Sometimes it’s necessary to use both Illustrator and Photoshop to get a particular effect. There’s some feature in one application that doesn’t exist in the other. And even if it does appear in both, it might work better in one than the other. Take the Warp function for example: In Photoshop you’re limited to four points, eight handles, and three rows and three columns; on the other hand, Illustrator allows you to set the number of rows and columns you need, thus greatly enhancing the amount of distortion you’re capable of producing.

The new 3D functions added to Photoshop Extended allow you to create and alter a variety of incredible shapes but one function that’s lacking is a “lathing” tool—allowing you to create a cross section of a shape and have it revolve to form an entire shape. In Illustrator, that feature exists and it’s aptly named Revolve. For example, in Photoshop it’s quite difficult to create a simple oblong disk—like an M&M.

Cook up some M&Ms in Illustrator

Two giant billboard screens in Times Square display animations to whet onlookers’ appetites for something sweet to eat. These animations switch between little M&M characters in various situations to thousands of M&Ms swirling, flying, and falling around. In the Times Square painting I’m working on, I have an M&M character in one and a bunch of M&Ms falling in the other. Let’s take a look at how to create an avalanche of M&Ms.

Step One: In Illustrator, start by creating half the shape of one M&M with the Pen tool (P), then choose a green Stroke and Fill color in the Options Bar. This will determine the color of the object being rendered.

Step Two: To turn the shape into a piece of candy-colored chocolate, call up the 3D function (Effect>3D>Revolve). In this dialog, you can set the viewing angle of the object by spinning the cube in the Position section of the panel or entering specific degrees for the X, Y and Z axes. You can add Perspective too, but in our example, perspective will only add an unwanted distortion. Try using the settings shown here as a starting point (be sure to set the Offset: From drop-down menu to Right Edge to get the proper shape).

To set the lighting controls, click the More Options button (the button changes to Fewer Options once it’s been pressed) and you’ll be able to create, position, and modify multiple light sources to give your object the appearance you desire. We set the Surface to Plastic Shading to simulate the candy coating of the M&Ms. Click OK when you’re finished.

Step Three: To duplicate your M&M, press-and-hold Command-Option (PC: Ctrl-Alt) and then click-and drag the shape. To alter the viewing angle of each duplicate and make it appear to be an individual morsel, go to the Appearance panel and click on 3D Revolve. This brings up the 3D Revolve Options dialog where you can alter the current shape without having to re-establish the lighting.

Note: Once your shape has been turned into a 3D object, you cannot change its shape from the Effect>3D>Revolve menu, as it will override the previous effect and start from scratch.

Step Four: Choose Select>All and press Command-C (PC: Ctrl-C) to copy all of the shapes to the Clipboard. Then click on the Create New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and press Command-V (PC: Ctrl-V) to paste the shapes into the new layer. With all the shapes still selected, click on Fill and change the color of this batch of new M&Ms to blue, and then change the Stroke to blue, as well. As our M&Ms are “falling in space,” no two will be in exactly the same position, so use the Selection tool to reposition them. Then modify the viewing angle in the 3D Revolve Options dialog for each again to add more variety to your candy bits. Tip: This needs only the slightest turn of the shape within the 3D panel. Repeat this step to create a set of red M&Ms and a set of orange M&Ms, each on their own layer.

Bring each color into Photoshop

Once all the different colors have been created, it’s time to bring them into Photoshop.

Step Five: You should have four layers in Illustrator, one for each color: green, blue, red, and orange. (Note: For expediency, we’re only showing blue and green in our examples.) We want to bring each color into Photoshop separately so, in the Layer’s panel in Illustrator, click on the box (now you’ll see a little padlock) to the right of the Eye icon beside three of the layers to lock them. The layer that isn’t locked is the one we’ll copy to Photoshop. Choose Select>All, then Edit>Copy to copy the contents of the unlocked layer to the Clipboard.

Step Six: In Photoshop, make a new blank document (File>New) where you’ll assemble the falling bits of candy. Then Edit>Paste the contents of the first layer into your Photoshop document—the paste function automatically places the contents into their own layer. In the dialog that appears, choose Pixels, then press Return (PC: Enter).

Switch back to Illustrator. Lock the layer we just copied and unlock the next one to be copied. Follow the steps above (selecting, copying, and pasting) until all four layers have been copied to the Photoshop document.

Step Seven: The four layers fall in position directly over each other, so they tend to hide each other in the Photoshop document. Determine their actual positions by selecting each individual candy and positioning it within the canvas to its final place in the scene. (Note: To select an individual piece of candy, just draw a loose selection around it with the Lasso tool and then drag it with the Selection tool.) You may have to scale some (Edit>Transform>Scale) to give the appearance of being closer or further back within the mass of candy bits.

You may also want to duplicate a few here and there to add more candies. I suggest using Layer>New>Layer Via Copy, as this will send your duplicate to a new layer where it can be manipulated without disturbing the other candy bits. This is helpful when you have two overlapping same-color bits and you decide to move one slightly over the other, then you won’t damage the one below.

Adding the M

You could apply the “M” that’s stamped onto each candy as a texture map to the object. Clicking the Map Art button in the 3D Revolve Options dialog allows you to take any Illustrator element that’s been converted into a Symbol and apply it in any specified position onto the surface of the object. For my M&Ms, however, I wanted every M to look slightly different from the others because real M&Ms have slight variations to the way the letters are stamped onto the surface of the candy.

Step Eight: So, create your “M” in a separate document and add it to the candies within the Photoshop document by placing your “M” layer above the candy shape that will contain it. Then use the Warp command (Edit>Transform>Warp) to distort it into position. Finally, press Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E) to merge each “M” layer down into the layer with the candy shape.

Get the shapes a’movin’

To make the M&Ms appear as if they’re falling together, we need to add some motion blur and shadows.

Step Nine: To get the effect that this image is a moving animation, select the candy bits toward the top of the image and choose Filter>Blur>Motion Blur, choose your settings, and click OK. Use different Angles and Distances in the dialog to make the top candies appear to be falling faster than the ones below.

Step Ten: One final touch to make the M&Ms appear to be falling together is to add shading. Create a New Layer above each colored candy layer to contain “shadows.” With this layer active, select a soft black Brush (B) and apply strokes above the individual candy bits. Then add an inverted (black) Layer Mask to this layer and use a soft-edged white brush to reveal and refine the strokes. We added a Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur using different amounts to make them seem to be at different distances from the candies they’re casting the shadows onto. You can clip the shadows to the candies below by holding the Option button and clicking between the shadow layer and candy layer.

