Abstract art can be quite amusing, when you are working with Photoshop you can do pretty much everything from, creating an ocean to making pebbles looks softer. Backgrounds with light soft looking pebbles can be quite popular. To do it start by creating a new document. Fill the background with black color. Select gradient tool with the settings shown at the top bar. Apply it several times to create an interesting effect. From "Filter" menu select "Distort>>Ocean Ripple ". This will create an awesome background that you can use for anything really, your desktop, messengers or even on the internet.
In this example we will take picture of the Planet Earth (round), and reshape it into a Square! 1. First, open starting image. In this case, I'll reshape picture of our Planet EarthOne of the things i will do is to play with a shadows a little, so to give our object sense of dimensionality. 2. Second, we will start by simple reshaping, as it is usually easiest thing to do. Go to "Filter -> Liquefy" and start morphing. Don't be frustrated if it is not perfect, as it is not the point of this step, but try to make it similar to the picture below. 3. Now that we have made our basic shape, we need to take care of the second part. If you have any shiny parts on your picture, you should flatten them out by using "healing brush".As we do not have that type of problem, we can move to next step. 4. Here, it will be helpful if you draw your square outlines on new layer on top of original picture, as to give you some guide in future steps.Also, don't worry if the picture doesn't fit perfectly into the square. 5. Now this step is going to further emphasize the role of light in completing the cubed effect. Using the guide layer above, get the polygonal lasso and select a single face of the cube as shown.Next get the eye dropper and take a midtone color from that area. Next get the paint bucket tool and fill in the selected area on a new layer above the Planet earth. Do the same for each face on the cube. As you usually don't need to blur top face, you can go to "Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur". When you are done blurring change the layer mode to "Overlay" and this will allow the detail of the image to show through while maintaining your adjustment to the light. Final step is to load the image back into the Liquify Filter and adjust the cube once more so that all of the faces fit the dimension of a cube. After that, you can see the final result! Excellent!
Using photoshop you can create some pretty awesome effects with pictures alone. Here is a step by step guide to show you how to blend and create a smooth waterfall. With your image open in Photoshop, grab your Lasso tool from the Tools palette: Select the Lasso tool from the Tools palette.You can also press the letter L on your keyboard to quickly select it.Then, with the Lasso tool selected, drag a selection around your waterfall. It doesn't have to be surgically precise, but try not to stray too far from the edges of the waterfall: Use the Lasso tool to drag a selection around the waterfall.If you need help with making selections, check out our tutorial Unlock The Full Power Of Basic Selections. Copy the Selection Onto Its Own Layer. With the waterfall selected, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Windows) / Command+J (Mac) to copy it onto its own layer above the Background layer. You won't see anything happen in the Document Window, but if you look in the Layers palette, you'll see the waterfall on a new layer: Press "Ctrl+J" (Windows) / "Command+J" (Mac) to copy the waterfall onto a new layer.Step 3: Apply The Motion Blur Filter To The New Layer With our waterfall now copied to its own layer, we can create our "silky smooth" effect by applying the "Motion Blur" filter to it. To do that, go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, select Blur, and then select Motion Blur. This brings up the Motion Blur dialog box:mPhotoshop's "Motion Blur" dialog box. Adjust the Angle of the blur so it matches the angle at which the water is falling. In most cases, this would be 90, since water would normally fall straight down. In my case, since the water is rushing so quickly over the edge, it's actually falling at a bit of an angle, so I've set my blur angle to -77. The easiest way to match your blur angle to the water is to click inside the Angle value box and then increase or decrease the value one degree at a time using the up or down arrow keys on your keyboard, which is what I've done. Once you've set the correct angle, drag the Distance slider at the bottom until your waterfall looks nice and silky. I've dragged mine to a value of 73 pixels, which gives me a nice effect. The image after applying Motion Blur.
When you are doing photo effects you can create those images that sometimes ipods use, the first thing you should do is de-saturate the photo. Change the levels so the range is closer. (Basically slide the black and white sliders towards the gray slider.) Create a new layer. Fill it with #fb4700. Set blending mode to Hard Light. For the Person Duplicate the photo. Take out the background by either the selection tool. Create a new layer. On that new layer, take the character, and paint the person black where you want it black.Set the person layer to blending mode overlay. This will have the part that is not black come through to reflect that red and orange colors. For the Graffiti create new layer just below the layer with the solid color set to hard light. Take a black grunge brush and start grunging the layer. Then again add grunge with the color set to white. Take the eraser tool and take a grunge brush. You can then delete some of the grunge on the layer. Create new layer above all. Set the foreground color to #e6ff8e. Grunge this layer a little. Use it for accents.
when you are creating photo effects you can change the color of a photo without actually selecting the color. At the bottom of the layer palette click at the icon - create a new fill or adjustment layer(a ball half white/half black) and choose Hue/Saturation. At the Hue/Saturation window, choose any color at the edit, as an example yellow; Point at the image, with the eyedropper, the color that do you want to change. Move the Hue slider and choose a color. Now , with the shift key, fix the color(eyerdropper +) where the changed was not good .......... click OK. With the mask active, paint with the brush(with the set foreground black) where is no good(at that example the face and arms).
