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20 Photo Manipulation and Montage Tutorials for Photoshop

2011-10-25T16:15:28Z

This week we are celebrating the launch of PhotoDune, our new stock photography marketplace. Today, we want to present you with a list of some of our favorite photo manipulation, photomontage, and photo effect tutorials from our site and across the web. We hope that this list will inspire you to create some fantastic photo-based designs of your own. Please take a look, and enjoy!

Create a Fantasy Bird Girl Illustration in Photoshop

This tutorial will demonstrate how to create a fantasy bird girl illustration using digital painting and photo manipulation techniques.

Create a Refreshing Beer Themed Poster Design in Photoshop

This tutorial demonstrates how to produce a beautiful beer-themed advertisement in Photoshop.

Undress a Giraffe in Photoshop

This tutorial will demonstrate how to undress a giraffe by removing its spots. We will then show how to turn its spots into an outfit that will be draped over an ironing board.

Paint With Fire

This tutorial demonstrates how to create a flaming person in Photoshop.

The Making of the Nutty Boat Trip

In this tutorial you will demonstrate how to place a couple of squirrels in a coffee mug that is floating in a body of water.

Playing With the Displace Filter in Photoshop

This tutorial demonstrates how to make a brick wall made of cloth.

Create a Fictional Arctic Snow Frog in Photoshop

In this tutorial you will combine several stock images and effects to create a fictional arctic snow frog in Photoshop.

Combine Stock Photography to Create a Sleepy Japanese Village in Photoshop

In this tutorial you will create a sleepy Japanese village in Photoshop by combining several stock photos.

Army Squirrel Photoshop Manipulation Tutorial

This tutorial demonstrates how to create a badass army squirrel that will eat you for breakfast!

Milk Monster and Chocolate Splash

This tutorial shows how to manipulate a splash to create your own milk monster.

Create a Devastating Tidal Wave in Photoshop

In this tutorial you will learn how to destroy London with a devastating tidal wave.

Create a Lost Fantasy Micro World with Powerful Photo Manipulation Techniques in Photoshop

This tutorial will demonstrate how to create a floating, micro world using several stock images in Photoshop.

How to Make a Car Advertisement Poster Design

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a cool off-road auto advertisement.

Meat Text Effect in Photoshop

This tutorial will show you how to create a text effect made from meat.

Create a Miniature Super Car in Photoshop

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a miniature super car in Photoshop and then give it a paint job.

Age Progression

This tutorial will demonstrate how to make a person look older in Photoshop.

Lighting a Giant Elephant

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a giant elephant walking through city streets.

Make a Soft Grunge Product Ad Design in Photoshop

In this tutorial you will learn how create a shoe advertisement using a nice splash effect.

Applying a Realistic Tattoo

In this tutorial you will learn how to apply a realistic tattoo to a person.

Create a Realistic Blueprint Image From a 3D Object

In this tutorial, you’ll create a quick mock-up of a 3D car blueprint. Then place it on an image of a drafting table. This time we’ll use a particular Photoshop 3D Render Mode to create this awesome effect.

Photo Effects Week: Create a Cutout Photograph in Photoshop

2011-10-24T16:30:13Z

This week we are celebrating the launch of PhotoDune, Envato’s new stock photography website with a series of photo effect and photo manipulation tutorials that showcase the images from our new marketplace. In this tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a cutout photo using simple selections and advanced transformations. The photos used in this tutorial are available for free for Psd Premium Members. Let’s get started!

Tutorial Assets

The following assets were used during the production of this tutorial. We have granted a complimentary personal license to Psd Premium Members for the stock photos used in this tutorial. They can be accessed in the source files of your premium download. If you are not a premium member, you can download the images used in this tutorial below.

Step 1 – Put The Images Together

For the start of this tutorial you’re going to want to bring the picture of the girl running into the picture of the kitchen. You can do this by opening the file then copying and pasting, or using File > Place. Once you’ve got the picture of the girl running inserted convert that layer to a Smart Object. Right click on that new image layer and choose "Convert To Smart Object" from the contextual menu. If you haven’t used Smart Objects before, they can be a real lifesaver allowing a better non-destructive editing workflow many previous versions of Photoshop didn’t have available.

