How to blend stock to your BG. (like I do it)

[Arika]

Okay. I think this is something all of the more expirienced sig makers should do right now. Alto of the newer sig makers are getting better at their BG's and stuff, but not making getting much help with blending aside from people saying "blend it more"

so here's a little Tut on how to blend stocks; using this sig right here!


Okay, so here it goes!

-Step 1: This is the BG of my sig, there are lots of layers to it, but it's jsut the base anyways. So first off, make a cool BG, and remember in mind to match the colors and style of the BG with your stock! thats IMPORTANT! other wise no matter how cool your BG or stock may be, they'll look bad together.


-Also make sure that you have a good variety of light and dark area to give the sig depth; and dont have repeating patters, that makes it lose depth as well.

Step 2: Blending a stock well takes multiple layers of stock blending, not just one. For me the first layer looks like this. Totally crazy looking huh? Well to get this effect use the Smudge tool with any brush you want and Smudge the bottom stock later inward and outward from its edges, that way you'll get light and dark variance inside the stock as well.


-I erased and blurred that inside part of her face, because the Smudging design was too dark and was showing all the way through the top layer; and messing up her pretty face.

-Step 3: This is a Duplicated layer of the stock. Remember to duplicate it BEFORE you do any Smudging so you have a clean stock on top always. Anyway, this layer of stock hasnt been touched at all. I just used the Burn Filter to add contrast. It looks much better with the dark shadows etc.


-I lied before, this Burn layer is actually a duplicate of the stock AFTER I Smudged it up, but you still always need a clean stock layer on top. This layer is also set at about 70% opacity, otherwise it would be too dark.

-Step 4: Not to get rid of the hole in the middle of her face. This layer is a duplicate of the stock without the Smudging, so it's just the normal stock. All I did here was Soften the edges using the Gaussian blur to soften them. If they're still to pronounced then use layer masking and make them less opaque. I then set the whole layer to the Hard light filter.


-The face is still too see through though so we have one more layer to go.

-Step 5: Last step. All I did here was use another duplicated layer of the plain stock(without smudging) and set it to the Multiply filter to make her face the right color and less transparent. Note that the edges of this layer are also Gaussian Blurred as well. I set the opacity of the layer to about 70%.


-Looks alot better now, no?

-Step 6: I lied about Step 5 being the last step, now you gotta do some work on top of the blended stock to give it more light and dark contrast. I used what I always use. a standard circle brush set at about 75% opacity. Then I use a light yellow(dont use just white) as my color and set the filter to dodge. I then use Gaussian blur as much as need be to get it to look smooth.


-And then I use the same brush; but with Black as my color and Overlay as my filter to add the shadows.


and wOOt! it's done. It's blended, and It doesnt look flat because of the Highlight and the shadow I added. It's really not hard at all.

I hope this helps everyone to blend their stock images a little better.