Preview

Before move on, let’s take a look at the design that we’re going create here. Click on the image to see it in full size.

Step 1: Create Main Background

Create new file with size: 1100 x 1600 px.

Step 2

Before we move see I’d like to start by creating groups. Putting every layer in appropiate groups will help us works effectively and help the programmer to easily code the final psd .

Step 3

Fill background with color #656565.

Step 4

In this step, we’ll change the background color. Click Add adjustment layer icon and choose Hue/Saturation. Activate Colorize option and move three sliders available until we find color that we like.

At this point, you might ask “Why using Hue/Saturation. Why not shoose the color in step 3″. The reason is with this technique you can easily change the color. All you have to do is just open the Hue/Saturation and move the silder to change the color.

Step 5

We’ll add stripe to our background. You can create stripe pattern in Photoshop but I’ve found a free tool to create stripe. Go to stripegenerator.com. Change the settings available. After you find nice stripe pattern on the preview image, click download button. You’ll have the pattern in png file type.

Step 6

Open the png pattern file in Photoshop. Click Edit > Define Pattern. Name the stripe pattern if you want then click OK.

Step 7

Return to our blog design file. Create new layer. Click Edit > Fill. Choose Pattern for its content. Click small down arrow to open available pattern and choose stripe pattern we have just created. Click OK to start fill layer with stripe.

Step 8

Set Layer’s Blend Mode to Overlay and change Opacity to 8%.

Step 9: Page Background

Activate rounded rectangle tool. Set radius to 10 px and foreground color to #7f7f7f. In the middle of the image, drag to create a rounded rectangle. Put this shape inside base group.

Step 10

Add these layer styles to give it a 3D look.

Step 11: Create Main Menu Button

Create a rounded rectangle on top. Put it inside top menu group. Add page title inside the button. Add these layer styles to the button.

Step 12

Create new layer above the button. Create an elliptical selection and fill it with black. Deselect (Ctrl + D). Add Gaussian Blur (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur). Change layer’s opacity to 30%. This subtle shadow add more depth to the button and gives 3D impressions.

Step 13

Use a pencil tool to draw 1 px white line on top of the button. Erase both ends with eraser tool.

Step 14

This 1 px line is very small. You may not notice it but it does give more depth to button’s 3D appearance. You can the difference in this animated gif.

Step 15

Draw another 1 px white line. This time on top of the content’s base. Erase both ends with eraser tool.

Step 16

Again, spot the difference with and without that 1 px line in this gif animation.

Step 17

Repeat previous steps to create another buttons.

Step 18: Content and Sidebar Background

Draw smaller rounded rectangle for content background. Use color: #c4c3c3. Add these layer styles.

Step 19

Now, select right side for sidebar.

Step 20

Click Add Adjustment Layer icon and choose Levels. Use setting shown below to make selected area lighter. This will separate it from main content area.

Step 21

Double click Hue/Saturation layer and add Inner Shadow. This will add another depth the main content area and make it seems taller.

Step 22: Create Featured Content

Create a white rounded rectangle and use these Layer Styles.

Step 23

Add picture above shape, convert it to clipping mask by pressing Ctrl + Alt + G.

Step 24

Draw black rectangle shape. Convert it to Clipping Mask (Ctrl + Alt + G). Add post on it.

Step 25

Next, we will add Featured Content banner. Draw a rectangle above the picture. Click its right side to add a point. Select the point using direct selection tool and move it to right. Write FEATURED CONTENT inside the shape. Draw another shape under the banner and use darker color.

Step 26

Ctrl-click banner and fill it with black. Move it few pixels down and add Gaussian Blur. Erase unneeded areas creted from blurring process and change layer’s opacity to 60%.

Step 27

We will add navigation arrow to move to next or previous featured post. Create a black circle with opacity 35%. In its center draw a white rectangle. Rotate it 45 degree and change its opacity to 35%. Duplicate rectangle path, move it few pixels right and select subtract.

Step 28

We have just created navigation arrow for previous post. To create next post, duplicate the arrow by Alt-drag it to the opposite side and rotate it 180 degree.

Step 29: Create Post

Draw a white square shape. Add Layer Style Stroke. This shape will be container for post thumbnail.

Step 30

Add image above square shape. Press Ctrl + Alt +G to convert it to Clipping Mask.

Step 31

Next to the thumbnail, add some text. Add post title, post info (category, author’s name, number of comments). Finally, add short post content.

Step 32

Draw a rounded rectangle under the post. This will be read more button. Add these layer styles.

Step 33

I want to add a subtle 3D effect to the thumbnail image. Create ellips selection under the thumbnail image. Fill it with black. Deselect and add Gaussian Blur. Change fill layer to 20%. Alt-drag this shadow and put it on top side of the thumbnail.

Step 34

Next, we need to add separator between each post. Activate brush tool. Open brush panel, set brush size to 1 px and increase spaing to 955%. Shift-drag to draw thin dotted line under the post.

Step 35

In Layers panel, select all post layers. Right click and choose Convert to Smart Object. This way, our post is now in one layer. Alt-drag to duplicate post and fill the content area.

If you want to change something on the post, maybe make the read more bigger. You can do that easily. Double click post layer to open it in new Window. Create some changes and click File > Save. Once you return to original file, every read more button will also change.

Step 36: Create Separator Between Featured Content and Posts

Now, we’ll create a separator between featured content and post list. Create new layer and draw two 1 px lines. Use color #898888 on top and #d6d5d5 under it. The difference of brightness between these lines will gives a 3D look. You can see the result below.

Step 37

Add layer mask and paint both ends with black to hide them.

Step 38

Above the line create new layer. Create elliptical selection and fill it with white. Deselect and add Gaussian Blur. Select bottom part and press delete. Change layer’s opacity to 30%. This will add another subtle 3D effet on the image.

Step 39: Add Social Media Icon

Search for free social network icon. I suggest iconfinder because it has a friendly interface.

Step 40

Download icons and put it on top of sidebar.

Step 41

Draw a rounded rectangle and add these layer styles.

Step 42

Add another rounded rectangle shape, this time shorter. Add these layer styles. Add text subscribe on this button.

Step 43

Repeat step 38 to add a separator between each sidebar widget.

Step 44: Create Ad Spot

Create a rectangle for ad spot. Use color #d7d7d7 and add Stroke.

Step 45

Draw another smaller rectangle for smaller ad spot.

Step 46: Create Other Sidebar Content

Add another content on the sidebar such as Post List and some text. Don’t forget to put separator between each widget. For the separator you can just duplicate earlier separator by Alt-dragging it.

Step 47: Add Logo

Let’s insert the logo. Grab tutoriallounge’s logo from here. Put it on top right of the image. The logo’s color is unique, dark and light blue. That different gives me an idea to make it looks like a sticker.

Create ellips selection behind the logo. Fill it with black. Deselect (Ctrl + D). Add Gaussian Blur and reduce its opacity.

