See, that wasn’t so hard after all, now was it? And here is the final result:
Hey, wait, we’re not done yet! Come back here! Now’s the time to fiddle with the brightness and contrast knobs to see if we can make some final improvements before we call it a day. The Amazon’s cast shadow, for instance, is just lying flat across the tree root. It should most definitely be curved. And the colors of the leaves are a little washed out, and the rainbow would show up a little better if we re-introduced some darker darks into all the shadows and…well, wait here a minute, I’ll be right back…
*several tweaks later*
Ta-da!
There, that’s better. Now I think we’re ready to call this one finished! So flatten it into a JPG and be done with it! Unless, of course, you want to make a Photoshop tutorial out of it, in which case those layered PSD files might come in handy someday…
Well, I hope you were able to glean some useful information out of this tutorial. I certainly wish I had known about the marquee Stroke function much earlier in my career, and I also wish that the interface for creating new brushes in Photoshop was more intuitive. As the old GI Joe cartoon used to say: “Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!â€ÂÂÂ
Joel A. Hoekstra
Architectural Illustrator
