Tutorials9

stylish banner for your website

2009-05-21T13:49:00.000-07:00

Now I will show you how to create a stylish and effective banner which you may use on your website.
First of all we need to create a new document with the size of canvas 500×300 pixels and fill it with color of #2d164d.
Then use the Rounded Rectangle Tool and draw the form bellow with any color.
Then we use following layer styles for this layer: Gradient Overlay and Stroke:
And we get this:
Then create a new layer over and merge it with the previous one to get all effects in one layer. Now we apply the Drop Shadow layer style to received layer:
Get the effect which you may see at the picture bellow:
Let’s add some volume to our banner. In order to do this we use the Dodge Tool (130 px, Range: Midtones, Exposure: 25%.) and make darkening on left and right side.
After that we load selection with Select > Load Selection, then create a new layer and use the Gradient Tool to fill selected part of the layer with the gradient from white to transparent at the top and the bottom of layer.
Then remove selection with Ctrl+D and then change layer mode to Overlay.
And the last step for design of entire banner. We need to add some glare. In order for this we create a selection across the banner’s form (Ctrl+left click the first button Layer Thumbnail in the Layers Palette). The use the Elliptical Marque Tool, hold down Alt and cut the piece of the selected area. You have to get the same result as on picture bellow.
After that we use the Gradient Tool and fill the gradient from white to transparent on the new layer.
Remove the selection by using Ctrl+D and change the layer mode to Overlay. Then apply Drop Shadow layer style for current layer:
Get this one effect:
Now we may add some information to our banner. In the beginning we may bring the tracery to our banner. For these purposes we may use these brushes. Load selection of banner again (Ctrl+left click the first button Layer Thumbnail in the Layers Palette), create a new one layer and put the print of brush into the selected area.
Remove this selection with Ctrl+D and change the layer mode to Overlay, then set up opacity to 30%.
Now we adjust the sharpness by using Sharpen Tool (Brush: 200px, Mode: Normal, Strength:50%).
Now, I would like to add a picture. Let’s use Google Pictures or sites of stock clip-arts. I found this one. Open image, separate it from background by using Polygonal Lasso Tool and copy it to our main canvas, make it a little bit smaller and rotate by using Ctrl+T.
After that we’re going to highlight the flower. For this effect apply the Outer Glow layer style for current layer:
Get this effect now:
Let’s create a new layer and merge it with the previous one to get all effects in one layer. Now select the banner’s form (Ctrl+left click the first button Layer Thumbnail in the Layers Palette). After that invert the selection using keys Ctrl+Shift+I and press Delete to delete everything abroad the banner.
Now, remove selection with Ctrl+D. It’s time to add the text information. Use the Horizontal Type Tool and type the string ‘New Spa Saloon’ with white color.
Font we’ve used above is Avant Garde Gothic – commercial font. In this way you may use any other font if you don’t have this one. Now apply to this text layer Drop Shadow layer style:
Now we get something like this one:
After that, type one more string like ‘Click here to enter’ underneath with the color of #80bb00 using the same style of layer.
And the last thing what we need to do is add the name. Type the word ‘AQUA’ using white color.
Apply the following Blending Options for this text layer: Drop Shadow and Outer Glow:
We should get the result of applying layer styles at the picture bellow.
At this point our lesson is finished. I hope it was useful and interesting for you, do not feel shy to make experiments and you shall get great results. Good luck!

How to Create an Anime Artwork in Photoshop

2009-01-14T02:20:00.000-08:00

Learn step by step how this painting was created. You will get a good understanding of how to create anime images with beautiful lighting and learn techniques that will help you in many types of drawings.

Preview of Final Results

How to Create an Anime Artwork in Photoshop

Step 1 – The Outline

Most people draw the outline on paper then use a scanner to load the outline into Photoshop. Begin by opening the outline image into Photoshop.

Use the Levels tool (Image > Adjustments > Levels) to correct the contrast of the outline. You can do this with the Levels tool by moving the black and white input sliders towards the center of the histogram. Make sure that the background is 100% white and the outline is 100% black with smooth edges.
To begin, you’ll need to unlock the Background layer. To do this, double-click on the Background layer in the Layers palette and click OK in the New Layer window.
Now that the layer is unlocked, you can change the blending mode to Multiply. This will make the white background in the layer transparent.

Tip: Ensure that there are no broken lines. You will be using the Magic Wand tool often and broken lines will slow you down.

Step 2 – Separating the Outline

In this step, you’ll learn how to separate the outline and the background into two layers. This will also make the outline slightly thinner. You’ll also learn how to dissect the outline without any jagged edges using the Load Selection from Layer command.

In the above image, you can see the difference between using the Magic Wand tool and the Load Selection from Layer command. The Magic Wand tool produces jagged edges that become apparent when placed on a colored background. Instead of using the Magic Wand tool, use the Load Selection from Layer command to produce smoother outlines that blend well with any background.

In the Channels palette (Window > Channels), click on the button. This will create a selection using the tonal information from the layer. Press the Delete button on your keyboard to delete the white background.
Add a new layer below the outline layer and fill the layer with white.
Change the blending mode of the layer to Multiply.

Step 3 – Base Color

Now that we have the outline and white background separated, we can add the base color.

Add a new layer below the white layer.
Select the Magic Wand tool and, in the option bar, set the Tolerance to 50.
In the option bar, checkmark the Contiguous and Sample All Layers options.
With the Magic Wand tool selected, click where you want to add color.
Expand the selection by 3 pixels using the Expand command (Select > Modify > Expand). If you are using Windows, you can press Alt, S, M, E on your keyboard to quickly access this menu item.
Use the Paint Bucket tool to fill the selection with a color of your choice. Use the same technique (Create a selection with the Magic Wand tool then fill with the Paint Bucket tool) for the entire image.

Step 4 – Adding Shadows

In this part, you’ll learn how to add shadows to the image. One important technique from this step is how to select the correct color.

Create a new layer and position it between the white layer and the base color layer.
Select the Magic Wand tool and set the tolerance to 1 (so that it will only pick one color) and uncheck the Contiguous and Sample All Layers options.
Select the Brush tool and set the hardness to 100%. This will give the brush a sharp edge.
In the Tools palette, click on the foreground color. This will bring up the Color Picker window. Select the base color from where you want to start. This will give us the hue of the color. Move the slightly off the area to change the saturation and brightness of the color.
Paint the shadows. Be sure to pay attention to where the light is coming from to get proper looking shadows.

Step 5 – Dodge and Burn

The Dodge and Burn tool will be used to give a gradient tone effect to the solid colors.

Duplicate the layers with the base color and shadow then position them above the original base color and shadow layers. The new layers will be used for dodging and burning while the old layers will be used to load selection with the Magic Wand tool. Select the layer with the base color and use the Magic Wand tool to create a selection of an area that you want to edit. In the image above, we created a selection of the hair.
When using the Dodge or Burn tool, turn on the “Other Dynamics” option in the Brushes palette (Window > Brushes).
Also, in the Dodge or Burn tool options, set the range option to Midtones.
When using the Dodge or Burn tool, set the hardness to 0%.
Select the top shadow layer (shade 2 in the screenshot). You will be using the Dodge and Burn tool to create a gradient in the shadows. Start with the Burn tool to darken the areas in a smooth motion on the lower part of the shadow.
On the same layer, select the Dodge tool and lighten the upper part of the shadow.
Select the duplicated layer with the base color. Use the Dodge tool to lighten the upper area of the base color.
Use the Burn tool to burn the lower area of the base color.

Step 6 – Adding Reflected Light

In this step, you’ll learn how to add light reflected from the ambient light.

Use the same setting as previously used for the Magic Wand tool.
Turn on the “Other Dynamics” setting in the Brush palette (Window > Brushes).
Set the Brush hardness to 0%.
For this image, a dark purple color was used to shade the area with no reflected light. The light source is from the left of the image so the right side of the characters were painted with dark purple.
A light yellow color was used to shade the areas facing the ambient light.

Step 7 – Coloring the Outline

Coloring the outline will add more detail to the final image and it’s easy to do.

Leave the brush presets on.
In the Layers palette, select the layer with the outline then lock the transparent pixels by clicking on the button.
Use the Brush tool to color the outline using a color that is close to the outline.
Keep using the Eye Dropper tool to select the color beside the outline.

Step 8 – Creating the Smokes

Now you’ll learn how the smoke swirling around the characters were created.

Create a new layer for the clouds. Use the Brush tool with a hardness of 100% and paint some zigzag shapes for the smoke.
Use the Smudge tool to smudge it in the motion shown above.
Use the Dodge and Burn tools to create volume on the smoke so that it looks 3D.
Load the selection (Select > Load Selection) of your smoke layer. Choose Select > Modify > Contract and enter an amount that will make the selection half its size. You may have to undo and try this several times to get the correct amount.
Create a new layer for the smoke highlights. Use the Brush tool and paint inside the smoke with yellow orange.
Select the Move tool and nudge the layer up by pressing the up arrow on your keyboard.

Step 9 – Creating the Cloudy Sky

Creating the cloudy sky uses a similar process as the previous step.

Create a new layer for the sky and name the layer “sky”. Use the Gradient Tool to create a gradient like the image above (#1).
Create a new layer above the sky layer and name this “clouds”. Use the Brush tool and paint some lines to create the shape of the cloud.
Use the Smudge tool to smudge the cloud layer in the motion shown (#3).
Load the selection of the clouds layer (Select > Load Selection). Choose Select > Modify > Contract and contract the selection like you did when you were creating the smoke. The selection should be close to half of what it was. You may have to try this more than once to get the right value.
Create a new layer and mane this layer “clouds 2”. Position it above the clouds layer. Select a color that it slightly darker than the color you used to create the clouds. It should still have the same hue and saturation. Paint the selected area with this color.
Use the Dodge and Burn tools to add volume to the clouds so that they look 3D.
Duplicate the clouds layer then use the Free Transform tool (Edit > Free Transform) and enlarge the cloud. Set the opacity of this new layer to 75%.
Use the Dodge and Burn tools on the sky layer to create a light source.

Step 10 – Adding Light

Create a new layer and name this layer “light”. Move the layer to the very top so that it is above all the other layers.
Select the Brush tool. In the Brushes palette (Window > Brushes), checkmark the Other Dynamics option.
Set the brush hardness to 0% for soft edges.
Select white as the foreground color then paint the areas where you want the light to appear. The image above shows the areas that were painted.

Step 11 – Tinting With a Gradient

This step will show you how to create more realistic colors by warming the areas closest to the light source and cooling the areas away from it.

Create a new layer and position it above all the other layers.
Load the selection of the characters then use the Gradient tool to create a orange to blue gradient. Because the light source of the drawing used for this tutorial is from the left side, I will draw a gradient from the left to right. This will make the left side warmer and the right side cooler.
Change the blending mode of the current layer to Color.
Lower the opacity to about 10-20%.

Final Results

The image above was created by Adimas Soekidin. You can view more of his work at his deviantART gallery.

Exposure Blur

2008-12-12T08:53:00.000-08:00

Create animated light streaks using special Photoshop techniques.

Finding the Light Sources

In this section, we'll use the Levels tool to identify the light sources that will be used to create the light streaks.

Step 1

Open an image to edit. Use the Image Size tool to resize the image to the final output size you would like. This Photoshop effect will use a lot of your computers resource so we recommend starting off with a small image, around 300 pixels wide or tall.

Step 2

Duplicate the layer (Layer> Duplicate Layer or Ctrl+J).

Step 3

With the top layer selected, open the Levels tool (Image> Adjustments> Levels or Ctrl+L) and move the middle input slider all the way to the very right. Click OK when done.

Step 4

The light streaks will be created from the light areas in this layer. Use the Brush tool (B) and paint over the areas that you do not want any streaks to be generated from. If there are any light sources that's clipped off by the edge of the image, erase those light sources. If they're not removed, the final result will show light streaks with clipped edges.

Step 5

Change the blending mode to Screen.

Creating the Light Streaks

Now that we have the light sources identify, we can use it to create the light streaks. The streaks will be created by duplicating the layer and moving it one pixel at a time. This might send shivers down your spine; don't worry, it'll be easy and fun. Really!

Step 6

Before we start, we need determine the opacity of the light streaks. Light streaks with a lower opacity setting will be more transparent and is ideal if you'll be creating very long light streaks. If you'll be creating small light streaks, you can use a higher opacity. Instead of guessing, we'll give it a test. Change the opacity of the top layer to 15% and while holding the Alt key, press the right arrow key about 20 times until a streak of light is created. Using the reference below, adjust the opacity to what you think will work best with your image.

Step 7

Delete all the layers that were created so that you have 2 layers remaining. With Photoshop CS2, you can do this easily by selecting the layers the same way you select multiple files (Using the Ctrl or Shift key) and pressing the delete key.

Step 8

You've probably already figured out how to create the light streaks by now. But before I let you experiment, i need you to download a set of Photoshop actions that will let you zoom in/out and rotate left/right. Download and save the controls action to your computer then load it into Photoshop:

Loading the Action

Open the Actions pallet (Window> Actions).
Click on the flyout menu located on the top right of the Actions pallet and select "Load Actions".
Locate and select the action file then click Load.
The Controls action set should now be visible in your Actions pallet. There should be F keys assigned for each action. If you don't see any F keys assigned, it probably means that you have those keys reserved for other actions. To assign a different key to run the action, select the action, click on the flyout menu, select Action Options and change the Function Key.

The function key is shown beside the action name.

Step 9

Use the images below as a reference to controlling the light streaks.

Tip: This is a CPU & RAM intensive process so we recommend closing any unnecessary programs before proceeding.

Use these commands to control the direction of the light streaks.

Use these commands to control the zoom and rotation of the light streaks.

This is an animated sequence of the light streaks I created.

Animating the Light Streaks: Creating the Frames

To create the animation, we need to create the individual frames as layers.