Make a duplicate of the girl running Smart Object layer you just converted by pressing Command/Ctrl + J. After this, turn off the visibility of this duplicate layer, we won’t need it until later.

Tip: A neat trick is that you can also drag files directly from their folder into the canvas of the kitchen picture and it should make it a Smart Object automatically. (Windows users may need to change their workspace/view to make this possible.)

Step 2 – Find The Focal Point

The next step might seem a bit obvious, but you need to identify where in the staging image (the one you’re compositing into) is the area that’s most in focus. This is often a part of compositing that gets over looked. If you don’t do this you can really paint yourself into a corner that is hard to work around. If you are compositing elements into an area that’s out of focus just remember that you’ll need to blur any additions out to match the out of focus of the staging image. In this case the kitchen image was shot with a really small depth of field, it almost resembles a tilt shift style image. To make sure I know where this area is in the image, I create some guides by dragging from the rulers to frame the focal point of the image. If you can’t see your rulers just press Command/Ctrl + R. The menu option for this is under View in the menu bar.

Tip: don’t forget to turn off the layer of the girl running to make sure you can see the whole picture.

Step 3 – Find The Perspective

Now we need to Distort the image of the girl running so that it looks like it matches the perspective of the surface of the counter top. I always find that perspective is one of those things that can make or break a piece so I like to trace the vanishing points of an image to help guide where I’m going to place the image. The vanishing point is where all the edges eventually lead to and meet. In an image like this, there are two vanishing points on what is called a two point perspective. The red lines below show the left vanishing point, the only one I’m concerned with for now.

After this I feel like I have a better sense of where the surface plane is. So now it’s time to make the layer of the girl running visible and press Command/Ctrl + T on Windows so that you can Free Transform the image. The great thing here is because you made this layer a Smart Object earlier, none of this distortion is permanent nor are we resampling any pixel data. So even after we distort the pic, if we wanted to adjust the tonal values of this image afterwards we could without any loss or rework necessary.

To Distort the image hold down the Command/Ctrl key and move with the central coordinate markers instead of the corner markers. This way you’re not abstractly distorting the shape of the image and instead you can distort it in a way that feels more intuitive to matching the perspective plane of the image. This is something that should be practiced if you don’t regularly distort images to match a three dimensional space.

Once you have the image matching the correct surface plane of the counter top, and you’re ready to match your perspective now hold Command/Ctrl and distort from a single corner to match the perspective lines on your image. From here move it into a position and layout you feel works best for you.

Step 4 – Make It Less Rigid

With your image moved into a position that you like, and in the correct perspective of the kitchen counter surface plan, we want to add a little dimension to this rigid photograph placed on the counter.

So while you still have your Free Transform box active now look up in the menu bar and click on the Warp Mode button so that we can do a more organic type of transformation. Once you’ve switched to this mode you can pull down on the corner so that it curves over the edge of the counter top and you can bend any side edges to add a curling effect to the photograph. The real reason to do this is to create a shape that forces you to add shadows and highlights. By making it so you can add shadows and highlights you should get a much more convincing composite.

Step 5 – Separating The Character

Remember the duplicate of the girl running picture we made earlier, right after we converted that layer into a Smart Object? Now make that layer visible and using the same transformation and distort techniques move it into position but this time match the vertical surface plane of the perspective instead of the counter surface. This will become our character that has broke free and is running out of her photograph.

Step 6 – Cutting Her Out

What makes this technique fast is the stylization of a choppy cutout from the photograph. As if it was done by some children’s scissors or an old xacto cutting knife. To emulate this I use the Polygonal Lasso Tool, and loosely clicked around the girl’s silhouette. You could also do this with the Pen Tool and produce a saveable Work Path that could be converted into a Selection. This could be very useful if you were dealing with more than one character in your final piece. Remember to click with some extra space around your character so that it accentuates the detail that the character is flat and from a piece of paper. Later in this tutorial we’ll add some slight paper frayed edges for texture here.

