Excerpted from Photoshop Studio with Bert Monroy: Digital Painting (New Riders).

Reflections and Shadows
Paul's Shoe Repair is one of those places that seems to defy the changes of time. As the surrounding landscape of Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, California, has seen businesses come and go, this little shop continues to open its doors every day as it has for countless decades. The interior with its mountains of shoes yet to be done and the neat rows of shoes that have been repaired waiting for their owners to reclaim them give the shop the reputation of having served many generations of happy and loyal customers. Some of the displays of merchandise for sale are so old that they seem like props to accent the antiquity of the place.

Tucked away between other shops and restaurants, and partially hidden by trees that adorn the street, Paul's Shoe Repair sits there calmly and quietly as hundreds of shoppers and university students rush by it every day.

It was its outdated look and humble façade that attracted me to capture a moment of its lifetime. The worn canvas awning that protects the entrance, the stained neon sign, and the decoratively shaped tiles that cover the building, all gently bathed by the shadow of the tree in front begged me to commit them to the screen (Figure 1).

Figure 1. "Shoe Repair"

Many of the techniques that went into creating the painting were techniques that I had developed earlier, such as the damages on the concrete section above the awning (Figure 2). I employed the same technique that I used to create the damages on the wall in "Oakland" in the previous chapter.

Figure 2. The worn texture of the stone section above the awning was created the same way the stone was aged in Chapter 3.

In this chapter I discuss a few additional techniques and concepts behind this painting that will help you learn some very important practices when creating realistic imagery such as reflections and shadows.

Reflections
Learning how reflections work is simply a matter of studying the real world. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, I never guess at what something should look like, I study models and real-world objects to determine how something should work.

Let's say you wanted to create an image of the straight-on view of an object being reflected into a mirror. You would only need to take the object and flip it horizontally (Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal) to get a fairly decent reflection. If, however, the mirror was placed below or at an angle to the object, flipping the object vertically or rotating it would not be enough to produce a proper reflection. In this case, the reflection would show the bottom or unseen sides of the object, requiring you to alter the shape to produce the final effect.

In the following example, note the reflections of the neon tubes on the orange, plastic letterforms of the sign (Figure 3). Creating the reflections was an easy task but making them look right required a little alteration.

Figure 3. The neon tubes can be seen reflected in the orange, plastic surface of the sign.

The tubes were created exactly as the neon tubes in the previous chapter. The difference here is that the tubes are attached to a plastic surface that is reflective.

To create the actual reflection, I simply duplicated the layer that contained the tubes. Next, the layer was offset to the lower right to match the viewing angle (Figure 4). I renamed the layer "Paul's tubes refl" to differentiate it as the reflection layer. It was then turned into a clipping group with the layer that contained the orange letterforms (Figure 5).

Figure 4. The layer containing the neon tubes was duplicated and offset to the lower right.

Figure 5. The duplicate layer was clipped with the layer of the orange plastic.

An in-depth explanation of a clipping group can be found in the Layers PDF file at www.peachpit.com/digitalpainting.

The one thing that needed to be altered was the area where the tubes bend inward toward the sign to connect to it (Figure 6). These tubes are bending away from the viewer toward the sign. But in the reflection they should appear to be bending the opposite way toward the viewer and away from the plastic sign. To accomplish this effect, I replaced the end of the tube with a new shape that would resemble a proper reflection, as shown in Figure 7. I also recolored the tubes to better simulate the soft reflection.

Figure 6. The end tips of the neon in the duplicate layer needed to be altered to act like a true reflection.

Figure 7. The tips in the duplicate layer were altered and recolored to look like a reflection.

Aged Neon
Another small detail that I needed to consider was the fact that these neon tubes were old. Years of glowing to attract customers have had their affect on the brightness of the neon tubes. Their glow is not consistent. There are sections of the tubes where the glows dim as the gases flow through.

The tubes were paths that were stroked with the Paintbrush Tool using a hard-edged tip and a color that was a soft, warm white (Figure 8). The brightness of the white created the effect of light being emitted from the tubes. Creating the glow of the lit neon tubes was a matter of applying a few layer styles. Inner Glow gave them the orange haze along the edges. I chose an orange color that was darker than the color of the tubes. It was necessary to change the Blend Mode to Multiply so that the color could be seen (Figure 9).

Figure 8. The tips were paths that were stroked with a warm white.

Figure 9. The tips were given an edge with the Inner Glow layer style.

Bevel and Emboss gave the tubes their three-dimensional shape by adding a soft shadow along the bottom as well as an additional glow along the tops of the tubes (Figure 10).

Figure 10. The tips were given their roundness with the Bevel and Emboss layer style.

To produce the effect of the fading light, in a separate layer, the paths that were used to create the tubes were stroked once more with a soft-edged brush using a bright white color (Figure 11).

Figure 11. The tips were stroked in a new layer using a soft, white brush.

This stroke was erased in certain areas to make it appear as if the light was brighter in some spots and less bright in others (Figure 12). The end result was a neon that had uneven brightness, as shown in Figure 13.

