OK guys, I'm in search of some much needed advise. As much as I love the posing, the rendering, and the postwork; the clothes in postwork has literally just about kicked my buttocks out of Photoshop. To my chagrine, I'm here pleading for some assistance. I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing wrong. I've got the layout of the clothes on a new layer above the posed figure. I've set the opacity levels properly to view the image beneath. Now the dodge, burn, smudge and airbrush has become the bane of my existence to the creation of a semi-realistic cloth material. I've read Voodoo's tuts, and its a great tutorial, but unfortunately, I don't believe I'm grasping some details that I believe I'm in need of. Whatever anyone can do to assist in this matter would be greatly appreciated. If there are other tuts out there, please feel free to post them. I promise on my next posted pic, I'll give you the utmost credit you deserve. Thanks so much in advance and look forward to reading the advice posted. Thus far, here is where I am at with the pic Adieu, Ehrilaz

OH, BTW, this pic will be entitled: "Reaching for
Perfection"...Gawd knows it's dire need of it...>snicker

Don't get discouraged or frustrated about painting clothes! If you've never done this before, start with small painted parts (I don't know, something like a table cloth, it drapes nicely over the sides of the table). What I like to tell people is to take a real piece of clothing and lay it down in front of your drawing board... as you look at it try to copy the folds and creases... use all those tools that you find in the tutorial to help you... Then after sometime you will be ready to get into more complicated things like dressing up a model. It is little time consuming, but I think it is worth of trying!

Attached Link: http://www2.evansville.edu/studiochalkboard/draw.html

Picky, Thanks for the advise and I will do what you suggest. Also as a side note, with much research via the net, I found a very nice site that gives a little bit of detail of which I was looking for. Those that are interested, the following address can help interested enthusiasts with the basics: http://www2.evansville.edu/studiochalkboard/draw.html As the ironic adage goes: "Do I need to draw you a picture for you to understand?" (please 'scuse the literal pun >snicker<)

Great advice, Picky. Practice on something easy, then the other things will come. As far as transparent material, I've found it's not really a case of lowering the opacity of the layer to get the right look. When you lower the opacity, you also lower the power of the color and saturation. Try this: Try painting on the cloth using the color of what you want to show through. If, it's the sky in the background, use some sky color to paint in the areas you want the cloth to look more transparent. Be careful to pay attention to the folds where the cloth is doubled up and is more likely to be opaque. Good luck :) Will

Hi :) Im all new here but would like to help... I am by no means an expert or anything, but have gotten compliments on my fabrics so here goes (and I've included a really bad example too rofl) Even though the fabric is a transparent one you are still going to have shadows and highlights. What you can do to get them to look right is dont work with the image as transparent at first. Paint it as if it were a solid piece of material then drop the layer opacity once you are finished with the layer. Ok so how do you "paint" fabric in Photoshop..... eesh LOL I dont know that they would let me have that much room here but lets see if I can help some.. Do what the others said.... take a solid color piece of fabric and toss it in a chair or something and study it. What you want to look at are the highlights and shadows and the way fabric lays. When I paint fabric in photoshop I mainly use Dodge, burn and smudge tools. Use a soft edge brush and put in your shadows with the burn tool, the shadows will be where ever there are creases, folds or tucks in the fabric. Then I use the smudge tool and basically just smear in the ridges or high areas around the burned in shadows. Smudge over the shadows and think of the fabric as a fluid (sorta) make it look fluid by smudgeing in long smooth strokes with a soft edge brush that is a little bigger than the brush you used to burn with. Once you do this you will see what I mean, it will start to look like a piece of silk draped across the figure (hopefully) go back after all the smudgeing and add in highlights on the fabric ridges with your burn tool. One thing to remember is that whenever fabric changes direction naturally there are lumps curving out as well as dips on the opposite edge. Think of a flag blowing in the wind (see very bad example in graphic lol) look at the ripples along the top edge as compared to the bottom edge Anyway, I hope this helps some... take a look at this quick thing I made as an example, look at the shadows and highlights. All I did was paint a soft edge white object on a layer of it's own over a black background, then burned in some shadows, smeared them around with the smudge tool until they looked kind of like fabric then added in some highlights. Oh and you need to darken your shadows some more on your image, but I think you're getting pretty close. Just play with it some more ;) the more you do it the better it will be!

Voodoo is being more than a little modest in his suggestion to you. Check out his tutorial here on painting clothes: http://www.earthcurves.com/tutorials/shirt_tute_0.htm Very good work/tutorials here.

Voodoo/Desy and everyone else whose posted, thanks so much for the advise. I'll see what I can come up with and keep you posted... Thanks again! Ehrilaz