A fun thing to do with patterns is to create rain. Learning how to add rain to any image is quite easy. Start by opening the image you would like to add the effect of rain to. Then create a new layer and fill it with white colour. Now go to Filter-> Noise -> Add noise. Then apply motion blur with the angle you would like to have your rain falling and change the blending option to screen. Now press ctrl + M and change the curve from the middle acc. to the intensity of the rain.
Images on layouts are just as important as the layout itself. A fun one to would be the Alert Icon: Project09 tutorials photoshop Alert Icon Step 1 Create a new layer, and select the polygonal lasso tool. Draw a triangle as shown on the left. When you have the selection, smooth it by 6. Step 2 Set the foreground color to #FFEB90 and the background to #FF7131. Select the gradient tool, then choose the radious mode. Click and drag from the top to bottom inside the selection, using the gradient tool. You should see something similar to mine on the left. Step 3 Open up the layer styles box for layer 1. Add an inner shadow with these settings... Blend Mode: Overlay Color: Black Angle: -90 Distance: 2 size: 1 Leave the rest of the settings as default. Step 4 Add an outer glow with these settings... blend mode: normal opacity: 33% size: 9px Spread: 0 Add an exclamation mark using the text tool. Set the color to black, the to size to 48, and set the font to Times New Roman. That will give us a nice thick character. Open the layer styles box for the text layer and add outer glow with these settings... Blend mode: normal opacity: 13% spread: 25 size: 8 Step 5 Create a new layer. Select the rectangular marquee tool and set it to subtract. Cut the previous selection in half, leaving the top half. Contract the selection by 2 then smooth it by 4. Fill it with (white) and set the opacity of the layer to 54%. Step 6 De select the selection by pressing ctrl+d. Create a new layer. Hold down your ctrl button and click the first layer we made, in the layer palette. This should create a selection around our triangle. Make sure your still on the top layer, which we just created. Set the foreground color to black and stroke the selection, this will create our border. Congratulations! Your finished!
In this example we will take picture of the Planet Earth (round), and reshape it into a Square! 1. First, open starting image. In this case, I'll reshape picture of our Planet EarthOne of the things i will do is to play with a shadows a little, so to give our object sense of dimensionality. 2. Second, we will start by simple reshaping, as it is usually easiest thing to do. Go to "Filter -> Liquefy" and start morphing. Don't be frustrated if it is not perfect, as it is not the point of this step, but try to make it similar to the picture below. 3. Now that we have made our basic shape, we need to take care of the second part. If you have any shiny parts on your picture, you should flatten them out by using "healing brush".As we do not have that type of problem, we can move to next step. 4. Here, it will be helpful if you draw your square outlines on new layer on top of original picture, as to give you some guide in future steps.Also, don't worry if the picture doesn't fit perfectly into the square. 5. Now this step is going to further emphasize the role of light in completing the cubed effect. Using the guide layer above, get the polygonal lasso and select a single face of the cube as shown.Next get the eye dropper and take a midtone color from that area. Next get the paint bucket tool and fill in the selected area on a new layer above the Planet earth. Do the same for each face on the cube. As you usually don't need to blur top face, you can go to "Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur". When you are done blurring change the layer mode to "Overlay" and this will allow the detail of the image to show through while maintaining your adjustment to the light. Final step is to load the image back into the Liquify Filter and adjust the cube once more so that all of the faces fit the dimension of a cube. After that, you can see the final result! Excellent!
