Embossed Copper Horse

We all love metal. Around here, we love Copper even more.

Frequently, we look for pictures that will harmonize with the copper embellishments we use in our assemblage work, and don’t always find what we want.

In this Chapter, you will learn how to turn any black and white line art into “embossed copper”.

Skills Learned in this Chapter:
Creating Custom Copper Colors with RGB Formulas
Painting with the Gradient Tool
Using Layer Styles with Fine Tuning
Using Contrast Adjustments

Backgrounds
Among rubber stampers, collage and paper artists, making backgrounds is a very popular activity. This Chapter will teach you some basics for creating a large variety of Backgrounds from a single piece of art, but this is only scratching the surface. With PhotoShop, you could probably sit and make Backgrounds for a lifetime and never have to repeat yourself.

Skills Learned in this Chapter:
Rotating the Canvas
Sponge Painting with Translucent Brushes
Saving a Duplicate Image
Exploring and Experimenting - PhotoShop Filters

A Springtime Landscape
Some of the image Brushes in Photoshop are a lot like rubber stamps - but pretty wild and unpredictable ones! It is possible to create whole scenes with these image brushes, and that’s what we have done in this Chapter.

Skills Learned in this Chapter:
Using a Selection as a Mask
Saving a Selection
Loading a Selection
Using the Airbrush
Painting with a Variety of Image Brushes
Adding Type

Compositing In PhotoShop

With the widespread popularity of collage, it is no wonder that many artists want to learn how to combine images in PhotoShop.

Collage in PhotoShop is called compositing. It can be a complicated and painstaking process, but this Chapter will get you started - painlessly.

Skills Learned in this Chapter:
Extracting the Background from an Image
Using the Selection Brush (Elements), Quick Mask Mode (PhotoShop)
Antiquing the Edges of an Image
Combining Images
Blending Images

Torn Edges

There are filter sets on the market that will automatically render torn edgs around an image, but this method gives you complete control, and looks very, very real!

Skills Learned in this Chapter:
Creating a Selection Mask
Using Natural Brushes
Using Brush Angle Options
Moving the Image to a Copy Layer
Applying Layer Styles