Paper "Mountain"

Tutorial here.

This was just a quick and easy tutorial that I did while I was looking for something more advanced. I started with a crumpled paper image and did a Curve Adjustment and Channel Mixer to make the paper black and white and show the highlights and shadows. Then I used an unsharpen mask, despeckle, blur tool, and smudge stick filter to make the "mountains" look more textured. I used a lens flare in the upper left corner and used liquefy to make a glowing star shape. Then I added a new layer and added in the different colors, and changed the layer mode to overlay. I used a tiny star brush all over the image and then used a  motion blur.

Chilling Photo Manipulation

Tutorial here.

Clearly photo manipulation tutorials have become my favorite. I have been looking for more advanced level tutorials, and this one was labeled as advanced. I think the instructions were clear and I didn't have too many problems with this one, it just took me a while to finish.

I began by adding the pier and sky backgrounds and blending the seam between them. Then I added the body and head of the mermaid-thing, which were two separate parts. The head had to blended in to the sky more, so I used a layer mask and painted over the edges. I cut out the eyes from an animal skull and pasted them in, and used a small soft brush to make the eyes look like they are glowing. Next I added the ice layer, and I used Select > Color Range to select on the white parts of the image. The next couple steps involved some shading and adding in the hourglass and blending that in. Then I added the waves, and I used 5 different wave images for this. I used Select > Color Range to select the waves, but I found that I had to invert the selection or I would just end up selecting the area around the waves. I added in the person/wizard/magician and used a soft brush to make it look like there is an energy coming from him, like he is summoning the mermaid-thing. Next I added the lighting, and I just used a brush set. I added a mist effect using a gradient overlay. Then I added some color and lighting adjustments until I liked the result. I really like how my image turned out. It actually looks close to what the tutorial image looks like for once.

Supernatural Dark Scene with Fiery Effect

Tutorial here.

I came down with a bad cold last week and it really kicked my butt so I haven't been able to post as much as would have liked. I thought this tutorial looked cool and I think it turned out okay. I started with a black background and used a crack-pattern brush for where the girl would be standing. The link to the brushes in the tutorial was broken so I used some brushes that I already had, and the effect didn't turn out quite the same. Next, I used the quick selection tool to cut out some flames to put over the crack area. The tutorial said to use the crack pattern brushes to erase some of of the flames. This didn't turn out very well, maybe because I was using a different brush set. Then I added the girl and added a few adjustments to that. Next I added the flames on the side, which had to be scaled, rotated and warped. At first, the flames looked exactly like how they did in the tutorial and somehow ended up looking very different. Then I added in the crow. After that I used some feather brushes and made some adjustments with the color and contrast.

Create an Out of Bounds Fantasy Illustration

Tutorial here.

This is the 7th tutorial I've tried to get through this week and nothing has been turning out right. With the more advanced tutorials, it takes me so much longer and without detailed instructions, things get really complicated. I decided to go ahead and post this one, even though I don't like how it turned out. I thought this tutorial looked really cool, but halfway through it really started to suck. Half of the stock images didn't exist and I had to find other images that were similar. The completion time given is 2-3 hours. It took me at least 8. Most of this tutorial was using stock images and adjusting them, adding textures, etc to fit with the rest of the image. To make the waterfall, I used the lasso tool to cut pieces of an actual waterfall. For the break apart effect (which you can't see too well in mine) I used the lasso tool to move little pieces of each object. I added a radial blur over everything and used a layer mask to 'un-blur' the objects. Next I used Topaz Adjust (which was a pain in the butt to install but I figured it out eventually) to adjust the color. I also used Adobe Lightroom to change some settings. I have never used either of these programs so it was nice to see how they work. In the last step of the tutorial, you were supposed to copy the green channel and paste it over the blue channel, which didn't work and I couldn't figure it out.

The Pen Tool

You would think that at an intermediate/advanced level, I would have mastered the pen tool by now, right? Wrong. I avoid it like the plague, and I go to drastic measures to work out around. Until today. I found a tutorial from psd.tuts (here) that has a file where it gives you a guide that gives you step by step instructions while using the pen tool to trace around some letters. It took me a while to get started but I eventually got the hang of it. I wouldn't say that I'm an expert at this point, but I think I could do some basic things with it.

"Cosmic Love Goddess"

Tutorial can be found here here.

I thought this would be a fun tutorial to get back into Photoshop with. I omitted a couple steps and I really like how to final product turned out without them.

The first step was to take the photo of the model and use the Quick Selection and Refine Edge tool to get rid of the background around her. I also ended up using the Magic Wand tool and the eraser for some of the smaller areas. Then I used two different sky images and a wave image blended together to create the background. After placing the model into the background, I resized and rotated her. I did the same thing with the wings. I duplicated the wings layer and placed one layer under the model layer and one layer above it. Then I used a layer mask to erase the part of the wing that was covering the arm. Next I used some of the hair brushes (link from tutorial) to make her hair super long. I haven't used many brush sets, so it's always nice to use something new and try it out. I added the stars using a soft brush and used the Brush Palette to vary the size and spacing, then set the layer mode to overlay so they blended in the background better. Then I made three different layers for Color Balance, which I have not used before. In the tutorial, it showed different settings for the shadows, midtones and highlights for each of the three layers. The settings created a pink-ish color. Then I used the eraser tool with a soft brush to erase in the middle of the second two layers to get the effect that you see above.

Interface Problems

I had to shrink this to get it to fit, but my interface is there, and then the template is below it. First of all, the interface only takes up about half the width of the page, so I don't know if I need to remake and make it bigger or if this can be adjusted. Then I thought the interface would override the template. Do I need to open a blank page and then put the interface in? I'm really confused as to how to get the interface into Dreamweaver and I can't find a tutorial that explains it. I've been hung up on fixing this for two weeks now and I can't keep remaking this interface.