Step 7 – Mask Out & Position

Once your selection is made for the upright girl running, make sure you have that layer targeted and then press the Layer Mask button at the bottom of the layers palette. This will isolate the girl with your choppy selection.

Next move the girl into position, using the Move Tool, so that the foot aligns with the original foot on the flat surface image.

Step 8 – Making The Hole

Now that you’ve got your girl running setup to be vertical and cutout from the image, we need that same shape to be cut out from the image that appears to be resting on the counter surface. There are lots of ways to do this, but the way I did it was to right click on the layer mask we made on the upright girl running layer, then chose "Add Mask To Selection" from the contextual menu. You could just as easily hold the Command/Ctrl key and just click on the layer mask, that will give also give you a selection based on the layer mask. Once you have this active selection go to "Select" in the menu bar and come down to choose "Transform Selection."

This will produce a bounding box around your active selection that allows you the ability to transform and distort just that selection and not the pixels that are currently selected. Using the distort techniques we learned earlier, by pressing and holding the Command/Ctrl key, Distort the selection until it aligns around the image area of the girl that is flat to the counter surface. You’ll then use this mask to remove her from that picture, and produce your see through hole for the effect we’re making.

As you have that selection in place, just Inverse the selection by either pressing Command/Ctrl + I. You can also go to Select > Inverse in the menu bar. Now target the layer that has the image of the girl running flat to the counter surface, press the Layer Mask button and you should end up with the girl cut out from the counter surface image and the rest of the photo intact. If you’ve done this correctly it should look like the preview below. You can now see the vertical girl running picture with no background from her source image, and the other girl running picture flat on the counter surface with the selection knocked out to create the hole in the surface photo.

Step 9 – Puppet Warp To Adjust

At this point, if you’d like to adjust your girl running, I suggest doing it with the Puppet Warp feature found under Edit in the menu bar. I won’t dive too deep into the Puppet Warp feature, but basically you get a grid that allows you to add "Pins" to it. After you add a pin you can hold down the Command/Ctrl key and click on the pin to move or adjust that segment of the picture. Locking down various areas means they won’t transform while you move your selected pin. When you’re happy with your adjustment simply click on the check mark up in the options bar. There’s a lot of power behind Puppet Warp and it will allow you to adjust the form of your girl that is cut out to appear more dimensional as a piece of thin paper. I moved her left knee and her head just a little bit.

Step 10 – Layer Styles

So now we need to add some surface shadows for all that distortion, transforming, and warping, that we did earlier. Although I’m a big fan of just painting in shadows so they look more organic and less like a calculated digital production this is often a major time suck, so in this step we’ll take advantage of the drop shadow feature and then modify that after it’s added to create a better shadow for the image. So you’re first step is just to add a Drop Shadow by clicking on the Layer Styles button at the bottom of the Layers Palette and choose Drop Shadow.

Step 11 – Shadow Coloring

When I’m adding a shadow, whether it’s painted or a style, I always remember something my art professor in college told me. "Mark, shadows aren’t black…EVER!" Now I don’t know how true that is for the argument of science but I get the point. Shadows are an artifact of lighting that are cast onto a surface that most likely has color on it. So I try to use that influence in much of my compositing work. Here I sampled a dark color from the counter surface, and then I experimented with the Color Burn Blend Mode in the Layer Style Drop Shadow dialogue box options. This should give you a more subtle shadow. I adjusted the settings until I found that tone and contrast was similar to objects that original existed in the background photo so that it would be more convincing.

It’s worth noticing also that I keep the Size value down at 0. The reason for this is because we’re going to modify the softness/blur of the shadow by hand so it’s more believable. In Photoshop one of the simple rules is that it’s much easier to blur something then it is to un-blur something. So having a good sharp source to work with is always best in my opinion.