Step 48

Create selection with shape like shown below. Fill it with black, deselect, and add Gaussian Blur. Reduce its layer opacity.

Step 49

Create new layer above logo. Draw a radial white to transparent gradient and reduce layer’s opacity to 30%. This will add a subtle light source on top of the image.

Step 50: Pagination

Draw a white rectangle under posts list. Add Inner Shadow Layer Styles.

Step 51

Add page list and page number. Between every page draw a thin line to separate them. Higlight active page number with subtle to make it different.

Step 52: Add Search Box

Search for a magnify glass icon and put it on top of the page. Next to it, draw a rounded rectangle. Dont forget to add subtle shadow under the shape and icon. Add these layer styles to the search box.

Final Result

Finally, we’re done. I hope you like the end result and learn some new techniques from this tutorial. Click on the image to see it in full size.

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Preview

Before moving on, take a look at the final image we’re going to create. Click here or click on the image to see it in full screen.

Source Needed

These are the resources used in this tutorial:

• Vintage Grunge Textures from princess-of-shadows
• Butterfly 3 from shoofly-stock
• Autumn Leaves PNG Pack from gild-a-stock
• Autumn Leaves 1 from sammykaye1sstamps
• Stock9-Yellow Flower from pralinkova-princezna
• Flower Stock 59 from anbdstock
• Vector Flourish Design from All-Silhouettes
• 5 Vector Floral Ornaments from QVectors

Step 1: Background

Open Photoshop. Create new file (File > New) with size 1280×1024 px, resolution 72 dpi, Mode: RGB.

Step 2

Activate gradient tool. Click preview box in option bar to open gradient editor dialog. Create gradient from #ffbc58 to #f95b1e.

Step 4

Create radial gradient from center to outside.

Step 5

Download vintage grunge textures and paste it on top of the image. Resize it until we find nice texturing.

Step 6

Change texture blend mode to Multiply with 20% opacity.

Step 7: Main Text

Add text on top of the image. Here, I use yellow color.

Step 8

Add this layer styles.

Step 9: Floral Shapes

Download Vector Floral Ornaments and open it in Illustrator. Select one of the vector shape. Hit ctrl+C to copy it to clipboard.

Step 10

Back to Photoshop. Hit ctrl+V for paste. Make sure you choose Smart Object. This way, pasted object will remain an illustrator file, so you’ll be able to resize it without degrading its quality. Rotate and resize the vector shape until you find it interesting.

Step 11

Now, we need to change its color to math overall color tone. From the Layers panel double click its layer thumbnail. You’ll probably get a dialog box like seen below, just click OK.

Step 12

The Shape wil be opened in Illustrator. Select it and change its color from Color Panel. After you finish edit the color hit ctrl+S to save it and ctrl+W to close it. Let’s go back to Photoshop and you’ll find the shape is also changing.

Step 13

Hold alt and move cursor on line between shape and text layers. The cursor will change into two overlapping center, click now to convert shape into clipping mask. The vector shape will goes inside the text.

Step 14

Repeat the process for other vector shape. Once you’re done, select the shape layers and the text then hit ctrl+G to put them into separate group. Name the group text.

Step 15: Add Subtle Floral Image in Background

Hold shift then click on thumbnail layer of shapes we have created earlier. This step will create selection based on the shape’s size.

Step 16

Create new layer underneath the text. Click Edit > Fill, use White then click OK.

Step 17

Remove selection by pressing ctrl+D. Click Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

Step 18

Change layers opacity to 20%.

Step 19: Decorating Text

Back to Illustrator, open Vector Flourish Design and hit ctrl+A to select all shapes. From color panel change its fill color to white.

Step 20

All the shapes’s color is now white. Because the background is also white its very hard to see them. Click View > Preview to see shapes outline.

Step 21

Shape one of the shape. Press ctrl+C.

Step 22

Return to Photoshop, hit ctrl+V to paste the shape. Place it on top of the text. Add layer styles Drop Shadow.

Step 23

Repeat this process with other shapes.

Step 24: Add Depth to Text Decoration

Select all shapes and press ctrl+G to put them in one group. Duplicate the group by dragging it to New Layer icon.

Step 25

Hit ctrl+E to convert duplicated group into a layer. Double click layer to open layer styles dialog box. Select Layer Mask Hides Effect and add bigger drop shadow.

Step 26

Select text by ctrl+clicking its layer thumbnail. Hit ctrl+shift+I to invert selection. Make sure the floral layer is still selected and click Add Layer Mask icon. Change fill layer to 0%.

Step 27

Now, floral shape out side the text will have bigger and darker shadow. This gives impression as if they are higher from the background.

Step 28: Adding Real Flower

Open Yellow Flower in Photoshop. Use Quick Selection to select the flower. It’s very amazing how this tool works! All you need is just dragging inside the flower and they will automatically selected.

If you use earlier version of Photoshop, you may not have this tool. Use the magic wand to get similar result.

Step 29

Click Select > Modify > Contract. Use 2 pixel then click OK.

Step 30

Copy flower and paste it on our image. Right click flower layer and choose Convert to Smart Object. By changing the flower layerto smart object we will retain all its pixel information.

Step 31

Hit ctrl+T and change flower’s size.

Step 32

Add drop shadow to give the flower realistic look.

Step 33

Hold alt and drag flower to duplicate it. Again change its size.

Step 34

Open another flower, select it, and paste it in Photoshop.

Step 35: Add Dry Leaves

Download Autumn Leaves 1 and open it in Photoshop. This file is already cutted. All we need to do is just make rough selection around it, cpy, and paste it in Photoshop.

Step 36

Resize and put it on the text.

Step 37

Keep doing this to another dry leaves.

Step 38: Adding Butterflies

Open Butterfly in Photoshop. All the butterfly has already cutted. Just like we did with earlier dry leaves, select and paste them on Photoshop. Don’t forget to add drop shadow.

Step 39: Add Subtle Floral Shape in Background

Paste floral ornament we have opened earlier. Put it behind the text.

Step 40

Change fill layer to 0%. Add Bevel and Emboss.

Step 41

Add another floral ornament on the background. Don’t overdo this, keep them subtle. Otherwise the design will be too crowded and remove the focus from main text.

Step 42

I feel that there’s too much empty space in this design. To remove it we’l use crop tool. Open crop tool and drag around the text. I’m using Photoshop CS5 here and you can see that the crop box is divided into 9 grids that help us see the final image proportion. Once you have find the right size hit ctrl+Enter to start cropping.

Conclusion

Finally, we are done! I hope you like this tutorial and learn something here. Click here or click on the image below to see it in full size.