Step 10

First, we need to determine the amount of frames we want in the animation. More frames will create a smoother and longer animation but will also take longer to complete and create a larger file size. For this tutorial, I will be creating an animation with around 10 frames. Because my animation will only have 10 frames, I can merge the 115 layers into 10 layers.

Step 11

With some simple math, we'll find out how many layers we need to convert to one. To do this, take the number of layers the light streaks was created with and divide it by the number of frames. For myself, this will be around 12 layers (115 layers ÷ 10 frames). Now select the top layer and press Ctrl+E to merge down with the answer to the mathematical equation as the number of times. For myself, I will press Ctrl+E twelve times to convert twelve layers into one. Select the layer below and do the same thing until all the layers have been merged

Step 12

Hide all the layers except for the bottom two layers.

Step 13

Select the second layer and press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E to create a new layer from the visible image. Select/activate the layer above, click on the eye to make it visible, and press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E. Repeat this for the rest of the layers above.

Step 14

Delete all the old layers except for Background.

Animating the Light Streaks: Animating with ImageReady

Now that we have the frames created, we're ready to switch to ImageReady to start the animating process.

Step 15

Send the document to ImageReay (File> Edit in ImageReady or Shift+Ctrl+M).

You may also press the Photoshop to ImageReady button in the toolbox.

Step 16

Open the Animation pallet (Window> Animation). Click the flyout menu on the top right corner and select "Make Frames From Layers". Your animation pallet should now contain frames created from the layers.

Step 17

Save the image. To save the image as an animated GIF file, change the Format in the Optimize pallet (Window> Optimize) to GIF and adjust the settings. Because the animation I created will be used on the web, I used the following properties:
Format: GIF
Colors: 64
Dither Method: None
Use the "Save Optimize As" tool (File> Save Optimized As) to save the image.

Final Results

There are countless effects that can be created with this technique. Experiment with different combination to discover new exposure blur animations.

A simple camera flash effect was added to the end of the animation.

This effect was achieved by simply using the ALT and arrow keys.

This effect was achieved by alternating between the Rotate Right and Zoom In actions.

This effect was achieved by creating a right light streak and duplicating the layer about 20 times at the end.

Decorating Text

2008-12-10T23:39:00.000-08:00

Creating text and then decorating it is often a daunting task, not knowing what colors to use and how to achieve effective results with the resources you have is often hard to overcome. Keeping your text simple but still having it stand out is an art in itself. Here we learn lots of techniques on decorating text like using textures, brushes and patterns. Pick and mix which techniques you use or just try all of them and end up with an image like this.

Preview of Final Results

Decorating Text Photoshop Tutorial

Step 1

Before we start on the actual image, we first need to create a simple pattern which we will use later. Create a new document with dimensions 20x20px then go edit>preferences>grid... and use these settings. Create a new layer (Shift+Ctrl+N), hide the background layer then set the foreground color to #808080. Now recreate the image shown here using whatever method you feel comfortable with, the polygonal lasso tool is a good choice for what we want to achieve. Now save the pattern by going edit>define pattern, after saving, close this document. When making patterns like this one it is important to make sure that they will repeat when tiled, there are various methods of achieving this like the offset filter, however with a pattern this simple it easy enough just to visualize it.

Step 2

Create a new document, this time with dimensions of 1024x768px then select the gradient tool (G) and open the gradient editor. Click the arrow in the presets box and choose pastels, select the first gradient in this set. Using a linear gradient drag from the bottom of the page to the top, holding Shift to keep it vertical. Lastly change the opacity of this layer to 75%. A gradient is always a strong way to begin a piece like this but does require a texture over it.

Step 3

Here we will create our background texture, first find a simple image of clouds, the one I used can be found here. Copy and paste this image then resize it to fit the page. Next invert the colors (Ctrl+I) and set the blending mode to screen. Now add a bit more depth to the background by doing exactly the same with another image of clouds like this one. When adding a texture to any piece on Photoshop, always experiment with all the blending modes as some will look better than others depending on the texture you use.

Step 4

Before you start on the foreground, a good idea is to set up some swatches that you will use regularly throughout this piece. Double click on the foreground color and create a swatch of these three colors; #b5005e, #39d336, #00baff.

Step 5

Okay now for the text, start by creating a new layer group named 'foreground', it will become clear why we did this later on. Select the text tool (T) and draw a text box that goes from the left of the page to the right. Type your text in then highlight it all and go window>character to bring up the character settings. Use all the same settings as shown here. The reason for the wide character spacing is to allow enough space for the borders we will add.

Step 6

Right click on the text layer and select blending options and add a drop shadow, outer glow, bevel and emboss, color overlay, pattern overlay and a stroke. Use the settings shown below. You will notice that, although we used the drop shadow and the outer glow, we just mimicked the effect produced by a stroke. The blending options can be very powerful when used in this way so take words like drop shadow as a guideline rather than an instruction.

Step 7

The next few steps will show how to add some goo and drips to the text. Set the foreground color to the purple swatch then create a new layer group named goo directly below the text, still within the foreground group. Create a new layer within this group (Shift+Ctrl+N). Use the line shape tool (U) and create lines like the ones shown here, make some with the weight set at 2px and some with weight at 3px to add some variety.

Step 8

Create a new layer within the goo group. Select the brush tool (B) and use a round brush with a size of 3px and a hardness of 100%. Zoom in to about 400% and draw some droplets at the bottom of each line, also draw some beads of liquid on the line.

Step 9

Create another new layer within the goo group. Using the same brush, decorate the text a little more to achieve a result similar to below. This step can take a few tries to get right but is quite enjoyable at the same time.

Step 10

If you try Ctrl+clicking on the text layer you will notice that the selection will not include the border around the text, this will become a problem in the next few steps as you will see. The easiest way to overcome this is to first duplicate the text layer then drag it below the original text, now create a new layer directly below the new text layer then select the new text layer and merge it down (Ctrl+E) then name it 'selection'. Now if you Ctrl+click this layer you will notice the selection covers the border of the text and we also still have our original text which can be edited easily.

Step 11

Create a new layer group named lines, this time above the text layer although still in the foreground group. Create a new layer then select the pen tool and draw path, making sure to hold and drag after each point to ensure the path is smooth. Next right click on the path and select stroke path and don't check simulate pressure. The result should be similar to below. On these brushes, using simulate pressure will blend out both ends of the line which is not what we want here.

Step 12

Now select the eraser (E) and use a 100px diameter, 0% hardness and 30% opacity to fade out the end of the line. Also use the blur tool (R) with a similar brush to blur some parts of the line.

Step 13

Now we will use that layer we created back in step 10 to remove parts of this line accurately. The concept behind this method is to use our selection layer to select all our text then create a new selection manually and intersect these selections, let’s see how it works. First Ctrl+click on the selection layer then select the polygonal lasso tool (L) and in the main toolbar change it to intersect mode. Choose a part of the line that you want behind the text then draw round that part of the text then select the layer with the line in it and hit Delete. So in the image here, I want the line to go behind the left part of the 'H', note that I didn’t draw accurately around the 'H' this is because only the parts included in both selections will become our final selection. Continue using this method for other parts of the line to give the impression it weaving in and out of the text.

Step 14

Try adding some more lines using the same method shown in the last three steps. Try also changing the brush size to either 2px or 1px or switching on simulate pressure.

In this example I used a 1px brush with simulate pressure on.

Here I used our green swatch, again with 1px and simulate pressure on.

For this effect I used a 2px brush with simulate pressure on and when creating the path, held Shift to get a straight line.

Step 15

A quick way to make some random dots is to first select the brush tool, using a 2px hard brush then hit F5 to open the brush editor. Use the same settings as shown here and use the blue swatch we created earlier. For this brush we can drag it, note how the dots will be random and will give different effects depending on how fast you move the cursor.

Step 16

For this step you will need to have a floral brush set, lots of these can be found here, download one and install it, note that you may need to restart Photoshop after installing it. Create a new group behind the text and in a new layer; use the purple swatch and go wild with these brushes, making them flow from the letters and the lines. My set included some leaves which I dotted around using the green swatch. Using the floral brushes was just an idea, other vector style brushes can give good results too, one which is worth trying is using tree brushes on the top half of the letters.

Step 17

Another nice detail that is simple to make is these blue lines. First create a new layer then select the blue swatch then the brush tool and use an 8px hard brush. Use the pen tool to create a large arc, mine went roughly from the 'H' to the 'O', now stroke the path and make sure simulate pressure is checked. Use the eraser tool to get rid of half of the line and to blend it slightly. I created three of these.

Step 18

Duplicate this layer, with all three lines in it then hit Ctrl+T and rotate the lines roughly 180° then move them to below the text as shown here.

Step 19

The text is looking nice now however the foreground and background are like to separate images at the moment so we will learn a few ways to make them harmonize better. A good way to approach this problem would be to create an in between layer which is kind of half and half and can bridge the gap between foreground and background. Start by creating a new group within the foreground group but below everything else in that group. Create a new layer in this group then go image>apply image then edit>transform>warp and drag only the boxes here to warp the image, make sure that when your warping the image it still covers the entire document or else you will be left with sharp edges.

Step 20

Now select this layer then go layer>layer mask>hide all, change the foreground color to white then use a few of the following brushes with medium opacity to unhide some of the content on this layer, make sure the layer mask is selected rather than the layer itself.

1. A grungy brush of any size, this can be a brush you have downloaded or one that comes with Photoshop like the spatter, charcoal or chalk brushes, these work well when used at a larges size and dotted rather than dragged.

2. A floral brush of medium to large size. This looks good on a slightly higher opacity brush as well as on low. Never drag these brushes, it just doesn't work.

3. A really good effect can be created when using the pattern stamp tool (s), although it requires a few tries to get it right. Try using the pattern we created earlier and also some of Photoshop's like the checkered one.

Optionally you can repeat these two steps again to add more detail as you are trying to get a fine balance between the foreground and background.

Step 21

You will notice with the image we have at the moment, the clouds are only in the background. Let's solve this problem; we have to choices here, we either add more in front of the foreground group or we can take something away from the foreground. I've found that the taking away method produces a more realistic result. However if you have some cloud brushes kicking about feel free to use them but in this image I didn’t. First let’s check where we are at in terms of layers; at the moment you should only have a foreground group, a background group and the white background layer, everything else should be contained within these. In the background group duplicate one of the cloud layers then drag it out of this group and to the very top of the layer stack. Change the blending mode to normal then go select>color range and pick the very darkest part of the image and use the settings shown below, OK. Now you should have a rough selection around the clouds, hide this layer then select the foreground group and in the layers panel click the layer mask button at the bottom.

Step 22

The last step is to add some color adjustments to the whole image. Start by creating a new layer above the foreground group then select the gradient tool and create a gradient like shown here. Use a radial gradient setting an create a blurry circle, go back to the gradient editor and change the color and do this again until you have something that resembles below. Lastly change the opacity of this layer to 50% and the blending mode to color. One last adjust that I save until last is to move that cloud layer that we duplicated to the top of the layer stack, unhide it then change the blend mode to soft light; I'll let you decide on the opacity this layer should be.

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Retro Text

2008-12-10T23:35:00.000-08:00

Retro Text and Video Layers Retro text like this looks great but isn't easy to create in Photoshop alone so here we use a mix of Photoshop and Illustrator, raster and vector to create some unique text. The second part of this tutorial explains video layers, something which is relatively new to most people. The final result will be an animated image that could be used for a web header.

Preview of Final Results

Retro Text Photoshop Tutorial

This tutorial will kind of be split into two parts, the second part starting at step 19.The first part will cover the creation of the text and then editing this text in Photoshop. The first part will require Adobe Illustrator as well as Photoshop. The second part covers adding the animation in through Photoshop, this will mean you have to have Photoshop CS3 extended version as we will be using video layers. However there is ways round this if you can find a program to convert movie files into animated gifs. Firstly a good idea when starting any project is to think up a color scheme or to find one on the internet, I tend to use this site to find color schemes so for this project I searched for 'retro'. Part of the reason why I wrote this tutorial was because gomedia have released a couple of free sample motion packs which ought to be utilized and for people who don't know how to use them then this is what the tutorial covers. For this I will be using the Hooladanders pack which can be downloaded here.

Step 1

Start by opening Adobe Illustrator, there are two reasons why we want to use Illustrator here rather than Photoshop, firstly we can create vector files which gives us more flexibility when we export things to Photoshop and secondly there are a few nice things we can do in Illustrator which would take a while in Photoshop. Hit Ctrl+N to create a new document, I used a size of 800x600px but this doesn't matter as we are working with images that can be enlarged infinitely. Now hit Ctrl+' to show the grid. Now the default grid should have 8 subdivisions, if yours is different then go edit>preferences>guides & grid and change it. Next click on the view dropdown and make sure snap to grid is checked. Select the rectangle tool and draw a 2x2 rectangle, we will change the fill and stroke in the next step.

Step 2

With your rectangle still selected, go to the main toolbar and change the fill to one of the colors in your color scheme and set it to no stroke like in the image below. If you were wanting an outline round your text you would have to draw a line only at the left and right side of this rectangle for reasons that will become apparent later on.

Step 3

Create four more of these rectangles, each with a different fill and a 1 subdivision space between each.

Step 4

Hit V to use the selection tool then drag a box round all five rectangles then hit F5 to bring up the brushes panel. Inside this click the new brush button and select new art brush. Now change the settings to mimic the ones shown below. It should be fairly obvious why we changed it from a horizontal to a vertical direction.

Step 5

Next I worked out a rough typeface I was going to use, we are not using a real font here but rather, creating a path then stroking it with the brush we created. Below I've shown the path I would make if I wanted to make a P, an F and a C; the red lines being the first path and the green; the second path. From this you should be able to work out roughly how to create any letters. At the moment don't actually do this in Illustrator but maybe sketch out the kind of letters you want. I'll show more details on how I created the letters in RETRO. The main points here were to make most letters 1 major gridline in width and half a major gridline between the letters. Note that on the F, it extends 1 minor gridline below, this is to acount for the extra width from the brush on letters like the C. If this doesn't make too much sense at the moment; don't worry I'll go through a full example in the following steps.