Step 12 – Separate The Shadow

After you’ve added the generic Drop Shadow, we’re going to convert that Layer Style into it’s own layer. To do this, Right Click on either the ‘fx’ icon in the layer with the Drop Shadow or click on the effect label itself. Scroll down and toward the bottom of the contextual menu there should be an option for Create Layer. This will then separate the Layer Style from it’s original layer and produce a new layer of it’s own. This new layer should be labeled with Drop Shadow in the layer title, and you’ll notice the blending mode and fill percentage mimics the original dialogue box settings. Now you have the shadow on it’s own layer in physical pixels that can be modified uniquely.

Step 13 – Warp The Shadow

Now that you have the Drop Shadow as it’s own layer, use both the Free Transform and Warp Mode techniques we utilized earlier to modify the shadow so that it better represents the shadow on the surface of the counter.

My advice here is to think about where you created curves on your surface photograph earlier so that you can Warp your new shadow to compliment those curves and bends of the photograph. Any part of the surface photograph that should be touching the counter top would have almost no drop shadows at all. Any edges of the photograph you bent up, would require being able to see more of the shadow under the photograph.

For the outer edge of the counter I cut a section of the drop shadow out and warped it to run parallel to the vertical axis of the counter top edge surface. This is primarily done because in the background image I can tell that there is a strong light source from high above, and slightly off to the left of the photographers frame composition.

Step 14 – Smart Object

At this point I convert any layers I have for the drop shadow into a single Smart Object. Just hold down Shift and click on multiple layers then Right Click on the highlighted layers and choose "Convert to Smart Object".

The reason for this is so that I can blur my shadow without permanently committing to those blur values.

Step 15 – Subtle Shadow Tweaks

After you’ve blurred your Smart Object, the one you created from all your Drop Shadow layers, go into the mask of the Smart Object using a soft feathered brush and paint out the areas that should not be so soft.

Tip: Remember, the closer an object is to the surface the more likely it is the shadow will get sharper edged. So mask out your soft shadow by painting into the mask of the Smart Filter so it will appear to sharpen the edge of the shadow where appropriate. You can see in the example below which areas I left soft and which ones I masked out the filter to gain a sharper edge shadow. This will help create a more dynamic believable lighting effect for your composite.

Step 16 – Fix The Less Obvious

So all of your fancy shadow work will be for nothing if you don’t notice things that need to be fixed. For example, here there is an original highlight from the source kitchen photo that is running behind our added photograph and underneath our made up shadow. There should be no highlight here!

So to fix this, you can just use the Stamp tool to remove the highlight. You could also consider using more modern tools like the Patch Tool or Content Aware Fill, but in this case the old tool is fast and easy to use. The way I did this was I created a new layer above the Background Layer. Then I chose my stamp tool, and made sure that I had the option for "Current & Below" selected on the tool. This allows me to have all my other visible layers active and seen but it will only clone pixels from the Background layer below this new layer. After this is set, choose a soft brush and work the Stamp so that it blends the highlight into the shadow.

The cool thing about doing it this way, is that I can keep my shadow which we created on one of the layers high above the Background Layer. Because our Stamp options were set to only clone the Current Layer & Below I can see how I’m cloning out the highlight in relation to the shadows we manufactured earlier.

Step 17 – Dab it Darker

My last little touch for lighting is to take some of the areas where the shadows could look stronger/darker and build those up for depth on the surface of the counter top. So I made a new layer in my layers palette above the existing drop shadow layer. Then using another color sample of the counter top, like we did earlier for the drop shadow, I painted in a few small parts using a soft brush with the sampled color. Next I set that layer to Multiply so that it would naturally darken between the two sampled colors and help enhance the shading. If you want to have more control, set the Opacity of your brush to 40% and then build up your painting by dabbing and layering the sampled color into the areas you want to improve.

Step 18 – Match The Highlight Direction

Remember earlier when we removed that higlight that was running underneath the photograph and through the photograph’s shadow? Even though it was accurate to remove that highlight it means that we still need to add a highlight to this photograph because it’s the new surface that is closest to the light source. To produce this I make a selection of my photograph, the easiest way is just Command/Ctrl + Click on that surface photo’s layer thumbnail. From here I chose a reflective gradient type with my swatch being white to transparent. Then I dragged the gradient within the selection until I got it to align with the counter top ridge edge. All these little details of lighting are what help making it feel more natural.

