Mental Wave Explosion

Tutorial here.

First I opened the road photo to use as my background. I used a layer mask to cut out the guy from another photo, and placed him in the road photo. I made a selection of the guy to create his shadow on a new layer. Then I used the ellipse tool and direction selection tool to create the mental wave shape. I used the clouds tool and used the selection of the ellipse from before to make the clouds only appear within that shape. Then I used the liquify tool to make the shape appear to be bulging. I repeated this step three times. I used the outer glow tool to give the shape its desired effects. I used the elliptical marquee tool to make the shadow underneath the shape and then used the zig-zag tool to create the ripples. Next, I added the truck and created a shadow the same way I made the shadow for the guy. Then I just made a ton of adjustments with the lighting and coloring to make it the way that I wanted.

Good and Evil

Tutorial here.

This tutorial splits a face in half to make a good side and an evil side. First, I used a single column marquee to make the line in the middle. Evil side: First I desaturated the left side and then used the brush tool to make the eye black. I used a concrete texture for the skin and used a layer mask and erased over the eyes and lips. Then I used to burn tool to hollow out the eyes and cheekbone area. The tutorial included a link to a brush set to make make-up smudges on the face. Good side: I used the spot healing brush and gaussian blur to make the skin look perfect. Then I used an elliptical marquee to select the eye and made it a bright blue color. Then I used a star brush and changed the settings to make them look random and put some over various parts of the face.

Chocolate Skull

Chocolate skull tutorial here. The point of this tutorial was to take a realistic skull and make it look like melting chocolate. It was pretty simple (only a few tools were used) but the detail was very important. I started by making the skull black and white and duplicating the layer and making it a chocolate brown color. Then I used the smudge tool to make 'drips' coming from the skull. This was pretty easy but I don't see how the person who made the tutorial made the little ball at the end of the drip to make it look really. Then I added some white for highlights and smudged those out too. Next, I found a cake background and dragged the skull over it. I used the clone stamp and smudge tool to make things blend together. The red background was not high enough, so I found a red fabric texture and added and used the clone stamp and smudge tool again to make it blend.

Flash Writing Effect

I have tried at least four other Flash tutorials before this one and I have been unsuccessful with all of them so I decided to start with something really simple. The tutorial can be found here. I began using a script front to write my name and I used the break apart tool twice to break apart each letter. Then I used the eraser tool and worked backwards from the end of the text, erasing a piece and then hitting F6 to create a frame, and repeating that until I reached the beginning of the text to make it look like my name is being written across the screen.

I can't figure out how to post flash things on here, so here is my Google page and I hope you can open and view it.

Cyborg Girl

This is probably going to be my last Photoshop-only project for this class. I began by taking the start image and camouflaging any blemishes on the model's skin. Next, I used the curves adjustment layer, made a layer mask and then erased over her eyes to make  them stand out. Then I used to magic wand tool to cut out the model from the background, refined the edge, and placed her on a gray background. Next, I added the cyborg parts, and there were a couple different methods for doing this. One method was using the pen tool to cut away part of the model, and then placing the cyborg part. Others were cut and dragged in and then I used layer masks to help them blend in.

Christmas Tree

Tutorial can be found here.

I found this Christmas tree tutorial and it looked really fun. I began with a black background and then used a green and black gradient overlay. Then I added two more gradient layers with the fill level at 0% to create the background. The tutorial used the pen tool to draw the tree and the shape tool to make the stars but I just used a star shaped brush and changed the size to create my tree. Next, I added an outer glow to the star layer. Then I used the snowflake shapes and placed them randomly on the background with varying fill levels to make them different shades of white. Then I used the shape called Registration Target 2 with a gradient overlay to make the top star look like it is glowing. The tutorial used the pen tool to draw the garland on the tree, but I just tried to use the shape tool to make a line and then warp it.

Cracked Portrait

This is another tutorial from the Photoshop magazine. The goal of this tutorial was to make to make a picture look like the Black Swan movie poster.

