs on the antennae, for example - but you do need to go pretty small to get the legs and stuff.

Zoom in for the finer details. The finer your work is here, the better the final product will look. Keep going until the entire ladybug is masked in blue.

This level of detail should be fine. For the last bit of masking, I switched back to a very large brush, and used the edge of that to approximate the curve of the ladybug's shell. That way, you get a smoother edge. (There's math there, I just don't know exactly what it is. Something calculus-y.)

6. Now press "q" again. The marching ants selection line should appear around everything that was not masked.

7. Now press "Delete". You should be left with just a ladybug on a white background. I resized and rotated it a bit using Transform (Ctrl+T), but you don't have to if you don't want to.

8. Now import your new leaf background on a different layer. Title it something impressively creative.

9. The next step is to put the leaf into perspective, so it looks like the ladybug is actually walking on the leaf and not floating in front of it. Press Ctrl+T to transform it, then hold down Ctrl to use the Distort mode as you move the handles as below. You may want to move the ladybug layer above the leaf layer for a reference.

11. Obviously we've got some work to do here - it looks awfully Photoshop-y at this point. The first step is to add the ladybug's shadow back in. Press Ctrl and click on the ladybug thumbnail in the layers palette to select just the ladybug. Copy and paste it into its own layer and call that layer "shadow." 

Now, with that shape still selected, fill it the selection with black.

12. Move the shadow layer under the ladybug layer. Get rid of the selection (Ctrl+D), but keep the shadow layer activated. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and set the blur to 13.0 px. 

13. Using the direct selection tool (the black arrow symbol), move the shadow so that it approximates the original shadow in the original photo. No need to get too precise - we're going to transform it in the next step to make it look a little more accurate.

14. It looks better with the shadow, but the legs still look like they're floating a bit, and the overall shape isn't quite right. While you're still on the shadow layer, press Ctrl+T to transform it, then right click on the canvas and select the Warp tool. 

15. Using the Warp tool, start nudging the shadow around. You want to make the shadow near the head a little bit wider. Also, make the shadow-feet meet up with the real feet in such a way that the feet touch, but the shadow of the leg is in front of the real leg.

16. Better, but still not perfect. Pick up the brush tool and select a round 0% hardness brush and set the opacity and flow as shown: 

Now, brush in some shadows near the feet. Use a small brush (like 12 px to start), and as you move away from the foot, use one a few pixels larger - maybe 20 px. Don't go crazy - subtlety can work in your favor here. Let the shadow fade away as you move away from the foot. 

Shadows can really make or break your image, so be careful in this step. Take the angle of the light into account, as well as the angle of the legs and the angle of the leaf. If you took a really long time to get this step right, it would be time well-spent.

17. Once you're happy with your shadow, it's time to move on to the interesting stuff. Import your argyle texture (or follow this excellent tutorial and make your own) and give it its own layer above the ladybug.

18. Press Ctrl+T to transform the image, and rotate it clockwise about 45 degrees. I also resized it to be slightly smaller. Make sure that if you do resize it, you hold down the shift key to maintain the proportions.

You'll also notice that I took the opacity of the argyle down to about 70% to make it easier to line up the pattern. Try to line it up so that the line down the center of the carapace lies directly between two of the black diamonds. It will also look better if that line is parallel to the line that runs through the longest dimension of the black diamonds at at least one point. See below:

19. Still in Transform mode, select the Warp tool again. Start nudging the argyle shape around the ladybug's shell. The important parts are the top and bottom edges. See if you can make the argyle pattern make the same curve as those upper and lower edges. Don't worry if the pattern hangs over in some places. We'll crop that out later.

20. Hold Ctrl and click on the argyle layer thumbnail to select its contents. Go to Filter>Distort>Spherize, and set the slider to about 45%. Press OK.

21. Depending on how happy you are with the argyle pattern at this point, you may or may not need to go to the next step. Go to Filter>Liquefy and choose the Bloat tool.

With a these settings, click once or twice in the center of the argyle pattern.

You may find it necessary to go back now and redo some of the warping you did earlier. You can modify it all you like, but make sure that the argyle always overlaps all of the red.

22. Now turn off the argyle layer for the moment. Click on the ladybug layer and select the magnetic lasso tool (click and hold on the lasso tool to find it).

Using the magnetic lasso, trace all the way around the red part of the ladybug. The tool does a nice job of selecting anchor points itself, but sometimes you may need to click and add one if the tool wanders off in an odd direction. Once you've made it all the way around, click on your very first anchor point to complete the loop and make the selection.

23. Go back and turn your argyle layer back to visible and make sure that layer is active. Press Ctrl+Shift+I to invert the selection, then press Delete.

24. Turn up the opacity of the argyle layer to 100% and select Overlay as the blend mode (Soft Light and Linear Light might also work, depending on your preference).

