PRO Photoshop Tutorial

In this advanced Photoshop Tutorial, you will literally be transported into an underwater world, and shown how to do exactly that with your photography. Using what we cover in this Photoshop Tutorial, you will be able to create just about anything you can imagine. We even use a bowl of cranberry sauce for a very important part of this image!The FREE CUSTOM BRUSHES that are included with this tutorial are the best ways to make atmosphere and LIGHT RAYS.

Photo Shoot

Thanks to some very special Phamily members who assisted on this shoot – Zach, Syed, & Scot. What an amazing time we had setting up and shooting. When you are trying to make someone look as though they are underwater, you have a TON of obstacles in your way. One of the biggest challenges we had to overcome during the shoot was the fact that we didn’t want to fill the entire room with smoke until just before the shoot. That meant that testing the lighting was pretty much out of the question, as it would react totally differently with the fog.

Getting someone to look like they are floating underwater is also very difficult, and we tried a number of poses and camera angles to get the best result. In the end we have to use a little Photoshop trick to make it look as though her legs aren’t on the ground.

How to Add Light Sources

It would have been hard enough to make an image of a girl underwater with jellyfish, but we wanted to take it a step further and do something that no one has ever done. Make the jellyfish actually LIGHT the model. Half of this had to be done in camera during the photo shoot, and the other half in Photoshop.

The main light sources that were there from the photo shoot remain relatively untouched, but all of the others are added in. When doing this, careful attention has to be paid in order to assure you don’t get BANDING in your photo. Something we have developed a technique for. Also in calcualting depth, a light source that is further into the deep is going to look a lot different than one right next to the camera.

How to Create Flowing Hair

Anyone can photograph a model in a room with fog. The difficult part of this image involves making all the small details ALSO say UNDERWATER. One of the biggest ways you can tell is by looking at a person’s clothing and hair. In this tutorial, we cover both how to make hair look like it is floating, and piecing together clothing to do the same.

How to Add Depth

The BIG selling point on any image like this is always how much depth you can create. If you look at an image and it really seems to go off into the distance, you are far more likely to believe it. Creating depth is done in a number of ways, and we cover the principles behind doing this successfully. We also teach an AMAZING method that will make this SO MUCH EASIER for you.

The ability to change how much blur something has at any point in time. That is VITAL in making something look as though it is farther into the deep. A blur that is off by .5 pixels could mean the difference between something that looks amazing, and something that looks horribly fake.

Subject Interaction

If you really want to sell the idea that a person is in their environment, they should interact with it. In this tutorial we take a simple and elegant solution. One of the tentacles wraps around the girl’s arm. We teach you how to make that too.