This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to recreate the look of ancient cave drawings.
I provided four images, so you can follow along.
One is a cave wall for the base, two black and white graphics and a photo of a bison.
Their links are in the video's description or project files.
Before we begin, if you haven't yet subscribed to Blue Lightning TV, click that "Subscribe"
button to let you know as soon as I upload new Photoshop tutorials.
First, we'll create a displacement map of the cave wall, which will make our drawings
look like they're conforming to the hills and valleys of the wall.
Click the icon at the upper, right and click "Duplicate Layer".
Open the Document list and click "New".
Name it "Displacement".
Notice it created a brand new document named "Displacement".
Since displacement maps look best when their color is removed and then blurred, press Ctrl
or Cmd + Shift + U to desaturate it and go to Filter, Blur and Gaussian Blur.
Blur it 3 pixels.
Go to File and "Save As".
Save it to your Desktop as a Photoshop PSD file and click "Save".
Now that we saved it, we can close the document.
Open the bison image.
Feel free to use a different image if you like.
We're going to create a selection around it, so we can separate it from its background.
Open your Quick Selection Tool.
If your Photoshop version is CC 2018 or later, click "Select Subject".
This automatically detects your subject and makes a selection around it.
If you're using an earlier version, drag the Quick Selection Tool over your subject to select it.
To remove areas of the selection, press and hold Alt or Option as you drag over those areas.
We'll fill the selection with a dark brown color, but first, click the New Layer icon to make a new layer.
Click the foreground color, which opens the Color Picker.
In the hexadecimal field, type in: 3B1E0F.
Then, click OK or press Enter or Return.
To fill it with our new foreground color, press Alt or Option + Delete.
Deselect it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + D.
We'll place it onto the cave wall by pressing "v" to open our Move Tool and dragging it
onto the tab of the wall.
Without releasing our mouse or pen, drag it down and release.
To resize it, press Ctrl or Cmd + T to open the Transform Tool and go to a corner.
Drag it in or out to a size you like.
To reposition it, go inside the Transform's bounding box and drag it.
To angle it, go to a corner and rotate it.
Then, press Enter or Return.
We'll convert the bison into a Smart Object, so we can modify it non-destructively.
Click the icon at the upper, right and click "Convert to Smart Object".
Go to Filter, Blur and Gaussian Blur.
Blur it 2 pixels.
Go back to Filter, Other and "Maximum".
Basically, it spreads out or chokes in shapes.
We'll use this filter to constrict the shape of the bison, which will give it a primitive
look that mimics the shapes seen in ancient cave drawings.
We'll choose "Roundness" for the Preserve.
Sliding the Radius to the left, expands the shape, while sliding it to the right, constricts it.
For this particular shape, let's make the Radius: 9 pixels.
Go to Filter, Distort and Displace.
Make the Horizontal and Vertical Scales 10 each, "Stretch to Fit" and "Repeat Edge Pixels".
Click the "Displacement" file you saved at the beginning and click Open.
Change the Blend Mode to "Multiply" and reduce its opacity to 70%.
Next, we'll blend our drawing into the cave wall.
Double-click an empty area of the layer to open the Layer Style window.
We'll use the "Blend If" feature to blend the bison into the wall.
It basically uses the luminosity of pixels to blend layers together.
"This Layer" is the active layer, which in this case is the bison, while the "Underlying
Layer" is the cave wall.
When we move the slider on the Underlying Layer , it forces the cave wall to punch through the bison.
By sliding the sliders, any part of the image in which tones are above the threshold will be cut off.
To soften the blend, we can split the sliders by holding down Alt or Option as we left-click
on the middle of the triangle.
Doing this makes the slider split in two.
Dragging the left half of the slider will soften and smooth the transition making it
look more natural.
We can fine tune it by dragging the right half of the slider, as well.
Open the Archer graphic.
If you're using another graphic, just make sure all the shapes aren't too thin.
Otherwise, when we apply the Maximum filter, it'll constrict those thin shapes to a point
where they won't be visible.
Open the Magic Wand Tool and make its Tolerance: 2 pixels.
Click anywhere on the black shape to make a selection of the graphic.
Click the New Layer icon to make a new layer.
In this layer, we'll fill the selection of the graphic with the foreground color.
Press Alt or Option + Delete.
Then, deselect it.
Press "v" on your keyboard to open the Move Tool and as before, drag it onto the tab of
the cave wall and without releasing your mouse or pen, drag it down and release.
Open your Transform Tool to resize, reposition and angle it.
Then, convert it into a Smart Object.
We'll copy the Smart Filters from the bison onto the archer by holding down Alt or Option
as you drag the Smart Filters onto the archer layer.
You know a layer contains Smart Filters if you see this icon on the right of the layer.
You may have noticed that as soon as we copied the Smart Filters, the layer that we copied
if from became the active layer.
As we can see, we need to decrease the amount in the Maximum filter to constrict this shape less.
Open the Smart Filters of the Archer and double-click "Maximum" to open it.
If you see this message, it's just letting us know that the Smart Filters will be temporarily
turned off until after we edit them.
Just click OK.
Make the Radius 6 or 7 pixels.
If parts of your graphic are still too thin as in this case of the bow and arrow, make a copy of the layer.
Since we just want the bow and arrow thicker and not the archer, we'll add an inverted
layer mask next to the copy of the archer by Alt or Option-clicking the Layer Mask icon.
This masks our the entire copy, but by painting white over the bow and arrow, it'll reveal
it through the layer mask.
Think of layer masks as stencils.
Black conceals and white reveals.
Open your Pencil Tool and Pencil Picker.
Pick a hard point and make its size around 40 pixels.
Make its hardness: 100% and its Opacity also 100%.
Draw over the bow and arrow to make them appear thicker.
Notice the layer mask now has white in it, which is revealing the bow and arrow of the
copy onto the original archer below it.
To save space in the Layers panel, let's group the archer layers into a folder.
To do this, Shift-click the original archer layer to make it active as well, and press
Ctrl or Cmd + G. Change its Blend Mode to Multiply and reduce its opacity to 70%.
Double-click on an empty area next to the folder to open its Layer Style window.
Split the right slider of the underlying layer and drag its left half across until you like
the way the graphic punches through the wall.
Drag the right half to finesse it and play with the left underlying layer slider, as well.
I'll name the folder, "Archer".
Open the "Archer 2" graphic or another one of your choosing.
We'll repeat all the steps that we did for the first archer.
Open your Magic Wand Tool and click anywhere on the black portion to make a selection of it.
Make a new layer and fill the selection with the foreground color.
Then, deselect it.
Open your Move Tool and drag it onto the tab of the cave wall.
Drag it down and release.
Open your Transform Tool.
For this particular graphic, first, I'd like to flip it, so I'll go to Edit, Transform, and Flip Horizontal.
Resize, angle and position it.
Convert it into a Smart Object.
Open the Archer folder and drag a copy of the Smart Filters to the top graphic.
Close the folder and open the Smart Filters of the new graphic.
Make the graphic active and change its Blend Mode to Multiply and reduce its opacity to 70%.
Double-click an empty area of the layer to open its Layer Style window and use Blend If
to blend the graphic into the wall.
If you want to adjust its size, just open your Transform Tool to do it.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!