Step 6

First I made a new layer, the plan was to have two layers as I needed two paths for some of the letters. This meant that I could export it to Photoshop as two layers also. We will create all of the first layer (red) then afterwards create the second (green). Hit P to select the pen tool, the pen tool in Illustrator works in the same way as in Photoshop. We don't want any bezier curves so click once at each point and don't drag the mouse. Draw this shape in your document; starting from the lower left point. We have to start at the right end or else the colors wont match up when we add layer 2.

Step 7

Hit V then click on the path and a bounding box should appear. In the main toolbar make sure we have no stroke or fill then just click on our brush in the brushes panel and it should look like the image below. If for example our brush was the wrong size we could click the small button to the left of new brush and change the size but since we set it at 20% already we should be fine.

Step 8

Now for quick bit of maths; go edit>preferences>guides & grid and take note of the 'gridline every:' number, now divide this number by 4, mine was at 72px so I got 18. This number is because we are going to round the corners and want the radius to be equal to two of the minor gridlines; the reason for this is obvious if you look at the examples of the letters I used but if you were to use different letters you could make it more or less rounded. Okay to round the corners, with the leter still selected, go effect>stylize (illustrator)>round corners and set it to the value you calculated.

Step 9

Do the same for the other letters, so all my paths looked like the image below. You can either do the letters one at a time or create all the paths then add the styles to all of them at the same time. The image below that shows the completed first layer of the letters.

Step 10

Now for the second layer, do exactly the same as for the first, In green is the paths I used for the second layer, I then added the same styling to achieve a result like the one below. Note that here you could always just copy the R to save creating it again. You should have three layers; one with the brush shape in it, another with the first layer of our text (red) which we'll call T1 and another with our second layer of text (green) which we'll call T2.

Step 11

Create a new document in Photoshop; since these are vectors you can make it any size but I used 900x300px as I envisioned it as a good idea for a website header. Now in Illustrator, hide T2 then drag a selection on over the text then copy and paste it into Photoshop as a smart object if possible, if not then paste it as pixels and ignore the next bit. Hit Ctrl+T then change the height and width to 150%. Now do exactly the same with T1, hiding the T1 in Illustrator, then alaign it with the other layer. Below I've only shown one letter but that's only because I'll be demonstrating the techniques on this letter first.

Step 12

Ctrl+click on T1 to make a selection around it. There is a few steps that aren't required for the text I used but you may need to do all steps If you are doing this to a different shape or size of text so I'll show you all the steps then you can work out the shortcuts if you want. Select the polygonal lasso tool then hold Shift to change it to add mode, this will add to the selection we already have. Now draw around the parts of T2 that you want to hide (purple line), one letter at a time. So here I've made this selection which will keep the same curve at the right part of the R by staying within this line then drawing round everything else. The resulting selection is shown below that.

Step 13

Next, with the either the polygonal lasso or the marquee, hold Alt+Shift to change it to intersect mode which will select only the parts included in both selections. Now draw round the part of T2 which you want removed, there's no need to be neat, just draw a box like the one shown in purple. This is so that when we remove it it will only apply to this one letter then we can go on and do the other letters after. Again I've shown the resulting selection below.

Step 14

Now go select>modify>expand and choose 3px as the value. Select the T2 layer and hold Alt and click on the add layer mask button in the layers panel, this will create a layer mask then fill the selection in black, if we were to just click on the layer mask button we would get everything except the selection filled black. Below is what your letter should now look like.

Step 15

Do this for any other letters that have two layers so for mine I had to do it to E.T, Note that after you've refined the selection you don't want want to make another mask so instead select the mask then hit D to reset the foreground and background colors then hit Alt+Backspace to fill the selection black. Alt+Backspace is a shortcut for filling something with the foreground color and is quicker than going edit>fill or Shift+F5.

Step 16

Now you can move certain parts of your text to get the spacing right. Lastly select T2 and hit Ctrl+E to merge it with T1 then right click and convert to a smart object. Below I've shown the finalized text.

Step 17

This next part shows how I created the background and is optional as I'm sure you can think of much more creative thing to use for a background. Well firstly I pasted in an Image of cardboard then desaturated it.

Step 18

Next I made a very dark radial gradient then set it to 75% multiply.

Step 19

Now go layer>video layer>new video layer from file and choose one of the videos you downloaded. Now go window>animation to bring up the animation panel. You will now have what looks like a histogram of the time, all except one of the layers should have an infinite time, the one that doesn't is your video layer and should be at the top. Move the time slider to the end of this layer, see the image below for reference. You will see that the animation will move, the reason we moved the slider to the end was because if you watch it you will see that the last 10 seconds include every part of the animation.

Step 20

Now hit Ctrl+T to enter free transform mode, a warning should pop up just press convert and it should change to a smart object. Next move, rotate and scle it then put it above part of your text, here I put it above the first R.

Step 21

Now we are going to mask it, I used similar techniques to what we used when masking the letters. Note that when you mask a video layer it does this in every frame. Ctrl+click on the text layer to make a selection then get the polygonal lasso tool out, hold Alt+Shift to go to intersect mode then draw roughly round the part you want to hide behind the letters like shown below; the purple line being the selection I made.

Step 22

Now mask the video layer in exactly the same way as in step 14 and 15. Do this for some other parts of the animation.

Step 23

Right click on the video layer then go blending options, that's right you can add layer styles to a video. Use the settings shown below. Make sure that 'Layer Mask Hides Effects' is checked as this will make the shadow more accurate because the shadow won't follow the layer mask at all. For the color overlay, just select the color that the animation merges into with the eyedropper, so here mine merged into the green line.

Step 24

Do exactly the same with the other two movie files and just copy and paste the layer styles by right clicking on the layers then change the color overlay. They should vaguely resemble the image below.

Step 25

Try now playing your animation by clicking the rewind button then the play button in the animation panel.

Step 26

There's a few things you can do with this file, you could save it as an animated gif, export it to flash or save it as a movie file. Here I saved it as a gif by going file>save for web & devices. Depending on what you want to do with the file you can choose your settings. I knew I was going to upload it to this site so wanted it quite low quality, I also found that by cranking the lossy value up you get a grainy effect and a smaller file, I liked this effect so kept the lossy at about 85% then set the colors to 64. Below I've included my final layers panel and also the unanimated image. You may notice that the colors are different here this is because I added a hue/saturation adjustment layer at the top of the layer stack.

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

3D Textured Text Effect

2008-12-10T23:31:00.000-08:00

In this tutorial, I will show you how you can make a stylized 3D textured text effect using various textures to give it a unique look with Illustrator & Photoshop. I will be giving you the step by step instructions along with the links to the resources & stuffs used.

Preview of Final Results

3D Textured Text Photoshop Tutorial

Step 1

Open up Illustrator, and with the Type Tool type a letter or text, I typed the letter “C” I used the font Adobe Caslon Pro, you can use any font that you like, just make sure that it is a bit thick font to yield better results. I set the font size to 400 pt & scaled it horizontally & vertically to 150% through the Character Palette, though don't worry about the font size too much because we'll be pasting it as Smart Objects in Photoshop so we can adjust the size at any given time. The color I used for the letter is #8CC63F.

Step 2

Now go to Effect>3D>Extrude & Bevel, make sure that Preview is on. Use the settings shown below, apart from specifying rotations for x, y & z axis, I chose Tall-Round from the Bevel drop down list. The settings will more or less depend on the font, so if you have used a different font play a bit, though I will advise to stay away from the fancier Bevel settings, mostly None setting works best. You can also make it more thick by increasing the Extrude Depth.

Step 3

After you’re happy with your 3D effect, it will be time to move on over to Photoshop. Open a new document in Photoshop. Now, copy your 3D text/letter from Illustrator & paste it as Smart Object in Photoshop, press Enter key or checkmark to commit. You can now resize your text to whatever size you want, in fact, bigger the better, but for the purposes of this tutorial, I will stick to a small canvas.

Power Tip: If for any reason, you want to edit the pasted 3D Smart Object, just double click on the Vector Smart Object thumbnail in the Layer Palette, press OK on the resulting window, the Smart Object will automatically open up in Illustrator, do the changes or editing you want, then go to File>Save & close the file & tadaa the changes will reflect in your Photoshop file.

Step 4

Now, lets begin with the Photoshop magic, we will be adding various texture on the different layers & will spice them up with the variety of blending modes, the key is to experiment & choose the settings that will best suit your purpose.

Open the texture image that you would like to use, for the first layer I used a texture, lets call it Texture 1 from a texture pack on deviantArt. Go to Select>All & then Edit>Copy to copy the entire texture image, Now we are going to paste this image into our letter, but you have to tell Photoshop where to paste it. So return to your 3D text document & pressing down Ctrl/Cmd Click on Vector Smart Object thumbnail, this will select the entire text/letter, in our case, the letter “C”, now go to Edit>Paste Into (Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+V) to paste the texture image on “C”. Change the blending mode of the texture layer to Overlay.

Now, your image & layer palette should look like so:

Look at your layers palette now. You see your texture image there and a mask has been made that allows only the letter part of the image to show.

If you’re using different images, play around a bit with blending modes, mostly Overlay, Soft Light, Hard light, Multiply will give the desired results.

Step 5

Repeat the procedure prescribed in Step 4, but with a different texture. I used one of the texture from this pack.

In brief, open the texture image, Select All (Ctrl/Cmd+A), Copy it (Ctrl/Cmd+C) & return to your original document, pressing down Ctrl/Cmd Click on Vector Smart Object thumbnail to select the letter/text & go to Edit>Paste Into (Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+V) to paste the texture in the letter “C”. And, change the blending mode to Multiply.

Step 6

Now, its again time to do the same thing as mentioned in Step 4 & 5, but with the different texture image. This time I used a more colorful texture from a another texture pack over at deviantArt. And, this time I choose the blending mode to Soft Light.

This is how my image & Layer Palette looks like after step 6.

Power Tip: If you need to edit the filler texture image or if you don't like how it looks within the letter, you can still change it! Just choose the Move Tool (V) & drag over with your texture layer selected. Also, if you need to resize the texture image select Edit>Transform to resize it.

Step 7

Now, select the Background layer & fill with a Gradient Tool (G). I used Linear Gradient & the colors for the two stops are as prescribed in the screenshot. Drag the gradient tool diagonally from bottom to top.

Step 8

Pressing down Shift key select all the layers in the Layer Palette except the background layer & Link all of them. Also make sure to link the Layer Mask thumbnails with their corresponding layer thumbnails by clicking once between them.

Step 9

Now, we will do the reflection of our letter “C”. For that, select all the linked layers & duplicate them.

Step10

Merge all the duplicated layers & name it Reflection.

Step 11

On the Reflection layer, go to Edit>Transform>Flip Vertical & place it beneath the letter “C”. Adjust its perspective if the need be.

Step 12

The next step is to add a layer mask to the duplicate layer. To do this simply click on the add layer mask button in the layers palette.

Now pick the Gradient Tool (G) and draw a gradient (black to white) in the direction from bottom to mid top.

Finally just reduce the opacity of the duplicate layer and you are all done. I reduced the opacity to 20% , there is no golden rule about the opacity % , just play with the opacity setting & choose the one that suits your image.

Step 13

Finally, with the Type Tool, I wrote the words “for creativity” with the settings as shown in the Character Palette.

The font used is Larissa & can be downloaded from here. I also rotated the words a bit via Edit>Transform.

Then I applied the layer style, as shown in the screenshots below.

Step 14

To add a bit of finishing touch, I added Outer Glow to the Vector Smart Object layer, as shown.

And, that’s how my Layers palette in end & final image looks like.

Here, is a another example of image, I made with the same technique.

To take it further, play & experiment with various textures, the blending modes, also changing the various Adjustments options like Invert, Posterize, Hue/Saturations settings etc. gives the different results. You can also make the text look grungy or rusty using grunge textures, its just the matter of exploring the powers of Photoshop & tapping your creativity!

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Create Custom Photo Brushes

2008-12-10T23:24:00.000-08:00

When you think of creating custom brushes in Adobe Photoshop, you usually think of creating basic shapes and paths with the pen tool and then creating a brush from those shapes. But we can also use photos and convert them into brushes as well for unique designs in web sites and print designs. They also can make aesthetically-pleasing backgrounds.

Preview of Final Results

Create Custom Photo Brushes Photoshop Tutorial

Step 1

Open Photoshop and open a photo to use as a brush. It should be something that would work in a pattern, where the content of the photo is obvious as various sizes. I'm using this "blue angel wing" I found on iStockPhoto. IT should be relatively large, perhaps 1000 pixels for both width and height. If you create a brush at a small size, setting the brush to a larger size than originally created will cause it to lose resolution. But making it smaller is no problem, just like resizing a photo.

Optional: You can download this file to use at http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=130023 or use a similar one.

Step 2

To first define a brush, we need to select the area. Click the Rectangular Marquee tool on the toolbar.

Step 3

Click-and-drag a selection around the photo. We don't need to remove the white pixels first because they will be transparent in a brush.

Step 4

Go to Edit>Define Brush Preset.

Step 5

Name the brush something that matches the image, and click OK.

Step 6

Now that we have the brush defined, go to File>New and create a new file at 1024 x 768. Click OK.

Step 7

Click the Brush tool on the toolbar.

Step 8

Click the arrow on the Options palette which will bring down the brush styles and size options. Scroll down and click the brush we just created. You can change the size here, or change it by pressing the left and right brackets to make the size smaller or larger. Bring the size of the brush to something much smaller, such as 100.

