Butterfly Effect

This was an effect I had used when I was making a card for my mum on Mother’s Day. A similar effect was also used in one of my themes. In this tutorial, we will blend 2 images of butterflies together and give them a digital and oldish look. To follow this tutorial, you must know the basic tools, effects and blending for using Adobe Photoshop. I use Photoshop CS for this tutorial. The images of the butterflies used are from Nighty Stocks and Stock Exchange.

Please note that a large part of graphic designing depends on experimenting. Thus, your final work may not be identical to mine.

Sumary of this tutorial

Main Image

(Optional) Open the main image as shown on the right. Go to image>image size and change it to the appropriate size you want. Do ensure that the constrain proportion is checked. For this tutorial, I scale it to 350×527 and labelled it as main image, Layer 0.

Second Image

Open the second image and labelled it as Layer 1. Hide Layer 1. We will then proceed to add some grungy textures to it. The textures I used here are from Vered. Choose various textures with different degrees of brightness and grungy-ness.

Screenshot 1

Arrange the layer in order as show in screenshot 1.

Set the blending mood of the layers to:

Layer 2 – Screen
Layer 3 – Overlay
Layer 4 – Overlay

Screenshot 2

Your butterfly should look similar to the one in screenshot 2.

Screenshot 3

Unhide Layer 1 and set the blend mode to softlight. Blend Layer 1 with the other layers as shown in screenshot 3.

Desaturate Layer 1 (Image>Adjustment>Desaturate) and duplicate it again; named this layer, Layer 5. Duplicate Layer 4 (Layer 4 copy) and move it on top of Layer 5. Create a new layer and named it Black, Fill the layer with black and set the blend mood to overlay. The colour will be too dark and thus we lower the opacity of Layer Black to 30%. You may adjust the opacity until you have achieve your desired colour tone.

Screenshot 4

We then proceed to adjusting the colour tones. Go to Image>Adjustment>Colour balance or look for this icon .

Adjust the colour balance such that it is: Shadows -59 -11 +3, Midtones +2 -100 +59.

Screenshot 4 shows what my butterfly looks like now.

Use a texture with strips or has a smoothing effect and put it on top of the colour balance layer. Set blend mood to Lighten. Duplicate the original main image, Layer 0. Hide the new duplicated image, Layer 0 copy and merge the rest of the layers; named the merged layer “Butterfly”. Duplicate Layer “Butterfly” and set it to softlight. Create a new layer (Black), fill it with black and set blend mood to Overlay. Change the opacity of Layer Black to 40%.

Screenshot 5

Unhide Layer 0 copy and place it at the top of all the layers and set blend mood to softlight as shown in the screenshot 5.

It will look similar to screenshot 6 now.

Go to Edit>Copy Merged.

Open a new canvas with twice the width of the original canvas. In this case, I have my new canvas at 600×527.

Screenshot 6

Screenshot 6 shows what the butterfly looks like now.

Screenshot 7

Paste the merged layer on the new canvas twice. Name the layers – Layer 1 and Layer 2. Click on Layer 2 and go to Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal. Adjust the layer such that they are not an exact reflection of each other, as shown in screenshot 7.

We will now adjust the colour balance again. Go to Image>Adjustment>Color balance or look for this icon .

Adjust the colour balance to: Midtones -72 +10 +5, Shadows +13 -18 0.

Screenshot 8

(Optional) I place another texture with extremely light colours and set to Lighten at the top of all the layers with opacity 30%. Create another new layer, fill it with Black and set blend mode to overlay with opacity 15%.

Merge all the layers and named the layer “Merge”. Duplicate Layer Merge, go to Image>Adjustment>Posterize and set it to 7. Following such we adjust the image saturation by going to Image>Adjustment>Hue / Saturation and setting the Saturation to -23. Draw a 5 to 10 pixel line in the middle of the two wings and lower the opacity. We will achieve something similar to screenshot 8.

Finally, I added some effects with sparkles and white clouds. This is the final result from this tutorial.