AlchemyBro - Day 30

Some random experimentation as WiP continues.

This one's the random effects of Overlay. This is details of the chair cushion - straight b&w sketch and using stronger whites directly next to shadow spots to make crevices bulge

Stuck a dark brown on an Overlay layer, no other post processing done, and got this -

Its like some sort of Cheer color effect - whites are left alone or pumped up, but when a tonal threshold is hit darks get darker. It looks like it gets emphasized when darker colors are used in the Overlay layer.

This next one is trying out Agepoyo's suggestion to Tthal a few posts earlier (sorry for being a snoop, just really wanted to know what it does!) This what the chair looks like when applying what I've been doing for the past 10,000 posts:

Going back to having just b&w sketch and colors on an Overlay layer, first thing was to combine everything into one layer, hereafter called the Master layer. After that, created a copy the Master layer and put it under the original Master layer. On the copied Master layer, used Levels and moved the black arrow until hit 200, then Gausian Blurred at 10px, back to Levels and moved the White arrow to hit 200. Finally, back to original Master layer at the top, set it to Screen.

Really sweet highlights and for messy sketchers, this effect looks like it cleans up a lot of dirty tones. For people that draw light, though, it looks like it drops a lot of shadow. Tried out 2 methods to do a quick adjust.

Method 1 - Apply a copy of the b&w layer back to the top of everything and set the layer to Multiply with layer opacity at 25%. Got this

Method 2 - Go back to having a Master layer (both colors and b&w combined into one layer), apply an Unsharp Mask at 400 - 500%, then do the rest of the steps of creating a copy, using levels, gausian blur, levels again, screen, and whatnot. Got this

The Unsharp Mask is the quick trick to remove the fuzz off of images. Applied at 100%, it starts showing noticeable grain and makes images look like they were drawn with a pencil when zoomed in. At really high levels, it makes that really vibrant scratchy effect.