Transcript:
Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. I’m going to show you how to transform a photo of a face into the look of a stained glass portrait. This is an update of a tutorial I did many years ago. I provided this photo of a lake that you can use for your background. Its link is in my video’s description or project files. Feel free to use your own background if you’d like. If you do, just make sure its resolution is 150 pixels per inch to ensure that your result will look similar to mine. We’ll convert the background into a Smart Object, so we can modify it non-destructively. To do this, click the icon at the upper, right of the Layers panel and click “Convert to Smart Object”. Go to Filter, Blur and Gaussian Blur. Blur it 5 pixels. Check your foreground and background colors. If they’re not black and white respectively, press “d” on your keyboard. Click your foreground color to open the Color Picker. In the Brightness field, type in 20% to change the foreground color to a dark gray. We’ll use this dark gray for the color of the metal between the stained glass, known as “Came” or “Leading”. Click the New Layer icon to make a new layer. We’ll fill it with white and since our background color is white, press Ctrl or Cmd + Delete. Go to Filter and Filter Gallery. Open the “Texture” folder and click “Stained Glass”. Make the “Cell Size”: 46, the “Border Thickness”: 6 and the “Light Intensity”: 0. We’ll get rid of the white background surrounding the leading. To do this, open the “Channels” panel. If you don’t see it, go to Window and Channels. Ctrl-click or Cmd-click the RGB thumbnail to make a selection of the lines. Open back the Layers panel and press the “Delete” key to delete the white background. To deselect it, press Ctrl or Cmd + D. I’ll zoom into the leading, so you can see that there’s a slight, light fringe on both sides. We’ll get rid of this fringe by going to Layer, “Matting” and “Defringe”. Make the Width: 1 pixel. Now, there’s no more fringe surrounding our leading. I’ll zoom back out. Next, we’ll add dimension to our leading, but before we do, let’s rename the layer, “Leading”. Double-click its thumbnail to open the Layer Style window. Click “Bevel and Emboss”. The Style is “Inner Bevel”, the Technique is “Smooth”, the Depth is 100% and the Direction is “Up”. The Size is 5 pixels and the Soften is 0 pixels. Uncheck “Use Global Light” and make the Angle: 120 degrees and the Altitude: 30 degrees. The Gloss Contour is Linear. The Highlight Mode is “Screen” and its opacity is 75%. The Shadow Mode is “Multiply” and its opacity is also 75%. Let’s save some space in the Layers panel by collapsing the effects. Hide the Leading layer and open a focused, well-lit color photo of a person you’d like to use for this project. I downloaded this one from Shutterstock. We’ll separate our subject from its background by making a selection around the subject. Since we want the edges to be sharp, I’ll use the Pen Tool. I did in-depth tutorials showing how to use the Pen Tool and the Curvature Pen Tool, so if you want to watch them, I provided their links , as well. Once you completed the paths, place your cursor directly on a path and right-click or secondary-click to open the fly-out list. Click “Make selection” and keep the “Feather Radius”: 0 pixels. Click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection next to your subject. Convert the layer with its layer mask into a Smart Object, so we can modify it non-destructively. We’ll place it onto our background by pressing “v” to open your Move Tool and dragging it onto the tab of our background. Without releasing your mouse or pen, drag it down and release. To resize it, open your Transform Tool by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T. If you can’t see the entire Transform’s bounding box, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0. If you’re using a version earlier than CC 2019, go to a corner and when you see a diagonal, double-arrow, press and hold Alt or Option + Shift as you drag it in or out. If you’re using CC 2019 or later, just press Alt or Option as you drag it. To reposition it, go inside the bounding box and drag it. Then click the check-mark at the top or press Enter or Return. By the way, starting in the release of CC 2019, version 20.0.5, Adobe has given us the choice of working the Transform like it did in previous versions by going to Edit, Preferences, General and enabling “Use Legacy Free Transform”. Ctrl-click or Cmd-click your subject to make a selection of its shape. Click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection. Click the thumbnail of your subject to make it active and go to Filter and Filter Gallery. This time, for its Cell Size, type in 17. Change its Blend Mode to “Multiply”. Next, we’ll surround our entire stained glass with a lead strip border. To do this, double-click an empty area of the layer to open its Layer Style window and click “Stroke”. The color is black, the size is 4 pixels, the Position is Outside, the Blend Mode is Normal and the Opacity is 100%. Make the background active and press Ctrl or Cmd + Shift + N, which will make a new layer above it and name it “White”. Then, click OK or press Enter or Return. We’ll fill the empty layer with white and since our background color is white, press Ctrl or Cmd + Delete. Let’s collapse the effects to save space. Next, we need to remove the color pieces leaving just the leading. To do this, double-click your Smart Object to open its source image. Make a new layer above it and fill it with white. Save it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + S. Do not close the this file. Normally, we’d close this psb file to update the Smart Object, but in this case, leave it open. You’ll see the reason we’re doing this in a minute. Open back your stained glass document and you’ll see that the color is now gone. Open your Channels panel. If you don’t see it, go to Window and Channels. Ctrl-click or Cmd-click the RGB thumbnail to make a selection of the leading. Invert the selection by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + Shift + I. Open back the Layers panel and make a new layer. Name it “Subject leading”. Fill it with the foreground color by pressing Alt or Option + Delete. Deselect it and click back on the psb tab of the Smart Object to open it. Hide the white layer and close the psb tab. When you see this window, click “Yes” to save the changes. Immediately, the stained glass colors re-appear because the Smart Object has been updated from the white background to the original subject’s face. Next, we’ll add dimension to the leading. Collapse the effect and hide the white layer. Open the “fx” of your stained glass face and hide the “Stroke”. This cleans up our leading. Next, we’ll make a composite snapshot of our visible image, but first, let’s collapse the effects and scroll to the top. With our top layer active, press Alt + Ctrl + Shift + E on Windows or Option + Cmd + Shift + E on a Mac. Ctrl-click or Cmd-click the layer mask to make a selection of its shape. Go to Select, Modify and Expand. Expand it 4 pixels, which is the thickness of our leading. Click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask next to the composite snapshot. Click the Adjustment Layer icon and click “Brightness/Contrast”. Place your cursor over the layer mask and press and hold Alt or Option as you drag a copy of it on top of the existing layer mask. If you see this window, click Yes to replace it. Now, whatever adjustments we make to the the brightness and contrast will be seen only through the white shape of the layer mask. In other words, the adjustment layer will be restricted to affect just the face and not the background. Click the icon next to the layer mask to make it active. For the Brightness, I’ll type in 60 and for the Contrast, I’ll type in 100. Feel free to adjust these amounts for your image. Click the Adjustment Layer icon again and this time, click “Vibrance”. As before, drag a copy of the layer mask on top of the existing one and click “Yes”. Click the icon next to the layer mask to make it active. I’ll make the Vibrance: 100 and the Saturation: 30, but again, feel free to adjust these amounts. Lastly, make your Leading layer visible. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!