Photoshop Tips
Create a Patinated Effect by Controlling Pixel Residue in Photoshop
Dateline: November 2, 2005
Version: Photoshop CS
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| Rebecca Lysen used Photoshop’s Color Range as a better way to control pixel residue for a patinated effect. "The pixel residue helped to give the image a degenerated,
patinated look of an ancient wall space—like paint
that has peeled away after time. I wanted to give the
composite a cohesive feel,” Lysen says.
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Lysen began her composite by opening each scanned
image in its own respective document. In order to give
deleted selections transparency for layering later, she
double-clicked on the name “Background” in the Layers
palette and clicked OK in the New Layer dialog box to
change the name of the layer to Layer 0. Dragging Layer
0 to the Create a new layer icon at the bottom of the
palette, Lysen copied the layer to preserve the original,
then turned off the visibility of the bottom layer.
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“Using Color Range instead of the
Magic Wand tool to delete selections
gives me greater control over the colored
areas I want to keep,” Lysen notes.
Choosing Select > Color Range, Lysen
left Select set to Sampled Colors, and
clicked Selection. Clicking in her main
image with the Eyedropper tool, she
picked the color she wished to eliminate
from the image, like the blue sky in
the temple image. She then adjusted the
Fuzziness slider while watching the preview
window to determine how much
of the color she wanted to retain.
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Once she was satisfied with the amount of
background color, Lysen clicked OK to close the
dialog box and load the selection in the image.
Pressing Delete/Backspace, she deleted the
selection and it became transparent, then she
Deselected it (Command/Ctrl-D). For the flower
bouquet at the bottom center of the image, Lysen
used Color Range twice to virtually eliminate
almost all the brown and black from the background
of the image, isolating the flower buds.
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With the main Background image set for the composition, Lysen moved
each image to the composite document by choosing Duplicate Layer from the
Layers palette menu and selecting the composite as the Destination. After each
had its own layer in the new document, Lysen adjusted the layers’ opacities to
better blend the images and heighten the bronze and rose tones. On the temple
layer, she set the blending mode to Overlay at 59% Opacity, which allowed the
temple’s detail and shape to recede into background while its golden color
complemented the colors of nearby images. To further soften individual image
edges, Lysen applied the Blur tool set at 60% Opacity or selected images such as
the flower bouquets with the Elliptical Marquee tool at a 30-pixel Feather.
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The final image is shown at left (click to enlarge).
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