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Premium Wordpress Theme Design Part 1 – The Photoshop Mock Up

I’m Alvaro Guzman and in part 1 I’ll show you how to design a contemporary web interface from scratch using Photoshop and stock pictures. You can download the finished PSD file at the end of this tutorial. Initially let’s have a look at the finished PSD mock up:

Download the photoshop psd file

Premium Wordpress Theme Design – Part 2 – HTML + CSS + Wordpress Theme Files

Hi, I’m Alvaro Guzman and this is the second part of the Premium Wordpress theme tutorial continued from Part 1. This time you’ll learn how to slice the design and change it into XHTML + CSS, then I’ll show you how to use the css files to mock-up a Wordpress template. This isn’t a essential tutorial, if you’re a newbie, maybe you should read some basic HTML+CSS tutorials, and understand the fundamentals of CSS tags and Wordpress features and structure.

If you’re a programmer, you must have some basic information about Phothoshop, layers, slicing and obviously Wordpress. Anyway, if you’re an intermediate – advanced level Web Designer, I’m sure you’ll find this useful.

Tutorial files

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I think it is the best time to contribute to this post, Happy Easter every one. Here are collected works of vector and Photoshop brushes for Easter eggs with my beautification and designs on it. Use it in your ecard, share it with your friends and send it to the client.

Free vectors easter eggs

Description:

6 vector Easter eggs with no raster belongings. Have fun and happy Easter time

Author Website: pehaa.com
License: free for personal and commercial use

File Size: 4,4 MB

Dowenload

Free easter eggs brushes

Description: 13 Brushs easter eggs

Author Website: pehaa.com
License: free for personal and commercial use

Download

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Advertisements and posters are one of the principal markets for graphic designers.  Posters must be eye-catching, proficient, and communicate an significant message about a product, service or occasion, all while maintaining the viewer’s interest.

Today, we have a review of 47 tutorials for creating professional posters and ads.  Whether you’re a apprentice in the field of graphic design, or you’ve been doing it for years, there is a tutorial in this list for you.

A special thanks goes to all the endowed designers out there who take the time to write a tutorial and split their astuteness with the rest of us!

How to Create an Ice-cold Poster with 3D Text

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to combine stock images and 3D text into a cool poster. We’ll use an icy theme for it and color it the way we want. You’ll see it’s not that hard to create a simple appealing poster with effective use of text and imagery.

Sony Ericsson G900 Ad Tutorial

As announced on the deviation, I’ve created a tutorial of the Sony Ericsson G900 picture. I’ve tried to create it as easy as possible that you can understand every step. All right, lets start !

Creating an Old Collage Effecft Poster

One of my favorite ‘looks’ is the sort of old-collage feel of old photos and old paper. It’s a favorite because it lets you work images and text together really easily. In this tutorial we’ll put together a poster where there is a main photograph and a lot of text using the old-collage feel.

Download the PSD for this tutorial

Creating a Grunge Rock Poster

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.

How to Design a Rockin 80’s Party Poster

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to design a poster for an 80’s song of praise party. All the way through this tutorial, we’ll produce some textures for background, influence a photo to give it a stylish look, and make some color variations. Let’s jump into this super rad tutorial.

Gig Poster Design Tutorial

A lot of people are making them. A group of people suck. We don’t suck, and neither do you. This tutorial requires NO drawing aptitude… so don’t journey folks. You will though need Adobe Photoshop 7.0 or higher and Illustrator CS2 or higher. My name’s Dave, and this is my first ever solo tutorial. I’m very unorthodox and direct… so pardon me if I lose you guys during any part of this. I’ll do what I can to answer questions for people who think my tutorial is too confusing.

Create a Poster Illustration With Floating Floral Elements

we will be working to make an attractive Poster-size illustration with flowery rudiments. This tutorial is enthused by a proposition0 from Zach on our Tutorials Suggestions/Request page. He required to know how one would create a design like the flowery ingredient in the Version App header. I’ve taken a look at that, added a few of my possess ideas, and run with it to create a cool poster design.

Click here for Full size Image

Make an Inspiring Artistic Poster with Drawn Elements

we’ll create strained rudiments, use design brushes, carry them into Photoshop, and amalgamate them into a distinctive poster masterpiece that feels hand-made, stylistically combined, and tailored. The techniques here are pay attention on creating an original inventive illustration. Let’s see how this poster design was created.

Creating a Sci-Fi Poster

The customary space movie poster is a extremely elegant but prescribed matter, featuring characters that emerge out of the darkness, brooding intergalactic clouds, some luminous chrome effects for the text, and then a modicum of lens flare to add a little pragmatism.

Given the right photography, then, any half-competent designer could knock up a absolutely ample space movie poster design in minutes. The only problem is that, as it’s in space – and consequently impossible – such photos don’t exist.

A Muscle Car Poster Tutorial

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Create an Impactful Child Welfare Poster

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Creating a Grid-Shattering Typographic Poster

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Create your Own Crazy Movie Poster

So anyone who knows me knows that I love movies. That said, I recently was overcome with inspiration when I saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean Posters. They are pretty sick.

When you look at the POTC Posters (That will be Pirates of the Caribbean and NOT Passion of the Christ from here forth….you know you were thinking it!) they all follow a general theme: A collage of imagery along the bottom, a bunch of enormously large heads along the top, and the classic parchment paper logo with a title slapped across it. Oh and some hot chick but we wont be using one of those for this. Boo.

Create A Retro Poster Step by Step

Creating a Stencil Effect Poster

Digital artist Ian Keltie reveals how to composite elements in Photoshop and create a poster that deploys stencilled art to promote your message. For many, the humble stencil has been a part of a personal history from when we used them as children to trace out basic shapes of houses, cars, and cats using cheap, plastic stencils.

And for most, stencils have remained firmly in the realm of playgrounds and classrooms, as we abandoned our stencilling ways and learnt illustrative and design crafts.

Designing a Portable Gaming Device Poster

In this intermediary Photoshop tutorial we will be walking through the making of an appealing, creative advertisement poster. This is what I would consider great for advertising your latest product, or just getting some design perform. I will not be amplification the function of every tool in Photoshop used in this tutorial, instead I will be walking through the design procedure (if you could call it that, anyway).

Create an Inspirational Vector Political Poster

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Creating A Quick Grunge Poster

This tutorial will show you how to change your images into a cool dirty grunge design, which could be used for posters, prints, CD covers, etc.

Creating a ‘B’ Movie Poster

This burlesque movie poster design is a uncomplicated but efficient way of tackling those graphics challenges where there seem to be too many opinions to fit in: it enables the designer to merge slogans and other textual rudiments with the bare bones of a storyline and conspicuous images, all bound up in an iconic format that everybody will distinguish.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be the classic 1950s B-movie style that you adopt – the entirety of cinematic history is at your disposal. Take your pick from gangster movie, romantic comedy, war film or chick flick.

In this tutorial, Mark Mayer shows you how to combine 3D renders with stylized photography, text and smoke to capture all the camp horror of an alien invasion.