Step 18 – Cast Shadow

Next we need to add a cast shadow to our girl so that she looks more dimensional and interacting with the light direction from the source background photograph. Using the same techniques as earlier, I selected the girl’s cut out shape. Used that to fill with a dark surface color that was sampled from the counter top. Then the shadow was blurred, the top left was reduced with a mask out in the space of the hole, and the blend mode was set to multiply so it would adopt colors more naturally. From here the opacity is turned down to your own liking.

Step 19 – Torn & Frayed Edges

We’re almost done, but we need to add this small important step to help create a little more realism and texture to the effect. If this runner was to magically free herself from the confines of her photograph I think there would be some tearing or fray to the photo paper. Now you can take that concept and go crazy and really tear up the page but I thought that might be distracting. Instead, we’re going to use some brush settings to create a simple fray behind the girl and in the hole of the image below. So we’ll start with the spatter brush that comes with the default brush set in Photoshop.

From here we’ll customize the brush settings. Pressing F5 on your keyboard will bring up the brushes palette where you can customize all of the brush options. There’s a lot going on here, but your end goal is to create a brush that has a random variance to it so that as you paint it appears natural and organic in it’s stroke. In most of these dialogue boxes this is called Jitter, and it’s a great feature of the brush tools for getting wonderful effects really fast. Below you can see screen shots of my settings, but explore some other settings, and maybe some other texture brushes to see what you can produce and make it your own.

Step 20 – Make A Work Path

Now, that you’ve got a brush set, load a selection of the girl (easiest way I find is to Command/Ctrl + Click on the layer mask of the upright image of her, this should auto load a selection). Now with the girl selected, bring up your Paths palette, and press the button that is labeled "Make Work Path From Selection". If you’ve done this correctly you didn’t even need to switch from your brush tool, bonus points for you if you did that!

Step 21

You should now have a work path around the girl, and you have your customized brush active with the brush tool chosen. Create a new layer that goes beneath the layer of the upright girl running, stay on that layer. I then set my brush size to 9px for a size.

Choose white as your foreground color. Now press the "Stroke Path With Brush" button in the Paths palette.

This should now create a fibrous sketchy stroke from your custom brush around the contour of the girl. To create some denser strokes and more variety, press the Stroke Path button a few more times, I did mine twice.

Here is a preview of what that looks like after you’ve applied the brush stroke. A helpful tip, if you like the treatment of the brush stroke for a fibrous/torn/frayed edge save it as a Brush Preset in your brush palette so you can use it again and work faster next time!

Down by the foot of the girl, I erased some of the brush stroke. I did this because I didn’t want her to be completely torn free of the photograph yet causing the two images to interact more as one image to the viewer. So just make a quick marquee down by the foot, and simply press delete on that layer with the brush stroke.

Step 22 – Adjust The Global Three

The final and last step of all my composites usually involve global adjustments. Things that I can do to make the piece feel more unified in its appearance. This usually involves three key things. Luminance: Does the brightness of the images composited seem to match? Contrast: Are the shadows, and highlights between the composited elements equal in their appearance of contrasting tones? Saturation: Are the colors for my additions as vibrant and dense as the ones in the source image, or are they too saturated?

For this piece, I had been working with the Luminance and Contrast concerns in mind all along, trying to match my shadows and highlights to those I saw in the kitchen image. But, our girl running photo appears to be much more Vibrant and Saturated with it’s colors comparing it to the kitchen image. One thing I find is that too much saturation is a clear sign of something being done on a computer, so I like to with draw saturation when I have the choice of either/or. It feels a little less "rendered" and more natural. Plus, a lot of computer monitors now have the saturation and contrast already turned up very high so that could actually take your image and push it further.

So all I did as a final step was add two Vibrance Adjustment Layers above all the other layers. Make sure they are not clipping grouped. (If it’s indented from the alignment of the other layer thumbnails, it’s grouped. Remove a clipping group my pressing Command/Ctrl + Option + G on a Mac, or CTRL + ALT + G on Windows).

