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Glossy look


Doc

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I'm trying to create a 'Life Magazine' style link for my Guest Page. I've created the graphics and text to resemble the magazine, but now I'm trying to achieve a 'glossy' look to it. I've added a gradient highlight on the left, and a reflection too...still seems to be missing something though.

Any suggestions?

Doc
 

kiwi

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Nice work Doc :perfect:



Your gradient is not over enough of the page.Try this it works better then gradients most times.Take a photo of the ceiling in your house {no I have not gone mad :)} and take the image and place it over top of your mag cover and set to softlight or overlay.My reason for doing this is that if the cover is glossy whatever is above the mag is going to be minutely reflected in the cover thus an accurate gloss portrayl.Another good one is a window you could try as well,but using a gradient for gloss is going to be really difficult on a black cover.Gloss is generally contrast related so on black it would be quite difficult.



Stu.
 
G

Guest

Guest
It's like Stu said; take a second image and blend it in, using a low opacity. This will create some illusion of reflection.
At this moment your gradient is creating the illusion of a bevel.
 

Doc

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I added the gradient to the left to try giving the impression of 'roundness' to the folded side of the mag...but, it doesn't seem 'bright' enough and of course, the mag doesn't appear to curve.

My 'reflection' seems to be part of the page, not a reflection on it.

I used a black background for the magazine page thinking 'you can't show light without dark'...I was going for the high contrast a gloss would give.

Thanks to your comments and suggestions, I think the key here is to come up with a different color for the main magazine background. Then I can try using soft light and/or overlay on the blending options.

Back to the drawing boards...will let you know how I fair.

Doc
 

wbiss

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;) Great suggestion there Stu! ;\ Hadn't even thought of that simple solution...

but then my ceilings are black... [confused]...

:) I look forward to seeing how you finish up with this latest project, Doc!
 

kiwi

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Thanks Wendy :D



Doc for a black background try screen mode.I use screen for highlights,softlight for midtones and multiply for shadows.For the rounded effect try using a grdient of foreground to transparent,now zoom way in and add just a smidgeo of noise to get rid of the plasticky look,and add just a smidgeon of g blur as well.For the edge of your mag I think white is a bit bright for even that lit are,maybe try blue or mid to dark grey as they will give your color fall off and white is really just pure specular which nature does not throw out very often at all.


Stu.
 

kiwi

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I had a play and came up with a bit of a tute :)



First heres a pic of my final image so you can see if you like it or not Doc.


Stu.
 

kiwi

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First thing I did was to blur the window on the cover to make it recede.

I then made a long thin selection the left edge to just in front of the L in Life.I copied that selection to a new layer.Then in hue and saturation I lifted the lightness to +5,I then copied this layer nudged it back 3 pixels and repeated the process twice more.Now merge all three layers and lift the lightness to +5 again and add a layer mask.Select 50% grey and apply a gradient of foreground to transparent from right to left,but not quite touching the edge of the doc window,leave a little gap.Lift the layers lightness +2 once more,now blur by 8.2 pixels.You should have a nice smudged ink effect at the top left of the page.

Make another new layer and make a selection very similar to our previous one only bring it to 3/4 of the last selection to the outer edge on the right.Drag a gradient from left to right,add noise of 7.3 and reduce the opacity to 60%.You now have a lit magazine edge.

Take a soft brush and make small soft brush strokes like in the images supplied below,we are going to make finger prints.When you are satisfied load the layers selection and turn off the white brush marks layer,select the background layer and copy with the selection active to the top of the layer stack.Increase lightness {hue and sat} +5 once more and there we have greasy smudged finger prints,blur a little if needed.

Make a selection like the panes of a window like in the image below.In the selection on a new layer drag a gradient from top to bottom.You will have a pink area to delete at the top right now,whack it and set the layer to soft light.

In the final image I quickly threw a texture of wood in the background and added a layer style drop shadow to give the mag depth.If you decide to use a drop shadow make your shadow in distance away from the mag the size it is in thickness.The further away you make your shadow the more depth the magazine will retain until it looks like a thick hardback with the shadow moved quite a bit.

The last thing that I added to the image I will let you work out on your own,its very similar to our window but different.The edges could also have more tweaking as well to look real if you wanted.

HTH


Cheers
Stu.
 

wbiss

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:perfect: Great tutorial Stu! You did a fabulous job on making the magazine look so much more realisitic! :perfect: Excellent results! :D
 

kiwi

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Thanks bud :perfect: .....its aways the small details whch make n image work or not.I think if I spent an another hour or two playing with the background and the mags edges etc I could make it look real,but lghting using gradients makes realistic falloff difficult for a really real world effect :D



Stu.
 

sfm

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you did a super job there Stu well done :perfect:
sfm
 
G

Guest

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Black or no black, one can add a glossy look to every color and you've proven that it's possible. Well done Stu! :perfect:
 

Doc

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Kiwi, all...

Sorry it took some time for me to reply. What can I say but FANTASTIC! Thanks very much for the suggestions and 'tute'.

The one thing that still bothers me tho is the window reflection...it makes the magazine look 'glassy' more than 'glossy'.

I took the window, skewed it a bit, had guasian blur it a bit [shhh], made it grey scale too.

I still need to work on the highlight on the left, but here's my latest try.

Doc
 

kiwi

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That does look good Doc :perfect:



Another way to get away from the reflection angle and make it more realistic is shadows that cover the whole image,ie a palm frond that starts at the bottom of the image and covers part of the book and carries on to the other side of the wood as well if you know what I mean,remember to add the depth of the book into the shadow though :)



Maybe coffee stains on the wood work as well Doc.



Stu.
 

theKeeper

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Just wanted to make it clear to Doc that to create the illusion of a reflection, the reflected subject matter must appear above the printed material on the book's cover. Highlights and reflections should cover over, and even wash out/obscure sometimes, the images seen on the paper.

That's what actually creates this illusion.
Take another look at Stu's example, it shows what i mean.

Good work though. :perfect:
Keep at 'er.
 

kiwi

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Best way I find to acheive what Mark has mentioned is make a gradient,blur it then copy using the gradient as a selection to a new layer and tweak.



The glass look is because the reflection is to sharp Doc,I found blurring a great help.Also white seems to be what causes all the problems,its to specular for a large area :)



Do you like this one better?



Stu.
 

kiwi

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That grey strip down the binding was meant to be layer which was turned off [doh]



Stu.
 

Alistair

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I like it wendy :perfect: And that grey strip actually makes it look like a real book (real books have curves on the binding), so I think the grey strip should stay, but the erased part of the strip should be fixed.
 

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