Step Eleven: For the final figure, we filled the Background layer with black (Edit>Fill, then select Use Black, and click OK) to complete the sense of depth to the image.

I hope you’ve learned a few tricks (without causing you to break your diet by downing a few bags of M&Ms). Bon appétit.

Don’t fear change
Perhaps I was a little off in saying all you need is Photoshop, there’s one other thing you need to create this animation and that’s an image with some coins.

STEP ONE: Start by finding or creating an image that shows both sides of a coin. Using the Elliptical Marquee tool, select one side of the coin (press-and-hold the Shift key to get a perfect circle; press-and-hold the Spacebar to reposition the selection as you drag). Once you’ve made your selection, press Command-C (PC: Ctrl-C) to copy the selection, choose New from the File menu, and click OK. This will create a document that matches the size of the copied selection. Press Command-V (PC: Ctrl-V) to paste the data into your new file. Once pasted in, drag the Background layer to the Trash icon at the bottom of the Layers panel to delete it. This will leave the coin with transparency around its edges. Repeat for the other side of the coin then save the two files with the appropriate names for the front and back.

STEP TWO: Go to File>New and create a new file 8×4″ at the same resolution as your coin files. Click on the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. Press Shift-Delete (PC: Shift-Backspace) to open the Fill dialog, choose 50% Gray from the Use drop-down menu, and click OK. This layer will be our 3D coin. Under the 3D menu, choose New Shape From Layer>Cylinder. The flat, gray layer will turn into a gray cylinder.

STEP THREE: The 3D widget that appears when you’re working with your 3D tools allows you to control many of the object’s attributes. This is that little object with the three colored arrows you see located at the upper left of our cylinder. If yours isn’t showing up, select one of the 3D tools from the Toolbox by pressing N or K (if you still don’t see it, make sure that the Enable OpenGL Drawing option is turned on in the Performance Preferences). Each color represents a different plane of the object’s axis: red contains the controls for the x-axis, green controls attributes for the y-axis, and blue denotes the z-axis. Passing your cursor over the various symbols on the 3D widget, and clicking-and-dragging once the point you’re hovering over turns yellow, will activate its specific control. The small box where the three axes converge will control the size of the overall object. Traveling up one of the tiny poles you’ll come across three symbols. The arrow at the top controls the placement of the object within the file window on its plane; the arc rotates the object; and the little box below the arc controls the size of the object in the direction of the arrow’s plane. Clicking on the little box on the blue pole will allow you to shrink the height of the cylinder to resemble an actual coin, as you see here.

STEP FOUR: Using the 3D Rotate tool (K), orient the 3D coin so that it’s facing the same direction as the image of the original coin. Select the Move tool (V) and drag-and-drop one of the saved coin images into the 3D coin file. Select the 3D Scale tool (nested under the 3D Rotate tool in the Toolbox or go up to the Options Bar and click on Scale the 3D Object icon) and resize the 3D coin so that it matches the size of the saved coin image. When finished, drag the saved coin image layer to the Trash icon at the bottom of the Layers panel.

STEP FIVE: Now let’s turn this thin cylinder into a coin! Make sure your 3D layer is selected. Call up the 3D panel from the Window menu. Click the Filter By: Materials icon to access the Materials section of the 3D panel. There you’ll find the three sides of the coin. I know you always hear “there are always two sides to every coin” but in this case we’re also dealing with the edge.

STEP SIX: Click on Top_Material to bring you to the section that contains the attributes for that side of the coin. Click the Edit the Diffuse Texture icon (to the right of the color swatch next to the word “Diffuse”) and choose Load Texture from the drop-down menu. Navigate to the file that contains the face of the coin and click Open. The cylinder will now have the face of the coin appear on the top.

For the bottom part of the coin, choose Bottom_Material and apply the file with the back of the coin to it the same way you applied the top part of the coin.

STEP SEVEN: The edge of our coin requires a little more work. A real quarter has ribbing along its edge. You must create a bump map that will simulate that ribbing. In a new layer, create a very narrow, vertical selection with the Rectangular Marquee tool (M). It should be about the thickness of a single rib on the coin. If you keep the 3D layer visible and turn the coin to its edge, you’ll be able to approximate a thickness by comparing the selection to the 3D coin. Fill the selection with a 50% gray. Don’t deselect the rectangle yet.

Click the Add Layer Style (ƒx) icon and apply a Bevel and Emboss. You’ll have to adjust the Size of the bevel so that you get an even amount of light and dark along the edge. The default setting might be too much to actually see a bevel and emboss within the rectangle.

Using the Rectangle Marquee tool with the Option (PC: Alt) key pressed, drag around the top and then the bottom of the rectangular selection to deselect those areas. This will leave you with a selection that has even tones for the vertical rib (as shown). Choose Define Pattern from the Edit menu, name your pattern, and click OK. You can now drag this layer to the Trash icon and deselect.

Create a new file of any size you want, making sure it has the same resolution as your 3D coin file. Open the Fill dialog again, but instead of using 50% gray, choose Pattern from the Use drop-down menu. Then, click the preview thumbnail next to Custom Pattern to open the Pattern Picker. Click the vertical rib pattern that you saved and then click OK. Save the file with the pattern of the ribbing with the other faces of your coin.

STEP EIGHT: Back in the file with the 3D coin, choose Cylinder_Material in the 3D panel. This time we’ll load the texture in the Bump Strength section: click the Edit the Bump Texture icon to the right of the Bump Strength value and choose Load Texture from the drop-down menu. Find your file with the ribbing pattern and click Open. You can push the Bump Strength number up to about 10 or whatever value looks best for your coin. Here we’ve added a spotlight to accent the edge where you can see the ribbing.

Put your money in motion
Now that our coin is complete, it’s an actual 3D object that can be moved around in three-dimensional space with any of the 3D object and 3D camera tools. It can also be animated, so let’s open the Animation panel from the Window menu.

The Animation panel will display the various layers that your file contains. Choosing the layer that contains the 3D coin and clicking on the small arrow to the left of the layer name will drop down the parameters for the layer’s movement. Click on the Time-Vary Stopwatch next to the 3D Object Position property. This will place a diamond-shaped indicator in the Timeline—this is called a keyframe. Move the Current Time Indicator (CTI; the small, blue arrow at the top of our Timeline) over to the position in time where you want the movement to end. Using the adjustment tools for the 3D object, move it, rotate it, or whatever else you want to do to it. Once you’re done, a second keyframe will automatically appear at the new place in the Timeline. Photoshop will now interpolate between the two keyframes, thus generating the movement.