Creating a Grungy, Retro Poster

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Creating an Awesome Music Poster

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Photoshop can seriously aid the 3D artist in his or her day to day routine. With the new panoramic stitching tool, the 3D artist can save time by letting Photoshop CS do the majority of the back-breaking work, just leaving a little clean-up. The new non-destructive pixel aspect viewer tool helps the artist view the image how it is supposed to be seen on the target screen

1. 3D PUZZLE

we’re find a Photoshop Tutorial for design 3D Puzzle with respect of steps which will help everyone who learning.

2. Metallic 3D text

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5. 3D Text (Video Tutorial)

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Download Flash player.

6. 3D Text Effect (Video Tutorial)

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7. Draw 3D Crystal Icon in Photoshop

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Discover some great tips and techniques for blending and compositing 3D objects with your own photographic images.

9. 3D Shining Text

Draw 3D lighting text in photoshop.

10. 3D Blueprint Effect

A simple method to create a 3D blueprint effect.

11. 3D Text with Special Smoke

Learn how to create 3D text with smoke effect in this photoshop tutorial.

12. Create a 3D Flowery Text Effect

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13. Great Looking 3D Box

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14. Best 3D Effects

This is a basic tutorial on how to ultilize the 3d render filter in photoshop. An easy way to make 3d effects in your graphics.

15. Designing with 3D Render Pack

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16. 3D Objects in Photoshop CS3 (Video Tutorial)

A brief overview of what can be done with 3D objects in Photoshop CS3.

Download Flash player.

17. Mickm 3D text

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Photoshop Tutorials that educate how to design, illustrate, compose, and sketch magnificent creations. These creative techniques are ideal for both beginners and advanced Photoshop users.

Tutorial# 1:  Apple Shelf Dock from Leopard OS in Photoshop

In the new MAC OS X Leopard operating system, the application bar has a new, sleek look. This tutorial will show you how to create the Glass Shelf Dock used for the operating system.

What We Will Be Creating

For those of you not aware of what the Leopard operating system looks like, you can see it here. The image below will give you an idea of what we will be creating.

Wallpaper

The background wallpaper we are going to be using is shown below. A larger version can be found here.

Setting the Guides

Now that we have all the materials we need to get started, and we have an idea of what the Glass Shelf Dock looks like, lets begin to create our own inside of Photoshop.

Begin by Creating a New Document (I used a 1280×800px document) and placing the wallpaper into the Background Layer.

Make sure your rulers are enabled. If they aren’t, navigate to View > Rulers(Ctrl+R). Also make sure your guides are enabled at View > Show > Guides(Ctrl+;). Now lets drag guides out from the vertical ruler to 140px and 1140px. Then drag a guide from the horizontal ruler to 760px.

Creating the Shelf

Grab your Rectangular Marquee Selection Tool(M) and select the 1000×60px area in between your guides. Then set your colors as such:

Foreground color #777777

Background color #555555

Create a new layer. Then grab your Linear Gradient Tool and select the “Foreground to Background” preset gradient. While holding shift, drag your cursor from the top of the selection to the bottom.

Create two more vertical guides at 170px and 1110px. Now lets go to Edit > Transform > Perspective and while holding shift, drag the top left corner to your 170px guide.

Adding Effect to the Shelf

Change the opacity of your Shelf Layer to 90% or 80%. Ctrl+Click on the thumbnail for the Shelf Layer to make a selection of it. Create a new layer. Then, grab your Pencil Tool and create a 2px line with the color #cccccc across the bottom of the selection and set the opacity of the layer to 85%. Then, above that, create a 1px line on a new layer with the color #000000 and set the opacity to 25%.

Once again, Ctrl+Click on the thumbnail for the Shelf Layer to make a selection of it. Then, create a Foreground to Transparent Gradient about 30px wide on the left and right side of the selection on a new layer. Change the opacity to 10%.

Creating the Glossy Effect

To add more effect to the shelf, lets add a curved gloss to it. Create a new layer and grab your Pen Tool(P). Make sure that your pen is set to paths.

Create a path similar to the highlighted area below. Then, right click while you still have your pen tool selected and click make selection. Make sure feather radius is set to 0px.

Grab the Foreground to Transparent Gradient Tool and set your foreground color to #FFFFFF. Then, hold shift and drag the gradient from the bottom of the selection to the top of the selection. You should now have something like below.

Adding Icons

Bring in the first icon that you want to add and place it about halfway up the height of the shelf. Duplicate(Layer > Duplicate Layer…) it and flip it vertically(Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical). Drag it down until the top of the flipped version is touching the bottom of the normal version. Then, change the opacity to 25%.

To add the shadow, duplicate(Layer > Duplicate Layer…) your icon layer and drag the new layer under the original. Fill your layer with black Edit > Fill… Use: Black(Shift+F5). Then change the size of your icon using Edit > Free Transform(Ctrl+T). Drag the top middle box until the top of your icon matches the top of the shelf.

Once you have this accomplished, we need to blur the shadow. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set the radius to 1.5px. Then change the opacity to 25%.

Repeat this process with more icons

Creating the Fading Rectangles

To create the fading rectangles, follow the same steps we used to create the shelf. Make a white rectangle and transform it using perspective. Delete sections of the rectangle, making them get smaller as they get farther away. Then lower the opacity to 25%.

Creating the Orb

Create an oval 10×4px using the Elliptical Marquee Tool. Then apply the following Layer Styles(Layer > Layer Styles).

The Final Result

We now have all of the objects and effects that we need to complete our design. Lets take a look at the final result.

Tutorial# 2:  Quick, Easy, and Scalable Photoshop Backgrounds

This tutorial will show you how to design backgrounds with ease of future adjustments in mind. Applying these techniques in your designs will make color adjustments a breeze, sizing/scaling changes in your background incredibly easy, and give you unprecedented control over how your background looks with very little effort involved.

Backgrounds Made Simpler

Suppose you are working on a graphic for a client (or yourself), where the colors used may be changing on occasion, or perhaps you’d like to experiment with several different colors. One way of going about doing this would be creating several different documents, and for each document, manually adjust the colors, size, and positioning of different elements.

Being the curious folk we are, we wonder, “Shouldn’t their be an easier way to do this?”

As a matter of a fact, there is a much simpler way to work with documents using Shape Layers, Blending Options, and Adjustment Layers. In this tutorial, I’ll demonstrate how you can create very simple backgrounds in Photoshop that can be editing on the fly in a matter of just a few clicks.

What’s the difference?

For purposes of this tutorial, we’ll just be using a simple gradient background. Before you go and grab your Gradient Tool, let’s talk about resizing and scaling.

When you use the Gradient Tool, you are really just performing a one time calculation. The gradient blends between it’s different colors from one point to the next, and after its applied, the data does not change. This is ok in a lot of scenarios, but what happens if we resize our image?

As you can hopefully tell from the image above, the colors are simply being stretched out when we resize an ordinary gradient. Instead of the calculation for the gradient being redone, Photoshop will keep the current data and try to work with it alone.