25. Make a new layer on top of the argyle layer and fill it with this gradient:

Copy all of it (Ctrl+C). Go to the Channels palette and paste it into a new channel (Ctrl+V). Call this channel "blur source".

You can delete the original gradient at this point - we don't need it anymore.

26. In this step, you're going to have to combine all your current layers into one. I like to make a copy of all of them, just in case I have to go back and change something. Lock the duplicates and make them invisible.

 Now select all of your other layers, right click, and select "Merge visible".

I forgot to take a screenshot of this, but using your rectangular marquee tool, select the entire canvas and copy it onto a new layer. You can get rid of the old merged layer. This will make it easier to apply an accurate Lens Blur in the next step. 

27. With your new merged layer, go to Filter>Blur>Lens Blur. You can play around with the settings to find a look that you like. I like these settings:

Make sure that the source is set as "blur source" (or whatever you titled your gradient in the channels palette). I have the shape set to octagonal, the radius to 19, the curvature at 8, and the rotation at 31.

28. Last step: vignetting. No doubt there are real graphic designers out there going "God no! Not another vignette!", but I like the way it looks. Go to Filter>Lens Correction and apply these settings:

That's it! I didn't quite like the way the argyle pattern lined up with the shell, so I went back and changed the way it was warped back before the Spherize and Bloat steps. Here's my final result:

Questions? Leave a comment!

If you use this tutorial and happen to post your result somewhere on the interwebs, leave a link...I'd love to see!

Quick and Dirty Photoshop Tutorial - Modifying Old Black-and-White Photos

Let me say before I even start that I mean to step on no one's toes. The author of this textbook, the lovely and accomplished Keiko Fukuda, has  done more for women's judo than anyone else in the history of the sport. She recently celebrated her 98th birthday last year and is still active in promoting and teaching judo. She's the highest ranked female judoka in the world - ever. They're making a movie about her. So when I say that I mean absolutely no disrespect with this photoshop tutorial, know that I mean more than that. This woman is amazing, and I would not EVER (literally or figuratively) step on her toes.

I've been working on ju-no-kata, literally the "forms of gentleness", for maybe 2 years now. It's not terribly polished, but someone was around with a camera and took this picture:

I think this is the third form in the first set, if inquiring minds want to know.

That's me there in the blue. My partner there sent me the file and said something about it being a good picture but an awful background. No problem! I said. I'll Photoshop us out and put us in the Kodokan. She replied that if I put us in the Kodokan, she'd blow it up to poster size. Well now. Challenge accepted.

I may have failed straightaway by not actually putting us in the Kodokan. (Turns out there aren't too many great matside pictures there that I could use as a new background.) Instead, I decided to 'shop us onto the front cover of Fukuda Sensei's textbook:

I promise to try not to be presumptuous.

So here's a quick and dirty tutorial on the quick and dirty photochop that I did this afternoon. A word of warning: these are not the best techniques you will ever see in photo retouching. They are quick, though, and luckily for me, these were both pretty forgiving photographs. Onwards.

1. If you're following along at home, I'll assume that you have one modern, in-color photograph that you would like to insert into an old-timey, black and white photograph. Import both of them into Photoshop on their own layers and make a copy of your color photo. I always make a backup copy of my image right off. I know I'm going to make mistakes, and it's easier to start over if I have my original image right there.



Sorry that isn't too readable. Just know that those two layers on the right are the same thing.





2. As you can see, in the modern-day photograph, we're facing the wrong way. The first step is to flip flop the photo horizontally. Select the top copy of the image by holding down Ctrl and left clicking on the thumbnail picture of the layer in the Layers tab. Press Ctrl+T to transform it. A box with handles should appear around the entire selection. Don't touch them yet, just right click somewhere inside that box and click on the option that says "Flip Horizontal". 



Flipped. 





3. One of the things I struggled with most while I was learning Photoshop (still, actually), was how to select and extract the bits you wanted, and how to discriminate between them and the parts you didn't. There are a couple options - the Magic Wand tool is fantastic, but it only works really well if you have an image that is fairly homogeneous in color over the piece that you want to keep, and a fairly homogeneous different color over the piece that you don't. No good here - our heads blend right into the background. The Quick Selection tool is good for the same type of thing - an image that contrasts sharply with the background. Nope. There are a few others - Quick Mask, Extract, that sort of thing, but I hope you'll trust me when I say I tried all of them and ended up, sadly, with the Pen tool. It's a last resort, but for this sort of detailed, low-contrast image, it's a good bet. What you'll have to do is zoom in and start drawing the outline of the figure you want to extract. Ideally, you'd fit curves to all of the figure's edges by clicking two points down, and using the handles to dial in the curve. I'll admit that I'm not a fan of the way Photoshop handles Bezier curves with the Pen tool - I like Illustrator for that better - so for some of it, I went the quick and dirty way. If you put enough points close together, they'll imitate a smooth curve just fine. It's calculus! Here's my completed path:



Once you've finished the path and connected the ends, save it! Go to the Paths tab and change the name to something memorable.

