Cloth Painting In Photoshop

  1. I’m using an image of about 2500 pixels wide and 1900 high. For this particular size I used my 35 pixel airbrush to draw in the basic outline and general direction of the folds. I used white in this case, but any shade from medium gray up works fine.
  2. I then took my smear tool using a 45 pixel airbrush with it set to darken and 82% strength. The less strength, the more dark streaks happen, thus more folds, thus longer time though pulling out the shape. The high, the less dark streaks, less folds, less time not, but then you’ll need to draw in more folds later. Here I pretty much shaped out my clothe.
  3. I used my curves took and set to bring up the dark/contrast of the folds/clothe.
  4. I turned on preserve transparency on my layer. Then I took my smear tool (same settings) and dragged out those dark streaks following a direction of folds that makes sense. I go both down the clothe and up the clothe.
  5. I de saturated the colors. When you use the darken smear tool it tends to bring in some funky colors, sometimes that’s ok, but not here.
  6. I took my airbrush set to 35 and brushed in some more folds which I’ll then pull out and smear them using my smear tool set to normal.
  7. I also on this step, went between darken and normal to drag out the folds using the same 45 pixel airbrush. Then in this step, I turned off transparency, and dragged and pushed the clothe around the character’s hands and the lounge. Note: You can render your image in pieces to so then your model could be on the clothe. I’m too lazy though.
  8. In this step I duplicated my layer, then merge. Reason is that I wanted to have as solid a piece of selection as possible. Then I created a new layer and filled it with a medium dark red, and multiplied the layer. Now this step is variable. You can use hard light or multiply, it will depend on your desired color. Then I merge these layers. If that scares you, duplicate you folds layer, then merge only the color and one of you fold layers. If you decide you hate the color you have the original folds. But then again you can always play with curves, and hue/sat to change it.
  9. Now let’s get rid of the white fizz by making a selection on your folds layer, then contract by 1 or 2, then invert, delete.
  10. I turned on transparency again, and fiddled a bit with my smear brush adjusting some more folds. Then I selected the layer, made a new layer and draw in shadows with a 176-pixel-airbrush black, under her body, on the floor and around the edges for depth. I overlayed the layer, brought down the opacity to about 70. Then with my selection still in place, made another new layer, drew highlights, same size except used white. Overlayed the layer, brought the opacity down to 75.
  11. Make a new layer below, still have the clothe selected, filled the new layer with black, deselected, gaussian blurred set at 13. Duplicate, and nudge in the direction of shadows. Mow much depends on your image, size and so on. Merge down and adjust opacity. Now if you render in layers, great, this step can be skipped. I don’t most of the time. So now I go in and erase around her hand, making it visible. Then I draw a shadow around her hand, gaussian blur it by 7. You could stop now, play with curves, contrast, hue/sat. How dark your folds are depends on your lighting, scene and type of clothe simulated. You could stop now…
  12. What?! There’s more. Yeah, there’s always more. Select the clothe, make a new layer (above) and flood fill with any pattern (sized appropriately for the scene). You can use desated cloth, colored clothe and get all sorts of cool effects. This is very much optional. Sometimes I do this, sometimes I don’t. Then I went in and erased some more of the shadow layer, where it made sense.