BIOLOGICAL POND FILTER

For this submission I wanted to update the original post by using colour to give it more impact.

I have used the same techniques as my first submission, but tried to improve the detail on the plane. The two areas being the propeller effect and adding wire struts. I also added my own illustration of the Zeppelin, this took the longest time to complete. The sky and clouds were from a photo taken from my garden.

1. Zeppelin - First I searched google for an image. The picture I found didn’t have the colours and detail that I wanted but it was good enough to give me the proportions, so I used it for reference only. I placed it into Adobe illustrator and on a new layer started to trace around the outline. I added details like the ribs, cabin and engines. When it was finished in illustrator I copied all the paths to Photoshop. Once in Photoshop I basically had a wire frame of the Zeppelin. I then went through the process of selecting the different parts of the airship to add colour and tones. The completed zeppelin was now on it’s own layer. I positioned it using Free Transform. The next step was to make it look like it was breaking through the clouds.

2. Clouds - I used a photo shot from my garden as a new background. To give the effect of the airship passing behind the clouds a duplicate of the clouds was place above the airship layer. I used the ‘blend if’ sliders to drop the blue from this layer. This left only the clouds in front of the airship. The ‘blend if’ sliders are found in the layer styles at the bottom of the layers panel.

3. Masking Plane - I used a copy of the blue channel to make this mask. The blue channel had the best contrast between the plane and the background. First I used levels to increase the contrast and then finished the mask by dodging and burning and using the brush in overlay mode.

4. I used the Shadow/Highlight adjustment to bring out the detail in the model.

5. New Propeller - I used the clone tool to delete the original propeller blades. The replacement blades were made on a new layer. I made a circular selection and filled it with grey. I deleted segments of the circle using the selection tool. Next I gave it a little noise, radial blur then dropped it’s opacity. I used Free Transform to distort it and move it into place.

6. Wire Struts - The struts were created using the pen tool. Once all the struts were drawn I created a new layer above the plane. I stroked the paths with black and dropped the layers opacity. I used a layer mask to delete parts of the struts that fell behind the wing pylons etc.

7. I decided to replace the model pilot with a photo of myself. I had a couple of shots taken at different angles with a silly hat on. I placed the chosen photo on a new layer then used a layer mask to paint away areas so as to look like I was sitting in the cockpit. I then masked the away parts of the model pilot that showed with a layer mask.

8. I merged all the layers to a new layer keeping the background transparent. I gave the plane a slight motion blur and created some noise. To create the noise I made a new layer and filled it with 50% grey.
I then used the noise filter and set the layers blend mode to overlay. I then clipped this noise layer with the plane layer. Using this method I can reduce the layers opacity and have more control over the noise effect.

9. I used the same techniques as the large plane to create the middle size plane. I didn’t go to the trouble of adding to much detail like the struts because it wouldn’t be seen when it was reduced to size. Finally I created the smaller planes by duplicating the larger plane and Free Transformed to reduce there size. I gave them a lot of blur and reduced the opacity slightly.

Time taken: 3.5 hrs

Slightly blurred photo shows the screw loose and is ready to go. It sits to the left of the piece of 2x4. The horizontal metal bar has to be removed for the filter to come out.