For the final values I experimented with two Vibrance Adjustment layers on different parts of the photograph. I kept the vibrance and saturation down on the surface photograph but I kept the vibrance turned back up on the girl running. Experiment with this to your own taste so you feel it best suits the background image.

Conclusion

When you’re done compositing, crop to create a unique, macro styled, break out graphic. Here’s a close-up crop of the final piece and a wider preview below.

I hope this tutorial covered enough wide variety of techniques that you gained a few ideas or learned something new to add to your toolbox of tricks for making graphics. Have fun with your pixels!

Photo Effects Week: Turn a Portrait Photo Into a Painting

2011-10-25T13:00:44Z

This week we are celebrating the launch of PhotoDune, Envato’s new stock photography website with a series of photo effect and photo manipulation tutorials that showcase the images from our new marketplace. In this tutorial we will turn a photo into a digital painting using several techniques to achieve a mixed media look. For this workflow you don’t necessarily need to be good at freehand drawing as we won’t start from scratch but use the photo as the base of our artwork. The photo used in this tutorial is available for free for Psd Premium Members. Let’s get started!

Tutorial Assets

The following assets were used during the production of this tutorial. We have granted a complimentary personal license to Psd Premium Members for the PhotoDune images used in this tutorial. They can be accessed in the source files of your premium download. If you are not a premium member, you can download the images used in this tutorial below.

Step 1

Open the Tribal beauty photo. First of all we need to extract the woman from the original background of the photograph. We don’t need to include the sticks in her hair, which makes the selection a bit easier. As the background and the foreground are too close to each other in colors we will you use the Pen tool for the selection. You can see the end result of the masking on this image:

Step 2

On images like this using the Pen tool is very useful as we have lots of clean curves on the edges. With the Pen tool you can create curves easily to track the outlines of the portrait. Once we draw the whole path, we will turn it into a selection and save it as a pixel mask. You should select the Pen tool and make sure you use the Path mode.

Step 3

You can choose to include the hand and the body in the selection and use it in the final composition but if you want to make the masking faster you can leave it out and only focus on the head as we will only use the head in this tutorial. Try to use the least amount of anchor points for your path but try to follow the edges preciously with your curves. If you are not familiar with the Pen tool check this tutorial out from my Photoshop for Beginners series:

Step 4

Once you go around the head with the Pen tool and you finish the path by closing it up you are ready to turn it into a selection. While still having the Pen tool selected use right click and choose Make Selection from the context menu. You can add 1 pixel feather.

Step 5

After you made your selection you will need to turn the Background layer into a normal layer by double clicking on it in the Layers panel and call the layer Portrait. After this turn your selection into a Pixel Mask by clicking on the this icon in the Mask panel or at the bottom of the Layers panel:

Step 6

The mask will hide the original background, where you should see transparent pixels now. Next thing we need to do is to brighten up the portrait. We are going to use a Curves Adjustment layer with the following curve:

Step 7

Select the Adjustment layer and make a clipping mask between the adjustment and the portrait layers by pressing Ctrl + Alt + G / Cmd + Option + G to make sure the adjustment won’t affect other layers below. After this use the Free Transform tool from the Edit menu (Ctrl/Cmd + T) to make the whole portrait slightly bigger to fill the original frame more tightly.

Step 8

We need to create a new layer at the bottom of the layer structure. Fill in this new and empty layer with white (press D and then Ctrl/Cmd + Backspace) and then apply the following layer style on it:

Step 9

You can call this layer Background. Next step is to make a new layer on top of the other layers and call it Mixer Brush. On this layer we are going to start creating the foundation of the painting effect. You will need to download the Watercolor Splatter brush set for this step. You can find the link at the beginning of the tutorial. Once you have the brush file, just double click on it to install it. After that the brush set should be available in Photoshop. First of all you will have to select the Mixer Brush tool (CS5 only) and set up the following options for it:

Choose Splatter 24px (from the Watercolor Splatter brush set)
Set the brush size to 121 px
Turn off the ‘Load brush after each stroke’ option
Choose Very Wet, heavy Mix option
Turn Sample All Layers option on
In the Brushes panel you will have to turn on Texture, Load the Artistic Surfaces and choose Dark Coarse Weave texture (turn Invert option on)
Under Texture set Mode to Height, Scale to 79% and Depth to 11%
If you have a tablet use Shape Dynamics too and set the Size Control to Pen Pressure (if you work with a mouse you don’t need this)
Under Brush Tip Shape set the Spacing to 5%

Step 10

After all these settings it is worth saving this brush setup for later use. Let’s save it as a Mixer Brush Tool preset. Click on the far left icon on the control bar and click on the new icon and name the brush Painting over photos.

Step 11

Make sure you have the new empty layer selected before you start painting over the photo. With this setup on the Mixer Brush you will be able to paint over the portrait blend details together. The Mixer Brush will not only use the portrait layer but it will also sample from the background, which will help us to break up the original edges of the face to make it a bit more artistic, painterly. Try to keep the details on the eyes, nose and mouth but you can be much more loose on the other parts of the face. Use your creativity in this step.

Step 13

After this point you can turn off the Portrait layer, which will also turn off the clipped Curves Adjustment layer. We don’t need them anymore, but it is good to keep them in case we want to add some more detail to the Mixer Brush layer (like the hand for instance).

Step 14

It is time now to add more canvas feel to our painting with the image you can download from the link I included at the start. Open up this image and drag it on top of our composition and name the layer Canvas Texture. Set the blend mode to Overlay and then create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer with the following options (this adjustment layer has to be clipped to the texture layer):

Step 15

To increase the contrast lets add a Levels Adjustment Layer on the top with these values:

Step 16

It is time now to make the whole painting more dynamic and interesting by using the Splatter brushes with Brush tool. Create a new layer under the Canvas Texture and call it Colors. There is no correct way to set the options for this step as you will get interesting effects no matter what options you use. It is useful to work with more than one brush tip shape from the brush set and also to use Jitter on the size and angle to get more variation. I was changing my color a lot and I tried to introduce interesting and vivid tints like purple, yellow and blue. On the left you can see the Colors layer separated and on the right the way it looks together with the other layers. This step took roughly 20 minutes, but it is the fun part of the process.

Step 17

Now we need to show the neck somehow. An interesting way to do it is to brighten the background instead of outlining the curve of the neck. This technique is very similar of using a sponge or a cloth to smudge and brighten up parts of your painting. The way we can easily do it in Photoshop is to make a new layer above the Colors and below the Canvas Texture, then fill this layer with 50% gray (Edit/Fill option with 50% gray option), set the blend mode to Overlay and the opacity to 60%. Once you are ready with this you will need to use the Brush tool with a soft edge brush set to white color and 20% opacity on this layer. Simply brush over the neck and maybe other areas as well a couple of times where you feel a bit of brightening would help the overall look. Optionally you can also darken with this layer if you change your brush color to black.

Step 18

Next step is to add more detail onto the face. I wanted to emphasise the eyes so I decided to create two new layers. I used a layer to paint some dark details (marked with red arrows) and another layer set to Overlay blend mode for adding bright paint spots on the face. These spots are actually following the design of the original makeup from the photograph.

Step 19

The last layer we need to create is for adding more detail to the whole portrait. On this layer I will use a simple default circular brush with hard edges and draw over parts of the image. You can place this layer below the Canvas texture and you call it Ink as it is similar to using ink over paint. Here are two close ups to see the details of this new layer:

Step 20

After this point it is up to your imagination how to finish the whole piece. Hopefully it was inspiring to go through these steps together. On the image below you can see the final layer structure:

Final Image

25 Amazing Photoshop Text Effects Tutorials

2011-10-25T11:08:20Z

Photoshop users often want to create unique and interesting text effects to take their work to the next level. Photoshop has plenty of potential here, and fortunately there are a lot of great tutorials out there that lead you step-by-step through the process of creating amazing text effects.