Step 9

Go to Window>Brushes to bring up the Brushes palette. This palette has a lot of options for the Brush tool. Change the Shape Dynamics to these settings by clicking on Shape Dynamics then sliding the sliders. The brush can rotate to a certain degree as we brush. Try various settings as the preview shows how the brush will look.

Step 10

Change the Scattering to the settings shown here. Scattering does just that—scatter the brush as we brush. Try various settings as the preview shows how the brush will look.

Step 11

Change the Hue Jitter to 12%, because we want to somewhat adjust the hue as the brush is clicked-and-dragged, but within a certain range. Setting it to 100% would cause it to include the entire color range.

Step 12

Now for the fun part: click-and-drag with the Brush tool in a curve.

Step 13

Whatever color is selected in the Foreground in the toolbar is the color of the brush. You can have a jitter between the foreground and background color as well as hue jitter from the foreground color.

Step 14

If you create a second curved brush path like this, click on New Layer on the Layers palette first, so that we can adjust the layer blending mode on the Layers palette. In this example, I adjusted the top layer blending mode to Multiply.

Step 15

Try various photos and converting them to brushes using the same steps here. Brushes with added Shape Dynamics and Scattering can help create a unique background, such as this one created with a photo of Polaroids.

Step 16

This one was created with a scan of tape. Besides creating unique paths, backgrounds are often created with such brushes.

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Cool Photography Layout

2008-12-10T10:07:00.000-08:00

In this Photoshop tutorial, you will learn how to design a simple blue layout with Photoshop by combining shapes and layer styles.

Step 1

First of all create a new document with the dimensions: 1080 by 880 pixels. Now we are going to fill in the background with a solid colour by going Edit > Fill, and use the colour #CDECFF.

Step 2

We are now going to be creating the navigation background. Create a new layer (Layer > New > Layer) and using the rounded rectangle tool make a selection (860 by 120 pixels) in the center, at the top of the document so that only the bottom curves are showing (hide the top ones outside the document by moving the selection up). Fill (Edit > Fill) the selection with the colour #151515 using the same method we used in the first step.

Step 3

On the navigation background layer go Layer > Layer Styles > Gradient Overlay and enter in the settings below. Clicking on the picture beside "Gradient:" brings up the window on the top.

Now your navigation should be looking like this:

Step 4

Now we are going to be adding in some text links to act as the navigation for the site. Select the text tool from the tool box and add in some names of pages that you'd have for a photography site. I've chosen home, about, portfolio, services and contact. The font I've used is Verdana (16pt) and the colours are #EAEAEA for the links and #010101 for the bars between the links.

Step 5

Next up we are going to be adding in the logo / header for the site. So create a new layer and using the rounded rectangle tool again make a selection of about 200 by 240 pixels (with a radius of 10 pixels) on the right hand side of the navigation, and using the technique we used for the navigation background make it so that only the bottom curves are showing (not the top ones). Select the gradient tool and set it to radial. Set your foreground colour to #E0E1E1 and your background to #F1F1F1, fill the selection with a gradient (left click somewhere near the top center and drag to the bottom and release).

Step 6

Now we are going to be adding a layer style (an outer glow) to the logo background. To do this we go Layer > Layer Styles > Outer Glow. I've used the settings below.

Your layout should now be looking like this.

Step 7

Using the text tool add the name of the site and a small description underneath. I've made up a name "PhotoSmart" for the site and the description is "Professional Photography" - alliteration :) The colorus I have used are #272727 (for the darker colour) and #7b7b7b (for the lighter colour).

Step 8

Now we are going to be doing the actual logo of the logo ;) If you don't want to make a shape from scratch for your logo, just use a custom shape from Photoshop. I've filled my tick with the colour #85c7ff and added a small white outer glow (Layer > Layer Style > Outer Glow).

Step 9

Create a new layer (Layer > New > Layer) for the top content background area. Using the rounded rectangle tool make a selection of 860 by 590 pixels and fill (Edit > Fill) with #181818.

Step 10

Create another new layer and make a rounded selection of 860 by 400 pixels at the bottom of the background (leave a 10 pixel margin at the bottom). Fill this selection with white (#FFFFFF).

Step 11

Add in some fill in text for the top content area. The colour I have used for the titles is #85C7FF.

Step 12

Now we are going to be adding a divider between the two paragraphs. On a new layer make a selection of 40 by 180 pixels (however high it is between the top and bottom of the black section). Fill the selection with a linear gradient from #181818 to #1e1e1e using the gradient tool.

Step 13

Duplicate the divider layer and go Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontally. Move the duplicated layer to the right so there is a one pixel gap between the original and the duplicate.

Step 14

Add in some fill in and footer text in the white content area and you are complete.

Final Results

Add some finishing touches, maybe a brush in the background underneath the navigation and you're complete. Click on the image below to see the full version.

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Modernistic Navigation Module

2008-12-10T10:05:00.000-08:00

Create this beautiful navigation module with Photoshop. This Photoshop layout tutorial will show how simple shapes and gradients can create elegant designs.

Preview of Final Results

Modernistic Navigation Module Photoshop Tutorial

Step 1

Firstly create a new document (File > New) 540 by 440 pixels. Fill the background with the colour #1b1b1b by going Edit > Fill.

Step 2

Secondly we are going to be creating the background of the navigation box. Create a new layer, you can do this by going Layer > New > Layer or using the short cut Ctrl + Shift + Alt + N. Select the rounded rectangle tool and set the radius to 5 pixels. Make a selection of 250 by 300 pixels.

We are now goingt to be filling this selection with a red gradient. Select the gradient tool and set it to radial. Fill the selection with a gradient from the top center (#bc0303) to the bottom center (#3f0000).

Step 3

Thirdly, we are going to be adding an outer glow to our navigation background by going Layer > Layer Styles > Outer Glow and enter the settings below.

Now it should be looking like this.

Step 4

Select the text tool and add in some text for the title of the navigation box. The font I have used is Verdana, Regular, 22pt, Strong, #ffffff.

Step 5

Create a new layer and using the rounded rectangle tool again make a selection of 230 by 250 pixels at the bottom of the navigation background (with 10 pixel spacing on the sides and bottom).

Fill this selection with a dark grey colour (#111111).

Step 6

We are now going to be adding a shine effect to the new layer. So on a new layer (keeping the selection that you had before) go Select > Modify > Contract by 10 pixels.

Fill the selection with a radial gradient from the top left (#ffffff) to the bottom right (transparent) using the gradient tool.

Lower the opacity of the layer to 5%.

Step 7

Now for the text links, using the text tool add in some text to act as links. The font that I have used for this is Verdana, Regular, 12pt, None, #5a5a5a (#ffffff for the hover effect). Set the line height to 30 pt.

Step 8

Next up is adding in dividers to go between each text link. Make selections of 210 by 1 pixel using the rectangular marquee tool between each line and fill with the colour #1e1e1e.

Step 9

The last step is to add in a background colour behind the active link (in my case I've made the Photoshop Tutorials link active) so create a new layer behind the text layer and make a selection of 210 by 30 pixels and fill with #171717.

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Blue on Black Navigation Bar

2008-12-10T10:03:00.000-08:00

Design a beautiful navigation bar in Photoshop. This tutorial will teach you how to combine several layer styles to create a beautiful yet simple navigation bar.

Preview of Final Results

Blue on Black Navigation Bar Photoshop Tutorial

Step 1

Firstly, create a new document - the size I've used is 540 by 220 pixels. Now for the background I've filled it with a black colour. To do this go Edit > Fill with the colour #0d0d0d.

Step 2

Secondly, we'll be making the background for the navigation buttons to go inside. Create a new layer (Layer > New > Layer) and select the rounded rectangle tool. Make fixed size selection of 480 by 50 pixels with a radius of 5 pixels in the middle of the document.

Fill this selection with a linear gradient from the colour #151515 to #050505 using the gradient tool. Deselect - Ctrl + D. Set the fill of the layer to 60% (the setting underneath the opacity in the layers window). The difference between opacity and fill is simply opacity changes the opacity of the entire layer and fill changes the opacity of everything except the layer styles.

Step 3

Now we'll be adding a couple of layer styles to this navigation background.

Layer > Layer Style > Outer Glow

Layer > Layer Style > Stroke

Now your document should be looking something like this.

Step 4

Next up we'll be adding in the buttons. Create a new layer and using the rounded rectangle tool again make a selection of 150 by 40 pixels (with a radius of 5 pixels again) on the left side of the navigation bar.

Fill this selection with a linear gradient from #323232 to #161616 using the gradient tool. Set the fill for this layer to 50%.

Step 5

I've applied three layer styles to this button to give it some depth and make it look cooler.

Layer > Layer Styles > Inner Glow

Layer > Layer Styles > Gradient Overlay

Layer > Layer Styles > Stroke

Your navigation bar should now look something like this.

Step 6

Select the text tool and add in some text - the font styles that I have used for the text are Bell Gothic Std, Bold, 20 pt, Crisp, #ffffff.

Step 7

Now repeat the button steps so you have two new buttons - I've decided that I'd make the middle one a different colour to stand out (this can be like a mouse over effect or something if you decided to code this navigation bar for a web layout). The blue colours I used for that are #14b9ef and #054573.

Step 8

Because we have set the fill of the layers to 50-60% we can adjust the background and it can be half see through - below I've put a radial gradient with colours used in the vista theme.

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Clean White Navigation Bar

2008-12-10T10:00:00.000-08:00

Simplicity is the key to beautiful web layouts. Learn how to draw a beautiful navigation bar in Photoshop.

Preview of Final Results

Clean White Navigation Bar Photoshop Tutorial

Step 1

To start off with, create a new document, for the purpose of this tutorial I have chosen 500 by 200 pixels. Fill the background with a radial gradient from a medium-dark grey to a darker grey. You can do this by selecting the gradient tool from the tool box and setting it to radial. Set your foreground colour to #45443f and your background colour to #31302c. Left click in the middle of the document, drag to the right and release.

Step 2

Create a new layer (Layer > New > Layer) and select the rectangular marquee tool. Make a fixed size selection of 440 by 50 pixels in the middle of your document.

Step 3

Fill the selection with a linear gradient from #f4f4f4 at the top to #d9d9d9 at the bottom.

Step 4

We are now going to be applying a couple of layer styles to this layer.

Layer > Layer Styles > Drop Shadow

Layer > Layer Styles > Outer Glow

Result:

Step 5

Now using the text tool add in some text links. The font settings I've used are Verdana, Regular, 13 pt, Sharp, #686868 (and #ac0000 for a hover effect).

Step 6

Lastly, we are going to be adding some dividers between the links. Firstly, create a new layer and select the rectangular marquee tool again. Make a selection of 1 by 50 pixels between the first two links. Fill (Edit > Fill) the selection with the colour #b4b4b4.

Step 7

Now move the selection across to the right by one pixel (left arrow key on your keyboard). Fill this selection with the colour #d9d9d9.

Step 8

Duplicate this layer and move the duplicate layer along to the right so it is between the next two links (hold down the shift key while moving the divider to the right to keep it in-line. Repeat this process for the rest of the links and you are finished. I've also lowered the opacity of the layers by 50% so they don't stand out so much - but that's up to you ;-)

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Web Photo Gallery

2008-12-10T09:57:00.000-08:00

Photoshop makes it very easy to create customized galleries from scratch. The Photo Gallery wizard is a automated task and it does not require you to have any prior knowledge of HTML coding, in fact it does all the HTML coding for you & within the moment the required files are generated by Photoshop & readies it for you to upload on your websites!

Preview of Final Results

Web Photo Gallery Photoshop Tutorial

There are variety of settings that allows you to customize the style & looks of your photo gallery which includes colors, text, security features etc. It also allows you to add sound to your gallery to give it a more personalized feel.

In the following tutorial, I will guide you through the steps by which you can create a photo gallery for web.

Step 1

When you enter the Web Photo Gallery wizard you will be prompted to select the source folder from where your images will come from. So the first step obviously will be organizing all the photos that you want to include in your gallery in a folder & giving it a appropriate name. For this tutorial, I have placed all my images in a folder named “Flower photos”.

Alternatively, instead of making a folder you can select individual images from various locations in your computer to include in the gallery. To do that open up Adobe Bridge & choose the folder you want in the Folder window on the top left and then Ctrl/Cmd click to select the images you want.

Step 2

After you’ve selected & organized the images in a folder, you will decide whether you want the title & description of each of the images to be included in the photo gallery. Open your photo in Photoshop, go to File>File Info & enter the text in the Document Title, Author, Description etc. boxes.

Step 3

Alternatively, if you’re using Adobe Bridge, you can enter the file info as mentioned in Step 2, by opening up your Bridge, selecting a image & choosing File>File info, now you can enter the Document Title, Description etc. as mentioned in Step 2.

Step 4

Now that we are done with initial preparatory stages of selecting, storing, naming & adding description & stuffs to the images, it is time to open Photo Gallery wizard to automate the task for creating a web gallery. For this, go to File>Automate>Web Photo Gallery.

Alternatively, if you’re using Adobe Bridge, you can access it via Tools>Photoshop>Web Photo Gallery.

Step 5

Now with the Web Photo Gallery dialog box open click the Styles drop down menu for various gallery template styles. I select, Flash Gallery Style, you can select any of them you like.

Step 6

Now, if you wish, you can add your Email address, it will appear below the title of you web photo gallery to enable people to contact you. It will become a active link through which people can email you directly.

Step 7

As mentioned in Step 1, whether you’ve made folder or you’re using individual images via Adobe Bridge, choose the suitable option for your Source Images clicking the Browse button. Since, I have made a folder named, “Flower Photos”, I choose that. Also, if your folder contains subfolders, which you want to include in your gallery, click the checkmark ON for Include All Subfolders.

Step 8

Since, Web Photo Gallery is an automated task, you need to tell Photoshop where you want all the files generated by Photoshop to be stored on your computer, so click the Destination button & select the location.