Figure 12. The soft lines were erased in certain areas to simulate bright spots in the tubes.

Figure 13. The final tubes with the uneven light flowing through.

Rust
Rust that had eaten away at the metal portions of the sign (Figure 14) was created using a modified brush tip. The basic tip is exactly the same as the one I used to create the damages on the stone wall in the painting "Oakland" and the stone wall in this painting (Figure 15). In fact, in many situations I often use this particular brush shape.

Figure 14. The rust areas of the metal of the sign.

Figure 15. The brush tips have been modified to randomize the stroke.

Because the damages on the stone surfaces were visible due to the affect of lights and shadows within the damaged areas, the Fill Opacity for the layer containing the strokes was lowered to zero, so the effect was created using the layer style.

For the rust on the signs, the Fill Opacity was left at 100% because the stroke needed to be visible. Color made the difference here. One function of the Brushes panel that was not used in the other instances was utilized here—Color Dynamics. In the Color Dynamics section the Foreground/Background Jitter was set to 100% (Figure 16). This feature randomly applies the colors assigned to the Foreground and Background to the brush tips as they paint over the canvas. Altering the Saturation and Brightness Jitters introduced further randomness to the colors being applied. Adjusting the Hue slider just a bit added even more randomness. Pushing the Hue slider too far produces unwanted colors, so I kept it low.

Figure 16. The Color Dynamics section of the Brushes panel.

NOTE: The only problem with the Color Dynamics feature is that the preview box does not display the colors.

Setting the Foreground color to a brown and the Background to an orange (Figure 17) created the effect of rust when I stroked the canvas with the altered brush tip.

Figure 17. The Foreground and Background colors were set to simulate the colors of rust.

Fading Reflections
As you can see in Figure 18, reflections of lights and objects are visible in the ridges of the tiles on the building. These reflections lack detail due to the surface texture of the tiles and the limited area within the ridges. The reflections appear simply as tonal changes along the surface.

Figure 18. The reflections on the curved surfaces of the tiles.

To achieve this effect, I employed the Other Dynamics portion of the Brushes panel. This section controls the Opacity and Flow Jitter of a stroke.

A more detailed explanation of the Other Dynamics portion of the Brushes panel can be found in the Brushes PDF file, which you can download at www.peachpit.com/digitalpainting.

I set the Opacity Jitter to Fade (Figure 19). I set an amount that would produce a stroke that was long enough to cover the area of reflection and then fade out to transparent as the reflection ended.

Figure 19. The Other Dynamics section of the Brushes panel where the Opacity Jitter is set.

Choosing a dark blue color, I clicked once at the bottom of the ridge to be painted (Figure 20). Pressing the Shift key to connect one click of the Paintbrush to the next click, I clicked at the top of the wall of tiles. The result, visible in Figure 21, was a stroke that slowly faded as it reached the top of the wall.

Figure 20. With a soft-edged, dark-blue brush tip, a single click is set at the bottom of the tiles to be painted.

Figure 21. The result is a streak that fades as it travels upward.

The tiles are slightly rounded at the edges. This rounded surface disturbs the reflection. To get this effect, I added a layer mask where I painted the stroke with black to hide the areas of the stroke that fell over the edges of the tiles (Figure 22).

Figure 22. The portions of the stroke that fall over the tile edges were hidden with a layer mask.

Go to page 2 for many more tips and tricks!

Shadows
The strong shadow cast by a tree in front of the shop adds the drama that made the painting for me. Creating that shadow was a breeze. Photoshop has a brush tip that was perfect for this effect—Scattered Maple Leaves (Figure 23). If I may take a moment to brag, this is one of the brush tips that I created for the release of Photoshop version 7, the version where the Brushes engine was introduced.

Figure 23. The Scattered Maple Leaves brush in the Brushes panel.

In a layer, I stroked the brush using black for the Foreground color, filling the layer with leaves (Figure 24). The layer was blurred with the Gaussian Blur filter (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur), as shown in Figure 25. The mode for the layer containing the shadow was set to Multiply and the Opacity was lowered (Figure 26). This allowed the colors of the layers beneath to be affected, as would the colors in the real scene.

Figure 24. The scattered maple leaves fill a layer.

Figure 25. The layer with the scattered maple leaves was blurred.

Figure 26. The mode for the scattered maple leaves layer was changed to Multiply, and Opacity was lowered.

In some cases, the shadows needed to be distorted as they traveled along angular surfaces, as shown on the sides of the letters in Figure 27. To get this effect, I distorted them using the Distort feature (Edit > Transform > Distort). I also applied the Motion Blur filter (Filter > Blur > Motion Blur) to stretch the shadow, as would be the case in a real-life situation.

Figure 27. The layer with the shadow was distorted to travel along the sides of the letters.

Inside the orange, plastic letterforms, the shadow was created using a brown color (Figure 28).

