Tutorial

If you want to be able to create the spandex effects that you see in the archive, this is the place to learn it. Once you have read through this tutorial, you ought to be able to do the spandex effects just as I have. Who knows? Maybe they will come out looking even better than mine! The program I will be using in the tutorial is Photobie 4.4. It's free and works just as well as Adobe Photoshop or Arcsoft PhotoStudio or any other photo editing software programs that I have came across. The principles I outline in this tutorial can be carried over to Photoshop or Photostudio if you prefer to use those software programs. I chose Photobie to do the tutorial in mainly because it's free and I want to spare you from having to spend money buying software. Click here to download Photobie. Remember to save your work periodically as you work through this tutorial. Save the file with a ".pob" extension.

We begin with a photo of Jenni courtesy of www.mc-nudes.com. Isn't she beautiful? As you can see she is quite bare. Let's put some sexy spandex on her!

Right-click on Jenni, select "Save As", and save the picture to your computer. Start the Photobie program, open up the picture of Jenni, and click on the Zoom In button and zoom in 250%. Use the scroll bars to place Jenni's left leg into the view of the window. Click on the Polygon Selecton Tool button and make sure that Union is selected. These are all identified by the red circles below.

Begin by selecting areas of the picture that are of skin. Click on several points along the outline of the leg and finish selecting an area by double-clicking. The area that you have selected should become shaded in light-blue as shown below.

Continue selecting regions of the picture composing of skin until you have all the skin regions selected like so:

On the Layer Manager tool box, click on the triangle next to the Clone Current Layer button and select "Clone only the selected area on current layer". This will make a new layer out of the selected areas. Repeat this for a second time to get two identical layers--"1. new layer" and "2. new layer".

Select "1. new layer" and check the box next to "hide". This turns off the visibility of layer 1.

Now with layer 2. selected, go to Filter, Embedded filters, Blur.

Move the dial so that it's about a quarter way toward the right and click OK.

The region that you have selected previously should now look blurred.

Now, with layer 2 still selected, click on Clone current layer button and select "Clone current whole layer" option. Now you will have "3. new layer". This is a clone of "2. new layer".

Hide layer 2 by selecting it and check the box next to "hide."

Now, with layer 3 selected, click on the drop-down arrow next to the "Adjust color balance" button. Choose "Advanced Channel Curve".

Adjust the curve to make it look like the picture below and click OK. This is the part where you have to experiment to get the look you like. (Note: In Photoshop and Photostudio, this is the part where you adjust the shadow, midtone, and highlights. You start by decreasing the midtone. You should immediately begin to see the effects that you want. If you want to further adjust, continue by decreasing the shadow and increasing the highlight.)

You should now get something that looks like spandex.

Repeat the same procedure again. You can adjust it however you like. Use your judgement. I find that the darker you make it, the better it looks.

Now make a clone of layer 3 using the "Clone current whole layer" option and select layer 3 and check the box next to hide.

You now have Jenni in red spandex. You can now save the image. Go to File, Save As and save it as "red.jpg" to get a JPEG image of Jenni in red spandex.

Make a clone of layer 4 with the "Clone current whole layer" option to get layer 5.

Hide layer 4 the same way as described earlier. Select layer 5 and click on the drop-down arrow of the "Adjust color balance" button. Go to Swap Channels, Swap Red - Green.

You should now see Jenni in green spandex. save the image as "green.jpg".

Make a clone of layer 5 and hide it, the way I described cloning and hiding of a layer earlier. Select layer 6 and click on the drop-down arrow of the "Adjust color balance" button. Go to Swap Channels, Swap Green - Blue.

You should now see Jenni in dark blue spandex. Save the image as "blue.jpg".

So far, we have Jenni in the three primary colors: red, green, and blue. What about the other colors? This is where blending of the three primary colors comes in. Let's start by making Jenni in yellow spandex. Hide layer 6 (blue layer) and unhide layer 4 and 5 (red and green layers).

Now select layer 5 and move the opacity knob to the left until you get yellow. Go to File, Save As, and save it as "yellow.jpg". Move the knob slightly further to the left to get brown and save the image as "brown.jpg".

Let's now make purple and violet. Hide layer 5 and unhide layer 6. You should now see Jenni in blue spandex again.

Leave layer 6 selected. Slide the opacity knob to the left until Jenni's outfit turns purple. Save the image as "purple.jpg".

Now slide the knob further left until you get violet. Save the picture as "violet.jpg"

Torquise can be created by blending the blue and green layer similar to the procedures that I went through above.

Remember:
Red + Green = Yellow / Brown
Red + Blue = Purple / Violet
Blue + Green = Torquise / Light Blue

Now let's move on to creating black and white. This is important: check to make sure that all layers are hidden except for layer 0. Clone layer 6 by clicking on the drop-down triangle and choosing "Clone current whole layer". Now hide layer 6.

Select layer 7, make sure that the check box next to "hide" is unchecked, and slide the opacity knob for the layer all the way back to the right. You should see Jenni back in dark blue spandex.

Go to Filters, Embedded Filters, Gray Scale.

You should now see Jenni in black. Save the images as "black.jpg".

Let's now make her outfit white. Clone layer 7 and hide it. Make sure layer 8 is not hidden. Click on the drop down arrow next to the "Adjust color balance" button and choose "Adjust advanced color curve".

Make the curve look like the one below and click OK.

Repeat this procedure second time except this time, make a curve that looks like the one below and click OK.

The outfit should now look silvery. Repeat the procedure a third time with a curve like the one below. Basically, you repeat this procedure until the outfit looks white enough. You can also try going into "AdjustColorBalance" option above the "Adjust advanced color curve" option and tweak the brightness and contrast.

You should now get an image that looks like this. You can see that there are some distinctive brightness gradients created.

To fix this problem, go to Filters, Embedded Filters, Blur. Slide the dial over to the center and click OK. Now you can save the image as "white.jpg" or "silver.jpg".

Well, there you have it. That's a rough run through of the basics that you need to know in order to create the spandex effects. It doesn't make you a master right away. The rest is up to you to experiment, explore, and play around with. You'll eventually get really good at it. Contact me if you have any questions or problems. If you wish to contribute your work to the archive once you have made your own pictures, simply send them to me via email to unrealspandex [at] gmail.com and I will gladly put them up for everyone to enjoy. Also, if you need unaltered images, send me your email address and I will send you the links to them. Have fun!!

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