Photo 11                                                                                 

Sue Leith        

product/cologne Exercise

 

1. Open the Cologne Begin Image. Then, create a new document - Go to File > New and create a document - 5 inches x 7 inches at 72 resolution with white background (mode = RGB).

 

2. Double click on the color boxes in the Toolbox to bring up the color picker.  Choose a soft pastel color (I used purple).

 

3. Go to Edit > Fill and enter Foreground color to fill your new document with the color you chose. (For different effects try a colored gradient instead of one fill color.)

 

4. Select the Move Tool and drag the cologne from the Cologne Begin Image into your new document. Name the new layer Cologne, and position it (the product) near the top left quarter of the page, then close the Cologne Begin document without saving.

 

5. Create a new, empty layer and place it below the cologne layer.  You should have 3 layers. The top is the cologne bottle, the middle is empty and the bottom is filled with color.

 

6. Working on the empty layer, select the Lasso tool and make a large, loose, messy selection all around the cologne, mirroring itŐs general shape. Then, go to Edit > Fill and choose White to fill the shape with white. Deselect. Still on the same layer, Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and enter a large number of pixels until you like the look of the blur.

 

6.  Copy the cologne layer by dragging it to the new layer icon in the bottom of the layers palette and name it Reflection.  Go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical, then with the move tool, drag the upside down bottle below the cologne bottle to make it look like a reflection. (Part of the upside down bottle will be off the page and not visible.)

 

7.  Lower the opacity of the Reflection layer so it looks more realistically like a reflection.

 

8.  Create another new empty layer below the cologne layer named Shadow. Make sure your foreground color is set to black and your opacity in the options bar lower than 100%. Select a soft brush and draw a shadow below the cologne. Use Gaussian Blur and lower the opacity until the shadow looks realistic and subtle. You may also use the Move tool to drag the shadow slightly to the side of the bottle. (If you were to use the drop shadow command now, it would create a shadow on the bottom and side of the bottle and not look realistic.)