Today I progressed through the Firefish Photoshop tutorial. Some of the tools used were documented with screen grabs.
The first tool was layering. In the right-hand side are the layers of the fish. The body, the eye and the lashes are each on their own layers.
While working around to find how to use the gradient tool, I incidentally found out how to fill a work path with text instead, using the text tool.
Each of the licks of flame on the bottom of the fish were made by first creating work paths which are then manipulated before being filled with gradient. At this stage the first work path has been made with the pen tool.
At this point a tendril path has been drawn and is being manipulated. This is being done by manipulating the anchor points.
After the path has been completed until it looks flowing, it is selected before the gradient can be applied.
Since only one colour was chosen, the gradient painted only one colour fading into transparent. The gradient tool has been used to create the lower flames which fade closer to the body. These layers were then merged into one, which was duplicated and flipped to create the fire tendrils above the fish. The same method was used to create tendrils from the centre of the fish.
With the tail of the fish, I wanted to create a bunch of yellow flicks. Instead of drawing each flick separately, I drew one using the path and gradient tools. Then I duplicated the layer again and again and moved each one with the Move tool. I merged the layers until I had about 5 separate bunches of flicks. Then I duplicated the "bunch" layers and moved and rotated them slightly to make the bunches thicker.
The last tool used before the end of the session was the addition of layer masks to control some of the fading.
