I was asked to create an invitation to the footy, to watch each of the Fremantle Dockers games. The final result is below, but scroll down a little to see the process involved in creating it.
Knowing that there would need to be one invitation per round, I immediately knew I would be using the Variables within Photoshop to populate the information for each round. It was the design that I needed to figure out.
My initial thought was to have a close-up of a football on a grassy field, with the information placed creatively within the scene. Most of my searches found the wrong international interpretation of football (such as soccer) rather than Aussie Rules, or the stock images cost money which I wasn't willing to shell out for this one occaision. Then it came to me; I would write all of the information on the grass of a football field, and make it look like it had been painted on.
I already knew that blending modes would be the key, and luckily I found the following video by Blue Lightning TV, called "Photoshop Grass Text":
First things first, I found a picture of grass from my favourite free stock image site, sxc.hu (now freeimages.com). I placed it on an A4 sized canvas in Photoshop, at 150dpi.
Nothing fancy.
I decided to make the white line separate the main content of the image, and I fleshed out the rest of the area by selecting a large patch of green grass and creating a Photoshop pattern. I offset the edges and used some clone stamp magic to make the pattern seamless, then filled in all the space. Finally, I used the clone brush to blend in another instance of the white line.
I created a really simple "logo" for the event, and converted it to greyscale. I then placed it on the grass with a hard light blending mode, at a lowered opacity.
Having success with that blending mode, I used it again for the main title text. I found a sports-like font on fontsquirrel.com called "Molot".
I continued using this font and blending mode with all other text, leaving placeholders to use the Photoshop variables, which I entered into an external .csv file. This is what the document looks like with placeholders:
Placeholders
Filled placeholders.
I felt like the main text still didn't look quite as 'present' in the scene as I would like it. I was hoping the grass would show through a little more. So I converted the grass background plate to black and white, and adjusted the curves to really contrast it..
Funny looking grass.
I added a layer mask to this, and filled it with black to make it completely transparent. Then, after changing the layer's blending mode to multiply to show only dark areas, I began to use a soft white brush to paint in the black grass areas 'on top of' the writing.
Before painting in the dark grass areas on top
After painting in the dark grass areas on top. (subtle!)
I was pretty happy with this result. I then decided to follow some advice from the tutorial mentioned above, and add some perspective to the picture. I converted all my layers into a Photoshop ismart object, and then used transform-perspective to drag the bottom of the image further apart, making it look like a camera is viewing the ground on an angle.
Unfortunately this cut off my text.
The benefit of using smart objects is that I can now double click within it and modify the contents. I did this, and scaled down the text. Once my changes were saved, I exited back into the parent composition and the perspective view updated to my changed image.
It always helps to gain some perspective.
To make this process easier for myself and avoid anything going outside my perspective modification from now on, I made a grid overlay pattern in the smart object composition. This shows me what falls within the perspective view.
This was created via a little trial and error, and jumping back and forth between compositions to line it up.
It was now time to add some curves, saturation, and vibrance adjustments. As well as dodge and burn the image around some of the main areas. I was also very keen to have an excuse to use Photoshop's Iris and Tilt-Shift blurs. These generate very realistic looking results, and are very easy to manipulate.
It's all a little hazy.
Another cool thing about these blur effects is that it can also output the blur as a channel. I then proceeded to create a slight vignette layer with an overlay blending mode. I then applied the very same mask from the blur process as an alpha channel.
Now the vignette matches the blur.
And that's it! I then added the client's logo to the bottom of the image (although in this case I've replaced it with mine). Once again the befits of using a Photoshop Smart Object are made obvious - I simply added my logo into the composition, and once I back out again, the colour correction, perspective, blur, and vignette effects are already applied to it correctly. And don't forget that using Photoshop Variables means that each new round/team/date/time information can easily be exported to their own separate document. Future proofing at it's best!
Ta daa.