After opening the start image, I duplicated the layer twice. I used to texturizer with a sandstone texture on both layers, but the first layer had a lesser effect. Then I merged those two layers and edited the color and decreased the saturation and increased the contrast. They included a brush pack to use for the cracks. After drawing some of the cracks in, I filled in one section with black paint  to make a selection, then duplicated the selection twice and changed the blend mode to multiply. On the first duplicated layer, I added an inner shadow and added a drop shadow on the second layer to make the cracks look 3D. Then I added some random paint spots to make debris in between the cracks.

Two Quick Tutorials

The first tutorial is from the magazine and it is a solarized eye effect. First, I opened the start image in camera raw and used the curve tool to create an inverted cone shape to alter the colors of the eye. Next, I made the image black and white. I added a mini cemetary scene and put it in the iris of the eye. I duplicated the cemetary layer and changed both to linear dodge to make it blend in with the eye.

The second tutorial is Sin City inspired with the black and white contrast and rain effect. First, I made the image black and white and then changed the levels to make more contrast. To make the rain effect, I made a new layer and filled it with 50% gray. Then I went to Add Noise and changed the amount to 400% and made it monochromatic. Then I used a Motion Blur with the angle and 90 degrees and skewed the layer so it was slanted. Then I changed the layer mode to vivid light. I made a new layer and did the same thing, but slanted this layer less to create a different effect for the rain.

Artists Sketchbook

The goal of this weeks tutorial was to take an image and make it look like something from an artists sketchbook. First, I used to magic wand tool to cut out the woman from the original background. Then I added a layer mask, created a new blank layer,  and used the smudge tool on the new layer to bring the woman through the layer. Then I used the pencil sketch filter and the tutorial said to invert this layer, but later showed it as un-inverted so I'm not sure what it was supposed to be. Then a layer mask was added an a wet media brush was used to erase some smudge tool layer to blend it with the pencil sketch layer. This is where things went wrong. My image does not look very blended and does not look like an artists sketchbook painting whatsoever. Next, the paper background image was added. I used the polygonal lasso tool to select some of the hair and then transformed them into different shapes to look like brush strokes.

Liquid Flowers

This tutorial was called "Liquid Flower Effects." The whole point of this tutorial was to transform milk droplets to make them look like the are part of the flowers. First I just used the magic wand tool to get rid of the background of the droplets and the refine edge tool to get rid of any excess and smooth the edges. Then a layer mask was painted over the make the liquid blend into the flower. Next I added a gradient overlay to each droplet to make it blend into the flower that it was on. Most of this tutorial was just transforming the shape of the droplets and making them blend into the flowers. It was pretty simple but it took a really long time to get everything positioned just right. I don't think my droplets blended as well as it looks in the tutorial image, but practice makes perfect.

Retro Pin-Up

This tutorial is called "Get the Vintage Look." The point of this tutorial was to turn a modern photo into a vintage pin-up photo. Again we used Camera Raw to warm up the undertones of the original photo and conceal some of the smaller blemishes on the skin. Then I used the patch tool to get rid of blemishes and under eye bags, the spot healing brush tool to cover freckles and a high pass filter to smooth everything out. A surface blur was used to create a painted effect. I learned how to convert layers into a smart object and this merges all of the layers into a new layer, but still preserves the previous layers in case you need to go back. The next couple steps involved changing her eye color and adding some blush to her face and smoothing her skin out some more. Then a radial gradient was used to create a warm yellow-y background. Next, a textured background was added and then I changed the blend mode to multiply so it could blend in with the yellow background. The tutorial used the liquefy tool to make her waist smaller, but the tool did not seem to work at all no matter how many times I reread the directions and re-did the steps, so I ended up skipping this step.