This is a whole new capability available to the Photoshop user. It’s powerful and far easier than many of the previous ways of achieving these effects. One small caveat is that to properly view the 3D functions it does require a video card with enough power to display it. The world of 3D opens new doors for you to explore and enjoy. Have fun!

I thought it would be fitting to write a column that discusses some of the functions of layers for a magazine aptly called Layers. I often write about the importance of layers because they serve so many functions—not only do they allow for easy adjustment of compositions but they also give you the flexibility to change their contents at any time.

One of the powerful features of layers is the layer style. Layer styles can be applied to create a variety of special effects, such as lighting or textures, that give an image dimension and set a mood. In these pages we’ll explore how layer styles can help create the effects produced by a light source that interacts with objects in a scene. It’s very important to notice what happens when light hits certain objects. For example, a strong light source hitting a glass window will have a dramatically different effect than if it were to hit a concrete wall. It’s crucial to understand how different objects react to light. Fortunately, you have a wonderful source for studying these effects—the world around you.

Become enlightened
I often tell my students that it’s not a good thing to guess at what something should look like. It might look right to you but if it doesn’t comply with the way things work in real life, even the untrained eye will look at your piece and say, “That looks phony.” I strongly advise that you study the way light works and how shadows travel along surfaces in order to recreate these effects in your images. If you import some object from one image to another and disregard things such as shadows and reflections, the new object will look out of place. It will look like it was pasted into the scene. If, however, shadows fall as in the rest of the scene and other objects are reflected onto the surface, the object will appear to have been there when the original shot was taken.

The two light poles shown here are but a tiny portion of my latest digital painting, a work currently in progress. The pole on the right is a lamppost that has two lights at the top that are out of our field of view. These two lights are lit; therefore, they cast highlights and shadows over the metal sections of the pole. The light sources are very close to the frame on the pole that supports the lights. This makes it necessary for the resulting highlights and shadows to be very strong.

Easy highlights
Here we can see the section of the rod that supports the actual globe for the light. In this version the highlights only simulate the reflected light from elsewhere in the scene; there’s no highlight for the globe at the top of the pole. Let’s add that strong highlight that’s needed to make this scene look real.

STEP ONE:
You can follow along by creating a simple rectangular shape in a layer similar to the un-highlighted pole above. (The pole or object that you’re using should be on its own layer above the Background layer.) Just click the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and then use the Rectangular Marquee tool (M) to draw your selection. Fill the selection with color and then use the Dodge and Burn tools to add highlights and shadows.

STEP TWO:
Now let’s create the highlight. Choose a bright yellow for your Foreground color and a round brush tip with zero Hardness for the Brush tool (B). (Note: You can select your brush tip and Hardness by clicking on the Brush thumbnail in the Options Bar to open the Brush Preset Picker.) Open the Brushes panel (Window>Brushes) and go to the Other Dynamics section. Under Opacity Jitter, set the Control drop-down menu to Fade. The amount of Fade will determine the length of the brushstroke. For example, a Fade of 10 will give you a short brushstroke while a Fade of 100 will create a longer brushstroke.

Set your Fade to whatever amount you need for your shape. Create a new layer, then click once where you want the stroke to begin. Press the Shift key and click beyond the point where you want the stroke to end. (Holding the Shift key will draw a straight brushstroke between the two points that you clicked.) The reason for clicking beyond the ending point is because you need to allow enough room for the stroke to lessen in opacity. For example, let’s say you set the Fade amount to 200. This means that when the stroke has applied 200 steps of the brush tip, it will fade out and disappear. So if you’re trying to create a stroke that will be about four inches long and you click at a point that’s exactly four inches from your first click, your brush stroke may not have enough room to apply all 200 steps of the fade. This will result in the brushstroke not having enough room to completely blend away to nothing (0% opacity). If you click at a point about six inches away from the first click, your stroke has plenty of room to apply all 200 steps and fade in opacity, thus giving you the effect you’re looking for. Press Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D) to deselect.

STEP THREE:
Double-click on the layer with the brushstroke to bring up the Layer Style dialog for that layer. Click on the Outer Glow layer style in the list of Styles on the left. (Note: In case you didn’t know this already, clicking on the title of the style will bring you to the control panel for that style; clicking on the checkbox for any of the styles will only activate that style and apply it with the default or previously used settings without giving you the ability to alter the settings.) In the controls for the Outer Glow style, set the color to a bright orange (click the color swatch to change the color) and the Blend Mode to Normal. Adjust the Size as needed to produce a bright glow around the yellow brushstroke, then click OK to close the Layer Style dialog.

STEP FOUR:
The glow is from the light directly above the pole and to the left. This means the reflection should be along the inside edge of the pole and not spill out into thin air. To constrain the effects of the glowing stroke and confine it to the shape of the pole, turn the two layers into a clipping group. To create a clipping group, hold the Option key (PC: Alt key) and click between the two layers in the Layers panel.

STEP FIVE:
Now let’s add a little glow that seems to reflect off the surface of the pole, adding an atmospheric effect. To achieve this effect, drag the layer with the glowing stroke to the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel to duplicate the layer. Make sure the layer with the pole is not clipping the new layer. To unclip the layer from the group, simply click between the two layers in the Layers panel while pressing the Option key (PC: Alt key).

This new duplicate layer should create a slight halo protruding beyond the surface of the pole. Double-click that layer to bring up the Layer Style dialog again. This time go to the Blending Options section and lower the Fill Opacity to 0%. This will make the original pixels of the yellow stroke invisible, but since the layer Opacity is still at 100%, the Outer Glow layer style remains completely visible. Reduce the Opacity if needed to soften the glow. (The image here shows just the glow with the other pole layers hidden.)

Damage control
Here you see multiple damages on the surface of the metal. You can create this effect with the Brush tool and customized brushes. If you apply brushstrokes in separate layers, you can treat the various strokes differently. To make some of the strokes appear like gouges in the metal, open the Layer Style dialog for those particular strokes, reduce the Fill Opacity to 0% in the Blending Options, and apply a Bevel and Emboss layer style. Modify the settings in the dialog to get the highlights and shadows necessary to complete the effect of gouges.

These are simple tricks but the end result is a believable lighting effect needed to make a scene look real. Along the way you will be faced with many dialogs with many buttons. Push them and see if it creates your desired effect. If not, push them again.

Remember to have fun and play.

