Drawing An Iris Using Photoshop

"How do you draw an iris in photoshop?"

Believe it or not I have been asked this question on a number of occasions. I don’t know why it is always an iris in photoshop and not some other subject. I don’t even know if the iris in question is a part of the eye or a flower. The following drawing of an iris in photoshop tutorial is a bit of a cheat because there is no drawing in it.

All I have done is to play around with the drawing tools in photoshop. This iris is a flower, and because I didn’t have a photograph of an iris I have used a watercolour of an iris that I painted, as a starting point.

First open your image in photoshop.

This is my watercolour painting of an iris, but you could photograph your own iris to use as a starting point.

You now have your image opened so next we will take the colour out of it. There are a number of ways of doing this, but the following is a not used very often method that I think gives good results. Go to IMAGE – ADJUSTMENTS – GRADIENT MAP

Using the Gradient used for Greyscale Mapping option click O.K. You should end up with a black and white image.

Next go to FILTER – FILTER GALLERY – INK OUTLINES

Here you can experiment with the controls varying stroke length, dark intensity, and light intensity.

Our last port of call is IMAGE – ADJUSTMENTS – HUE/SATURATION

Once the box opens tick the colorize button and play around with the controls until you find something that pleases you.

I’ve settled on a sepia affect. There you go, nothing to it!

You can now print it out.

As I said before this is not a true drawing, but it is fun to play around with the filter controls in photoshop. You don’t have to stay with my filter choices There are plenty there for you.

If you wanted to produce a proper drawing you could go straight to the ink outlines filter, make a new layer, adjust the transparency so that you have a very light image. You could then print this and draw over the top of it in almost any media that suited.

One way to draw an iris in photoshop.