This is why we want scalable backgrounds. If we resize a graphic, or if we want to reposition and change the scale of the background alone, we want the graphic to appear as smooth as possible. With scalable backgrounds, we can accomplish this.

Getting started

While it’s entirely possible to create a scalable background with any ordinary layer, you’re probably better off using Shape Layers (especially if you’re creating a multi-part background stored in a set of layers).

Let’s begin with a basic document; we’ll be using a plain document, with a layer of “Tutorial9″ text on it. To create your basic background, create a new rectangle shape layer, using the Rectangle Tool. Be sure that you have Shape Layers selected once your working with the Rectangle Tool.

Drag a box around your canvas. This will become your background later on, and can exceed the boundaries of your canvas.

The current background color of the shape hardly matters, as we’ll control it from elsewhere later on, but if you’d like to know how to change a shape layers color, you can easily alter it from the layers panel once you’ve created your shape.

Backgrounds with Blending Options

Right Click on your new shape layer, and select Blending Options.

Select Gradient Overlay. This is the area where we are going to set up our gradient background. There is nothing tricky about this part. Simply set up your gradient however you see fit.

Here is a glance of what I did:

You might be thinking, “All that work for this?”

Sure enough, we could have produced this exact effect with a simple click of the gradient tool, but take a look at what happens when you resize, or reposition the shape layer.

As illustrated in the example above, the layer will recalculate the gradient each time you resize, and will reposition nicely so that you don’t have to recreate backgrounds over and over.

Quickly Adjusting the Background Color

Using Adjustment Layers, we can modify our background on the fly in just a few simple clicks. In order to quickly edit Hue, Saturation, and Lightness, we need to create a new Hue/Saturation/Lightness Layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation/Lightness).

NOTE: Be sure to create this layer above the Shape Layer ONLY! This adjustment layer will effect all underlying layers.

Adjust the sliders presented to accommodate your preferences. Click Ok to save your adjustment. You can return to this adjustment layers settings at any time by double clicking the icon next to it in the Layers Panel.

Conclusion

It’s really simple to set up one of these backgrounds, and they can really improve your work flow if used properly. I’d suggest exploring some of the other adjustment layers, and seeing what helps you save the most time for your kind of work.

You can even use multiple adjustment layers to really control your graphics in an effective manner!

If you’d like to download the Photoshop Document we used for clarification, feel free to grab it here.

Tutorial# 3: Create a Surreal Environment Using a Photo

Lately, it has become popular to manipulate photos to create intense surreal environments. This tutorial will show you some of the ways to create such environments.

Finished Example

Let’s take a look at a finished example of a surreal environment.

Step 1 – Selecting a Photo

After browsing some free stock photos at stock.xchng, I finally decided on a picture of a road surrounded by daisies.

• Road Image

Step 2 – Think of Some Concepts

Now that I have my photo, I need to think of what I want to add to make it surreal. Since it is a curved road, I thought some vibrant tubes of light would create a nice effect. Also, since there were so many daisies, I wanted to make them appear to glow. I also wanted to add some more excitement into the empty sky.

Since I’m going to want some bright daisies and some glowing tubes of light, I’ll keep in mind that I may want to darken all the other parts of the photo.

Step 3 – Fixing the Background

I don’t like the tractor marks in the left field of daisies, so I’m going to use my Clone Stamp Tool to clear them away. I’ll do the same for the tracks in the upper field too.

Step 4 – Adding the First Beam

Create a path that winds up the road using the pen tool. Make sure that it extends below the actual document some, so that the end isn’t rounded. Select a 19px hard brush and set the Size Jitter Control to Fade, and give it a value around 400 or 500. Then, set the Minimum Diameter to 10%.

With your pen tool selected, right click and select Stroke Path. Select Brush from the drop down menu and make sure Simulate Pressure IS checked.

Step 5 – Adding Layer Styles

Go into your layers Blending Options (Right Click Layer > Blending Options).

Apply the layer effects shown below, making any modifications as needed.

Outer Glow

This will create a glow off of the tube of light. I used #ff0000.

Inner Glow

This will create a lighter color starting from the center of the tube. I used #f75151.

Satin

This will help to structure the shape of the tube.

Color Overlay

This will replace the color of the tube with red. I used #ff0000.

Step 6 – Add a Unique Glow

Our red tube is looking a little boring and not very vibrant. SO LETS BRIGHTEN IT UP!

Duplicate your red tube (Right Click Layer > Duplicate Layer). Then, convert it into a Smart Object (Right Click Layer > Convert to Smart Object), so that we can easily apply and remove filters.

Now, lets apply the following filters:

Reticulation (Filter > Sketch > Reticulation)

Make sure you have black as your foreground color and white as your background color.

Chalk and Charcoal (Filter > Sketch > Chalk & Charcoal)

Make sure you have black as your foreground color and white as your background color.

Plastic Wrap (Filter > Artistic > Plastic Wrap)

Finally, set the layer to Color Dodge and set the Opacity to 44%.

Step 7 – Intensify the Glow

Create a new layer and make a selection of your red tube (Ctrl+Click Thumbnail). Set white as your foreground color and set a dark red color like #7c0707 as your background color.

Go to Filter > Render > Clouds. Then, go to Filter > Render > Difference Clouds. By pressing Ctrl+F, you can now keep applying the previous filter you applied. So press Ctrl+F a few more times to apply Difference Clouds until you end up with a result you like (be sure it is red and white). Now, set the layer to Linear Dodge and lower the opacity until you get an effect you are happy with.

Step 8 – Adding Sparkles

Grab a 3px brush and apply the following brush settings.

Then, on a new layer, brush some white sparkles all down the red tube. Then do the same thing with a nice red color. After, lower the opacity of the layer to 40-50%.

Step 9 – Adding More Colors

Repeat the process with some more colors, and use layer masks to make them twist above and below each other. If you place all the layers for the green tube, for instance, into a new group, then you can create a layer mask on the group, and it will apply it to all of the green tube layers!

Step 10 – Filling the Sky

In order to create the effect in the sky, we need to create our own brush.

Create a new document that is 50×50px. Create a new layer and delete the background layer, since we want the background to be transparent. Then, create a rectangle that is 10px wide by 40px high. Then, duplicate it and rotate it 90 degrees (Edit > Transform > Rotate 90 degrees). Once you’ve got your shape, go to Edit > Define Brush Preset.

You can close the new document now that you have your brush. Select your brush, and set your foreground color to #335776 and your background color to #6084a5. Then apply the following brush settings:

Brush Tip Shape

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Color Dynamics

Other Dynamics

Add a layer mask to the layer after you brush in some plus signs. This way there is a transition from the full sky to the empty sky, and will be easier on the eyes.

Step 11 – The Darkening

This image looks pretty decent as it is, but its going to look even better when the background items are darkened. This way, the lights will have more attention and focus in the scene.

Create a new layer above your background. Fill it with black and set it to Overlay. By creating a layer mask and hiding the area of the layer over the daisies, we can make them appear to glow.