4. Once you've saved your path, go ahead and right click on it and click "Make Selection". A box will pop up that will allow you to select a feathering radius. I used a radius of 1 px, just to smooth out any sharp edges I left when I got too lazy to use Bezier curves.
5. You don't want to delete what's inside your path, you want to delete everything else. Press Ctrl+Shift+I (Select>Inverse) to select the "everything else" part, and press "Delete".
   



6.  If you're not working on this particular photo, this step won't apply to you. When you're competing in kata, you only wear a white gi. That means some color surgery here. Even though the final image is in black and white, I can't just desaturate it because the blue will turn a different shade of gray than the white. So, color surgery. Here, we get to use one of my favorite tools: Replace Color. Go to Image>Adjustments>Replace Color. You should get a popup box with a black and white image of your photo in the middle. Use the eyedropper to click on your original image and select the color you want to get rid of. Play with your color selection and the "Fuzziness" slider until the white part of the thumbnail represents the piece of your photo you want to change. Then select a "To" color by clicking on the colored square on the bottom. Here, I chose something close to white. If it's tinted, it won't matter so much because we're just going to desaturate it in a second anyway.



The white bit is what I want to change from blue.

7. If your color swap isn't perfect, don't worry. Just get it close, and the next step will erase a multitude of sins. With your figures selected (Ctrl+click on thumbnail), press Ctrl+Shift+U.
   

Not perfect, but better. 

See? Sorry for the weird cropping.

Good lord, I am GIVING UP on interspersing pictures into an HTML ordered list. Hell with it.

8. Ok, now we start the interesting stuff. Place your extracted figures layer on top of your black and white target layer - I used this book cover. Select your figures once more and press Ctrl+T (Transform). With both Alt and Ctrl held down, drag the handles of the transform box until your figures are the size you need. If you are covering something up, as I am here, you may need to use the Distort function to cover up as much of the original as you can. You can distort something quickly by using the keyboard shortcut: hold Ctrl and click/drag the transform box's handles.

Maximum overlap without looking grotesque.

9. This step is why I had to deem this whole tutorial "quick and dirty" - I have one screenshot for a process that took me 15 minutes or so. Here's the process: You'll be using the Clone tool to mimic the background over the areas where you can still see the original figures in the black and white photo. I did it in chunks: I cloned the stairs and the crowd over the top woman's feet and legs, then the mat over the second woman's feet, then the crowd over the second woman's legs. This will require some fiddling on your part, but I got lucky here - my photo was taken long enough ago and with low enough quality that I could look over some imperfections in the final product. This technique will not work if your photos are good quality!

If you look closely at the crowd, you can see heads and arms being repeated where the original figures were.  Luckily, this image will never see a printer or resolution that's higher than this, so I'm not worried.

10. This is decent, but the modern picture is much better quality than the old one. Let's age it a bit. The first step is to really overexpose the two foreground figures. If you look at the original textbook image, you'll see that their gis are almost totally white with no definition. Select the two original figures and apply a Contrast/Brightness adjustment layer. Up the brightness to something like +46 and the contrast to 10 or so. Your mileage may vary.

After I added the adjustment layer, I also used the Dodge tool to highlight certain areas. I don't have a screenshot of it, but if you want to overexpose your image even more, choose the Dodge tool with a soft brush set to about 40 px and 10% exposure. Start with the shadows and start overexposing a bit at a time. Use a light touch...less is likely going to be more here, especially when you start working on the highlights. Go through the shadows, midtones, and highlights slowly, trying to maintain some detail in the folds of the cloth, for example. Remember that once you've dodged something a little bit, you can mess with your Brightness settings to bring out the white even more.

11. That's better, but the foreground image still looks very crisp. In this step, we'll add some film grain to make that go away. Select your foreground figures and make a copy in a new layer. Title this layer "noise". Go up to Filter>Noise>Add Noise. In here, you can mess around with the settings until you like the amount of grain you see. I set mine to Gaussian, monochromatic (important!) and about 4% grain. Click OK.

12. That's not bad - maybe a little much, though. Turn your "noise" layer's opacity down to about 75%. You could also experiment with using the Blur filter, but I didn't find it necessary.

13. Last step. Even with the extra noise, the foreground looks a bit too crisp for my taste. To fix that, select the Blur tool and a brush with 0% hardness. Set the size to about 200 px. With very small strokes, gently blur your figure. 

Much better.

And there you have it! Here's my final version:

Here's the original for comparison:

Maybe I could have gone a little easier on the blur. 

That's all, folks. I know this was pretty slapdash, so feel free to ask for clarification in the comments.

"Be strong, be gentle, be beautiful." - Keiko Fukuda