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It’s not easy to portray texture through an image composed of pixels. Katelan Foisy deliberately spot-enhanced areas of her painting to communicate the sensory detail of her work.
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Foisy scanned a mixed media painting
as a background for her collage of a
woman in repose. Deciding a feather in
the painting would look better on top
of the woman, Foisy loosely selected
it, jumped it (Command/Ctrl-J) to a
new layer above the body layer, and
Option/Alt-clicked the layer’s visibility
icon to view the selection alone.
To carefully
remove the background around
the fine hairs of the feather, she selected
the layer (Command/Ctrl-click), then
Option/Alt-clicked the background
with the Magic Wand tool until she had
deselected everything but the feather.
She then inverted the selection, and
pressed Delete/Backspace. To magnify
the feather’s details, Foisy chose Filter >
Sharpen > Sharpen, then reapplied the
filter (Command/Ctrl-F) until the top
feather portion came forward from the
reddish texture behind it.
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To increase the visual interest of the
background, Foisy selectively enhanced
small areas of texture. She duplicated the
background layer (keeping it below the
body layer), lassoed an area of thick paint
ridges on the left, then applied a large
Feather to the selection. She jumped the
selection to a new layer (below the body
layer) and applied Sharpen to increase the
intensity of the paint’s thickness. While
sharpening made the texture stand out
significantly, the heavy feathering seamlessly
blended the selection’s edges into
the background.
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Foisy noticed an area of color on the
right appeared flatter after scanning,
so she sharpened a selection of it, then
deepened tonal values with Brightness/Contrast. She also sharpened selections of
gold leaf and used Curves to boost their
reflective shine. Foisy wanted the gold
leaf on the left softer, so after sharpening
a selection, she clicked the Add a layer
style icon at the bottom of the Layers
palette, chose Inner Glow, and increased
Opacity and Range.
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To make the outline of the woman
stand out, she lassoed narrow feathered
selections like the top edges of the hand,
chose Select > Modify > Smooth, and set
a 4-pixel Sample Radius to even jagged
selection edges. Then she sharpened
the selection until the edges of the hand
looked crisp above the background.
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The final image is shown at left (click to enlarge).
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Katelan V. Foisy works as a freelance illustrator out of Astoria NY.
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