Get Creative

Even after you achieve a great effect, spend some time trying to improve it. It is rare to achieve the greatest outcome possible in one try. You may even want to start over from scratch, keeping in mind what you liked from before and what you want to change or include!

In this tutorial, we’re going to explore some non-destructive image editing. With these techniques, you can bring out the best in an image, or absolutely destroy the graphic, but still keep the original photo intact.
So to begin, find a photo that you’d like to make dirty. Something that might feel bland as is, and could use more of a grungy feel. Here is what I’ll be using:

Crank the Colors

Now, we want to increase the contrast and the intensify colors of the photo, but do it in a non-destructive way (by non-destructive, I simply mean we do not want to lose the data from the original image as we modify the appearance of our graphic). How do we do this? We use layers, of course.

First, Duplicate the Layer. Then, go to the layer’s blend modes and select Hard Light. This setting will multiply any color darker than 50% grey and screen any color lighter. In this case, since both the base layer and the blend layer are identical, the light colors become lighter and the dark colors become darker, with no quality lost.

As you can see, we’ve increased the image’s sharpness as well as its saturation.

High Pass for Sharpness

The High Pass filter gives a photo that refined, sharp look that is hard to obtain using only a camera. Once again, this is a non-destructive way of adding more life to your photos.

Make a new duplicate of the original layer. For now, you can make the first duplicate invisible. Set the new duplicate’s blend to Hard Light as well.

Now, Go to Filters > Other > High Pass.

The High Pass filter sets it’s source image to 50% grey, and as you increase the amount on the slider, it reveals more of the image, in higher contrast areas at first, such as edges or lines.

The amount you should use of the filters varies. Too little causes no effect. To much, and the image gets halo’s and uneven blotches of more intense color. The the amount you should use really just depends on the kind of results you desire.

Mix and Match

Right now, in your layers panel, you should have three layers: the original as the background, the high pass layer, and then the direct duplicate. Both additional layers, if you haven’t tried by now, can be turned visible and invisible. Depending on your personal preference, you can choose one of these methods or the other, or even repeat a method, and combine these layers for different results. I just stuck to one of each layer for this image.

Tint and Grain

Now that our photo is more defined and sharper, we can add the finishing touches to really grunge it up.

Create a new layer and set its blend mode to Overlayd. Pick two similar colors, one light and one dark to paint as a gradient. For this photo, I picked two browns, to give the image an earthen tone.

Fill the blank layer with the gradient. It can be vertical, horizontal, radial, whatever you find looks good. For this I chose a nice horizontal fade. If the color is a bit stronger than what you wanted, just lower the Fill amount to the point you’d like.

Now, the image is tinted, and looking fantastic. It’s time to mess it up a little. Go to Filter > Noise > Add noise. Make the noise monochromatic, and set it so somewhere around 30%.

The resulting grain looks good, but it’s a bit too unnatural. A Guassian Blur (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur) at about 2 pixels smooths it all out, and viola!

We have a natural, sharp, dirty photo, and with very little effort!

Tutorial# 5: awesome image  editing of Caty

New Kitty

Well, they say there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
But I personally find it easiest (and least messy) to do it with a zipper.
In this tutorial, I’m gonna show how I pull off the unzipping effect using quick, simple methods, to give my kitty here a fresh new start on life.

1. So let’s get right into this thing and open her up.
I started off by selecting the top half of the kitty’s face and pasting it onto a new layer.
Then, using the Distort tool, I offset the face in an angle as shown here.

Then did the same thing to the bottom half so that both halves form a fan, framing the original face.

Using the Eraser tool set at 100% opacity, I spent a little time cleaning the edges of the kitty and also extracted the eyes from the sockets of our newly pasted face halves.

2. At this point, I decided to change the color of the inner cat to help differentiate between the two
Let’s go with a cute new grey kitten. I copied the inner cat’s face onto a new layer. Then, using the Lasso tool I selected the areas I wanted to remain saturated (ie. the eyes, nose).
I then inverted the selection (Ctrl + i) and with our kitty’s face now in selection, I dropped the saturation level of this layer by -80.

3. Next was to add some basic shadows on the cat’s face. I did this simply by taking a soft black brush (set to about 15% opacity) and painting over the edges and crevaces on a new layer.
I set this layer’s blend mode to “overlay” to give the inner kitty a little more pop.

Then, with the same brush (this time set much higher in opacity, 40-50%), I went on to darken the shadows around the edges.

4. Now, it’s finally time to add the zipper in. This step is probably the easiest part, in fact.
I imported a source pic of a zipper that generally fit the perspective I was looking for.
I extracted the zipper’s pull tab first and copied it onto a new layer. Using the Move tool, I rotated and resized it (note: holding shift to constraint the zipper’s proportions) and placed it so it would situate under our human’s finger.

I did the same thing for the actual teeth of the zipper, taking small segments at a time and placing it around the edge of our outer cat’s face.
Emphasis on the “small segments”. Especially when following along the more curvy paths and using limited zipper sources, though it may seem tedious, keeping your segments small and numerous will leave you with complete control over these trouble areas.

I did this until both sides were completely lined with zipper teeth.

And lastly, I copied the tip of the finger off our original source and pasted it over the zipper’s pull tab to situate the tab underneath.

And there you have it. Thanks to your friends at Aviary, a quick, easy, efficient way to skin a cat.

Full layered file

Tutorial# 6: awesome “How I Make Chocolate”

Like anything, there are plenty of different ways to go about creating chocolate.
But for those of you who are like me, and just don’t have the time to harvest cacao seeds in this day and age, I’m going to show how we can create everyone’s favorite food right here in Phoenix.
The techniques I use in this image can be applied to many different types of images that involve melting, or general liquifying and smudging.

The first step is to find a source image.
Doing a quick search for statues, I came across this wonderful image of the mythological, Artemis, who’ll be our lucky chocolate covered victim today.

Although, realistically, any image would work, I prefer sticking to images like these with very well defined ridges with stong contrasting lights and shadows.
They’ll make for a more interesting picture in the long run.

1. The first thing I do is desaturate the entire statue, and smooth out any glaring dirty or rough areas with either the blur tool or smudge.

2. The second step is really your call. Some would prefer to color the statue at this point. It really doesn’t make a huge difference.
But I really can’t wait to get to the fun part, the smudging. So I do that step here.
I look for any protruding areas first, such as the nose and chin, and lay down my thickest drips here, using the Liquify Tool set at 4/10 power.
Then, still with the liquify tool, using miniscule circular motions towards the base of the drip to create our blob-like ends.

We continue to do that throughout our entire image, creating drips in and around the ridges of the figure.
Note, be aware of the contours of your figure, and smudge your drips so that they flow accordingly.

And after we’re done that, you should be left with something like this.

I swear, it’s easy to get carried away in this stage once you get into the dripping groove, so make sure to step back every so often to make sure you’re not going overboard with the drips, or risk completely losing any sense of realism.