Step 9

In this & in the next few steps, I will give you a brief explanation as to what various Options Menus (which are basically the coding options) stands for. Some of the options will be grayed out or unavailable depending on the style of gallery you have selected.

General: It gives you a option whether you want to save your files as .htm or as a .html coding extension. It also gives you a option whether you want to preserve all metadata (as determined in Step 2).

Step 10

Banner: In the Banner option menu, the information that you enter in the Site Name box will appear as the title of your gallery. You can also add more personalized information as you name in Photographer box, Contact Info, Date etc.

Step 11

Then, Large Images: This gives you the option to customize the appearance of your main image, when the user clicks on the thumbnail in your gallery. You can resize the images, constrain its proportions, determine the quality of image, give a border to images etc. Also, by checking the corresponding boxes, you can choose which parts of information are to be displayed from the metadata you added earlier in the File Info window as in Step 2 above.

Step 12

Next, option is for Thumbnails: Which is quite similar to Large Images as mentioned above.

Step 13

Now, the Custom Colors: Here you can customize the colors used for background, banner, text & links by clicking the color swatch to bring up the color picker, choose the colors that matches your gallery.

Step 14

Finally, Security: Here you can choose a custom text to be displayed on the main images on your gallery to guard against theft. You can also alter the size, color & position of the text. Choose None from the menu drop down list, if you don’t want this watermark feature.

Step 15

Once you’re happy with all the settings, press OK button, give a few seconds to Photoshop to create the gallery & then it appears on your web browser. Also, if after exiting the web browser, you want to open it again, you can do so by finding it in the location, you chose in the “Destination” area in Step 8, it will have a .index extension.

Step 16

Additionally, you can also include music with some gallery styles like Flash Gallery 1 & 2. To include the music, name the file “useraudio.mp3” and copy it to the folder for the gallery style you have chosen. Locate your program folder for PhotoshopCS3 (or the version that you use) and then enter the Presets folder. Within this, double-click on the Web Photo Gallery folder to open it. Now open the folder of whichever gallery style you chose and then copy your music file into it.

And, there you go, your Web Photo Gallery is ready!

Now all you need to do is to upload the gallery for all to see, of course you will need the space with your Internet Service Provider (if you don’t already have it).

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Designing with 3D Render Pack

2008-12-10T05:28:00.000-08:00

Preparations:

Download Render Pack 4 here.
Download Life Brushes here.
Download Darius Brushes here.
Download Vector Linedots here.
Download 10 Scan Lines here.
Download Krakograff Textures here.

All rights of these resources belong to their respective owners.

Step 1 - Setting Up Background:

Create a document of size 750x550 pixels.

Choose a Krako's Texture 6 and resize it to fit into the working area.

Step 2a - Adding Base Colors:

Create a new layer and name it as Base Color 1.

Set your foreground color to #8A0504. Using a Soft Brush tool with size 400, paint a huge dot on the right of the document.

Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Overlay.

Step 2b - Adding Base Colors:

Create another layer and name it as Base Color 2.

Set your foreground color to #F38F00 and repeat what you have done in Step 2a.

Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Overlay.

Step 3a - Adding 3D Render:

Open up omjpack4r2.png of the Render Pack downloaded earlier.

Drag the shape into the document and position it the way seen in the diagram.

Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Soft Light.

Step 3b - Adding 3D Render:

Drag the same shape into the document again.

Reduce the size and move it to the bottom right so it looks like those 'blades' are emerging from there.

Step 4a - Abstract Details:

Load the 2 brushes, Darius and Life.

Create a new layer below the 3D render and name it as Black Shapes.

Set the foreground color to #000000. Select any the brushes in these 2 sets and paint them in any place you want it. Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Overlay once you are done.

Step 4b - Abstract Details:

Create a new layer above Black Shapes and call it as White Shapes.

Set the foreground color to #FFFFFF and repeat Step 4a with other brushes. Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Soft Light once you are done.

Step 4c - Abstract Details:

Load Vector Linedots brush.

Create a new layer above Black and White Shapes layer. Repeat similar methods done in Step 4a and 4b.

Step 4d - Abstract Details:

Load 10 Scan Lines brush.

Create a new layer below the lines and dots. Select Scaners7 and paint it with #FFFFFF.

Step 5 - Adding Bitmap Texts:

Type in some texts with small sizes, around 6-8 points to complete the design. They can be of any colors as long as it fits the overall scheme.

Optional:

There you have it!

As I prefer the whole thing to be lighter and of less contrast, I created a Levels Adjustment Layer above everything with values, 3, 1.56, 255 to brighten the art a little.

My Deviation:

With the same methods, I decide to try out another design with selections of much lighter colors.

The basic techniques used are exactly the same as those mentioned above.

Hope you will find this tutorial useful.

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Great Looking 3D Box

2008-12-10T05:27:00.002-08:00

Step 1

Create a new document and start by drawing a 3d box like the picture below and you should end up with the final image.. Dont worry about gaps as this adds to the effect later on.

Step 2

Click here to download a textured image and drag it on to this and press Ctrl and T and then scale it down and press right click on the mouse and goto Distort and distort it to the image as shown below.

Step 3

Now grab the brush tool and set the forground colour as 341203, now create a new layor and draw where the white lines you have missed are like the picture below.

Now put that layer to the bottom so you get a nice effect.

Step 4

Keeping with the brush create a new layer making sure that the new layer is above everthing. Now set the brush opacity to only 20% and keeping with the same brown colour start to draw shadows on the edges of the box untill you have a showing effect like the picture below.

Step 5

Click here to download the background. Now drag it to thedocument which will automatically give you a new layer. Making sure its the top layer, make the opacity to 50% and press P which is the Pen Tool and draw round the box and making sure you draw round a few grass petals so you can get the effect that its lying in grass. Now press the right click on the mouse and click Make Selection and click ok. Once you have done that just press delete on the keypad. You should have an image like the one below.

Now bring the opacity to 100% again and you should have something like the image below.

Step 6

On the layer you just did Ctrl and click the image in the layer image and the create a new layer. Grab the gradient tool and set the forground colour to 070636 and making sure that it is set the background colour to transparent which is at the top of the screen. drag from top left corner to near the box, then from other corner to box and a few from the middle top to box untill you have the look as below.

Final Step

Ok create a new layer and write some text within the box. Use the layer setting below and you have then finished.

This is how it looks.

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

3D Text with Special Smoke

2008-12-10T05:27:00.001-08:00

1. Let's start out by creating a new file. We will be creating a 3D text effect with special smoke. I used a 800x300 pixels canvas set at 72dpi, and I filled my background with a black color. Then make a new layer set and name it 'text design'.

2. Now select the horizontal type tool then set the font family to arial black, regular, 80 pt, smooth and white color. In a new text layer type your name.

3. Under layer style (layer - layer style) add a drop shadow, inner shadow, inner glow and gradient overlay blending options to your name text layer.

Result:

4. In a new text layer type your name with white color right on the first name. Then nudge it up by 3 pixels.

5. Under layer style (layer - layer style) add a drop shadow and inner shadow blending options to your white colored text layer. Then set the layer's blending mode to Darken at 68 % opacity level.

Result:

6. Duplicate your 'text design' layer set then go to (layer - merge layer set), the layer set should turn into a regular layer. Now place the second text design behind the 'text design' layer set on the layers window and nudge it down to create a 3D effect.

7. Under layer style (layer - layer style) add an inner shadow blending option to the second text design layer.

Result:

8. Now for the special smoke, first add a marquee selection around your name. Then go to (edit - copy merged) and paste.

9. Now go to (filter - distort - wave) and apply the settings below to your name design layer from step 7. If you don't like the result with the settings provided you can keep on applying the same filter until you get the same results.

Result:

10. Once you have a smoke design that your satisfied with you can go ahead and scale it down so its the same size as your text. Then finish it off with more smoke design on the rest of your name.

And there you go, this was a long tutorial but it's finally finished! A new 3D Text effect with special smoke has been created, have fun with it!

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

3D Text

2008-12-10T05:26:00.001-08:00

The Text

Open up a new document and create a nice background. I used MickM-green which is really turning into a trademarked green. I love it. It's not even a real color, but more and more people start to use it.

Anyhow, just make sure your document is large enough. I used 500px x 400px.

Now, on a new layer, create some text. But instead of writing the entire word on one layer, place all different letters on different layers.

I started with the M of the word "MickM". Make sure your font is nice enough to work with. With nice I mean that font needs to be thick enough. Too thin fonts will look a bit weird. Also make sure they're all black.

Because you're using different layers, you can always play with Ctrl+T to enlarge or scale the letters if needed. If you're done, you should have a few layers with every letter on another layer.

Making it look 3D

Now, on every letter add the same layer-style. What we're gonna do is add a white outer stroke that can deviate between 3px or 5px depending on the size of your font. Then add a gradient overlay and set this to SCREEN and lower the opacity of the overlay to 20%.

If you add this layer-style to one of the layers, and then right-click the layer and select "Copy Layer-Style", you can right-click every layer and choose "Paste Layer-Style". Or, if you have a lot of letters, select all layers and then paste it.

Now hide all but one layer to work on. Select your Move-Tool and while holding ALT press UP and LEFT one at a time. (LEFT, UP, LEFT, UP, LEFT, UP, etc) ...untill your letter looks like it's 3d.

Then select all the layers except the top-layer and merge them together by Ctrl+E.

Once merged, press Ctrl+U and drag the lower slider to the left a little to make the 3d-part of your letter a little darker to make it look like the lighting is giving it that extra touch.
When you're done, merge those 2 layers together as well!

Continue repeating this step but every time, use different angles. (Left, Left, Left, etc) or (Right, Bottom, Rightm, Bottom, etc). Anything goes. Also make sure that you merge all the seperate layers. So now you should have the amount of layers you had at the beginning again!

Now move the layers around, displace them, order them the way you like it and just make sure the letters are placed the way you like it.

Not much I can teach you about that! I chose to let my letters overlap each other a bit. As you can see the outer letters are in the back, then come the inner letters, and the middle letter is the closest letter if, let's say, the letters are placed on a table in front of you.

Now merge all those letters together! Then Ctrl+click on the thumbnail of the layer to select it and you'll notice you will get a selection around it.

Cool 3D Text

Then add a very soft White>Transparent gradient to a new layer and lower the opacity of it to 2%-10%. Then add a very small and soft white inner glow to the entire name or word.

Now add a large, but very soft outer glow in white to the text. Set the blending-mode to Overlay and the opacity around 40%.

With a soft brush (45px) brush, on a new layer, while holding Shift a small straight line underneath the text. It should not cover the entire area underneath the text though.

Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and set it to 20-30. Then go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur and set it to an amount so that the shadow covers the entire area underneath your text. Then just lower the opacity to 20-40.

On a new layer above all of it, grab a small brush around 1px-3px and use a very bright and noticable color to draw small strokes on places where we want some shine. I used red, because it's a color I haven't used in the entire image, so easy noticable.

Press Ctrl+U and drag the lower slider all the way to the right to make the lines all white. Now go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and leave the settings or play around with them if you want more or less shine.

I chose to leave them as they were!

Conclusion

Now you are done with the new and improved 3d-text tutorial. Not only did you learn how to make text look 3d, you now also know how to do cool stuff with it.

You can use this technique any way you want. You can also choose to make all the angles of the letters look the same way to make them all look the same, but if you want a more playfull composition like this one, you can add some difference to make it look cooler!

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Create a 3D Flowery Text Effect

2008-12-10T05:19:00.000-08:00

Preparations:

In this tutorial, we will need the beautiful Suddenly Spring brushes designed by GValkyrie.

Download the Suddenly Spring brushes here.

All rights of these resources belong to their respective owners.

Step 1 - Setting Up Background:

Create a document of size 750x550 pixels.

Set the foreground color to #004B64 and background to #000000.

Using the Radial Gradient tool, drag a circular gradient from the top downwards.

Step 2a - Create a 3D Text:

Open up Adobe Illustrator.

Set the Fill to be #FFFFFF and type in your first letter with a bold font. I am using Helvetica 75 Bold.

Draw a black layer below the white letter so it is visible.

Step 2b - Create a 3D Text:

Select the letter and go to Effect > 3D > Extrude & Bevel.

Fill in the settings shown on the left.

Check on Preview so you are able to see the end results from the settings. Adjust the values if necessary.

Step 2c - Create a 3D Text:

Fill in the remaining of settings as shown on the left.

Click OK once you are done.

Step 2d - Create a 3D Text:

Repeat Step 2a to 2c for the rest of your letters.

Adjust the values in Step 2b to get the letters facing in different directions.

Select the first letter and press on Ctrl+C to copy it.

Step 2e - Create a 3D Text:

Go back to Photoshop and press Ctrl+V to paste the first letter.

Paste As prompt will appear. Choose Smart Object.

Do the copying and pasting for rest of the letters.

Step 3a - Apply Surface Gradient:

Select Magic Wand and enter the settings shown on the left.

Click on top surface of the first letter.

Step 3b - Apply Surface Gradient:

Click on Refine Edge.

Fill in the settings as shown on the left.

Step 3c - Apply Surface Gradient:

Create a new layer above the first letter and name it as Surface. Fill the selection with #000000.

Select the new layer and choose Blending Option.

Activate Gradient Overlay set the colors to be #003146 and #B8EBFE. Set the Blend Mode to Normal, Opacity to 100%, Style to Linear, Angle to 90 and Scale to 100%.

Step 3d - Apply Surface Gradient:

Repeat Step 3a to 3c for the rest of letters.

Try to use different colors of same theme in the gradient overlay, such as shades of green and cyan.

Step 4a - Adding Flowery Swirls:

Load Suddenly Spring brushes. Create another layer above Surface layer and name it as Floral.

Set the foreground to #FFFFFF. Select one of the Suddenly Spring brushes and paint over the gradient.

Set the Blend Mode of Floral layer to Overlay and opacity to 50%. Ctrl+left click on this layer to load its selection. Click on Layer Mask button.

