need some advice and help from gurus

[Toho]

hello, I joined this community because I am having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around photoshop. i have been using gimp for a while and though i am no master i believe i know the basics of it and can navigate through it without too much trouble but Photoshop just confuses the hell out of me and leaves me speechless with its vast arsenal of options and brushes.

anyways i am working on a little project of mine and i need to cross-over some pre-existing textures together to make it look good. I doubt i have the talent to make the whole thing myself so i just 'merge' things together. until now GIMP was enough but now it is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve good results.
so for example in the picture below i want the left symbol to be placed 'over' the white shield but at the same time i want all the black details, that resemble a wooden shield, to be found on the symbol therefore making the white wooden shield look like a wooden shield with a sigil/symbol painted on it. when i try this with gimp and play around with the various layers i never get the symbol + the wooden-like texture over it without having the white or some other color contrast ruin the 'realism' of the shield art.

thank you for any help and assistance.
please be detailed in your instructions, i still dont know where all the tools are

 

[ibclare]

Hi to you too Toho and welcome to PSG. I'm trying to understand what you are saying and though I think maybe I know, I'm not sure.

'so for example in the picture below i want the left symbol' -- The symbol is the black and the snakes?

'to be placed 'over' the white shield but at the same time i want all the black details, that resemble a wooden shield' -- what black details resemble a wooden shield?

'to be found on the symbol' -- ??

'therefore making the white wooden shield look like a wooden shield with a sigil/symbol painted on it' -- Do you want to maintain the wood texture of a white shield with the snake symbol or are you changing the shield's color to black or does the entire black shield shaped symbol get placed onto the white shield?

We can definitely help you with this. We just need to understand. Or maybe I should say, I just need to understand, lol.

 

[Dataflow]

something like this

to achieve this just invert the wood texture (so black becomes white and white becomes black)
place is over the shield scale to size (using the warp tool in PS) it need to be on its own layer
change its blend mode to "Lighten"
and change opacity to suit

 

[Toho]

@Ibclare

the poster Dataflow got it right, i am sorry if i was unclear. but yes I wished to have black snake symbol appear on the white shield. however when i put the symbol on the white shield the black details disappear 'behind' the image like this:

I tried using different layers to get the black stuff behind the horse to show but to no avail, i either get black markings and lose the nice red color of the horse or I have the horse with its vivid color and have the black markings hidden behind it.
@Dataflow, yes something like that, thanks for the inverted trick but here is a better example.
lets say i have these two resources.

now as shown in my first image I place the horse over the white shield, with the same transparency issues. I simply want the red horse to become part of the white shield as if it was painted on it. which means it is important to have all the little black markings on the shield while having the horse on the shield.
in the image below you will see my attempt to place the horse right over the shield, as i did before in the first image, but also add colors to the shield also since i need to make dozens of these shields with different icons and background colors. sadly i am unable to get the same vivid coloring as the image on the right...

In this attempt I tried getting the same purple as the shield on the right but i would either get too light or too dark and never the same purple, even if i sampled the purple it would appear different on my shield. I also added an orange color just for the hell of it

TDLR:
after looking at these 3 images is there a way to
1) have the icon properly appear on the white shield without hidding all the details in background? in other words make the icon ONE with the white shield and not a cheap copy-paste job.
2) do you guys have a good technique to recolor the white shield without loosing the black marking details? (look at the purple and white shield as a good example)

thank you very much for your help and i hope this is more clear.

 

[agentmoeller]

Several ways to do this. You can change the blending mode of your symbol layer(s), and reduce the opacity to let the shield texture show through.

You can also try a displacement map. Just google "displacement map" + the Ps version you are using, and try a tutorial. It will "wrap" your image around/over the texture of the shield and give it a very convincing look.

Just as an example, I pulled this image off the internet to show how it looks. Fairly easy stuff.



Agent

 

[ibclare]

Here is something I worked on for you and I hope it is getting closer to what you want. This is (obviously aunty clare) a screen capture of the layers and I hope you can see them.

But, I will go through it.I placed the colors on their own layers (I sampled your colors) and changed the blend modes. The lower layer is set to multiply; copied this and set it to soft light. Did the same for the next color. For the horse, I set it to darken blend mode which made it easier to see it as painted on,

though if you want to make it look like thicker paint, don't do this, just adjust the opacity a little bit lower. The as agent suggested, I made a displacement map and applied it at a very low setting so as not to distort the horse too much but to have its shape follow the wood.

I hope this helps. I realize displacement maps are another story and will take further research, but if you have lots of shields to make, I believe it will be worth. If you have any questions about tutorials you watch (if you do), just come back and we'll be happy to help where we can.

 

[ibclare]

Mods and Admin:

This is making me crazy. I did this in advanced mode and all the paragraph breaks showed up, but they are not there now. I liked the old version better in some ways.

Also, and I have talked to Hoog about this, editing photo content is a nightmare. If I edit in in simple mode, the attachment remains. If I go into manage attachments, I have to go back to the simple mode and delete the picture or it still remains.

Huh? I'd appreciate some help here. Thanks, Aunty Clare
lol

 

[Hoogle]

I think it is the image location upload images first then press enter after it is uploaded then type, your text seems to be wrapping around the image alternatively if you want to place an image in the middle of a post when you have finished the text press enter then upload image then press enter again before typing

 

[AtomicAffliction]

Working with the layer properties help. I usually try overlay and softlight and go through them all until I think it looks pretty good. Also try working with the opacity levels. That displacement map is for sure something to look into that looks really neat!