Using photoshop you can create some pretty awesome effects with pictures alone. Here is a step by step guide to show you how to blend and create a smooth waterfall. With your image open in Photoshop, grab your Lasso tool from the Tools palette: Select the Lasso tool from the Tools palette.You can also press the letter L on your keyboard to quickly select it.Then, with the Lasso tool selected, drag a selection around your waterfall. It doesn't have to be surgically precise, but try not to stray too far from the edges of the waterfall: Use the Lasso tool to drag a selection around the waterfall.If you need help with making selections, check out our tutorial Unlock The Full Power Of Basic Selections. Copy the Selection Onto Its Own Layer. With the waterfall selected, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Windows) / Command+J (Mac) to copy it onto its own layer above the Background layer. You won't see anything happen in the Document Window, but if you look in the Layers palette, you'll see the waterfall on a new layer: Press "Ctrl+J" (Windows) / "Command+J" (Mac) to copy the waterfall onto a new layer.Step 3: Apply The Motion Blur Filter To The New Layer With our waterfall now copied to its own layer, we can create our "silky smooth" effect by applying the "Motion Blur" filter to it. To do that, go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, select Blur, and then select Motion Blur. This brings up the Motion Blur dialog box:mPhotoshop's "Motion Blur" dialog box. Adjust the Angle of the blur so it matches the angle at which the water is falling. In most cases, this would be 90, since water would normally fall straight down. In my case, since the water is rushing so quickly over the edge, it's actually falling at a bit of an angle, so I've set my blur angle to -77. The easiest way to match your blur angle to the water is to click inside the Angle value box and then increase or decrease the value one degree at a time using the up or down arrow keys on your keyboard, which is what I've done. Once you've set the correct angle, drag the Distance slider at the bottom until your waterfall looks nice and silky. I've dragged mine to a value of 73 pixels, which gives me a nice effect. The image after applying Motion Blur.
When you are doing photo effects you can create those images that sometimes ipods use, the first thing you should do is de-saturate the photo. Change the levels so the range is closer. (Basically slide the black and white sliders towards the gray slider.) Create a new layer. Fill it with #fb4700. Set blending mode to Hard Light. For the Person Duplicate the photo. Take out the background by either the selection tool. Create a new layer. On that new layer, take the character, and paint the person black where you want it black.Set the person layer to blending mode overlay. This will have the part that is not black come through to reflect that red and orange colors. For the Graffiti create new layer just below the layer with the solid color set to hard light. Take a black grunge brush and start grunging the layer. Then again add grunge with the color set to white. Take the eraser tool and take a grunge brush. You can then delete some of the grunge on the layer. Create new layer above all. Set the foreground color to #e6ff8e. Grunge this layer a little. Use it for accents.
when you are creating photo effects you can change the color of a photo without actually selecting the color. At the bottom of the layer palette click at the icon - create a new fill or adjustment layer(a ball half white/half black) and choose Hue/Saturation. At the Hue/Saturation window, choose any color at the edit, as an example yellow; Point at the image, with the eyedropper, the color that do you want to change. Move the Hue slider and choose a color. Now , with the shift key, fix the color(eyerdropper +) where the changed was not good .......... click OK. With the mask active, paint with the brush(with the set foreground black) where is no good(at that example the face and arms).
A fun thing to do with patterns is to create rain. Learning how to add rain to any image is quite easy. Start by opening the image you would like to add the effect of rain to. Then create a new layer and fill it with white colour. Now go to Filter-> Noise -> Add noise. Then apply motion blur with the angle you would like to have your rain falling and change the blending option to screen. Now press ctrl + M and change the curve from the middle acc. to the intensity of the rain.
Images on layouts are just as important as the layout itself. A fun one to would be the Alert Icon: Project09 tutorials photoshop Alert Icon Step 1 Create a new layer, and select the polygonal lasso tool. Draw a triangle as shown on the left. When you have the selection, smooth it by 6. Step 2 Set the foreground color to #FFEB90 and the background to #FF7131. Select the gradient tool, then choose the radious mode. Click and drag from the top to bottom inside the selection, using the gradient tool. You should see something similar to mine on the left. Step 3 Open up the layer styles box for layer 1. Add an inner shadow with these settings... Blend Mode: Overlay Color: Black Angle: -90 Distance: 2 size: 1 Leave the rest of the settings as default. Step 4 Add an outer glow with these settings... blend mode: normal opacity: 33% size: 9px Spread: 0 Add an exclamation mark using the text tool. Set the color to black, the to size to 48, and set the font to Times New Roman. That will give us a nice thick character. Open the layer styles box for the text layer and add outer glow with these settings... Blend mode: normal opacity: 13% spread: 25 size: 8 Step 5 Create a new layer. Select the rectangular marquee tool and set it to subtract. Cut the previous selection in half, leaving the top half. Contract the selection by 2 then smooth it by 4. Fill it with (white) and set the opacity of the layer to 54%. Step 6 De select the selection by pressing ctrl+d. Create a new layer. Hold down your ctrl button and click the first layer we made, in the layer palette. This should create a selection around our triangle. Make sure your still on the top layer, which we just created. Set the foreground color to black and stroke the selection, this will create our border. Congratulations! Your finished!
About the Author:
Did you enjoy this article? Curious about Learning Photoshop Fast? Well now you can by getting this Free Information Pack...what are you waiting for?