Step 4b - Adding Flowery Swirls:

Repeat Step 4a for rest of the letters.

Create new layers in between each letter to paint some black (#000000) shadows with Soft Brush tool. Mask these shadows the same way done for the Floral layers.

Step 4c - Adding Flowery Swirls:

Create a new layer below all the letters.

Set the foreground color to #BEF7A8 and paint some flowers around the letters.

Right-click on the layer and choose Blending Options. Activate Outer Glow and set the color to #FFFFFF. Leave the rest of settings as default.

Step 4d - Adding Flowery Swirls:

Repeat Step 4c to plant more flowers around the letters.

Step 4e - Adding Flowery Swirls:

Create a new layer below everything.

Set the foreground color to #FFFFFF and paint a large flower. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set the radius to 6px.

Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Overlay.

Step 5a - Glowing Stars:

Create a new layer above everything and name it as Stars.

Use Soft Brush tool with size 1px and color #FFFFFF, draw a big cross as shown in the diagram. Erase slightly on the 4 corners with big Soft Eraser.

Select Soft Brush tool, set its opacity 20% and size to 30px. Paint a fade dot in the center of the cross.

Step 5b - Glowing Stars:

Right-click on the Stars layer and choose Blending Options.

Choose Outer Glower and set the color to #FFFFFF. Leave the rest of the settings as default.

Optional:

You may repeat Step 5a and 5b for as many stars as you like with different sizes.

I hope you have enjoyed the tutorial as much as I do. Thanks!

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

3D typographic effects in Photoshop

2008-12-10T05:16:00.001-08:00

In it, type-effects guru Nik Ainley shows how to create the above image. The key is to create the letters in a 3D package first as individual characters, then bring them into Photoshop for further post work.

Through clever use of Photoshop’s masking tools and layers, Nik has created type with characters that weave in and out of each other. The characters’ faces also provide a handy canvas for further effects, such as patterns, gradients and lines.

01. Start by producing each letter separately in a 3D program, which Nik did here in Xara 3D, and import them into a Photoshop document. Keep each letter in its own layer, and then arrange them around each other, in whatever way looks good to you.

It might seem odd to create 3D text in this way, but Photoshop offers a lot more control than a 3D program and you will be able to produce a larger than life effect. To save time, the PSD file with the 3D text is included on this issue’s CD.

02. One advantage of working in Photoshop is that letters can appear to be both behind other letters while having parts in front of them at the same time. To achieve this effect, you need to mask parts of individual letters to make it appear that they’re behind others.

To mask part of a letter, start by adding a layer mask to the appropriate letter. The next step is to select which letter you want to appear in front – in the screen above, we’re making the E appear as though it’s partly in front of the H.

Select its outline by Ctrl+clickingon its layer thumbnail. Using the brush tool, brush black onto the H’s layer mask. It should now appear that the bottom tip of the E is in front of the H. Repeat this for as many letters as you like.

03. Next, you’ll start working on the lighting and shadows, starting with adding shadows onto the F. Create a new layer above letter F. To make sure the shadows fall only on the letter, give it a mask.

The shape of the mask must correspond to the shape of the F, minus parts masked off in the previous step. To do this, Ctrl+click on the F layer’s thumbnail, then Ctrl+Alt+Shift click on the layer mask’s thumbnail to get the intersection of the two. Now select your new layer and add a layer mask. It should be the same shape as your selection.

04. Using a large soft brush – say 70px – brush black onto this layer around the parts of the letter that should be in shadow. In this case, the top bit that falls behind the R and the bottom that falls behind the S. Repeat this process for each layer and you should end up with a lot more depth.

05. With the shadows on the letters done, now we need shadow on the background. Create a new layer below all of the letters. Select the outline of all your letters, and fill it with black. Run a Gaussian blur on this layer. Now, use a Warp Transform to pull it downwards slightly so it seems that the letters are floating above the background. Blur again, and drop the layer’s opacity if the shadows seem too harsh.

06. Next, add some more-controlled shadows beneath the layers to give greater depth. Create a new layer above your first shadow layer and, using a soft 50px brush, add black into this layer. Where you add it is down to what looks good. Add more underneath the base of the letters to give the impression that they’re standing up vertically.

07. Now start working on the actual letters. The first step is to isolate the front face of each letter, using either the magic wand or pen tool. When you have a face selected, create a new layer above your letter but below the letter’s shadow.

Fill it with whatever colour you want, but make it slightly darker and duller. If you have masked off part of the letter in step 2, you will need to duplicate the letter’s mask to your face layer.

08. To style each letter face we are going to use layer styles. The exact settings are really down to personal taste, but the basics are something like this: Inner Shadow: Color dodge, white, opacity 15 per cent, distance: 0px, size: 45px Inner Glow: Screen, white, opacity 75 per cent, size 2px Gradient Overlay: Soft light, black to white, opacity 100 per cent, angled to make the letter lighter at the top, darker at the bottom. Satin: Color dodge, dark grey, opacity 50 per cent, distance: 20px, size: 40px

09. Once you have got something you are happy with we are going to start working on the sides of each letter.

10. Next, you need to change the colours and lighting of the sides, as well as get them to look more consistent with each other.

To do this, you need to use Photoshop's adjustment layers. Start by selecting the outline of the F shadow s layer mask and creating a new gradient map adjustment layer just below the face layer.

11. Now it’s possible to stack additional adjustment layers above and below the layer created in step 10 to change the lightness, contrast and colours as much as you like. Next, copy the adjustment layers onto each other letter and go through making small adjustments to get a more consistent colouring.

12. To give a little extra gloss, run Filter > Artistic > Plastic wrap on the body of each letter with the settings Highlight strength 14, Detail 1, and Smoothness 14. After each filter is applied, fade it to a soft light blending mode (Edit > Face).

13. Now to bring all the colours together to give a more harmonious feel, add some adjustment layers right at the top of the image. Start by applying the same gradient map as before using a soft light blending mode at 50 per cent opacity.

14. Try different adjustment layers to get the right colours and balance. Add curves layer to lighten it, a photo filter layer to add more red, and a colour balance layer to add more orange.

Add as many or as few as you like to get the effect you want. As a final tweak, mask all these adjustment layers so that they didn’t have so much of an effect on the background colour.

15. From here you can do as much or as little as you want. Add more details to each letter, add more highlights and shadows, change the colours, whatever you can think of. This example has a few more details, but you can take it much further.

Nik Ainley

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Creating a Grunge Rock Poster

2008-12-10T03:59:00.000-08:00

Preparation:

You will need a beautiful guitarist from Mjranum Stock, Vector Speakers from Thegoldenmane and New York Sinatra from Antoine Mallet.

Click here to download Guitarist.
Click here to download Vector Speakers.
Click here to download New York Sinatra.

All rights of these resources belong to their respective owners.

Step 1a - Cropping Figures:

Create a document with size 800x600 pixels.

Open up Oh Yeah 3 and crop out the figure using the Filter > Extract tool.

Step 1b - Cropping Figures:

Do the same extraction for the other 2 images, Oh Yeah 4 and 5. You can find these other figures in the gallery of Mjranum Stock. Trust me, you gonna love his stock images.

Position the figures as shown in the diagram.

Step 2 - Setting Up Background:

Create a new layer below the figures and name it as Colorbars.

Using Rectangular Marquee tool, draw several boxes and fill them up with different colors.

The colors used in the example are (starting from the left) #F17D0C, #780606, #000000, #DC0C0C, #EE9D0D, #E58C0C and #F4F424.

Step 3a - Create Displacement Map:

Create a new document with size 800x600.

Select the Paint Bucket tool, set the style to Pattern and choose a default pattern call Textured Tile.

Apply this pattern by clicking onto the Background layer.

Step 3b - Create Displacement Map:

Unlock the Background layer by double-clicking on it and rename it to Texture.

Go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. Then follow by Image > Adjustments > Levels. Set the values to be 130, 0, 220.

Save this document as Displace.PSD. You may close this document after that.

Step 4a - Adding Grunge Effect:

Select all the figures and Colorbars layers, go to Edit > Free Transform.

Rotate these images at -15 angle.

Step 4b - Adding Grunge Effect:

Now select the Colorbars layer and go to Filter > Distort > Displace.

Set both Horizontal and Vertical Scale to 20. Choose Stretch to Fit and Repeat Edge Pixels.

Hit OK and choose to open the Displace.PSD saved at Step 3b.

Step 4c - Adding Grunge Effect:

Duplicate a layer for each figure, Oh Yeah 3, 4 and 5.

Select the bottom copy of each figure, go to Filter > Distort > Displace.

Set both Horizontal and Vertical Scale to 20. Choose Stretch to Fit and Repeat Edge Pixels.

Hit OK and choose to open the Displace.PSD saved at Step 3b.

Step 5 - Adding a Footer:

Create a new layer and name it as Footer.

Using the Polygonal Lasso tool, draw a selection similar to the diagram and fill it with #000000.

Step 6 - Adding Burst:

Create a new layer between the Colorbars and figures and name it as Burst. Using Custom Shape tool and choose Registration Target 2 path. Go to Edit > Free Transform Path and resize the shape as shown on the left.

Go to Paths tab and Ctrl+left click on the path to load selection. Go back to Layers tab, select Burst layer and fill it with #000000. set the Blend Mode to Overlay and opacity to 50%.

Step 7 - Adding Speakers:

Open up the Speakers_by_Thegoldenmane.AI in Photoshop.

Set the resolution to 300 and leave the rest as default.

Using the Rectangular Marquee tool, select the speakers you need and drag them as layers above the Burst layer. Go to Edit > Free Transform to rotate and resize them as shown in the diagram.

Step 8 - Adding New York City:

Open up the New York Sinatra AI in Photoshop.

Set the resolution to 300 and leave the rest as default.

Using the Rectangular Marquee tool, select the city and drag it as layer directly below the Footer layer. Go to Edit > Free Transform to rotate and resize it as shown in the diagram.

Step 9 - Adding Texts:

Type in some information at the footer area.

And you are almost done!.

Step 10 - Adjusting the Levels:

I did abit more adjustments to the Levels in general by creating a new Levels Adjustment Layer.

The values are set at 38, 1, 223.

Optional:

You may add another Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer and make the design more pinkish.

I set the Hue to -80, Saturation to 0 and Lightness to 0.

Optional:

Instead of making it pink, you may wish to turn the whole design into a sephia tone by adding a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer.

Check on colorize and set the Hue to 45, Saturation to 30 and Lightness to 0.

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Create Architecture with Pixel Stretching

2008-12-10T03:58:00.000-08:00

Preparations:

In this tutorial, we will need an image that you wish to create the stretch pixel effect with.

I'm using a photo of Singapore skyscraper taken by archlover. Click here to view the original image.

All rights of these resources belong to their respective owners.

Step 1 - Setting Up Background:

Create a document with size 750x550 pixels.

Fill the background with #000000.

Step 2 - Create Reference Layer:

Open up the photo and drag it into the document. Name this layer as Reference.

Set the opacity of this image layer to 40%.

This layer is to be used as a reference when we are doing the following steps.

Step 3a - Stretch Vertically:

Select the Reference layer. Zoom in the image so it is easier to work with.

Using the Rectangular Marquee tool, make selection with 1 pixel height as shown in the diagram. Select only the part where you wish to stretch the colors.

Press Ctrl+C.

Step 3b - Stretch Vertically:

Hide the Reference layer by clicking on the Eye icon.

Press Ctrl+V. This will create a new layer with the row of pixels you have selected in Step 3a.

Go to Edit > Free Transform. Stretch the pixels downwards.

Step 3c - Stretch Vertically:

You may also select some smaller areas and stretch them further so there are more variations in the stretched items.

Step 4a - Stretch Horizontally:

Unhide the Reference layer by clicking on the Eye icon again.

Similar to Step 3a, select a column with 1 pixel width using the Rectangular Marquee tool.

Press Ctrl+C.

Step 4b - Stretch Horizontally:

Hide the Reference layer.

Press Ctrl+V.

Go to Edit > Free Transform. Stretch the pixels horizontally.

Step 4c - Stretch Horizontally:

Select part of the stretched pixels and go to Edit > Free Transform again.

This time we create some perspective to it. Go to Edit > Transform > Skew.

Move your cursor over the border of the Transform grid till you see a double-sided arrow. Left-click and drag your cursor downwards.

Step 5a - Create Architecture:

Zoom out to have an overview of the buildings you created so far.

Step 5b - Create Architecture:

With the same methods stated in Step 3 and 4, create the rest of the buildings as shown in the diagram.

Step 5c - Create Architecture:

You may adjust the opacity (around 30-60%) and overlap some of the buildings to create a better effect.

Step 6 - Cropping Objects:

Let us mix some cropped objects to the foreground.

Duplicate the original photo. Select the duplicated layer and create a Layer Mask on it.

Using Soft Brush tool with color #000000, paint the areas that you wish to hide on the Layer Mask. You may touch up on the mask by painting with white and black colors.

Step 7 - Adding Halftone Effects:

Download halftone graphics at Vecteezy here. Open up the file in Illustrator. Select one of the halftone effects and press Ctrl+C.

Back to Photoshop and press Ctrl+V. Select Paste as Smart Object. Resize the graphic to your desired size.

Right-click on the layer and choose Blending Options. Activate Color Overlay and choose the color you wish to replace with.

Optional:

I added texts and some more halftone effects to the background.

This is a very simple tutorial that I hope will be useful to everyone reading it.

Below are the images that inspire me to write this tutorial:

Garbage designed by Jomino

Mitdarchitec_ure designed by Designers Republic

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Making of Fiery Planets Collision

2008-12-10T03:57:00.000-08:00

Preparations:

We will need around 4 images for this tutorial. The fantasic Nebula Stock designed by Kire1987, planets from hameed and some rocks.