ALL IMAGES BY BERT MONROY

Begin in Illustrator
As you can see, the sign is made up of colorful letters that are embedded in metal shapes that extrude from the edge of the building. Begin by drawing the paths that make up the basic letterforms of the store logo in Adobe Illustrator, and then export the basic shapes to Photoshop via Edit>Copy in Illustrator and Edit>Paste in Photoshop. Select Path in the Paste dialog. These paths will be used later as selections for the basic metal shapes and colored parts of the letters.

In Illustrator, you can create the extruded sides of the metal casings using the 3D tools. Start by giving the shapes a black Stroke with no Fill color. To achieve the slight depth visible on the sides of the logo facing the viewer, choose Effect>3D>Extrude & Bevel. Modify the x- and y-axes slightly, just enough to get the desired visible edge, then set the Perspective to a value that matches the viewing angle for the overall image.

Now set the surface lighting to give the shapes added dimension and highlights, making them appear to be made of metal. In the Surface section of the 3D Extrude & Bevel dialog (click the More Options button if you don’t see it) set the direction of the light, as well as its parameters, to give the appearance that the light is coming from below, as it is in the actual scene. The black outline extruded the letters in black, demonstrating the reaction to light with a series of gray values.

To get the sides of the letters on the left part of the sign that’s facing away from the viewer, duplicate the layer by dragging it to the Create New Layer icon in the Layers panel. Hide the original layer and then target all the paths in the duplicated layer. Open the Appearance panel (Window>Appearance), and click the 3D Extrude & Bevel effect to edit it. Further modify the x- and y-axes with a greater emphasis on the y-axis to turn the letters away from the viewer, thus exposing the entire sides. The Perspective remains the same as before but adjust the Extrude Depth to give the shapes the appropriate depth. Make sure you adjust the highlights too.

Assemble in Photoshop
Once the two different sides of the logo are complete, send each layer to Photoshop via Edit>Copy in Illustrator and Edit>Paste in Photoshop. This time, however, paste them as Pixels. Because the gray values were created in Illustrator, this will import the shapes into Photoshop with all their appropriate tonalities in place. If you paste the layers separately, each shape will be imported into its own layer.

After moving each layer into position, the face of the letters is next. With the Path Selection tool (A), place the originally imported paths in position over the their three-dimensional counterparts. Click the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel, choose a gray color, head over to the Paths panel, and click the Fill Path with Foreground Color icon.

Create another new layer to fill each individual letter shape with the bright colors that match the actual sign. Because the entire logo is a set of paths, use the Path Selection tool to select each letter, and fill the letters with the appropriate colors with the Fill Path with Foreground Color icon in the Paths panel. Now click the Add Layer Style icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Inner Shadow from the list. This will make the letters appear slightly indented into the metal cases. With the Layer Style dialog still open, choose Stroke from the Styles list. Adding a Stroke layer style gives the letters an edge, thus making them look separated from the metal shapes of the cases.

Now create a clipping group with the brightly colored letters layer and the layer containing the gray letters. To do this, press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key and click between the two layers in the Layers panel. Using the Move tool, move the colored letters to the right and down slightly to expose the gray letters underneath. This creates the effect of seeing the inside edge of the metal shapes where the colored letters are indented.

More detail
To add a little more dimension to the inside edges of the metal casing visible along the edge of the colored letters, use the Dodge and Burn tools to create highlights and shadows along the inside edge. Because the inside edge is made of metal, it’s necessary to add these shadows and reflections to complete the effect. In the two-dimensional workspace of Photoshop, how you handle highlights and shadows will give an object a sense of what material it’s made of.

With the colored part of the letters visible, move them further down than they should be to allow the highlighted edge to be easily visible. Can you see how the shadows and highlights give the edge that added dimension, making the whole image appear three-dimensional?

What’s next?
Once all the elements are in place, we’ll add the final details to make the sign look real. One of those details is the presence of dirt. What would a New York scene be without a little dirt here and there? This painting will take at least another year to complete.

Though the concept of 3D tends to scare many people, it’s there to make things easier. Understanding how it works will open the door to creating many effects that before required many convoluted steps and still didn’t guarantee the best results. I love telling people, “Sit there and play.” Think of yourself as a sculptor and create shapes. What about lighting? You can add and position multiple light sources and create a mood, as you would for that perfect photograph. The only difference in this lighting is that you’re using a lot less electricity. That’s important nowadays. Have fun!

In the world of imaging, one of the most important things to consider is that lighting sets the mood. The composition and subject matter are one thing, but how a scene is lit tells the story. The time of day, the light source, and the subsequent shadows all come together to form the image. This is a crucial consideration, especially when you’re compositing multiple images into a single image. All the elements must relate to each other and cast shadows that conform to the overall lighting of the scene.

The importance of shadows
Shadows add dimension to an image; without them an object will appear flat. Both Illustrator and Photoshop are two-dimensional programs, but shading a scene properly will give it the illusion of a third dimension.

Composition-wise, lights and shadows will determine the relationship of one object to another and their place within the total scene. When you’re compositing multiple objects into one scene or adding an object to an existing scene, it’s crucial that the light intensity, direction, color, and shading for each object match correctly. Even an untrained eye will be able to spot a discrepancy. For instance, an object sitting under a lamp can’t have a shadow on its top.

Light travels in a straight line. As it meets an object, it casts a shadow that falls within that straight line. If you were to add an object to an existing image, the first thing you’d need to do is determine the light source and direction. This example shows a platform of an elevated train. If you were to place on object on the platform, it would have to cast a shadow onto the platform that matches the shadows in the rest of the scene. In our next example, a briefcase has been placed onto the platform—it looks off. It’s too bright and casts no shadows, making it appear as a pasted in object.

Match placed object to scene
Study the overall scene and you’ll see that the sides of the structure on the platform are in shadows and appear darker. The first thing to do is to match the shade for the side of the briefcase that’s facing the viewer. This is simply a matter of selecting the side of the briefcase and applying any of the methods for darkening that Photoshop has to offer. Here you can see how the side of the briefcase has been darkened.

Now it needs a shadow to set it in its place on the platform. To do this, it’s necessary to determine the direction of the light source (in this example, it’s the sun). Unfortunately, the sun is out of the field of view in the image. This isn’t a problem because the effects of that light source are clearly visible in the scene. To determine the position of the sun, draw a line in a layer from the edge of the canopy top to where the shadow first appears against the railing below. Following this line tells you precisely where the sun is in the sky.

