Passion Petals

Passion Petals

Create a thrilling and passionate falling rose petals composition.

A stock image of a forest country road, an image of a woman in a red dress, and stock images of red silk and red rose petals are recommended for accomplishing the tutorial, but not required. Feel free to substitute these with any other images of your own.

The selection tools, the transform tools, layers, the paint tools, the Gradient Tool, color adjustments, and filters are used in this tutorial.

Step 1

Open an image of a country road or any other background image in Pixelmator.

Step 2

Drag-and-drop a stock image of a woman in a red dress onto your composition to place it. To fit the image of the woman:

• Use any of the selection tools to cut out the image of the woman from its background, so that she appears on a transparent layer.
• Use the Move Tool (V) to position the woman in the middle of the composition.
• If necessary, scale the woman by choosing Edit > Transform and dragging the handles on the bounding box.

Step 3

To extend the red dress, first, download a stock photo of red silk. Then, drag-and-drop it onto the composition. Attach the red silk to the dress:

1. Choose Edit > Transform, click the Action button in the Tool Options bar, and choose Perspective. Scale the silk image so that it looks like the bottom part of the dress (use the example in the image below as a reference).



2. Now, with the red silk layer selected, choose Layer > Add Layer Mask.
3. Choose the Brush Tool and click the color box in the Tool Options bar to pick black color to paint on the layer mask, hiding some parts of the silk image. Paint on the top part of the silk, so that it blends with the bottom of the dress. Also, paint on the edges of the silk image.

4. To fix the silk cloth edges, first choose the Lasso Tool (L) in the Tools palette. Then, using the Lasso Tool, draw around the edges and choose Edit > Cut to make the cloth edges more precise. Then, use the Blur Tool (R) to soften any hard edges after cutting.

Step 4

Add flying rose petals to the composition to make it more passionate:

1. Drag-and-drop a stock image of rose petals onto the composition. Use any of the selection tools to get rid of the unwanted background.
2. Use the Eraser Tool (E) to delete some petals and the transform tools to scale and move them around the composition.
3. Manipulate the rose petals by duplicating the rose petals layer (Layer > Duplicate), using the transform tools and the Eraser Tool.
4. Use the Blur filter (Filter > Blur > Gaussian) to blur the largest and the smallest petals in your composition.



5. When you’re done, select the first rose petals layer and then hold down the Shift key on your keyboard as you select the last layer with rose petals. Then, choose Layer > Group Layers.
6. Double-click on the layer group name to rename it “Rose Petals.”

Step 5

To give the background a nice frozen look, first, with the background layer selected, choose Image > Color Balance. Drag the Midtones sliders closer to Cyan, Green and Blue. Click OK.

Next, choose Image > Levels and drag the Black input a little to the right to make the background image brighter.

Step 6

The background forest without focus looks quite plain. Add some lens blur:


1. First, press Q key on your keyboard to edit in Quick Mask Mode.
2. Then, click to select the Gradient Tool (G) in the Tools palette and select the black and white gradient preset in the Gradients palette (View > Show Gradients).
3. Using the Gradient Tool, click anywhere at the top of the background image, click, and drag to the bottom.



4. Press Q key again to load the selection. Then, choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian and blur the selection a bit.



5. If necessary, use the Blur Tool to drag over the edges to fix them after applying the Gaussian Blur filter.

Step 7

Create a nice, canvas-style texture:


1. Click the Add button (=) to add a new layer in the Layers palette. Double-click on this layer’s name to rename it Texture.
2. Choose Edit > Fill and fill the Texture layer with black color.
3. Choose Filter > Stylize > Noise and set the Amount to 40. Click OK.



4. Choose Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Set Radius to 60 and Angle to 90. Click OK.
5. Change the “Texture” layer’s Blending mode to Overlay and the Opacity to 60%.



6. Duplicate (Layer > Duplicate) the Texture layer and choose Edit > Rotate 90° Right. Then reduce the Opacity to 40%.
7. For even brighter results, duplicate the Texture copy layer and reduce its Opacity to 20%. Finally, group all of the texture layers and that’s all!

© Pixelmator Team Ltd.