Click here to download Nebula Stock.
Click here to download the planets

All rights of these resources belong to their respective owners.

Step 1 - Setting Up Background:

Create a document of size 750x550 pixels.

Find the Red Nebula in the resource pack and resize it to fit into the document.

Step 2 - Position the Planets:

We will need one small planet and another larger one.

Let's name the small planet as Planet 1 and the other as Planet 2.

Overlap the two planets in manner shown in the diagram.

Step 3 - Adjusting Colors:

Create an Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer above all these layers.

Check on Colorize and key in 24 for Hue, 50 for Saturation and 0 for Lightness.

Step 4a - Creating Explosion:

Create a new layer and name it as Yellow Flame.

Set your foreground color to #F7F61C and use Soft Brush tool to paint around the bottom of Planet 1.

Using the Smudge tool, pull out the left and right corners of the yellow paint as shown in the diagram.

Step 4b - Creating Explosion:

Select the Eraser tool and set mode to Brush and type to Dry Brush.

Remove edges of the Yellow Flame with Eraser tool of various brush sizes. Blur some of the parts with the Smudge tool.

Step 4c - Creating Explosion:

Create a new layer and name it as Orange Flame.

Set your foreground color to #FE9005. Repeat the same as Step 4a and 4b.

Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set the blur radius to 5px.

Step 4d - Creating Explosion:

Create a new layer and name it as White Flame.

Set your foreground color to #FFFFFF. Repeat the same as Step 4a, 4b.

Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set the blur radius to 3px.

Step 4e - Creating Explosion:

Now we have to blend all these flame layers together.

Set the Blend Mode of Orange Flame to Hard Light.

Right-click on White Flame and choose Blending Option. Activate Outer Glow and set the Blend Mode to Screen, color to #F9F900, Spread to 5px and Size to 20px. The rest remain as default.

Step 5a - Adding Cracks:

Create a new layer and name it as Cracks.

Use Soft Brush tool of size 5px and color #FFFFFF, draw some irregular lines above the flames.

Remove some parts of the lines with Soft Eraser tool.

Step 5b - Adding Cracks:

Right-click on Cracks and choose Blending Options.

Activate Outer Glow and set the Blend Mode to Linear Dodge (Add), Opacity to 100%, color to #FFFFBE, Spread to 0 and Size to 7px. The rest of settings remain as default.

Step 6a - Adding Lens Flare:

Create a new layer and name it as Flare.

Fill this Flare layer with #000000. Go to Filter > Render > Lens Flare. Set the lens type to be 50-300mm zoom and position the flare as shown in the diagram.

Step 6b - Adding Lens Flare:

Resize the Flare layer with Free Transform tool.

Rearrange the order of the layers such that Flare is just below the flames layer. Position the lens flare to the center of the flames.

Step 6c - Adding Lens Flare:

Set the Blend Mode of Flare layer to Screen.

Duplicate the Flare layer and set the Blend Mode of the new layer to Color Dodge. Duplicate this new layer once more to brighten the flare further.

Step 7a - Glowing Bits:

Create a new layer and name it as Glow Bits.

Set the foreground color to #FFFFFF and use Soft Brush tool of various sizes, paint some dots around the flames.

Step 7b - Glowing Bits:

Duplicate the Glow Bits layer.

With the Smudge tool, pull a trailing tail out of each dot towards the flame as shown in the diagram.

Step 8a - Add Flying Rocks:

Extract out some rocks of various sizes and place them around the document.

Step 8b - Add Flying Rocks:

Duplicate one of the rocks layer.

Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Set the Angle to 0 and Distance to 180px.

Step 8c - Add Flying Rocks:

Select the blurred rock and go to Edit > Transform > Distort to adjust the shape into the one shown in the diagram.

Right-click on the original rock layer and choose Blending Options.

Activate Gradient Overlay and set Blend Mode to Multiply, Opacity to 100%, Gradient to Black,White, Scale and Angle depending on the size of your rock.

Step 8d - Add Flying Rocks:

Activate Outer Glow and set Blend Mode to Overlay, Opacity to 100%, Noise to 0 , Color to #FFFFFF, Spread to 0 and Size to 20px. The rest of settings remain as default.

Activate Inner Glow and set Blend Mode to Normal, Opacity to 60%, Noise to 0 , Color to #000000, Spread to 0 and Size to 25px. The rest of settings remain as default.

Optional:

You may repeat Step 8 for as many rocks as you desire as long as it looks good. I also created a Levels Adjustment Layer to enhance the depth.

This is a long tutorial and I hope you have enjoyed it. Thanks!

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Make a Web Interface with Car Images

2008-12-10T03:56:00.000-08:00

Preparations:

We will need several nice angles of a sports car. I'm using Toyota FT-HS Hybrid Sports Car for this tutorial.

Found these images through google with keyword "Sports Car". I think you can find even better ones if spend more time on it heh.

All rights of these resources belong to their respective owners.

Step 1 - Setting Up Background:

Create a document of size 900x550 pixels.

Set the foreground color to #6D6C67 and background to #FFFFFF.

Fill the Background layer with a top-down gradient.

Step 2a - Forming the Header:

Open up the front view of the car and identify any parts of it that can be used to form your header.

I'm using the bumper area that has the nice curves. Using Pen tool, create a path around the part you will need.

Step 2b - Forming the Header:

Go to Paths tab and press Ctrl+left click on the Work Path you created to load selection..

Back to the Layers tab and drag the selected area to your document above the Background layer.

Go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical and position it near to the top right corner.

Step 2c - Forming the Header:

Now will need to extend the length of the top bar.

Using the Rectangular Marquee tool, select a small portion of the top bar. Press Ctrl+C to copy then Ctrl+V to paste. You may need to repeat this several times.

Align all the pasted bars with Move tool as shown in the diagram.

Step 2d - Forming the Header:

Now we have the top part of header ready. Let's move on to the bottom.

I found another nice curve at the side of the car.

Using the Pen tool, I repeated the similar steps I did in Step 2a and 2b except for flipping vertical.

Step 2e - Forming the Header:

Place the cropped part under the top header to form something that looks like a frame.

Use Soft Eraser tool to blend the two images if need to. Normally just fade the edge a little will do.

Step 2f - Forming the Header:

Similar to Step 2c, we need to extend the bottom part of the header.

Using Rectangular Marquee tool, select 1 px of the lower bar. Go to Edit > Free Transform and stretch that selected area towards the left.

Step 2g - Forming the Header:

Now comes to the last part of the header.

Use Pen tool to crop one of the wheels out. Remember to include some body parts as well because they will be useful for blending later on.

Step 2h - Forming the Header:

Drag the wheel into the document and position it as shown in the diagram.

Use Soft Eraser tool to blend the edges again so all the three images looks as one piece.

Step 3a - Forming the Sidebar:

I cannot find a really suitable part on the images to form the sidebar.

So I created a new layer, named WhiteBars, below the header and drew 3 vertical bars. The colors I used are (from the left) #BDC0C5, #FFFFFF and #DAD7E0.

Step 3b - Forming the Sidebar:

Create a new layer above WhiteBars. Name this new layer as BlackBars.

I drew in a black bar with color #222222. This is to create a contrast where the white areas are exterior casing covering the black interior parts.

Step 3c - Forming the Sidebar:

Found another great part that can be included as part of the sidebar.

Crop the desired area with Pen tool and drag it into the document.

Step 3d - Forming the Sidebar:

Go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal.

Use Free Transform tool to rotate the piece so it fits beside the BlackBars nicely.

Step 4a - Forming Navigation Bar:

We need to enclose an area for navigation buttons.

Using Pen tool, crop out the handle as shown in the diagram.

Step 4b - Forming Navigation Bar:

Position the handle as shown on the left.

Using Rectangular Marquee tool, select 1 px of the handle. Go to Edit > Free Transform and stretch that selected area towards the left.

Step 4c - Forming Navigation Bar:

Merge all the layers (except for Background) created. Duplicate this merged layer and go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal. Adjust the two sides according to the width you wish to have for the interface.

Create a new layer, named Base, below the interface. Fill in the empty areas with boxes of colors. The colors I used are (from top) #000000, #8E352C and #131315.

Step 4d - Forming Navigation Bar:

Create a new layer above Base and name it as Lines.

Draw in the double lines to separate the buttons. The colors used are #BA594A and #5C0000.

Step 4e - Forming Navigation Bar:

Create a new layer above Lines and name it as Shadows.

Using the Soft Brush tool with color #000000, paint in some shadows around the navigation buttons as shown in the diagram.

Optional:

Now add in some images and titles to complete the interface. I'm using the logo and screenshots of Midnight Club 3 in the example.

This tutorial only show the basic methods used to create interface with car images. You can do the same with motor bikes or even trucks. Anyway thanks and hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Form a Threatening Troop of Archers

2008-12-10T03:55:00.000-08:00

Preparations:

We will need a desert, clouds and several characters that you wish to form up your troops with (I'm using a set of ancient archers for this tutorial).

All rights of these resources belong to their respective owners.

Step 1 - Setting Up Environment:

Create a document of size 750 by 550px.

Place in the desert and remove the sky along the edge of the sand with an Eraser tool.

Step 2 - Adding Shadows:

Right-click on the desert layer and choose Blending Options.

Activate Gradient Overlay and insert the settings shown in the diagram.

You can briefly see shadow cast on the right of the document.

Step 3 - Adding Clouds:

Place the clouds below the desert layer.

Select the clouds layer and go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. Insert 165 for Hue, -15 for Saturation and 0 for Lightness.

Go to Image > Adjustments > Levels and enter the values 30, 1 ,255.

Step 4a - Drawing Grid Lines:

Create a new layer above the rest. Use Pencil tool of size 1px and color #FFFFFF, press down Shift key, and draw a straight line at the top.

Ctrl+left click on the layer to load its selection. Ctrl+Alt+T to load transform tool (this is different from Edit > Free Transform or Ctrl+T).

Step 4b - Drawing Grid Lines:

Press a few times on the Down Arrow key and you will see a new line appearing on the same layer.

Shift the new line about 20px below the top original line you drawn and hit Enter.

Step 4c - Drawing Grid Lines:

On the same layer, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T (this is different from Edit > Transform > Again or Ctrl+Shift+T).

You will see more lines appear downwards with the same spacing as you did for the 1st and 2nd line earlier. Carry on doing so till you fill up the document with lines.

Step 4d - Drawing Grid Lines:

Go to Edit > Transform > Perspective.

Grab either the top-right or bottom-right square and drag it close to the vertical center of the document.

You should get to see white lines converge like the ones shown in the diagram.

Step 5a - First Row of Archers:

Crop out the character you'll be using to form up the first row.

Usually it should be either in kneeling or bending positions so we can see other variations of pose behind.

Place the character as shown in the diagram.

Step 5b - First Row of Archers:

This part is pretty much similar to the technique used earlier in duplicating the lines.

Ctrl+left click on the character layer to load its selection. Ctrl+Alt+T to load transform tool (this is different from Edit > Free Transform or Ctrl+T).

Move and resize the new character generated to the right. Use the grid lines to estimate its position and size. Hit Enter once you're done.

Step 5c - First Row of Archers:

On the same character layer, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T (this is different from Edit > Transform > Again or Ctrl+Shift+T).

There you will see another archer forming up along the grid line. Carry on doing a few more times to create a nice row of archers.

Step 6 - Second Row of Archers:

Create a new layer below the first row of archers and repeat Step 5 to form the 2nd row.

Need to pay attention to the perspective where all the archers converge to the same point.

This is somehow trial and error for the start, even with the grid lines. Things will be easier once you get the hang of it.

Step 7 - Forming the Troops:

Repeat Step 5 and 6 with other poses. It's up to you to decide how many rows of archers to form up in the troop. I've 8 rows (or layers) of archers in this tutorial.

Note that it is better to place the different poses near to each other without overlapping for the larger sized ones.

Step 8 - Adding Shadows:

Create a new layer below all the archers.

Use the Soft Brush tool of color #000000 and opacity 70%, paint in the shadows of the archers.

Step 9 - Adding More Shadows:

Right-click on the first layer of archers and choose Blending Options.

Activate Gradient Overlay and key in the values shown in the diagram. Click OK once you're done.

Right-click on the layer again and choose Copy Layer Style, then follow by right-clicking other layers of archers to Paste Layer Style.

Step 10 - Adjusting Colors:

Click on Create a new Adjustment Layer and select Levels. Key in the values 7, 1, 228.

Create another Adjustment Layer and select Hue/Saturation. Key in -10 for Hue, -10 for Saturation and 0 for Lightness..

Optional:

I've further added some colored smoke in between the layers of archers and also some glitters at the tip of their bow and arrows.

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial. Thanks!

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Dynamic Matrix Text Effect

2008-12-10T03:54:00.000-08:00

Preparations:

Create a new flash file (ActionScript 2.0) and save it as test.fla in this case.

Step 1:

Create a Dynamic Text on the Stage and key in "txt" as the value for Var.

Step 2:

Convert the Dynamic Text into a Movie Clip Symbol and set its instance name to "mc0".

Step 3:

Create a layer on top of the object layer and name it as actions.

Step 4:

Right-click on the frame and select Actions to open up the Actions panel.

Step 5:

Insert these codes inside the Actions panel.

Change the string of "MY_STRING" to your own preferred sentence.

Change the kern value to space out the letters depending on the font size of your dynamic text.

MY_STRING="Welcome to 10Steps.SG";
kern = 10;
total = MY_STRING.length;
xstart = mc0._x
mc0._visible = 0;
var i = 0;
counterAppear = false;
function txtDuplication(){
counterAppear = false;
if(i

Step 6:

Right-click on mc0 on the Stage and select Actions to open up the Actions panel.