To set up a guide to create the shadow, move the line depicting the angle of the light source down so it touches the top of the briefcase. The line shows where the shadow will fall against the platform. Using the Pen tool (P), create a path to represent the shadow. Create a new layer to contain the shadow, then fill the path with black. Lower the Opacity for the shadow layer so it matches the intensity of the rest of the shadows in the scene. The result makes the briefcase appear as if it belongs there.

Considerations
There are many factors to consider when creating lighting effects for your scene. Among them are:

• The number of light sources
• The position of the light sources
• The strength of the lights
• The color of the lights
• Do other objects block the light?

This last point brings up an interesting problem: What if the briefcase is closer to the railing? If this is the case, then the shadow will travel along the platform floor as before, but it will also travel up the railing. As you can see here, the briefcase is closer to the railing, thus casting a shadow up the side of the railing. This was accomplished by duplicating the layer containing the shadow. The duplicate shadow was rotated 90° clockwise (Edit>Transform>Rotate 90° CW) and flipped horizontally (Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal) to match the angle. Layer masks were then applied to each of the shadow layers to conceal the areas where the platform and railings end.

This is not a formula; it’s what worked in this instance. Things may vary in your particular situation. The direction of the light source determined how high up the railing the shadow would travel.

Do your homework
It’s not as complicated as it seems. You might say, “This is fine but my situation is different.” The solution to all problems lies within your grasp. It’s a matter of looking in the right places for the answers. I never guess at what something should look like. I study the world around me for the answers. When it comes to complex shading situations where I have no sources that I can refer to, I create models to study how a shadow will look. What if you need to have a shadow traveling up a staircase? What will it look like? Here you can see a staircase that’s simply a sheet of paper that was folded to form the steps. An object is lit in front of the makeshift staircase and the shadow falls into place, giving you a reference from which to create your shadow.

Shadows are crucial. They add life to an image. Study them. Use them. They will make your images come to life.

ALL IMAGES BY BERT MONROY

[If you’d like to download the image used in this tutorial to practice these techniques, click here. All files are for personal use only.]

1 CREATE A LABEL
The first thing we’ll do is create the label that will wrap around our can. Create a label like the one here, or you can download the source file (above). In this example, we’re going to create a tin can full of beans, but you can fill your can with whatever you want. You can even import an Adobe Photoshop file for your label, if you wish.

2 MAKE A SYMBOL
Once your label art is complete, select all the elements by pressing Command-A (PC: Ctrl-A). Using the Selection tool (V), click-and-drag the selected label into the Symbols panel (Window>Symbols). In the Symbol Options dialog that pops up, name your symbol, set Type to Graphic, then click OK. Press Delete (PC: Backspace) to delete the label from the artboard.

3 DRAW THE CAN
Now let the fun begin. Create a vertical line with the Pen tool (P) by clicking once on the artboard and then Shift-clicking below it to keep it perpendicular. Next, make it a guide by choosing View>Guides>Make Guides. Now set the Stroke to a medium-to-dark gray and the Fill to None (/) in the Toolbox or Control panel. Then draw a path similar to the one you see here (or download this file from the website). Make sure the path begins and ends on the guide. Believe it or not, this is the right side of the tin can. You’ll notice that I’ve created rounded corners. I did this to give my can a lip.

4 GIVE THE CAN SHAPE
With your can selected, go to Effect>3D>Revolve. In the 3D Revolve Options dialog that pops up, check Preview to see the 3D effect. At first it will look a little off. Dialing up the Perspective setting will make the can look more realistic (30˚ in this example). Click the More Options button to reveal the controls for lighting the object. I’ve added a second light source by clicking the New Light icon and then dragged the two light sources into place. With both light sources set, play with the other Surface settings to taste. I’ve bumped up the Highlight Intensity, as highlights would be stronger on a real tin can. (Don’t click OK yet.)

5 AFFIX THE LABEL
Now we’re ready to apply the label. Click the Map Art button to open the Map Art dialog. At the top of the dialog there’s a Surface indicator. As you cycle through the various surfaces by clicking the Surface arrows, the currently selected surface will be displayed over the object in red. Click the arrows until the body of the can is outlined in red. Then find your label in the Symbol drop-down menu in the upper-left corner of the dialog.

6 POSITION THE LABEL
Drag your label over the white surface shown in the box. The white area signifies the area that is currently in view, whereas the dark areas are the areas behind the object that are hidden from view. You can also grab the handles on the sides of the label to resize and alter its shape. Check Shade Artwork to add the highlights and shadows that appear on the can to your label. You can now click OK in this dialog and the one below because your tin can is finished.

7 ADD A LITTLE SHADOW
To make the can look like it’s standing within 3D space, add a little shadow behind it like the one shown here. To do this, click the Create New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel for your shadow and then click-and-drag it below your can layer. Next, create a shape like the one shown here with the Pen tool and fill it with black.

8 SOFTEN THE SHADOW
Lower the Opacity for the shadow to make it more realistic (Window>Transparency). If at any point you want to edit your can or label, go into the Appearance panel (Window>Appearance) and double-click 3D Revolved (Mapped). You have now completed your 3D tin can!

It’s all about reflections
In my studio, I have many objects and toys that serve as models when I’m trying to figure out how something will cast a shadow and how it will reflect other objects around it. And reflections are what we’ll focus on in this issue.

How you handle the surface of an object that you’re creating in Photoshop will be determined by what it’s made of. Photoshop isn’t a 3D application: it won’t automatically create shadows or reflections within a scene. Sure, there’s a layer style that creates drop shadows, but these are shadows cast by an object onto a surface directly behind it. In a three-dimensional space, shadows take on a shape of their own. For instance, an object sitting on a tabletop won’t cast a shadow onto the air behind it; the shadow will travel along the surface of the table. Also, if an object falls within the area where a shadow’s being cast, the shadow will change direction and follow the shape of the object blocking it. But let’s talk about reflections (we’ll cover the concept of shadows in more detail in a future issue).

If an object is made of glass, polished stone, or shiny plastic, it will reflect other objects that lie beside it. There’s no layer style, easy trick, or button to push to accomplish this. This detail needs to be handled with a little effort and skill. You might say, “I’m a photographer, not a painter!” But what if you’re combining two of your photographs into one and they contain reflective objects? If a reflection doesn’t exist, the image is lost and you’ll have to go in there and create the reflections.
Many times, it’s simply a matter of making a copy of the object and flipping it horizontally to make your reflection. Other times, you have to take your time and do a little manipulation to make it look right.

Window/glass reflections
When the reflections are on a window, then they need to be subtle so as not to clutter the scene behind the window. Just a hint of a reflection might be all that’s needed. This painting, Pic n Pac, at the top of the next page, was the first I created after I moved to California in 1993.

