In this tutorial, you're going to learn a lot. You're going to learn about Blending
Modes, Layer Masks, and Smart Objects. So let's get right to it. Let's get started.
thing that we want to do is apply this broken glass effect behind her so that it appears
on this light blue background.
To do that, we're going to start by making a selection of our model.
There's a lot of ways of making a selection, but in the latest version of Photoshop, Photoshop
CC, you can select the Quick Selection tool and then click on Select Subject.
Adobe's artificial intelligence, Adobe Sensei, which uses machine learning technology, will
analyze the image and make a selection around the subject.
In this case, it does a fairly good job.
It missed the part here by her hand but that's okay. We can Subtract from the selection by
holding Alt on Windows, Option on the Mac, and clicking and dragging on this area to
deselect. And you can simply click and drag on any other area if you want to add to the selection.
With the selection active, all I need to do is enable the broken glass layer
and I can click on the Layer Mask icon to make a Layer Mask.
But this is the opposite of what we want.
You can click on this Invert icon to invert the Layer Mask, or let me undo a couple steps,
Ctrl Z on Windows, Command Z on the Mac to undo.
When you se- have the selection active, you can actually do all this in just one step.
If I just hold Alt on Windows, Option on the Mac, and click on the Layer Mask icon, I'll
create an inverted Layer Mask and that's what I want to do.
Next, I'm going to click on the chain link icon. Make sure that the white line, the focus,
is on the layer thumbnail and not on the Layer Mask.
And I'm going to press Ctrl T, Command T, to Transform. And I'm going to scale this
up and make sure that it fills the entire layer.
And I actually would like this broke glass area on the right hand side, so I'm going
to right click and select Flip Horizontal.
Then I'm going to click on the check mark to commit the changes.
Now I want to make sure that this broken glass layer blends with the layer below.
One way of blending the layers will be by using a Blending Mode. I want to get rid of
the bright pixels and keep the darker ones.
So for that, I will use one of the Blending Modes in the Darken category.
See that when I hover over these Blending Modes, the bright background disappears and
we only keep the cracks of the broken glass.
I think Multiply does a really good job, so I'll select Multiply, and then I can fine
tune this layer by going into Image, Adjustment, Levels.
And with this window, I can adjust the luminosity of the layer to change how the pixels blend.
So as you can see, I'm making all these different adjustments to the blend just by using these
points on the Levels window. This point controls the dark pixels, so if I drag to the right,
it makes more pixels darker.
This point here controls the bright pixels, so if I drag to the left, I control which
pixels are bright. So if I make more brighter pixels, more pixels become invisible.
And this point controls the contrast. You can keep adjusting these points until you
get a result that you're happy with. When you're done, you can simply press OK.
What I'm going to do now is collapse the Smart Filters by clicking on this icon, then I'm
going to hold Shift and click on the model layer, and I'm going to right click and select
Convert to Smart Object. And this is a really important step because a little later one,
we're going to swap the contents of the Smart Object to apply the same effect to another
portrait. And you'll see what I mean in just a moment.
Next I'm going to go into the glass pieces document and I'm going to select a glass piece
to apply right in front of our model. And first, I need to make a selection.
So I'm going to use the Lasso Tool, which allows me to freehand the selection. And I
can just click and drag on any of the pieces of glass. It really doesn't matter which one.
Then I can press Ctrl J on Windows, Command J on the Mac, to put anything in that selection
into a new layer.
So now I have a layer that just has the piece of glass. Then, with the Quick Selection tool,
I'm going to click and drag and just make a selection around that piece of glass, then
I'll click on the Layer Mask icon, and now I have a layer that just contains that piece
of glass.
With the Move tool active, I can click and drag this over into the previous tab by hovering
right on the tab and release once, um, over the image of the previous tab.
And there it is.
Obviously that's quite large, so I'll press Ctrl T, Command T on the Mac, and Transform.
If you ever press Ctrl T, Command T, and you don't see the Transformation handles because
they're outside of the canvas.
What you can do is simply press Ctrl 0, that's Command 0 on the Mac, and Photoshop zooms
out so that you can see all the Transformation handles.
So what I'll do now is I'll just scale this down and rotate it accordingly, and place
it wherever I think it needs to go. So right over her face.
Maybe scale it down a bit more. And rotate it a bit more as well. So maybe, like, right
about here for now. And I'll click on the check mark to commit the changes. And now
I can start working with that piece of glass.
I'll double click on the Hand tool to fit the image to screen. And what I'll do now
right away is I'll create a Group, and this is where I'm going to work with this piece
of glass.
So I can just call this piece 01 and drag that piece of glass in there. And I actually
want the Layer Mask on the Group, not on the glass, so with the layer Mask Selected, I
can click and drag it into the Group. So now everything I place inside of that Group will
be confined to that Mask.
So the first thing that I want to do is select my glass layer. And I can just call it Glass
so that I know what is on this layer.