Step 7:

Insert these codes inside the Actions panel.

onClipEvent(load){
this._visible = 0;
txt = chr(starting);
steps = final-starting;
if(steps==0){
this._visible = 1;
}
adding = steps > 0 ? +1 : -1;
_parent.counterAppear = true;
}
onClipEvent(enterFrame){
if(steps == 0){
return;
}
if(_root.counterAppear==true){
_parent.txtDuplication();
}
this._visible = 1;
thisChar = ord(txt);
txt = chr(thisChar + adding);
steps = steps - adding;
}

You can find plenty of Bitmap Fonts over at Dafont. The one I used in this tutorial is "Visitor by Enigma".

Hope you enjoyed the session. Have fun!

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Creating a Nuclear Explosion Effect

2008-12-10T03:53:00.001-08:00

Preparations:

We will use an image of the gorgeous Miss Mosh, photographed by Mjranum and Deserted City from fl8us Stock.

Click here to download Miss Mosh image.
Click here to download the city image.

All rights of these resources belong to their respective owners.

Step 1 - Setting Up Background:

Create a document of size 750 by 550px and place the city image at the center of it.

Create a new Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer and check on Colorize. Key in 0 for Hue, 15 for Saturation and 0 for Lightness.

Create a new Levels Adjustment Layer and key in value 10, 0.92, 255.

Step 2 - Adding Dark Clouds:

Create a new layer above the rest.

Set foreground color to #FFFFFF and background to #000000. Go to Filter > Render > Clouds.

Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Multiply.

Step 3 - Apply Liquify Effect:

Select the city layer and go to Filter > Liquify.

Pick the Bloat tool and set its size to 600, density to 50, pressure to 50, rate to 80 and turbulent jitter to 50.

Click once or twice at the center of the city.

Step 4 - Cropping the Model:

Extract Miss Mosh out of the background and position her at the center of the bloated city.

Step 5 - Adding Shadow:

Duplicate the Miss Mosh layer. Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and set its Lightness to 0.

Rearrange this duplicated layer to be under the original Miss Mosh.

Go to Filter > Gaussian Blur with 3px and rescale to the shape as shown in the diagram.

Step 6a - Adding Nuclear Wave:

Create a new layer between Miss Mosh and the city layer.

Use Ellipse tool to draw a circular path. Go to Edit > Transform Path > Rotate to turn the path at 45 degrees.

Use Direct Selection tool to adjust the path as shown in the diagram.

Step 6b - Adding Nuclear Wave:

Select the layer created in Step 6a and go to Filter > Render > Clouds.

Go to Filter > Liquify. With the same settings in Step 3, left-click and hold on at the center of the clouds. Release the mouse when you got something similar to the left.

Step 6c - Adding Nuclear Wave:

Go to Path tab to find the path you created earlier at Step 6a.

Ctrl+left click on the path to load selection. Back to Layers tab, select the bloated clouds and set a layer mask with the selection.

Using a Soft Brush tool with size 300 and color #000000, paint the bottom border of layer mask.

Step 6d - Adding Nuclear Wave:

Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Soft Light.

Step 7 - Adding Highlights:

Create a new layer on top of the bloated clouds created in Step 6.

Repeat Step 6a to 6d on this new layer.

Set the Blend Mode to Color Dodge. You may go to Image > Adjustments > Auto Levels to enhance the highlights.

Step 8 - Adding Color:

Go to Path tab and load selection of the path again.

Create a new layer above the bloated clouds and fill the selection with #7197C3. Create a layer mask for this layer and paint the center of the mask with #000000 as shown on left.

Set the Blend Mode to Linear Dodge.

Step 9 - Adding Flare:

Duplicate Miss Mosh layer and go to Filter > Blur > Radial Blur. Set the Method to Zoom and Amount to 100.

Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Linear Dodge.

Duplicate this layer for another two times to achieve a brighter flare.

Step 10a - Adding Burst:

Create a new layer above the rest.

Draw bursting shapes with Pen tool and fill it with #FFFFFF.

Note that the burst starts from within the clothes. So only concentrate on the chest and sleeves area.

Step 10b - Adding Burst:

Select the bursting shapes and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur with 5px.

Use Soft Eraser tool of size 100 to fade all ends of the burst.

Step 10c - Adding Burst:

Use Soft Brush tool with size 100 and color #FFFFFF, paint a dot at the center of the burst.

And you are done! This tutorial took part of Fabio's Create a Powerful Mental Wave Explosion Effect as reference. Hope you like it.

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Making a Modern Abstract Scene

2008-12-10T03:51:00.000-08:00

Preparations:

We will use an image of a glass staircase (taken by Chris Borrell) and Vector Brush Set 2 from PaulW.

Click here to download the brushes.
Click here to download the image.

All rights of these resources belong to their respective owners.

Step 1 - Setting Up Background:

Create a document of size 750 by 550px.

Fill the Background layer with #41432B.

Step 2a - Adjust Brush Settings:

Open up the Brush Palette by pressing F5.

Check on Shape Dynamics, Scattering and Other Dynamics.

Under Shape Dynamics, key in the values as shown in the diagram.

Step 2b - Adjust Brush Settings:

Under Scattering, key in the values as shown in the diagram.

Step 2c - Adjust Brush Settings:

Under Other Dynamics, key in the values as shown in the diagram.

What these settings does is actually to duplicate brush shapes of different sizes and scatter them around your cursor during painting.

Step 3a - Painting Shapes:

Create a new layer and call it as Shape 1.

Set your foreground color to #48180A and select Brush 4. Paint around the document and you can see shapes appearing like the ones I got here.

There is no fix way on how to move and paint with the brush. Everything is random (and that's what makes it cool).

Step 3b - Painting Shapes:

Create another new layer above and call it as Shape 2.

Set your foreground color to #EEF4DA and select Brush 25.

Paint around like what you did earlier in Step 3a. Maybe you can reduce the number of shapes generated so there is a better focus on the brighter color

Step 4 - Grouping Layers:

Create a new group folder and call it as Patterns. Drag both Shape 1 and 2 layers into this folder.

Draw a vertical white line of 2px around the position shown in the diagram.

This is to define an empty area on the right where you may wish to add texts in later on.

Step 5 - Masking a Group:

Using the Rectangular Marquee tool, make a selection on the left half of document separated by the white line.

Select the Patterns folder and make a layer mask on it with this selection.

Step 6a - Adding the Stairs:

Crop out part of the stairs image using the Pen tool. You do not have to be very precise on the path as long as it looks straight and neat.

Place the stairs layer into Patterns folder and align it to vertical center of the document as shown.

Step 6b - Adding the Stairs:

While on the stairs layer, go to Image > Adjustments > Levels.

Key in the values 60, 1, 180. This is to increase contrast between brightness and darkness of the image.

These values may vary when using images other than the one used in this tutorial.

Step 6c - Adding the Stairs:

Change the Blending Mode of the stairs layer to Multiply.

Bring up Shape 2 layer to be above the stairs.

Step 7 - Adding More Details:

Repeat Step 6a, b and c to insert more details to your design.

You may tweak around the values of Opacity and Levels to achieve better results.

Step 8 - Drawing Boxes:

Draw in a few layers of color bars with different heights at the bottom of the stairs.

The colors I chose here (from top to bottom) are #4C0C02, #A3CA9D, #3B2F19 and #000000.

Optional:

Now you can start to type your texts in with different sizes and opacity. I will suggest you to use pixel fonts since they blend in better to this form of design.

The font I used here is called Visitor. You can visit Dafont.com to see more choices.

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Create an iPhone from Scratch in Photoshop

2008-12-10T03:50:00.000-08:00

Preparations:

Create a document of size 750x550 pixels.

Fill the background with a vertical gradient where the foreground color is #525659 and background color is #1C252E.

Step 1 - Drawing the Base:

Create a new layer and name it as base. Select the Rounded Rectangle tool and set its radius to 22 pixels. Draw a rounded rectangle like the one shown in the diagram. Fill the shape with any color.

Right-click on the layer and select Blending Options > Gradient Overlay. Set the color on the left to #8F9498 and right to #000000. Follow the rest of the settings as stated.

Step 2 - Drawing Highlights:

Create another layer and name it as highlights.

Using the Rounded Rectangle tool, set its radius to 20 pixels and draw a slightly smaller rounded rectangle than the base.

Fill this shape with #FFFFFF.

Step 3 - Drawing the Border:

Duplicate the highlights layer and name this new layer as border.

Go to Edit > Free Transform to scale the shape smaller vertically than the shape in highlights layer.

Right-click on this layer and select Blending Options > Color Overlay. Set the color to #1F2326.

Step 4 - Highlight the Border:

Create a new layer on top of border and name it as bhighlights.

While you are on bhighlights layer, Ctrl+click on border layer to load selection. Go to Select > Modify > Contract with 3px. Then Select > Modify > Feather with 2px.

Fill this selection with #FFFFFF.

Step 5 - Drawing the Surface:

Create a new layer and name it as surface.

Use the Rounded Rectangle tool with radius 18px, draw a rounded rectangle that is around 8px smaller than the base.

Fill the shape with a gradient where the foreground is #2D3037 and background is #000000.

Step 6 - Drawing the Speaker:

Create a new layer and name it as speaker.

Use the Rounded Rectangle tool with radius 2px, draw a small rounded rectangle that is around 25px from top of the base.

Fill the top half of shape with #000000 and bottom half with #828384.

Step 7 - Drawing the Screen:

Create a new layer and name it as screen.

Use the Rounded Rectangle tool with radius 2px, draw a rounded rectangle at the center of the surface like the one shown in the diagram.

Select the Brush tool and set the size to 2px and color to #666666. Select the Pen tool and right-click on the rounded rectangle path then select Stroke Path.

Step 8 - Drawing the Button:

Create a new layer and name it as button.

Use the Ellipse tool and draw a circle near the bottom of the surface like the one shown in the diagram.

Change your foreground color to #333333. Select the Pen tool and right-click on the circular path then select Stroke Path.

Step 9 - Drawing the Icon:

Create a new layer and name it as icon. Use the Rounded Rectangle tool with radius 2px, draw a small square at the center of the button. Select the Pen tool and right-click on the square path then select Stroke Path.

Ctrl-click on the button layer to load the button selection. While on the icon layer, use Brush tool with color #666666 and opacity 40%, paint in the highlight at the bottom of the button.

Step 10 - Adding Reflection:

Duplicate all the layers you've created so far. Merge all these layers.

Go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical. Align it to the bottom of phone base.

Use a Soft Eraser tool of 100px and opacity 60%, fade the reflected image outwards and you're done!

Optional:

Now it's time to add in your favorite iPhone wallpaper. Have fun there!

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Creating a Smoke Fading Effect

2008-12-10T03:48:00.000-08:00

Preparations:

We will need a close up image of a model, and also the awesome Smoke Brushes Set 1 designed by Falln-Stock.

Click here to download the brushes.

All rights of these resources belong to their respective owners.

Step 1 - Setting Up Environment:

Create a document of size 750 by 550px.

Use Gradient tool with foreground color #2B2B2B and background #000000, start a linear gradient from the bottom-left.

Step 2 - Adding Clouds:

Create a new layer on top of the Background. Set the foreground color to #000000 and background to #FFFFFF.

Go to Filter > Render > Clouds. Set the blending mode of this layer to Color Dodge.

Use Soft Eraser tool of size 300px, remove some parts of the clouds as shown in the diagram.

Step 3 - Cropping the Model:

Crop your model out with Pen tool and place it close to the clouds on the left.

Step 4a - Creating Smoke:

Duplicate the model layer and use the Rectangular Marquee tool to select the right half of the duplicated model.

Go to Edit > Free Transform and stretch the half of model's face to the right as shown in the diagram.

Use Soft Eraser tool of size 300px, fade off the right part of the stretched image.

Step 4b - Creating Smoke:

Go to Filter > Distort > Wave.

Set the Generators to 5, Type to Sine, Min Wavelength to 10, Max Wavelength to 120, Min Amplitude to 5, Max Amplitude to 35 and both Scale to 100%.

Select Repeat Edge Pixels under Undefined Areas.

Step 4c - Creating Smoke:

Hide the wavy model for the time being and create a new layer on top of it.

Paint a large smoke with color #FFFFFF on the new layer. Position it near to the face as shown in the diagram.

Step 4d - Creating Smoke:

On the same layer, paint in more smoke of various shapes and sizes.

Note that the smoke has to be connected or close to the skin for better results.

Step 4e - Creating Smoke:

Ctrl+left click on the smoke layer to load selection on its luminosity.

Unhide the wavy model and apply a layer mask on it with the selection. Delete the smoke layer once the layer mask is created.

See the layer shown in the diagram.

Step 5a - Fading Model:

Create a new layer above the original model.

Use Smoke Brushes of color #FFFFFF, paint in large smokes on the face of the model on the new layer.

Step 5b - Fading Model:

Ctrl+left click on the new smoke layer to load selection on its luminosity.

Select the original model layer and apply a layer mask on it with the selection. Delete the smoke layer once the layer mask is created.

See the layer shown in the diagram.

Step 6 - Apply Outer Glow:

Right-click on the original model layer and choose Blending Options.

Activate Outer Glow and set the color to #FFFFFF, mode to Color Dodge and size to 5px.

You can see a nice glowing border around the edge of the face blending with the clouds at the background.

Step 7 - Adjusting Colors:

Create a new Levels Adjustment Layer at the topmost and key in the values 40, 0.75, 255.

Create another Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer above the Levels. Key in the Hue as 190, Saturation as 25 and Lightness as 0.

Optional:

You can paint the eyes white to achieve a more mystery feel. Lastly, add some texts to complete the design!

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

Y

2008-10-14T05:38:00.001-07:00

YEYG

Yhuppy Toolbar 1.0

yKAP Bug Tracking / Issue Management Software 2.40

yPlay 1.0.75

yWriter 2.3.32

Z

2008-10-14T05:35:00.000-07:00

Z-

zNote 1.0.2

ZOC 5.11

ZO

zpad 1.0

ZTreeWin 1.74

zxChart 2.2