The store has big, plate-glass windows in front and, in the closeup of the window facing the viewer, you can see the interior of the shop.

There’s also a reflection from some object outside that’s out of our field of view. It’s not necessary to create that reflection from scratch. Here’s the layer for the reflection: a rough drawing I made with the Brush tool, depicting a reflection of me standing by my car taking the picture with my old Nikon camera. As you can see, there’s not much detail; just enough to get the point across.
In the Raven painting, the movie theater has a ticket booth that faces the street. It’s glass and of course, it’s reflective. How did I create that reflection? If you take a good look at the closeup of the ticket booth, you’ll see that I took the Pic n Pac painting and flipped it horizontally for the reflection. (Fortunately, no one has sent me an email [to date] complaining that there’s no such place across the street from the Raven movie theater.)

Manipulating a reflection
As mentioned above, there will be times that require some manipulation to make a reflection look right—the painting, marble and matches, at the top of the next page, is one of those instances. In the closeup, you can see that a reflection of the matchstick is visible along the edge of the marble that faces it. The marble is smooth glass; the matchstick is right next to the marble; therefore a reflection is needed.

The surface of the marble is rounded so it will distort anything that’s being reflected onto its surface. Don’t believe me? Go look at a marble!

Here’s how to manipulate this: Duplicate the layer containing the matchstick onto a new layer (Command-J [PC: Ctrl-J]). Then apply a spherical filter (Filter>Distort>Spherize) to the duplicate layer. One important consideration is that the Spherize filter creates the distortion outward from the center of the overall shape of a layer or selection. So, to get the proper distortion of the matchstick, place it at the far right of the layer being distorted before going into the Spherize filter.

Next, lower the Opacity for the layer of the distorted matchstick and place this layer in the Layers panel above the layer containing the marble. Use the Move tool (V) to position the distorted matchstick where the reflection should be in the marble. Then Option-click (PC: Alt-click) on the line between the matchstick and marble layers to turn them into a clipping group and complete the effect. This will “clip” out any of the matchstick outside the marble.

Manual modification
At other times, it might require some handwork to modify the layer for a reflection. Say you wanted to show someone looking at himself in a mirror. If you duplicate the layer with the person on it and flip it horizontally, you’ll get that reflection; however, if the mirror is being held at an angle, then you’ll need to distort the reflection. And if the mirror is below the person, then you’ll need to do some major work, because you’d see the bottom of the person’s chin and the nose in the reflection.

In the example, the Shoe Repair painting shows a neon sign with the word “PAUL’S” suspended over orange plastic, which is smooth and thus reflective. The basic reflection was easy to create: I simply duplicated the layer containing the neon tubes and offset it to the right, then lowered the layer opacity and clipped it with the layer containing the orange plastic letter shapes.

But…there are places where the neon tubes are bent to either travel under other tubes to form the letters or to connect them into the sign. In these cases I had to do a little modification to the reflection layer. The closeup below shows one of these instances.
Notice that the neon tube is bent to travel beneath another tube and then connect into the sign. The original reflection traveled in the same direction as the tubes. The reflection of the tube being bent toward the plastic has to look as if it’s being reflected outward to meet the reflection of the bar connecting it to the sign.

Another factor in this example is that you’re looking at it from an angle, which will cause the shape visible within the reflection to appear longer than the tube that’s being reflected. Try this: Hold your finger against a mirror so that it’s pointing at an angle similar to the tube in the painting and you’ll notice that you can see more of the finger reflected in the mirror than you can see of the actual finger. In the closeup, the angle and size of the tube has been modified to look the way that it should.

So, is there a science to all this? Do you have to go out now and study physics? No! Just study the world around you. Open your eyes and look at how things work. The answers are all out there.

For this project, I had to create several new buildings, a few additions to the existing museums, and a baseball park. As source material, I was given architectural renderings and city plans, but in some cases I wasn’t given much at all. There were a couple of buildings in which the extent of the information was “a building about 10 to 12 stories”—period!

Needless to say, I spent many hours at the City Planning Department looking for anything useful. The best part of the research required me to fly over the city of San Jose in a tiny, four-seat plane that was specially altered so that I could hang out the window and shoot pictures of the city. I never knew that even on a hot day it’s freezing when you’re dangling from a plane at 6,000 feet. Figure 1 shows one of the original shots before I started adding the future.

Fig. 1

Under consideration

There are many things to consider when adding elements to an existing image: first, the affect of the new object on the existing environment around it, and second, the affect of the environment on the new object itself. For example, the lighting and shadows must match the original source, and the focus and grain must also match. These points can be clearly demonstrated in this case where a building complex needs to be added in the current site of a parking lot in Figure 2. The strong shadows evident in the scene are necessary to match. More important is the fact that the existing building across the street has a facade made of glass. When the new building is added in front of it, the new building should be reflected in that glass.
The finished rendering (Figure 3) shows the new building in front casting a shadow across the street and onto the front of the existing building. The new building is also visible as a reflection in the windows of the existing building.

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Put it in perspective

The actual creation of the buildings requires many steps to ensure that they fit into the scene as if they were there in the original photograph. One of the most important considerations is perspective. Proper perspective is crucial so the buildings will fit accurately in the three-dimensional space of the cityscape. To achieve proper perspective, the vanishing point must be established on the horizon in order to set up guides for the construction of the various structures.

Photoshop has a filter called Vanishing Point. Unfortunately, it’s not very useful in this situation. For one thing, to get the necessary detail you would have to work much bigger than the existing image—so using the filter within the image is not an option. Another factor is that the sides of many of the buildings are rounded and Vanishing Point moves objects within flat planes.

The concept behind the Vanishing Point filter is based on the basic laws of perspective. Figure 4 shows a diagram that explains how perspective works. At the horizon (eye level) there are vanishing points. All parallel lines meet at those vanishing points. If you were to draw lines that follow the angles of all the objects in a scene, these lines would be called vanishing lines and they would converge at the vanishing points on the horizon.

Fig. 4

In Figure 5 we see a close-up of an area of downtown. (To draw your attention to a point of interest, take a look at the large, grayish complex just below center right—it’s Adobe headquarters.) In Figure 6 we see the way that same area will look in the future. Three buildings have been added in this scene. The building on the bottom left is a proposed second tower to an existing structure. You would think that all you’d have to do is copy the existing building over; however, there’s additional work, such as creating the reflection of the rooftop at the very bottom of the image into the new tower.

