The Shane Rielly Blog

Our bags are packed and we’re all ready to leave on our big 6 month long trip, only to find out that all flights out of London have been cancelled due to volcanic ash floating over the UK from Iceland. The day we arrived in England they had the most snow they had had in 18 years and the day we plan to leave there is volcanic ash in the sky. Pretty strange. If you’re wondering why planes shouldn’t fly when there is volcanic ash in the sky then you’ve come to the right place – I have created a very technical image to explain.

Apparently we could get a replacement flight on Sunday afternoon, but Monday is more likely.

I just finished a site for my wife’s dad – Terence Archibald. He is a bird and wildlife artist in South Africa and is flippin talented! If you have some time go check out the site. The site was a quick job that I rushed a little, but I’m happy with the result. My girl and I are leaving on a 6 month ’round-the-world’ trip tommorow, provided the volcanic ash flying over the UK from Iceland settles before then, so I needed to get it done before we leave. I will be teaking it over the next while, but it’s pretty much done. Below is my favourite painting from the site – seriously, how good is that!?

In this tutorial I run through a simple way to create a light wrap in Photoshop to improve the look of photo composites. It’s a pretty quick run through, but once you know how to do it it’s easy to play around with to get the look you think looks best. It doesn’t work in every situation, but well worth knowing about.

I’ve also created a Photoshop action to make the task relatively automated. You can download the action below the video – it’s free.

A big thanks to Jon Reid for the shots I used in this tutorial!! Check out his site, his travel photography site or his blog – do it!

Get the Photoshop action:

When you use the action make sure you name the layer above the background ‘Subject’ for it to work properly…
When I learn how to reference a layer by it’s position in the layer order and not by it’s name I’ll do a tutorial on that too

Download as a ZIP file(.zip) - PS Light Wrap Action(zip) (123)
Download as a 7ZIP file(.7z) - PS Light Wrap Action(7zip) (69)

So Adobe’s CS5 suite of apps is soon to be released. Some the stuff I’ve seen and heard about seems pretty impressive so it’s kind of exciting – the only problem is if you can’t afford the upgrade… We’ll see what happens in a few weeks time? If I get a few more jobs soon I think I’ll be taking the jump…

Please excuse the long title – I couldn’t think of a shorter one. In this (my first ever) tutorial I go through how to put graphics onto a t-shirt using Photoshop.

I used to own and run a clothing brand that I started in South Africa. I did it for around 9 years before selling the company and one thing I found to be a real challenge and expense was getting samples printed up. Apparel is a volume driven industry so very small runs and sample runs are either expensive are very difficult to get printers to agree to. So I figured out a way to put print ideas onto garments in a realistic looking way using Photoshop and eliminate the cost of sampling where possible.

There are two methods that I use. The first of the two methods is a lot more time consuming, but gives better results when you put the effort in and I find it is worth using when I’m putting together a nice printed catalogue.
The second method is the one I use most often because it’s really quick to reuse and it makes it super easy to swap out the graphics and it is the one I go through in this tutorial. If you put graphics onto t’s for clients as a means of pre-visualization before they do a print run or if you put graphics onto t’s for display on the web, as I do for a regular client who prints to order, then method 2 is the way to go.

Some of the things I go through in this tutorial are:

• Making a T you can easily change the colour of
• Dodging and burning
• Non-destructive dodging and burning
• Masking
• Blend modes
• Smart Objects
• Smart Filters
• Displace filter

Hey, if you liked the tutorial please tell others about it.

Thanks for checking it out!

So I decided to start this blog to post tutorials and info about random stuff that I learn or hear about. Honestly though I’m not really sure how much time I’ll be able to give to it. In just over a month I’ll be leaving on a 6 month ’round-the-world’ trip with my super-awesome wife. I’ll try to post as much as I can while we’re away, but I’m guessing that at best it will be sporadic.

For now take a look at this: The pros and cons of freelancing.