Friday, January 16th, 2009
This short tutorial shows you how to create the effect of arcing current in the air. Because it uses the “Difference Clouds” filter, the effect can look different every time you try it, as that particular filter changes each time you use it.
1. Open a new file. Make it 500 x 500 pixels, this is a nice size to work with for this tutorial.
2. Next you need to set the foreground colour of the file to black and the background to a light grey.
3. Select the gradient tool and then in the tool options bar, set the gradient to Foreground to Background.
4. Drag the gradient tool diagonally across the image from one corner to another.
5. The next step choose Filters > Render > Difference Clouds, which as said earlier will give a different effect each time you use it.
6. Now Invert the colours in the image by pressing Ctrl + I.
7. After doing this you need to choose Image > Adjustments > Levels to open the Levels dialog box. Drag the black slider to the right to dramatically darken the image, when doing this the effect of “electrical currents” should become apparent.
At this stage the electrical current looks very realistic but if you would like to add some extra colour to the image you can play choose Image > Adjustments > Variations. From the Variations dialog you can add colour by clicking directly on any of the preview images. Each time you click on the preview images the colour will change.
Tags: Electrical Current, Photoshop, Photoshop Effects, Photoshop Filters, tutorial
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Friday, January 9th, 2009
Adobe Photoshop is one of the most popular design programmes used by Graphic Designers and Web Developers today, this is because of its advanced level of tools and effects when it comes to editing photographs and designing graphics.
The programme was created by Adobe and works with both Windows (PC) and Macintosh. Photoshop’s name portrays it to be a programme solely designed to edit or repair photographs but it is capable of far more than this and once you have practiced tutorials and used your imagination you can create some amazing imagery using Photoshop.
The original versions of Photoshop were produced only for the Mac that allowed image editing to become affordable and accessible on your own personal computers; now Photoshop is industry standard when it comes to image editing.
The programme contains a large selection of image editing tools alongside an advanced capability of producing numerous layers, allowing images to be added, moved and rearranged over and under each other for different effects. It will also read from and convert to a large number of formats but uses its own format for layers, which is PSD.
Tags: Adobe Photoshop, graphics, Photoshop, photoshop CS3, Photoshop Effects
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Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
Chrome effects can be created in Photoshop to then be put onto objects or to be used as an effective text effect. In this tutorial I will show you how to apply a chrome effect to text or any other object.
1.) Start by creating a new image 500/500 pixels with a dark grey background, the foreground colour should be white and use the type tool to create text you would like to use to change into chrome, try and make the text as big as possible. Once you have done this choose Layer > Type > Render Layer and then hold CTRL and click on the text to select it, then go to channels palette and create a new channel.
2.) On the new channel fill the selection with white and then deselect (CTRL + D), then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and use a radius of 8. Repeat Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and use a radius of 4, repeat again using a radius of 2 and then again using a radius of 1. Once this is done go back to the layers palette and click on the type layer.
3.) Now the type layer is active go to Filter > Render > Lighting Effects and use your preferred lighting effect, try and set the texture of white high and use the light type as a spotlight. Also set the sliders to a more shiny and metallic level.
4.) After this go to Image > Adjust > Curves and alter the curves to a setting which you believe looks the best.
5.) Now you have made your chrome you need to highlight using blue highlights and again having the sliders highest at shiny and metallic. Keep adjusting the levels until you have an effect that you are happy with.
6.) Once this is completed you need to resize your type down to about half the size that it is and then add a drop shadow, you can change your design by creatively ‘playing around’ with Photoshop’s other layer style to add further depth and detail.
7.) Satin is a good effect to use with chrome of you lower the default opacity and the Outer Glow, Inner Glow and Inner Shadows also work well. Gradient Overlays with low opacity can create a interesting effect and explore the blending modes instead of just sticking to normal.
8.) Exploring the different layer styles can help you to learn new ideas and effects, and when you find something the works well you can also save it by clicking the New Style button but ensue you save them when your finished by clicking styles at the top left window, click the arrow button to the right and choose Save Styles.
Tags: effects, Photoshop, photoshop CS3, Photoshop Effects
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Monday, December 15th, 2008
To view any of your created images it is best to use the file browser in the toolbar menu, different buttons on the options bar will give you a number of ways to view your images one of which will allow you to quickly open up the browser and view high quality images alongside custom-sized thumbnails.
If you are making numerous adjustments to you’re images involving using a lot of layers your best option is to use layer comps, these will let you capture configurations of a document by recording the position, visibility and blending options of the layers which means you can later find a layer comp from the palette and reuse the setting and way everything was set at that stage.
Layers are the building blocks of many image creation workflows, especially if you are building up a document or a image from a number of other images. You may not need to work with layers if you are doing simple image adjustments, but layers help you work efficiently and are essential to most nondestructive image editing.
Tags: layers, Photoshop, Photoshop Effects, toolbar
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Monday, December 15th, 2008
The majority of Photoshop’s effects are most effective when used on photographs, but they can also be used on other types of images. One feature effect that works well on photographs is the lens blur filter, is uses effects that are similar to actually lens used on cameras e.g. focal distance, specular highlights and Iris.
These effects are attached to sliders where you can adjust the size of the aperture, as you would do on a camera, the curve of the blades and the number of blades. And then you apply the adjustment to the area that you want to blur, the effect the acts as a depth of field control tool.
After this you adjust the specular highlight control which then makes the catch lights white again, this process works on a alpha channel by creating a gradient mask and this means you can pin point focus to a certain plane in for example a landscape to make the foreground and background appear out of focus.
The crop and straighten tool is perfect for photos which have been scanned but haven’t been align properly by the scanner, there are scanners available which automatically rotate a skewed photo and crop it but if your scanner doesn’t have this feature then the crop and straighten tool saves a lot of time aligning photographs.
Photograph filters is a feature which professional photographers will appreciate! The photograph filters are automatic colour correction filters and applying these will automatically add a preset filter and then you pick the colour you would like to add using the colour picker option, the intensity of a filter is controlled by an opacity slider and fade option, automated photograph filters will pick which filter would work best for your image without you having to have any input.
Tags: cropping photographs, CS3, filters, Photoshop, Photoshop Effects
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