Fig. 5

Fig. 6

The blue glass tower that appears above the Adobe complex in Figure 6 is a tall tower with a rounded left side. The first thing that needs to be established for this building before it can be created is the correct perspective. The section of this scene needs to be copied and enlarged by at least 400% to get detail. The file is then placed in an Illustrator file, and lines are drawn on a separate layer that follow the angles of the windows, the tops of the buildings, and the streets, where visible. All these lines have to eventually meet at the horizon line (Figure 7). Once the vanishing point is established, all the guidelines can be drawn for the construction of the new building (Figure 8).

Fig. 7

Fig. 8

When the building is complete in Illustrator, the document is imported into Photoshop as individual layers, as we see in Figure 9. In Photoshop, add all the details necessary to make the building look realistic, such as shadows and reflections.

Fig. 9

The final building is merged into a single layer and reduced in size to 25% to fit the final composite of the entire cityscape. The details are then rasterized to the new size. Once placed in the composite file, the tower is blurred to match the focus of the rest of the buildings in that area. Noise is added with the Add Noise filter to match the grain of the original shot. The top of the brown building in front of the new tower needs to be copied to a layer and placed in front of the new building to give the new building its proper location in the scene.

The digital tools at our disposal have opened the door to let our imaginations run wild. We must, however, still conform to certain laws of nature to make things look believable. It’s not as hard as it sounds; it’s simply a matter of experiencing life with our eyes open. Study how the world works—how light bathes a scene, how shadows dance on the surfaces they encounter, and how materials react to the lights and shadows and the other objects around them. Keeping your eyes open and taking it all in will help you make better images—it will also help you from bumping into things.

The completed futuristic view of San Jose

Make a mesh

Illustrator also has this feature but with far more power than the one found in Photoshop. It has the ability to warp objects via a user-defined mesh. This incredible command is found under Object>Envelope Distort and is called Make with Mesh.

To demonstrate one of the times that I found this tool indispensable, let me refer to my painting Oyster Bar (shown above left). We’re going to focus on the trashcan in this scene. It has a wire net body that needs to conform to the curvature of the can.

The basic shapes were generated in Illustrator. The following image shows the frame for the can and the wire net that I created for it. The wire net was created in a separate layer. (Yes, Illustrator has layers too.)

It was necessary to distort the mesh to follow the curvature of the trashcan. If this were all that I needed to do, then the Warp command in Photoshop would have been sufficient. There was, however, one detail that made it difficult—I wanted the trashcan to be old and worn. The scene is, after all, a busy corner in midtown Manhattan. This meant there had to be additional dents here and there in the trashcan.

Employing the Warp command in Photoshop would have applied a mesh composed of nine panels. This mesh would have been sufficient to distort the mesh into the curvature needed for the can as shown here; but the desired dents added a complexity that this procedure in Photoshop could not handle.

Do it in Illustrator

Since the wire netting was created in Illustrator in the first place, warping it there made perfect sense. I selected the entire wire net and went into the Envelope Distort function (Object>Envelope Distort>Make with Mesh). When you choose this feature, a dialog pops up allowing you to determine the number of sections the mesh for warping will contain. Unlike the Photoshop version that’s limited to nine panels, Illustrator lets you create as many panels as you think you’ll need to do the job. (Note: The maximum is actually 2500 panels, but that’s probably more than you’ll ever need.) I chose a total of 10 Rows with 10 Columns (for a total of 100 panels).

This gave me sufficient space for distorting the net of the can to achieve the 3D effect I was looking for, plus the added dents. Once you have your mesh, you can use the Direct Selection tool to select and manipulate any individual point in the grid, or you can click-and-drag an entire section of the grid. Here you can see how some of the sections of the mesh have been moved, causing the net of the trashcan to distort in specific areas.

The beauty of all this is that you can work at any size in Illustrator without sacrificing resolution. Once you copy-and-paste the object into a Photoshop file, it rasterizes to the resolution of the Photoshop document. I tend to work in Illustrator at 400% of what I need for the painting. I then reduce the object to 25% and export it over to Photoshop.

The bottom line is that no single program does it all. It’s best to get a thorough working knowledge of the entire Creative Suite so you can take advantage of the best that each program has to offer.

Here’s a fairly flat-looking maple leaf made from two layers: The bottom layer contains the leaf and the layer at top contains the veins.

Create the mesh

What the leaf needs is some color to make it look more dimensional and natural and this is where the Gradient Mesh comes in.

STEP ONE:
First, we’ll create a new blank layer between the two existing layers. In this new layer, we’ll generate a box that has the same fill color as the leaf and covers the complete shape of the leaf. This layer is where we’ll create the gradient mesh and add the colors.

Click on the Toggles Lock box (to the left of the layer name) of the other two layers that contain the basic elements of the leaf. This is important because we’ll be doing a lot of clicking to create the mesh, and locking the layers will prevent them from accidentally being selected and altered.

STEP TWO:
Now if you study the veins on the leaf, you’ll notice that they break up the box into two columns, each with four rows. Armed with that information, choose Create Gradient Mesh from the Object menu. In the dialog that pops up, enter the parameters established by our observation of the leaf, and click OK.

STEP THREE:
Using the Direct Selection tool (A), move the center anchor points of the mesh to intersect the joints where the six horizontal veins branch off from the main central vein. Also, move the anchor points on the outer edges and adjust their handles so the mesh matches the shape of the veins.

STEP FOUR:
Add new grid lines above and below the horizontal veins and to the left and right of the central vein. To add new grid lines, click with the Mesh tool (U) anywhere within the grid. This will create both a vertical and horizontal grid line that intersect at the point where you click. These new grid lines will automatically follow the flow and direction of the existing grid lines that border on either side of them. (Note: Once you create one of the new vertical grid lines for the central vein, click directly on that line when adding horizontal grid lines. Otherwise, you’ll add additional vertical lines that you don’t need.) We need to alter these new grid lines also: Using the Direct Selection tool, move them and adjust their handles to start forming a shape within the leaf where the colors will flow.

Add colors

The beauty of the Gradient Mesh is that colors can be added that will fade into any other colors that exist within the mesh. To add colors to the mesh, simply select anchor points in the mesh and then choose a color. The color will automatically fill the area around the anchor point and fade into whatever color is assigned to the next anchor point in the mesh. Note: Any alteration to the shape of the mesh will alter the shape of the color and how it fades into neighboring colors. Let’s try it with our leaf:

STEP FIVE:
In the middle layer with our leaf color, use the Direct Selection tool to select all the points that travel through the original grid lines that are directly on top of the veins (add the Shift key for multiple selections). Once all the points are selected, choose a dark brown color to fill those points. Notice that the color falls behind the veins because the veins are in a layer above the layer where the mesh is contained.

