Less make dirt!

Noise is everywhere. Even in the flattest of photographed colors their is never a thing such as lets say blue. Their is merely a greater weight value of blue spectrum colors that make up a whole.

To give instant attributes that you can then work from. The mind approximates how much of a like color surrounds other colors in the same spectrum then looks for the greatest value above a 50% ratio and assigns the objects color definition and returns to you that the color of this sweet ride is red.

This perception happens in mere micro seconds. Weather it be from the eyes or in a minds eye like dreams.

So it’s no wonder that fake anything is instantly recognizable in any form. Weather moving picture or badly done use of the clone stamp tool. Everything is based on eb and flow. Even down to the smallest pixel and grain texture.

Begin the investigation!

This stock image is littered with dirt. But real dirt. Examine a portion of the image to select a dot of dirt and compare the visual size on screen to that of an actual pixel.

source

The dot when zoomed in is composed of 4-9 pixels. And the rest surrounds it in a complementary color scheme duo to it’s element in nature.

In this second visual example of screen size 16 pixels are evaluated next to each other
Left real Right one color. At 100% size they have a near similar color, however the left one does not consist of 50% anything, just a mass of browns and tans. So the mind places it into a “mud” category and moves one.

The right one would be considered flat or vector. However both are instantly “square” No doubt.

Fake Dirt

So now less make a fake piece of dirt! Yeah thats the tutorial you came here for. Impress your friends! Wow your boss, eh yeah…

Noise: the evil empire

Whip out your number 4 pixel brush with 0% hardness. And 100% Opacity

A few shortcuts to use if you like:

• B key for switching to Brush tool
• [ ] keys to resize the brush pixels up and down respectively
• To switch hardness of the brush up use shift + [
• To switch hardness of the brush down use or shift + ]

Click somewhere on the convas and zoom in to the max zoom in percent level of 3200% of the brushed dot to check out those sexy pixels. Ooo la la.

Bleh. It’s like a cloned organism. Look at the conformity.

Wait it’s not even 4 pixels it’s 25 pixels. What gives?
On top of that it’s all tan grey to white around the edges, and one stupid heavy pixel of brown in the center.

So like any smart touch up artist you immediately run to the thought this needs to be rectified, at this point most will jump to the noise filter to break up the conformity. STOP. Do not past go. Do not collect filter. Free noise is not good noise.

Filters, what will we do with you?

Just to explain a little more; less see what a harmless application of the noise filter will produce for us.

Note any “percent level Amount” of this makes a mess of colors.
OH GAWD NOOOOOOO!!! THE Colors!!!! AARRRRRGG My eyes!!!! My cerebellum and brain waves it’s horrendous. It should stick to the color scheme of tan to brown. Not f’n acid yellow and what is that baby blue.. pink… Pink!

Want to see more? Sure you do. Apply it to a new swatch of the image… Same effect.

So… What did we learn from this?

DO NOT USE NOISE

Make it, or take it from somewhere.

Thats in part 2. Stay tuned. It’s like a rainbow of pre-chewed skittles.