Photoshop Tutorial (Not for total beginners)

Keaton · December 08, 2007, 12:09:10 AM

All right, you know you've all been waiting for this, but here we go!

PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL ONE
Today we will be making this:

Start out by making a 400x150 blank Photoshop document. (that's pixels, kids.)

Find a render that will work for you. I chose one of Ghost Recon from Planetrenders.net (which is the best renders place ever).

Next, I analyzed to see where the light is coning from. This will come in handy later. Think of your render as a sundial. Wherever it's bright, light is hitting. Wherever that light is coming from is the light source.

Now, make a gradient (preferrably bipolar) to get some groundwork going.

Make a new layer. Now, we're going to take a few brushes and just go crazy. Try to keep them within the realm of slight sanity, however, as you're goign to want to see some of the background in order to get the coolest effect.

Make a new layer. Now, for the next step, place your render. Go to File>>Place then choose the image. Click on the little 'chain link' icon up on the top of the screen, which will make it so that the picture doesn't get over-stratched. Now, take this image, and use Ctrl+J several times to duplicate the image. Do it about five times, and throw them aroudn the image at various angles, trying to cover up all of the image. Once this is done, right cligk on the layer's name in the 'Layers' bar, and click Merge Down. Once you've done ALL this, find a good brush using the smudge tool (right-click on the blurring tool and go to smudge), and smudge away.

Once you're done with all THAT, you're going to want to sharpen the layer a tad. Go to Filter>>Sharpen>>Sharpen. Then, go to Filter>>Distort>>Glass, and use the settings (9, then 14) to get a nice, even ripple throughout the signature. Set this layer to Color Dodge, and this is what you should have so far.

Make a new layer. Now, you're going to want to take your render (oh yeah, you should've saved a copy of the unaltered, placed render. Forgot to tell you that) and then smudge the hell out of it. Set this to about 60% Opacity.

Make a new layer. This next part's easy, take that unaltered render, duplicate it, and set the duplicated one to lighten.

Remember to set the unaltered render layer to hidden, so that you can't mess aruond with it by accident.

Make a new layer. Now, smudge ANOTHER duplicated render a little bit, and then set that layer to Soft Light.

Make a new layer. Now, this is a moderately fun part. Go find a C4D off the internet (basically an abstract render that you can use) that matches the color of your signature and the direction of flow ('ll explain at the bottom of this tutorial, don't worry), and place it over where the render is in your sig. Then, delete the parts that overlap your render completely, leaving just a tiny bit around the edge for blending, andset the layer to Soft Light as well, and reduce the opacity to around 50%. Erase any overcontrasted parts. You should come out with something like...

Then, duplicate the C4D layer. Trust me.

Make a new layer. All righty. This is where it gets even more confusing, but keep with me. You're going to do something called 'flow emphasis' now. Be sure to read up on what 'flow' is below, although it's not that hard to figure out yourself. Now, use the bucket tool to make a new layer, and fill it with black. Then, take a color that best fits the 'mood' of your piece, and paint with a 100px 'soft' circular brush in the direction of your flow. Set this layer to Soft light as well, and again reduce the opacity to Soft Light.

Make a new layer. Now, we're just going to take a 100px 'Soft' circular brush, white this time, and we're going to paint where the light source is. It's in the top left corner of my sig, because of how the light hits the recon soldier. Set this to Soft Light, but at full opacity.

All right, now we're going to make a new layer. Then, go to Image>>Apply Image, hit ok, and a carbon copy of what you have so far should all merge into one layer. Then, go to Filter>>Disort>>Ocean Ripple, and use the settings (14, then 9). Erase the overcontrasted parts, and lower the opacity down to around 60%.

Now, make a new layer. Find a good spatter brush set, and use some spatter brushes on your signature in the color white. Don't make it look pretty, just go crazy.

Now, make a new layer again. Go back to the white brush layer and hide it. Then, go to the new layer and go to Image>>Apply Image. Click ok. Then, go back to the white brush layer (crazy, eh?) and unhide it. Now, go BACK UP to the new applied image layer, and right-click on the text in the 'layers' menu for that layer. Go to create clipping mask.

Now I want you to move the new image around, to wherever looks good and doesn't make any white shine through. If the mask is too overpowering, lower the opacity on THE WHITE BRUSH LAYER ONLY. Again, trust me.

Now, make a new layer and just do whatever effects look good. There can never be too many filters, as long as the piece looks good.

Just slap on some text, and you're done! YAY!!!

Flow-- The direction that things seem to be going in a signature. If a person is pointing his gun to the top left corner of the screen, and he is facing that way, too, then that's the direction the flow is going in. If multiple things seem to be going toward a specfic direction, then that's where the flow is going toward, as well. Simple.

KEEP IN MIND: You will not understand most of this until you get a basic grasp of the features of photoshop. Keep trying out other tutorials before you really start to go for other people's tutorials.

[Size=0]Partial credit goes to Mr. Jimmy Boy of GTech.[/Size]

alical · December 27, 2007, 02:38:43 PM

I thought this was really good!
I didn't understand the bit after the splatter brush but that didn't really matter.
Using this I made a sig I might put what I got in the showcase.
I did have some text, a line from a song but it really didn't blend in with the whole thing.

Anyway thanks for a great tutorial ^^

Takun · January 04, 2008, 05:42:43 PM

Im following you good. And I really want to put this pic of a pyramid head on there but there is one problem. When I got to File>Place, the pictures from my pics are not there. But if I use File>Open, I see them all but it opens my pic in a new window. How do I get it to where I can put it on there using the File>Place method?