Creating a Sparkle Abstract Piece
- Begin by taking this photo into photoshop, then press CTRL + V and press okay. The image should be pasted by its own dimensions.
- Next, we’re going to make the image black and white. With your image layer selected, go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. Set the Saturation to -100.
- Then go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast and set the Brightness and Contrast to 15.
- Now take this nebula stock by Moonchilde and paste it into your document. Press CTRL + T because we want to make this stock a bit smaller. In the boxes W and H type in 30.0 to change the scaling down to 30%.
- Now set the stock to Screen and place it on her upper right ear. Erase some of the outer parts of it with a default round brush that has 0% hardness so it blends better.
- Press CTRL+J to duplicate your nebula layer, then place the duplicated layer on the side of her left arm. Press CTRL+T to rotate it a bit and erase some parts if they aren’t blending well. I rotated mine -66.5.
- Now we’re going to be adding some more nebula stock. These are perfect for abstract types of graphics. Now that this blue nebula stock by MoonChilde and paste it into your document as usual. We won’t be resizing this one, so go ahead and set the layer setting to Screen. You should immediately see it change.
- Move it around a bit so that the blue ball of light is adjacent to the nebula we placed near the ears.
- Now download these Light textures by Frasio and copy and paste image “IMG_8611” into your document. Be sure to keep this set because we will be using some more of these textures in later steps. Set this light texture to Lighten
- We want to be able to make the texture more fitting to our piece so we’re going to warp it to follow the form of the girls arm. Press CTRL+T (transform) and then go to Edit > Transform > Warp. The image is quite big so we’re simply going to be dragging the lines back and forth til we see the light texture follow the form of her arm. It’s okay if you can’t get it perfectly, it’s hard to master your first time!
- Erase the bottom part with a round brush and other parts that you might not want. I’ve circled in red the areas I’ve erased with a size 125 round brush (0% hardness).
- Now take “IMG_8779” and place it onto your document. Set the layer to Lighten and place the document so the big firework is near the left ear.
- We don’t want the firework covering her eye so get your round brush eraser (default but very handy!) erase some parts of it near the eye. Mine is size 75 at 0% hardness.
- Erase the bits of the other fireworks below. We don’t want them to be too strong, but we don’t want to erase them completely. Fade them out a bit.
- Take this nebula stock by Hameed and place it onto your document. Set the layer mode to Lighten and adjust it accordingly.
- Go and download this light texture pack by Reila-is-Love and take image “Text-2” and place it into your document. Set it to Screen and place it around her eyes. There is a thin strip at the end of the texture so make sure to erase it! I’ve highlighted it in red.
- Press CTRL + J to duplicate this stock. Then press CTRL + T and rotate it and place it near her arm so it looks like its hovering around it. I rotated it -63.7.
- Now take this light texture by xnienke and paste it into your document. Set the layer to Lighten. Then press CTRL + T and resize to 50%.
- Now grab your default circle eraser brush and erase away some parts of it. Make sure to erase around areas of the mouth.
- Go back to the Frasio light set you downloaded previously. Grab image “IMG_8730” and set it to Light. Place it near the bottom of her arm so that the image spans out the left. The sparkles will be on the bottom of her arm.
- Delete the bottom part of the image because it just looks kind of strange.
- Now take “IMG_8725” from the Fraiso Light Set and place it into your document. Press CTRL+T and rotate it by 21.5% and set it to Lighten. The light texture should be placed near the arm aswell. I marked where it should be with the red arrow.
- Go back to Amurrr’s light texture pack one last time and select texture “Text-6”. Place it into your document and set the layer mode to Lighten. Then rotate it by pressing CTRL + T at the angle -150.
- Now we’ll begin the coloring process. Go to Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Selective Color and match your settings to mine.
- Now go to Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map and create a gradient using the colors (#96000b to #ffb80f). Set this layer to Darken at 25% opacity.
- Now go back once again to Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map and create a gradient using the colors (#ed0dd0 to #a2fd04). Set this layer to Hue at 58%.
- Last but not least, we will make one last gradient. Go back once again to Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map. This one will be from black to white, so it should be default in your gradients. Set this layer to Soft Light at 87%.
- And voila! We’re all done. In the final version I set the last step to OVERLAY instead of soft light.
See the final version.
Name's Jessica Kobeissi. I'm 22, Lebanese, Muslim, awesome & live in Detroit. I'm an artist - but I can't draw. I'm a Graphic Design major. 
Wahh, the transformation is pretty :D
Very well done!! ~~
Lynnie posted this March 06 * #