STEP SIX:
Click on the vertical lines to either side of the central vein to add two new horizontal grid lines that fall in the center between the horizontal veins. Add two new vertical grid lines to the left and right of the existing vertical grid lines. These new vertical lines will serve as the stopping point for the colors that are about to be added to the newly created horizontal lines. Select the four points on the two new horizontal lines where they intersect the vertical grid lines on either side of the center vein in the leaf. For our example, we added a pink tone to those points.

STEP SEVEN:

Select the points at each juncture where the veins branch out and add a green color to these points. Finally, adjust the various outside points that border the dark brown tones, which allows you to spread the browns and vary their effect over the leaf.

Now that the color is complete, place the middle layer with the colored box behind the layer with the leaf. Unlock the leaf layer, and then clip the two layers to form a mask (Object>Clipping Mask>Make). And here’s our more natural-looking leaf.

The Gradient Mesh Tool is a wonderful way of playing with color! Couple it with a little solar power and it’s a very environmentally friendly tool.

Quick Tips on the Mesh Tool by Corey Barker

• As Bert mentioned in Step Four, you can add additional horizontal and vertical grid lines to the gradient mesh by clicking in an empty area with the Mesh tool. You can also click directly on a vertical grid line to create a new horizontal grid line and vice versa. Now if you add an anchor point that you didn’t mean to, hold down the Option (PC: Alt) key and hover over a grid line. When the cursor changes to a minus sign (–), simply click on the undesired grid line to remove it.

• Now let’s say you’ve edited all the individual points with varying colors and when you look at the finished graphic, you decide you’d like to see other color variations. Well, you could go and select each individual point and change the color if you had all the time in the world. However, seeing as how most of us don’t have that luxury, we can simply select the object with the Selection tool and click on the Recolor Artwork icon in the Control panel. In the Live Color dialog, make sure the Recolor Art box is checked on at the bottom. Then click the pop-up menu at the top left to access the various Harmony Rules and experiment with different combinations.

For this project, I had to create several new buildings, a few additions to the existing museums, and a baseball park. As source material, I was given architectural renderings and city plans, but in some cases I wasn’t given much at all. There were a couple of buildings in which the extent of the information was “a building about 10 to 12 stories”—period!

Needless to say, I spent many hours at the City Planning Department looking for anything useful. The best part of the research required me to fly over the city of San Jose in a tiny, four-seat plane that was specially altered so that I could hang out the window and shoot pictures of the city. I never knew that even on a hot day it’s freezing when you’re dangling from a plane at 6,000 feet. Figure 1 shows one of the original shots before I started adding the future.

Under consideration
There are many things to consider when adding elements to an existing image: first, the affect of the new object on the existing environment around it, and second, the affect of the environment on the new object itself. For example, the lighting and shadows must match the original source, and the focus and grain must also match. These points can be clearly demonstrated in this case where a building complex needs to be added in the current site of a parking lot in Figure 2. The strong shadows evident in the scene are necessary to match. More important is the fact that the existing building across the street has a facade made of glass. When the new building is added in front of it, the new building should be reflected in that glass.

The finished rendering (Figure 3) shows the new building in front casting a shadow across the street and onto the front of the existing building. The new building is also visible as a reflection in the windows of the existing building.

Put it in perspective
The actual creation of the buildings requires many steps to ensure that they fit into the scene as if they were there in the original photograph. One of the most important considerations is perspective. Proper perspective is crucial so the buildings will fit accurately in the three-dimensional space of the cityscape. To achieve proper perspective, the vanishing point must be established on the horizon in order to set up guides for the construction of the various structures.

Photoshop has a filter called Vanishing Point. Unfortunately, it’s not very useful in this situation. For one thing, to get the necessary detail you would have to work much bigger than the existing image—so using the filter within the image is not an option. Another factor is that the sides of many of the buildings are rounded and Vanishing Point moves objects within flat planes.

The concept behind the Vanishing Point filter is based on the basic laws of perspective. Figure 4 shows a diagram that explains how perspective works. At the horizon (eye level) there are vanishing points. All parallel lines meet at those vanishing points. If you were to draw lines that follow the angles of all the objects in a scene, these lines would be called vanishing lines and they would converge at the vanishing points on the horizon.

In Figure 5 we see a close-up of an area of downtown. (To draw your attention to a point of interest, take a look at the large, grayish complex just below center right—it’s Adobe headquarters.) In Figure 6 we see the way that same area will look in the future. Three buildings have been added in this scene. The building on the bottom left is a proposed second tower to an existing structure. You would think that all you’d have to do is copy the existing building over; however, there’s additional work, such as creating the reflection of the rooftop at the very bottom of the image into the new tower.

The blue glass tower that appears above the Adobe complex in Figure 6 is a tall tower with a rounded left side. The first thing that needs to be established for this building before it can be created is the correct perspective. The section of this scene needs to be copied and enlarged by at least 400% to get detail. The file is then placed in an Illustrator file, and lines are drawn on a separate layer that follow the angles of the windows, the tops of the buildings, and the streets, where visible. All these lines have to eventually meet at the horizon line (Figure 7). Once the vanishing point is established, all the guidelines can be drawn for the construction of the new building (Figure 8).

When the building is complete in Illustrator, the document is imported into Photoshop as individual layers. In Photoshop, add all the details necessary to make the building look realistic, such as shadows and reflections.

The final building is merged into a single layer and reduced in size to 25% to fit the final composite of the entire cityscape. The details are then rasterized to the new size. Once placed in the composite file, the tower is blurred to match the focus of the rest of the buildings in that area. Noise is added with the Add Noise filter to match the grain of the original shot. The top of the brown building in front of the new tower needs to be copied to a layer and placed in front of the new building to give the new building its proper location in the scene.

Laws of Nature
The digital tools at our disposal have opened the door to let our imaginations run wild. We must, however, still conform to certain laws of nature to make things look believable. It’s not as hard as it sounds; it’s simply a matter of experiencing life with our eyes open. Study how the world works—how light bathes a scene, how shadows dance on the surfaces they encounter, and how materials react to the lights and shadows and the other objects around them. Keeping your eyes open and taking it all in will help you make better images—it will also help you from bumping into things.

Bio:
Bert Monroy is considered one of the pioneers of digital art. His work has been seen in many magazines and scores of books. He has served on the faculty of many well-known institutions, written many books, and appeared on hundreds of TV shows around the world.