alphamccall:
bringing back old editing styles: picspams
hi everyone ~
so i’ve been on tumblr since forever and took a break and then recently came back! however i’m still very much stuck with 2012 tumblr trends (lol) when graphics and picspams were just *chefs kiss*
i know trends change and all buttttt i really miss the creativity and beauty of picspams and graphics so…here is a picspam tutorial for y’all! stay tuned for more tutorials to come!
step 1: pick your screencaps
make sure they’re high quality
colorful/vibrant already
easy to mask (masking is really important here)
also figure out what color scheme you want to do! personally i like to organize it by warm colors on one side and cool colors on the other side but you can mix and match like this picspam
step 2: cropping
you can def choose whatever sizes you’d like but for my picspams each cap is 270px by 150px and the full size is 540px by 600px
step 3: getting textures
ok this is where the fun starts! although colorings are important, textures i’d argue are even more important and can elevate your picspam to a whole new level! and can even be used as a coloring (will explain later)
light leak textures / gradient textures such as:
textured textures (yes you read that right lol) such as:
step 4: base coloring
always start off with a base coloring on your cap which essentially just needs to be things like brightness, contrast, and/or vibrance etc. also a neat trick i learned is duplicating the cap layer and setting it to screen which can be used as a base coloring
example of duplicating layer + setting it to screen (it just brightens a bit)
step 5: the colorful coloring
so here is an example of taking a dull cap and making it super duper colorful <3
here are all the adjustments used:
vibrance: +100 (adjust as needed for your particular cap)
selective color: this is REALLY important so based on the color you want to bring out click that selective color. so for this cap i wanted to bring out yellows so i clicked the yellow tab and set it to +100
basic brightness/contrast. i usually like to add more contrast as it makes colors pop
another selective color layer
then a layer of a soft brush of yellow or a light leak on the corner and i set it to screen (screen is your bff here)
and then a few more layers of color balance, i just shifted it to be more cyan so i can bring out some greens + brightness etc,
this is what I mean by soft brush or light leak (adjust colors as needed):
step 6: coloring but also using textures
for this, same as before, have a base coloring and i also added a layer of solid yellow color and set it to ‘color burn’ so you don’t even need to color anything!! the layer of yellow + color burn or even dark, multiply etc will do that for you
next, slap on a texture of your choice and set it to multiply and you’re done
tips:
always always use a mask on every layer so you can easily erase adjustments where it shouldn’t be
if you want to add more colors use gradient map and set it from black to whatever color you want and then set it to soft light or screen and adjust opacity as needed
selective color if your bff here
light leaks go a long way! using light leaks or just soft brushes and setting it to screen or soft light make picspams pretty :)
use topaz labs if possible to sharpen! it just looks super clean
color fill is also great to use to make a cap more warm or cool toned
you can use light leaks, gradient textures, gradient maps, or solid colors and set it to multiply for a hassle-free quick coloring
this is my first tutorial so apologies if it doesn’t make sense! im happy to answer questions just shoot me a message <3
and don’t forget to tag me in your creations folks! i’d love to see them
~farah
