Fake satin/cloth backdrop

[Doug Nelson]

I stumbled upon this by accident, but it's kinda cool.

1. Open a new RGB document, white background
2. Select the Gradient tool
3. Set it as black to white linear gradient
4. Here's the important part: set it to Difference mode
5. Start drawing from left-to-right and right-to-left with strokes of varying length (don't be too picky about making them exactly horiztonal strokes)
6. Keep going (it gets kind of hypnotising)

If your strokes start to get too vertical it starts looking like wrinkled metal (which isn't a bad thing)

I can see this being used for replacement backgrounds if you colorize it. Other cloth effects might be possible.

Play with it, post anything cool you get in this thread (don't forget to specify anything unique you did)

[Doug Nelson]

Here's the same fake satin with a Color Balance adjustment layer and a layer made with Photoshop CS's new Fiber filter set to Color Burn blending mode

[Doug Nelson]

Same thing, only with different Color Balance setting, fiber layer set to Soft Light, and I added a Levels adjustment layer above the fake satin layer

[Doug Nelson]

Here's an incredibly sloppy mask of the official Presidential portrait (you never know, he might want to repurpose it in a few years) placed over a background made using this same procedure.

The only thing I did differently here was holding down the shift key while drawing the difference gradients, restricting them to perfect horizontal.

[Flora]

That's great, Doug!

...very versatile and extremely useful ....

Thank you for it!

[winwintoo]

Great tip Doug!!

Here's what I did:

1. Opened new document white background

2. select gradient tool; black white linear gradient; difference mode

3. made a pleasing drapery looking backdrop as per Doug's instructions

3. made a new layer, filled with a pattern

4. set the pattern layer to overlay blending mode

5. made a gradient map layer and picked a pleasing color

You can get an infinity of differnt effects by changing the blending mode of the pattern layer and the gradient map layer.

Wonderful possibilities Doug, thanks for posting it.

Margaret

[Doug Nelson]

Very nice, Margaret. That actually looks like what I was trying to achieve when I accidentally stumbled onto this technique (ie: fake curtains).

[winwintoo]

Thanks Doug, here's another one.

I did the black/white gradient thing. Next I made a new layer, filled it with a goldish color and set the blending mode to "color", then I pasted in an image of a flower and set it's blending mode to "overlay"

The possibilities are endless!!

Did you make it a tutorial Doug??

Later, Margaret

[Doug Nelson]

No, I was hoping someone would perfect it and then volunteer to write a tutorial.

I'm so subtle

[Leah]

OK, OK, we can take a hint... I've given it a go and thereby also got rid of some of my guilt about not writing a tutorial yet

[Doug Nelson]

Fabulous! Now we can start working on ameliorating your guilt for only doing one (I'm still in subtle mode)

Here's Leah's excellent tutorial

[heathrowe]

and i thought this was my little secret...
i did something very similar some time ago

Curtain

cheers
heathrowe

[winwintoo]

It's been a slow night.....


Margaret

[Doug Nelson]

Groovy!

[Michaelc]

What a brilliant forum.

What an amazing bit of teamwork. From inception to conception to tutorial in a flash and all blended with insight and humour. I have been bowled over by the sheer magnitude of tips on the site but this one takes a prize, especially after years of pondering over the same old backdrops for alternatives when restoring the original is beyond any conceivable hourly rate. This tip should be in Katrin's 3rd edition for sure.

Thank you for sharing. I'll shutup now.

Michael