Photoshop Tutorial - Glowing Bas Relief

1. Introduction

During the winter months of dark evenings I try and spend a few hours quite openly looking at new effects. In my terminology an effect is taking a 'nice' image and subjecting it to a minimum of two filters that have been subtly conditioned with layer, blending modes and opacity. In my view a 'nice' image depicts good, composition, impact and technical execution. There are nearly fifty filters in the Filter Gallery, yielding nearly two thousand five hundred 'two filter' permuatations and over twelve thousand 'three filter' permutations. In this tutorial I have paired off Glowing Edges and Bas Relief from the respective Stylize and Sketch suites.

2. The Effect

2.1 Click here to see the original image and click on the original image to return to this page.

2.2 Click here to see the colour effect and click on the colour effect to return to this page.

2.2 Click here to see the black and white effect and click on the black and white effect to return to this page.

2.3 Click here to return to the main Photoshop page.

3. Keystrokes

3.1 Copy the background layer and rename 'glowing edges'.

3.2 Filter>Stylize>Glowing Edges, setting edge width = 2, edge brightness = 6, smoothness = 5.

3.3 Set blending mode to subtract and opacity = 70%.

3.4 Copy background layer, rename 'bas relief' and place on the top layer.

3.5 Filter>Sketch>Bas Relief, setting detail = 12, smoothness =3.

3.6 Set blending mode to Vivid light and opacity = 50%.

3.7 Create a blank layer and name it 'curves'.

3.8 Holding the 'Alt' key down, Layers>(Drag the mouse down and release on) Merge Visible.

3.9 Image>Adjustments>Curves. Grab the curve at Input and Output values of 190 and move it to an Output 230, whilst maintaining the Input value of 190, to improve light pixel brightness. In order to maintain a moody contrast, grab the curve and pull it back on to the original curve at input and output values of 90.

3.10 To black and white the effect with an Infra Red cast, create a blank layer and name it 'black and white'.

3.11 Holding the 'Alt' key down, Layers>(Drag the mouse down and release on) Merge Visible.

3.12 Image>Adjustments>Channel Mixer, tick the monochrome box and set the red channel = 0, green channel = 200 and blue channel = -100.