Figure 28. The Scattered Maple Leaves brush was applied using a brown color to cover the orange plastic of the letters.

Creating a Canvas Texture
Another technique used in this painting is the creation of the canvas awnings that appear above the entrance to the shop (Figure 29) and the stitching that holds them together.

Figure 29. The awning over the door is made of canvas.

The canvas texture is a pattern that I created to simulate the look of canvas. Again, I studied a piece of canvas to get it right.

I started by creating a series of vertical lines of varying thickness (Figure 30). These lines were given a layer style of Inner Glow to give them an edge.

Figure 30. The pattern started with a series of vertical lines of varying thickness.

Inner Glow adds a color evenly to the edges of the contents of a layer. Because it is a glow, the default blend mode is Screen, which makes a color lighter than the current color of the layer visible, thus simulating a glow. The color I needed to use had to be darker to make the edges look like they were curled inward. To make Inner Glow work the way I wanted it to, I simply changed the mode to Multiply, so when I chose a color that was darker than the color of the layer, it would be visible (Figure 31).

Figure 31. The lines were given a layer style to give them dimension.

Then in another layer I created a series of horizontal lines that also contained a modified Inner Glow layer style (Figure 32).

Figure 32. In a separate layer horizontal lines were generated and given a layer style.

I created a new blank layer below each of the layers with the lines (Figure 33).

Figure 33. A blank layer was generated beneath each of the layers containing the lines.

NOTE: Creating a new layer will always put the new layer above the currently selected layer. To create the layer below the currently selected layer, hold the Command (Ctrl) key and press the Create New Layer button at the bottom of the Layers panel.

I targeted the layer with the lines and chose Merge Down from the Layers panel drop-down menu (Figure 34). This merged the layer into the blank layer, forcing the layer style to be flattened into the layer. I did this to each layer, the one with the vertical lines and the one with the horizontal lines. This was necessary because next I wanted to create the effect that the two sets of lines were interwoven. Masking or erasing the area where they intersect would have forced the layer style to reset itself to the new visible area and that would have destroyed the shape of the threads.

Figure 34. Each layer with the lines was merged with a blank layer to flatten its layer style.

I made the layer with the vertical lines a selection by Command-clicking (Ctrl-clicking) the preview icon for the layer in the Layers panel (Figure 35).

Figure 35. The layer with the vertical lines was made into a selection.

Using the Eraser Tool, I then eliminated the portions of the horizontal lines to simulate the interwoven quality of the cloth (Figure 36).

Figure 36. Portions of the horizontal lines were erased through the selection to create the look of interwoven fabric.

The entire image was then selected and Define Pattern was chosen from the Edit menu to make the fabric texture into a pattern.

The shapes of the awnings were filled with a solid color (Figure 37). In a separate layer, a large rectangular shape was filled with the canvas pattern (Figure 38). The pattern was then distorted to match the angle of the awnings (Figure 39) and then clipped with the layer of the awning shape (Figure 40).

Figure 37. The shape of the awning was filled with a solid color.

Figure 38. A layer was filled with the fabric pattern.

Figure 39. The pattern-filled shape was distorted to match the awning angle.

Figure 40. The layer with the fabric texture was clipped with the layer containing the awning shape.

Go to page 3 for the final steps!

The Stitching
The canvas over the awning was stitched, as shown in Figure 41. Creating the stitch was a snap thanks to the Brushes panel.

Figure 41. The Canvas was held together with thick stitching.

First, I created a single stitch by starting with a round brush tip (Figure 42). I clicked once with the brush. Then while pressing the Shift key to connect the clicks, I clicked a second time directly across from the first click (Figure 43). I turned the stitch into a brush (Edit > Define Brush Preset) and named it Stitch, as you can see in Figure 44.

Figure 42. A single, round brush tip was applied.

Figure 43. With the Shift key pressed a second tip connects to the first.

Figure 44. The shape is selected and turned into a brush.

In the Brushes panel I gave the brush tip enough spacing to simulate a stitch pattern (Figure 45). I set the Angle to Direction so the stitching would follow the angles of the canvas (Figure 46).

Figure 45. The Spacing amount is raised to give adequate separation to the tips to make it appear as stitching.

Figure 46. The Angle is set to Direction to make the brush tips follow the angle of the paths.

Paths were generated to represent the sew lines. The paths were then stroked with a Paintbrush using the Stitch tip (Figure 47).

Figure 47. The path is stroked with the Paintbrush Tool to create the final stitching.

For the final touch, a layer style of Drop Shadow was applied to give the stitching some dimension.

Years have gone by since I created this piece, but Paul's Shoe Repair still looks exactly the same as it did the day I decided to paint it. There is one tiny addition to the interior though—a print of "Shoe Repair" hangs proudly on the wall behind the register. Well, "hangs" might be the wrong word. Paul used tape to put it up and dust has settled on it to match the rest of the place

Excerpted from Photoshop Studio with Bert Monroy: Digital Painting by Bert Monroy. Copyright © 2008. Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc., and New Riders.