The inspiration of this image is the upcoming Nikon D800 which if rumors hold true will have the same crazy almost night-vision-like abilities. The Nikon D3s is Nikon’s flagship camera body and does a wonderful job shooting in very low light and as a result has been named by users the “Lord of Darkness.”

The techniques learned in this tutorial are all about using color range selections. I'm not sure about you, but the way I normally use color range selections is to help grab portions of an image I want to delete or mask away. This technique uses them in a different way allowing for almost transparent like abilities as well as a cool looking way to highlight something with subtlety.

Step 1: find an image of something you would like to use this technique on. In my case I chose this Nikon D3s camera.

Step 2: create a Photoshop canvas, I chose a 2000px x 2000px document with 300dpi so I could save the document at a high resolution after I was done. As a reminder it’s always easy to scale something down, but never quite so easy to scale up, so better to have it big to start out with.

Step 3: I filled the background with black by resetting my foreground and background settings by pressing the ‘D’ key and then pressing Alt + Del (Option + Del on Mac)

Step 4: add in your photo. Remove any white by selecting it with the magic wand tool, quick selection tool, or whatever other method you choose. I chose to remove the white by using the quick selection tool since the contrast between the camera and the white background made the selection easy.

Step 5: with the camera cut out now go up to the Select menu and choose ‘Color Range…’ fromt eh select drop down choose ‘Highlights’ then press ok. You will now see some marching ants around just the lightest portions of the image. With the camera layer still selected press CTRL + J (Command + J on a Mac) to put the highlights on their own layer.

Step 6: repeat this process to grab just the midtones by first selecting the camera layer then by again going up to the select menu and choosing the ‘Color range…” option then from the select menu chose Midtones…CTRL + J to put it up on its own layer. Finally repeat again only this time get just the shadows.

Step 7: I’ve renamed my layers so I don’t get them mixed up and then added all 4 camera layers to a group and named it ‘Camera.’

Step 8: select the camera group and then press the CTRL+T (Command + T on the Mac) to bring the group into free transform mode. Using the handlebars in the corner (hold the shift key so the transformation stays in the proper aspect ratio) size it down and move the group so there is room at the top and bottom for the title and the sales information.

Step 9: turn off the visibility eyeball icon next to the original camera image, we won’t need that on now.

Step 10: We now need to adjust the layers styles, blend modes and opacity to get the look we are hoping for. For this tutorial, I chose to add an outer glow to the highlights layer to make the Nikon and the other white parts of the camera glow. To do this, double click on the highlights layer name and in the layers styles dialog box enter the settings you see below.

For the midtones layer all I have done is lower the opacity to around 25% with a normal blending mode.

For the shadows layer I have changed the blend mode to pin light, so that just the red color shows through and brightens up the red grip. You will need to experiment with your project.

Step 11: I have added a layer mask to the midtone and highlight layers so that the camera fades into the background a bit more than it does by just reducing the opacity. To do this on each layer press the ‘Add layer Mask’ button at the bottom of the layers pallet. Then using a soft edge brush fade out the bottom of the camera somewhat to soften the bottom edge. (remember: paint with black to cover-up and white if you cover up to much or make a mistake.)

Step 12: next, create your title using the type tool. I used Lord of Darkness set in a cool free font called Raleway, which can be found here. After creating your title, lets duplicate it by pressing Command+J/Control+J on your keyboard.

To the bottom text layer add an outerglow, I used these settings.

Next add a layer mask to the bottom text layer and using the gradient tool this will help the outer glow fade out to the bottom of the letters.

On the top text layer chose gradient overlay and choose your settings, I chose these:

Step 13: finally add in your product information and company/contact information at the bottom.

Hope this helps you to learn a bit about how the select color range can offer some cool results.

Now if you would like to get me a Nikon d3s, I’ll take donations. If you are a Nikon rep and want to get me a demo camera, Contact me here. *wink*

As alwas if you have a question or an idea for another tutorial you would like to see, leave a comment.