Create Kaleidoscopic Patterns from Photos
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at www.adobe.com. ART, SO IT’S SAID, IS ITS OWN REWARD. The artifact you create has a beauty of its own that extends over and beyond that of its constituent parts. So, even if you’re not going to display your work, there’s value to be had from the simple act of creation.
Photoshop’s ability to layer images on top of one another gets another dimension when you add in the capacity to rotate one of the layers, shrink it in size, or generally warp it. Photoshop’s Smart Objects feature links a layer to a source file, meaning that however much you distort it, no data is lost—the original file isn’t altered, and the original data can be constantly referenced.
Here, we’re going to use it to make kaleidoscopic patterns from a single photo, but Smart Objects can come in handy whenever you’re importing data from one image file into another. 1 CREATE A SMART OBJECT When choosing an image for this treatment, we find something with strong colors and distinct areas of color works best. Get your image open in Photoshop (any version from CS3 should work, although we’re using the latest CC), and double-click the Background layer. Give it a name, or leave it as Layer 0, and hit “OK.” Right-click the newly named layer, and choose “Convert to Smart Object” from the menu that appears [ Image A]. The layer thumbnail should change slightly to let you know it’s been converted.
2 ADD FILTERS Next we need to increase the contrast of the image, and break it up into lines. To do this, we’re going to completely ruin the photo with the Mezzotint filter. Find it under “Filter > Pixelate,” and choose either of the “long” options from its “Type” drop-down menu. You’ll get an unusual result, but we can begin to see the makings of something worthwhile by applying the Radial Blur filter, too (“Filter > Blur > Radial Blur”) [ Image B]. Because we’re working with a Smart Object, Photoshop applies its filters as Smart Filters—non-destructive effects that appear in the Layers panel as a list below the Smart Object. Smart Filters can be turned on and off, or edited long after they’ve been applied, but can be a bit taxing on your system. We certainly heard the fans on our i7’s water-cooling radiators spin up as we did it. In the Radial Blur options window, set “Amount” to “100,” “Blur Method” to “Zoom,” and “Quality” to “Best.” We ended up with something that looks like a sci-fi warp speed effect, but your mileage may vary.
3 KEEP ON FILTERING… Next, we keep adding new Radial Blur Smart Filters, using the same settings. Photoshop places your last-used filter at the top of the Filter menu, so you don’t need to go digging in sub-menus. Hit the filter two more times, for a total of three. You should now have a very smooth effect, like god-rays descending into a colored ocean. Or something like that. Now apply another filter— Twirl—which is found under “Filter > Distort” [ Image C].
4 GIVE IT A TWIRL Twirl’s options box contains an Angle slider that controls the level of twirling. Sliding it to the left twirls counterclockwise, and to the right twirls clockwise. We went for a big clockwise twirl of 510°, which gives a tightly twirled center. Again, this is added to the Layers palette as a Smart Filter, so can be edited later if you rightclick its entry and choose “Edit Smart Filter” [ Image D]. Try this now with the Mezzotint filter, and see how the effect changes if you change its Type. Doing this re-applies every filter on top of the one you’re editing, as well as the edited one itself, so it can spin up those fans again.
5 BLEND IT UP Duplicate your Smart Object layer by right-clicking it and choosing “Duplicate Layer” (this freshly applies the Smart Filters to the new layer, so there will
be some processing time), and edit the Twirl Smart Filter on the new layer, so it twirls in the opposite direction by the same amount. The new layer completely covers the original one below, so to let it show through, we’re going to do some blending. Switch the Blend Mode of the upper layer to “Darken” using the drop-down on the Layers palette [ Image E], leaving the opacity at 100%, and you’ll see patterns begin to emerge. Experiment with different Blend Modes to see which gives the strongest or most pleasing effect. We had good luck with Pin Light and Exclusion.
6 ADD SOME SYMMETRY To make a symmetrical pattern, first merge your Smart Objects by right-clicking one of them and choosing “Merge Visible.” You need to be happy with the way they look at this point, as the merge process converts them to a normal layer—so don’t
do this until you’ve finished tinkering. If you want to create a new layer without affecting the Smart Objects, you can use the keyboard shortcut Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E, which pops the new layer on the top of the stack, but it’s not mirrored in the menu commands, so we can’t say for sure if it’s supported in versions of Photoshop older than CC 2018. If you do it this way, you still need to flatten the layers (“Layer > Flatten Image”) before exporting. Duplicate the new layer just like you did in Step 5, and flip the top one horizontally with “Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal.” Then it’s just a case of changing the Blend Mode to something like Lighten or Darken [ Image F]— whichever looks best in your eyes— and you’ve got a symmetrical, kaleidoscope-like pattern generated from a single image file. Export it as a JPEG or PNG for sharing or to use in another project.