And I can change the Blending Mode to a Blending Mode that hides the bright pixels but keeps
the darker ones. So it creates that illusion of transparency and glass. So I'll click on
the Blending Mode dropdown and select one of the Blending Modes in the Darken category.
If you don't know much about Blending Modes, then no worries, I have a tutorial that talks
about all the Blending Modes. I explain what each one of them does. I'll place a link to
that tutorial down below in the description so you can watch it after you finish this tutorial.
But anyway, I'm going to go into the Darken category of Blending Modes, and you can see
that, as I hover through this list of Blending Modes, I get a different result. I think that
Linear Burn works best in this case, so that's what I'll select.
Next, from the New Adjustment Layer icon, select the Solid Color fill layer. Then, in
the Color Picker, select a dark green. And I'll press OK. If you change the Blending
Mode to Color and reduce the opacity, you can apply a faint green tint to the piece
of glass. You don't have to add a tint to your glass, but I'm showing you how to do
it in case you want to. And I can call this layer Tint.
Then I want to bring back some of the highlights, some of the specular highlights that we lost
with the Linear Burn Blending Mode.
So what I'll do is, I'll duplicate this glass layer by pressing Ctrl J, Command J on the
Mac, drag it to the top of the Group, and change the Blending Mode to something that
keeps the bright pixels.
So something in this Lighten category. And the Blending Mode that will work best in this
case will probably be the Screen Blending Mode.
But then that sort of brings back the original image and it doesn't look that good. So what
we need to do is go into Image, Adjustment, Levels and then adjust the brightness of this
layer. So if we make it darker, notice that we're only keeping the brighter pixels. And
that's what I want. I just want to keep the brightest of the pixels.
And then press OK when you're done. So that brings back the specular highlights. And of
course, if the effect is too intense, you can reduce it with the opacity slider And
you can keep adjusting it accordingly until you find something that works great.
So now, in this Group, we have that piece of glass, which looks great. But now we want
to apply the image below onto that group to create the reflection.
So what we're going to do is we're going to select the broken glass layer. Press Ctrl
J, Command J on the Mac, and drag that in here.
And now this layer is covering everything below. We really don't want that. We want
this layer to be at the bottom of the layer stack.
So of course I can click and drag that down, but there's actually a keyboard shortcut that
you can use.
So that you can do it all in one click. So with the broken glass layer active, again
I'll press Ctrl J, Command J on the Mac.
And then I can hold Shift and click and drag it into the Group, and that will place her
at the bottom of the layer stack.
So if you hold Shift when you drag something into a Group, it'll place it way at the bottom
of the layer stack inside of that Group, which is exactly what I want.
Now, with that layer active, I can press Ctrl T, Command T, to Transform.
Once again, I'll press Ctrl 0 so I can zoom out and see the Transformation handles, and
I can Transform this layer accordingly, and I can click and drag and move that layer into
position.
So now we have that reflection, and I think it looks fantastic. I'll click on the check
mark to commit the changes and I'll collapse this Group and we have our first piece.
I'm now going to add more pieces of glass. To save time, I'm going to pause the recording,
and I'll be back as soon as I'm done. All you have to do is follow the same step to
get more pieces of glass.
Okay I'm back. So I created four additional pieces using exactly the same technique. We
started with that. You might notice that I moved it a little bit. I wasn't very happy
with the placement, so I just moved it up a bit. And I've added three additional pieces
using the same technique. You can add as many pieces as you like in your project. I think
that four will be good for this example.
So the next step is to treat this, now, as a single image. So with the piece number four
Group selected, I'm going to hold Shift and click on the bottom-most layer and convert
this into a Smart Object.
Now I can go into Filter, Camera Raw Filter, and I'll start by saturating the image. I'm
going to increase the vibrance, which adds saturation to a photo, but in a controlled
way. It protects already saturate pixels and skin tones.
I feel that I need more saturation, so I'm just going to drag the saturation slider to
the right to add saturation to all pixels equally.
Then I'll brighten up the highlights and I'll do the same with the shadows, just to create
a brighter image.
Also, I can make the texture pop a bit by dragging the texture slider to the right.
It's looking pretty good so far.
And I can then click on the Detail tab and sharpen the image.
And I'll go into the Effects tab and add a little bit of grain to my image to bring it
all together. And I'll press OK.
Now this is our final effect, but we're not done with the tutorial. There's still one
more important thing to do.
If I wanted to change the contents of this project to feature a different model, I can
easily do that by double clicking on my Smart Object, and then scrolling down and going
into the broken glass Smart Object.
And I can replace the model.
So with this model layer selected, I'm going to go into my Libraries, just because I know
I have some models there I could use under my Downloads folder.
And I can click and drag this portrait down and I can place him in the scene accordingly.
Right about here.
Let me reduce the opacity just to make sure he's more or less in the right spot. And yeah,
this, this'll probably work.
Right about there.
I'll increase the opacity back up to 100%. I'll commit the changes, close the Smart Object
and save it, and this will automatically update on my project.
If I close this Smart Object as well and click on Yes, notice that in my working document,