PS Tutorial: Leaves on Fire

I love Fall! I know I say this every autumn, but September seems to always roll around in a heartbeat and there it is again! Glorious, gorgeous, sun-drenched, COOL fall. Is it a coincidence that September is also my birthday month? I'm not sure,  but I know I feel most alive when the fall temps hit and the leaves begin to turn. All the good things come with fall too... crisp, sweet apples, cider & donuts, back-to-school and did I mention the donuts? :)

Along with all that goodness come the colors of Fall and in Michigan we are really blessed with some of the most beautiful fall color around! This year, though, fall is late, darn-it! With the unseasonal warm temps, the leaves are having a hard time turning. And if they turn, the colors aren't rich enough for me — so I thought I'd "Photoshop Fall"! Wanna join me? (If you want to play along, you can download the original scanned leaf (leaf1.png) as well as two other leaves here. (10 MB)

I found this leaf in my front yard and even though the colors were pretty, I wanted to brighten it up a bit.

Besides being in love with this time of year, I also have fallen in love with a website called Lost and Taken. It is the creation of Caleb Kimbrough. Caleb is a freelance photographer and cook who creates some really gorgeous (and high quality) textures. The best part he not only gives these beautiful textures away for free but he allows you to use them in your commercial work. As long as you don't try to package and resell them and that you not host them on your site, he is okay with that. Pretty cool, eh? While you are there, why not donate to the site? It's good karma especially since he is kind enough to give them away.

I ended up downloading two textures from Lost and Taken, a greenish-gold background and a bright orange with some great folds in it.

Next, I opened up the leaf1.png file and dragged the first green-gold background on top of my leaf. Using Option (Alt) G I created a clipping mask. Then I used a small circular eraser and erased the part over the stem. In the Layers palette I used an Overlay blend mode at 100% opacity.

and this is what it looked like....

Nice, huh?

But I really wanted it to look like it was on fire - like in October when the whole world is red and gold and green and burnt orange, you know? {btw, if you live in Southern California or somewhere in the Tropics, I apologize! :) LOL! }

So I dragged over the orange texture on top of the green  and enlarged it. Again, I erased the parts over the stem) and used Opt-G to make a clipping mask.

Using an opacity of 65% and a linear burn made the leaf really pop!

 

Last, but not least, I used the burn tool and a round feathered brush and burned in to the leaf's veins to make them more pronounced.

 

The end result is a bright, beautiful red-ish leaf!

 

But I'm not done yet! I want some of the greenish-yellow of my original leaf to show in the red. To do this, I created a layer mask on my topmost layer (the orange texture layer) and, using a small grunge brush in black, I "erased" away some of the layer to let the other colors show through.. mostly around the edges of the leaf.

 

Again, if you want to download all three leaves, in .png format, plus the grunge brush, you can do so here.

Happy Fall!
Nancie

Comments

[digi_scrap]

I'm also from Michigan. Thank you for this tut. Really enjoyed it and will have to try it out.

[just sarah]

Awesome tut! I dont get to see any lovely leaves like that here in San Diego so using this tut might be the closest I get to a fall leaf! Thanks for sharing.