My Pin-Up

Betty Blue Movie Poster

This is another tutorial from Practical Photoshop magazine. The point of this tutorial was to recreate a Betty Blue style movie poster. I really liked this tutorial and it was one of the only ones that turned out just like how it looks in the magazine. First Camera Raw (which I have never used before this) was used to manipulate the original images to get a more high quality result. Next, several different gradients were used on the background layer to get the desired effect. I have used gradients before but I didn't know what the different kinds meant. There is foreground to transparent and foreground to background and I did not know what the difference was until this tutorial. I used the polygonal lasso tool to cut the face and arms out from the background and then used adjustment layers to hide the remaining parts of the background and to blend the model into the sky and make her features stand out against the dark sky.

My image:

Image from the tutorial:

Halloween Pumpkin

Tutorial can be found here.

I really did not like this tutorial, but I decided to post it anyway. I think a different version of Photoshop was used (the tutorial was made in 2008) because I would follow directions exactly and things just would not turn out right even after going over the directions multiple times. The first part of the tutorial was adjusting the shape and color of the pumpkin. Then, the tutorial said to use a brush tool to sketch the mouth and eyes. Next, it said the create a new layer and use the magic wand to select the inside areas of the mouth and eyes, which didn't work, so I had to do it on the previous layer which then made other things not work in the following steps. I do like the background of the image. A clouds filter was applied and then sections were duplicated and made different colors and then blending together, and an elliptical selection was used to create the reflection on the table.

Fantasy Landscape

For this project, the idea was to put together several different images to make a fantasy landscape. I don't think that mine looks very realistic but it was still really fun to make. The first part of the tutorial was to create faces in the tree, which didn't turn out so well. I ended up only using one of the faces because the process was just too time consuming. There was a lot of morphing and blending the faces into the trees and rearranging the leaves. Next, the mountains background was put in and the Marquee selection tool was used to cut pieces of the grass from another image. Then two different flower images were added. These were hard to blend (using layer masks) together and make this part of the project look realistic. The tutorial added fog to blend the layers but I don't think it worked very well. 

Create a Jungle

I chose the project from the Photoshop book where you had to create an urban jungle in London. This project took forever and there was a lot of steps but I think it turned out really nice.

This tutorial introduced a new technique to add images to the project. The Calculations Dialog box was used to change the colors and blending modes of the different channels to create a new Alpha channel. Then the contrast of the channel was increased and then painted over with a black or white brush. Then a layer mask was applied and the image was dragged into the project and transformed accordingly. This technique worked really well if the painting over with black or white brush but sometimes it took a while to get it exactly right. I ended up just moving the entire image into the project and using a layer mask to erase the extra parts and blend it in. I think this technique would be really useful with some more practice. I think my image looks similar to the one in the tutorial. They included more foliage and more shading to bring everything together and make it look more realistic.

Original Image from the tutorial:

Typography Effects 3

This week, I decided to play around with some of the text tutorials found here. They were pretty simple to I did a couple of them at once. Most of the tutorial involved creating different effects with the layer styles. There's a lot of tutorials that I really want to try but they involve using the pen tool and I just can't do it.

Quick Gold Text

 Hypercolor

Plastic

Double Type

Project 5: Wheels on Fire, Round 2

I attempted to finish the Wheels on Fire tutorial. I used the same finished car from the last post and added some more smoke and fire. I used the city background image from the tutorial and I just used a layer mask and erased the background instead of using the pen tool. On another layer, I made stripes of paint to make the sky and then used a Gaussian blur to make the colors blend together. I ended up using the completed car image from the tutorial to get the lines on the road. I cannot get the hang of the pen tool for the life of me, so I again used a layer mask and erased the rest of the image. Then I added a bit more smoke to make everything blend together more. I duplicated the car layer to make the orange-y tones even brighter. The last thing I did was use the brush tool to make some little sparks in the flames. No matter what I did in this tutorial, my car just did not turn out as"glowy" as the car in the tutorial, and that was kind of disappointing. 