3. Since grey chocolate is not on anyone’s list of favorite confectionaries, let’s give her some color now.
Using the Brush tool set to a dark brown tone, I painted over the entire figure on a new layer, then set this layer to “Hard Light”

Remember, you don’t need to get the color perfectly on the first shot. You can always go ahead and adjust the hue and saturation levels once the figure is covered and you can see exactly how the Hard Light blend mode affects your image.

4. Now she’s starting to look a little tasty. But let’s make her more shiny.
I do this first by using a white Brush Tool and painting over key areas lightly. Following the general highlighted area of the original lighting, all we’re doing here is enhancing what’s already there.
I then set this layer to “Overlay”.

Then using a black brush, I did the exact opposite and painted in the shadowed areas to enhance the contrast of the image overall.

Then lowered the opacity as I saw fit.

5. At this point, our chocolate friend is just about finished. But a few finishing touches can help give it that extra pop.
I did this simply by taking a white brush again, but this time set to 100% opacity and painted in small overblown highlighted spots in the middle of key highlighted areas.

And voila, dessert is served.

A quick and easy way for you to to create chocolate, while your friends are still busy grinding away at their cacao nibs.

Full layered file

Tutorial# 7: awesome “The Making of a Robot Frog“

In this tutorial, I’m basically emphasizing the importance of spending that extra time in the planning stage of your images – finding the most suitable source images and even sketching out your basic compositions before the actual image creation stage.
After all, why create more work for yourself when you don’t need to?

1. So the first step was to prepare my source materials.
First off, I started with a frog. Any animal will do, but I prefer to stick with animals with an easily identifiable figure.
Once we go on to cover our figure in metal, we want the underlying figure to still read clearly regardless of the material he’s contructed from.
Then I went and gathered various chrome, engine, and robotic parts. While doing this, I kept on the lookout of pieces that had a relatively similar tone in reflection to them.
Of course, you can always apply the necessary changes to nonuniform source images, but it’s always easier to spend the time now in the initial source hunt stage instead of trying to fix them all later. It just makes sense.

2. Okay, so now time to start drawing out a blueprint for our mode of attack on this image.
Still in the planning stage, I spent a little time sketching out the basic outline of our image, laying out where I want my segments to lay.
Knowing where and what shapes I’ll need makes the whole process a lot easier, trust me.

3. So now armed with our ground plan and source images, it’s all a matter of following our outline.
Using the Lasso tool, I roughly selected these areas and pasted it over my sketched segments.
Then it was all a matter of skewing the pieces to fit our blueprint as best I could.

And I did this until the figure was covered.
As an aside, I like to start with the pieces furthest from the camera, then work my way forward as much as I can.

For the frog’s mouth, I needed a wider piece of chrome.
I decided to use an image of a faucet for this part, since it’s a nice longer piece and fit the shape of the mouth relatively well.
So again, I just extracted the pipe, and used the Distort tool to form it around the mouth area.

4. There, now we have the frog covered to my liking.
But I noticed a few remnants of the original background remained on the edges.
No problem, easy fix.
Using the Clone Stamp Tool, I sampled a clean area of the background and just painted over our unsightly areas.

5. Now that I’m satisfied with the look of the basic figure, it’s time to add a few shadows to this guy.
I did this by creating new layers sandwiched in between each of our chrome segment layers.
Then, on these layers, using a soft black brush, I painted in shadows underneath our chrome segments following the contours of the pieces directly below.
This should add a little more depth to the figure and also isolate each of the segments a little better.

And finally, to further accentuate the shadows, I added a few slight highlights to the edges of our pieces.
I did this with a small white brush just painting over our edges and existing highlighted areas.

Tutorial# 8: awesome “Smokin’ Woman“

In this tutorial, I’m going to show how to create one smokin’ woman using a couple source pics, and just a few of the features associated with Phoenix.
So follow along and I’ll try to share a few secrets into some of the magic, without the smoke and mirrors.
Well, maybe a little smoke.

With the general idea already in my mind, I needed to find a suitable background image.
The image I found turned out perfect because of the line of direction of the main figure’s vision. He’s looking directly where we’re going to place our smoke, creating unity among our elements. How convenient!

1. The first step was to remove most of the smoke from the original image, as we’ll be bringing in our own later on.
I did this simply by taking the Clone stamp tool, shift-clicking a clean area of the background to sample, and painting over the smoke covered areas with our selected sample.

It doesn’t need to be perfect at this point, as most of it will be covered by the end anyways.

2. Next, I brought in a high contrast image of a model. Not only do the natural stark shadows and highlights of this image look good, but hey, the contrast will do half the work for us in the long run.
Using a combination of the Move and Distortion tools, I resized and situated the model right where we want her.
Then set the layer’s blend mode to “Screen”.

3. Now that we have our basic composition in place, it’s time to get to the real action.
Using the liquify tool, I smudged the edges of the figure and pulled out trails to draw a smokey effect.
I did that until I was left with a wispy looking figure.
And remember, the more work you do in this stage, the less time it’ll take to cover your overlooked areas later on.

It’s almost good to go just as is, if I do say so myself.
But since we saved time by finding excellent source pics to begin with, let’s spend our free time fine tuning this thing up.

4. Our lady could always be more smokin’. And what’s more smokin’ than, well, smoke?
Using the Lasso tool, I copied and pasted a segment from an image of actual smoke onto a new layer.

I set this layer to “Screen”, just as we did with the woman. Using the Move tool, I resized the piece to situate around our lady friend.
I repeated that step numerous times until our lady was covered entirely hiding my earlier (now hideous in comparison) attempts to freehand the smoke entirely.

5. Now we’re getting somewhere! But I still wanted to expose a few of the highlights of the smoke a bit more. Just to give it that extra pop.
I did this by using a white brush to paint a rough outline around the figure on a new layer, then set this layer to “Overlay”.

6. Then, as a final touch, I filled the entire image in a light blue on a new layer, then set this layer to “Overlay”, and set the opacity to 25%.
Of course, this step is not 100% necessary, but it adds a little extra mood and brings the whole image together harmoniously.

And there you have it. With the magic of Phoenix, you’ve created the smokin’ woman of your dreams.

Full layered file

Tutorial# 9: “Reptilian Overlords!“

I’ll be showing you the steps I took in creating an image similar to the one I did for this video.
Using these sources, we’re gonna attempt to reptilianize (it’s a real word now) the woman on the left.

I don’t mean to stereotype, but I always assumed aliens would be bald.
So let’s get rid of her hair first.
I did this by using my source of the bald man and copied and pasted it onto a new layer.
Using the Move tool, I then resized it to fit the proportions of the woman.

Because of the high contrast in the bald man image, I opened up the Brightness/Contrast Menu under the “Image” tab, and simply lowered the contrast until it fit in with the rest of the image.

Then using the Eraser tool set to it’s lowest Hardness setting, I softened the edges to blend in better.