Tutorial Image:

Project 4: Wheels on Fire

This tutorial is called 'Wheels on Fire' and is from the Photoshop magazine. This tutorial was super frustrating and took forever and would not turn out like the one in the tutorial no matter I did and no matter how many times I reread the directions. Although I do like the way it turned out, I might come back to this tutorial later. First, I used a quick selection tool to remove the car from its original picture. This was so much easier than using the pen tool. The tutorial said to use a layer mask and paint over the decals and lettering on the car and this just did not work at all. It looked okay at first, but the next couple steps involving duplicating the layer and blurring it, and then it just highlighted the parts that were painted over and made them even more noticable, so I ended up leaving them. You can't really see them with all the smoke and fire anyways. The rest of the tutorial was added smoke and fire layers and transforming and blending them into the car. For my smoke layers, every time I added a new layer, it somehow erased the previous smoke layer and I had no idea how this happened and I kept having to start over.

Project 3: Typography Effects

Today I tried a tutorial for a 'Harry Potter' text effect. Tutorial can be found here. Overall, the tutorial was pretty simple but it took a while to finish. The text layer was duplicated three times, and each time the layer was duplicated, the tutorial said to 'clear the layer style' which I didn't know you could do. The rest of the tutorial was just changing the blending options of each layer to create different effects. Going through the settings for drop shadow, inner glow, bevel and emboss, satin, color overlay, gradient overly, etc is what took the most time. The settings were also different for each layer to give the text a 3D effect. My text appears to be grainy and I couldn't figure out why, so I probably missed a step somewhere. I then merged all of my layers into one because it was easier. Then I applied a Gradient map, which changes the color of the entire thing, and you can make thing any color or type of gradient that you want. The tutorial added some sparkle brushes but I don't like the way mine turned out. I haven't made any kind of 3D text before, so it was nice to learn how.

Project 2: Nature Photo Manipulation

Tutorial used can be found here.

The tutorial I used is called Create a Nature Inspired Photo Manipulation in Photoshop, found on psd.tutsplus.com. I opted for a simpler tutorial since I am still getting back into Photoshop and I feel a little rusty. I was also able to use some tools that I have never used before.

This tutorial used a lot of different blending modes. There were two different tree layers, one set to multiply and the other set to color dodge to give the tree a different effect. For the sky layer, a screen mode was used to make it blend into the background more. For the text, soft light was used, which kind of makes the text blend into the background. Usually when I use text, I prefer it to be very bold, but I like the soft light mode for things like this. This tutorial involved grouping layers, which I have not done before. The hand, tree, and sky were all part of one group, and the lighting was part of another group. The owls were selected from their original background using a quick mask, which I have never heard of. You basically make a mask over whatever object you want to cut out of a background. I had a little trouble painting in the owl since it has so many feathers sticking out, but with some retouching I think it turned out okay. Overall, I think the composition turned out good and I really liked this tutorial. It was a good refresher and I learned some new things along the way.

Project 1: Reawaken the Dead

This is my first project so far. The tutorial was called "Reawaken the dead" and halloween is coming up so obviously I had to pick this for my first project. There was a lot of work with layer masks, which I haven't used too much before. There were several different layers (like the skull layer, the teeth layer and various texture layers) that needed a layer mask to get rid of the excess. Instead of using the eraser tool, the tutorial used layer masks and you paint over the excess and it acts like an eraser. In the tutorial, they used the stock photo of a man's face and the skull stock photo they used seemed to fit perfectly with his face, but it didn't match that well with mine so I used the free transform tool to get things to fit my own face better. I've done some zombie faces before using Photoshop, but this tutorial had a really good idea for making bloodshot eyes. The used a cracked paint texture and a layer mask and then adjusted the hue/saturation to make them red, but there is a little box called 'colorize' and when you click that and then change the hue/saturation, the results are so much better. The teeth part was kind of tricky and mine didn't blend as well as I would have liked. I would like to go back and play around it to get it to blend into my face better.