In order to remove the remaining visible edges of hair, I took the Clone Stamp tool and sampled a clean area of the background and painted in the areas I wanted covered.

I wanted to add a little more definition to her face.
Using our bald man source again, I used the Lasso tool to select the area under his eye where we see a lot of nice definition. I pasted this onto a new layer and using the Distort Tool, I situated the segment to fit our female figure’s face.

And did the same with a few other facial areas until I was happy with her general look.

meowza posted 11 months ago

Now we’ll use the power of the “Overlay”!
Wanting to add the scaley reptilian texture to our figure, I found a nice picture of a snake that had well defined texture.
I selected a segment of this source and pasted it onto a new layer. Using the Distort, again I was able to rotate and skew it to fit our female.

After I was happy with it’s general placement, I destaurated the layer and applied the “Overlay” blend mode.
And, like magic, the segment texturizes our female’s face for us.

I continued the same process throughout her face, pasting and Overlaying scaley segments. And using the Eraser Tool, I just simple softened the edges to blend.

As an added effect, I decided to color the female’s eyes black simply by taking a 100% alpha brush and painting them in, leaving a few shiny spots for effect.

But let’s go back to having fun with Overlay!
In order to give her skin a green complexion, I created a new layer and coloured her exposed skin areas in a green tone.
Then, by setting this blend mode to Overlay and dropping the Alpha by about 50%, we get a nice greenish hue all the Reptilian Women in Alpha Draconis are aiming for these days.

And there you have it.

I, for one, welcome our Reptilian Overlords.

Full layered file

Tutorial# 10: “Basic Shadows“

Here’s a few tips on creating basic shadows in Phoenix.

For my example, I’ll attempt to place the apple into the following street pic.

First, I’ll extract my apple and place it where I want.
You can extract the apple using a number of different methods. I used the method described here .

So first thing I do is fill in the shape of the element we want shadowed in black.
I did this by selecting the outside of the Apple with the magic wand, then pressing Ctrl+i to invert my selection so only my apple was selected.
I used the Fill tool to create my base.

To place the shadow where I want, I used the Distort Tool.
Following the car’s shadow as a guide, I made sure my apple’s shadow follows the same light direction.

I then dropped the Alpha of this layer to about 45%, to match the car.
But we can see the car’s shadow has a strong blue tint to it. So we want to emulate that for ours.
I did this by first selecting my color.
Using the Eye Dropper Tool, I selected some of the blue from the car’s shadow.

I selected the apple shadow with the magic wand, and on a new layer I filled the area in with the blue color.
Setting this layer’s blend mode to Overlay, the apple’s shadow took on the same hue of the car’s shadow.

meowza posted 11 months ago

Because shadows are never uniform in tone, I applied a light Gradient over it.
Making sure the base of the shadow closest to the apple remains darker and lightens slightly as it reaches the furthest point.
I did this by applying a Gradient fill on a new layer and setting this layer to Overlay.

Because we’ve already determined the light is coming from the top left of the apple, we need to hide the back of the apple in shadow as well.
So I selected the apple once again and with a black brush set to only 4% alpha, I lightly painted in the back of the apple a little shaded area.

And on the left and top sides where the light would be hitting the apple, we painted in these areas in white and applied the Overlay blend mode to make these sections pop as if they’re being hit with the sunlight.

And finally, I did the same on the bottom, painting in a slight reflection of the concrete onto the reflective apple surface.

And that was that. An apple that fits a little nicer into his environment now.


If you have your own techniques or secrets for drawing shadows, share them!

Full layered file

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This tutorial creates a way 3D cool effect in an “A” text, but you use this tutorial to apply on other letters, even you can make logo in text too, this is a way where anyone can learn about Photoshop effects too, there is some following involvement:

• 1.    Text
• 2.    Transform
• 3.    Pen Tool
• 4.    Layers
• 5.    Rasterize Effect
• 6.    Layer Styles
• 7.    Perspective transformation
• 8.    Shapes
• 9.    Filters
• 10.    Colors (Foreground / Background  )

Step 1

First chose some font. We chose Handel. Hi’s good because have strong and straight shape.

Step 2

But we gona make him much better and faster.

First rasterize text layer. Go to layer style and find Rasterize>Layer.

Then with Skew transformatoin move in left side.

Step 3

Now we gona cut some parts. Do like in next steps. U can use Magnetic lass ofor straight lines or Pen Tool.

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Step 7

When u finish with giving final shape of layer, duplicate him and put him behind.

Step 8

Give stroke like in picture. Use color you want.

Step 9

Now open new set and put duplicated layer inside. Then go to Layer>Merge Layer Set.

Step 10

Go back to first layer and give Gradient Overlay. Use 4 grade of nice sky blue color.

Step 11

Then gibe Bevel and Emboss like in picture. Use some dark blue color, almost black.

Step 12

Color duplicated second layer to some lite gray.

Step 13

Ok. when finish with coloring, open new set. Put both layers in set and merge layer set. Go to transformation and use Perspective transformation.

Step 14

Then free transformation like in picture.

Step 15

Duplicate new layer, and with tranformation tool give position like in picture. Looking in gaudlines you can see how it must be.

Clear all layer styles from this layer and color in black with brush.

Just give selection to layer and use brush tool.

Step 16

Then with Pen Toll draw missing part’s, and with that we gona visually line up both layers.

Step 17

Open new layer. You can named him shadows. With pen tool draw new shape folowing line of blue area. When you give selection use select inverse option.

Step 18

Then start giving the shadows. First give black shadows. Use just brush tool.

You can experimentize with opacity of brush color.

Step 19

Then give white shadows. But use some light gray color. Freely draw shadows.

Step 20

Ok. Now we have surplus of shadows.

To release from this surplus do next.

Give selection to first layer. Go to Inverse slection. You can see in picture.

Step 21

Then select shadow layer and press delete.

Step 22

Ok. Now we are giving shadows to second layer.

Give him selection and folowing lines like in picture draw with brush.

Use various intesity of light gray color.

Step 23

Now open new layer and draw rounded shape. Color him in black.

Step 24

In Filter>Blur give Gaussian Blur

Step 25

with skew transformation give some perspective.

Step 26

For backround lightin use Gradient tool. Select Foregraund to Transparen with gray color.

Step 27

Then in Filter>Renden give some Lighting Effects.

Step 28

For magnetic field we gona do next.

Open new layer and with gray and sky blue colors use option Reflected Gradient from Gradient Tool.

Go with mouse from up to dawn of layer.

Step 29

In Filter>Blur use Motion Blur.

Step 30

Then resize opacity to make larey transparent. About to 30 %

Duplicate layer for several time around the shadow.

Put them in one set and merge set.

Give selection to first layer like in picture, go back to last layer and press delete.

Step 31

Finish

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1. Rainbow Colorful Glowing Text Effect Using Adobe Photoshop One of our new team member showing his effort...
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