In this post you’ll find links to 25 of the best Photoshop text effect tutorials online. You may also be interested in 50 Essential Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials.

Create a Chrome 4×4 Vehicle Emblem

L.A. Noire Neon Style in Photoshop

Photo Mosaic Text Effect in Photoshop

The Wheels Text Effect

Colorful Retro Text Effect

Creating Realistic 3D Text Using Photoshop’s Repousse

How to Create a Chocolate Text Effect in Photoshop

Create Super Glossy 3D Typography in Illustrator and Photoshop

Create Liquid Filled Glass Text in Photoshop

Create Elegant, Glassy, 3D Typography in Photoshop and Illustrator

Create Gold Ornamental Text in Photoshop

Vintage 3D Typography in Photoshop with Repousse

Create Astonishing Nightclub Themed 3D Typography

Create Sparkling, Animated Text in Photoshop

Create Metallic Text on a Concrete Background

Painted Snow Lettering Effect

Create a Scrapbook Alphabet

Modern 3D Text Effect

Tron Legacy Tutorial

Easy Casino Style Sign in Photoshop

Cool Text Effect with the Puppert Warp Tool in Photoshop CS5

Create a Realistic Folder Paper Text in Photoshop

Create a Dynamic Shattering Text Effect

Create Good Enough to Eat Typography

Create Retro Folded Typography Using Photoshop

For more Photoshop tutorials please see:

Barcode House by David Jameson

2011-10-27T17:00:58Z

Architect David Jameson completed Barcode House in Washington, DC earlier this year. The project entailed creating a freestanding, modern addition to an existing, vertically-oriented urban row house. The extension is composed of a completely see-through, two-story, glass structure in front of a narrow concrete tower. A lyrical pattern of black steel rods that resemble a barcode run across the two glass façades, hence the name.

Notice the lines on the ceiling of the interior space, which echo the steel rods that adorn the exterior.

The kitchen is done in a completely monochrome palette, with stainless steel appliances and minimal furnishings, including backless bar stools. The extension houses a new kitchen, living room, balcony, and roof deck. The bedrooms are located in the concrete tower at back.

The glass extension has its own staircase. In fact, the extension can only be accessed from the original row house through a door on the first floor.

The living room seems high enough up that occupants would be unbothered by traffic on the sidewalk and street.

A close-up of the barcode.

The little balcony off the kitchen also features a barcode inspired railing constructed from the same steel rods.

Photos by Paul Warchol Photography.

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Fresh From The Dairy: Skulls

2011-10-27T19:00:48Z

Happy almost Halloween! In keeping with the spooky theme of Halloween, I thought it’d be fun this week to feature some creative skull prints in The Design Milk Dairy.

Skull Study no.1 by Ryan Miglinczy

Have you seen a cool skull or a spooky print on Society6? Let us know!

Skull Roots by Famous When Dead

Vintage Skull by Ali Gulec

I also love these Star Wars themed prints by Rlhoffman. Although they’re not in our collection, they are available for purchase here.

In an ongoing effort to support independent artists from around the world, Design Milk is proud to partner with Society6 to offer The Design Milk Dairy, a special collection of Society6 artists’ work curated by Design Milk and our readers. Proceeds from the The Design Milk Dairy help us bring Design Milk to you every day.

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How to Create a Fake Identity and Stay Anonymous Online [Evil Week]

2011-10-28T14:00:00Z

You don't need to have evil motives for wanting to fake your identity or go incognito online; for many people, it's a matter of privacy and avoiding spammers and scammers. Thankfully, there are a great many tools for staying anonymous online. Here are a few of the best. More »

How to Stop Caring About Trolls and Get On With Your Life [Trolls]

2011-10-27T22:30:00Z

You see them everywhere you go on the internet: anonymous users with nothing to say but rude, off-topic, or annoying comments aimed at making you angry. The only cure is to just stop caring, and while that's easier said than done, these tips should help you overcome their spell. More »

Make Better Soup in a Crock Pot by Using Less Water [Cooking]

2011-10-27T14:00:00Z

The crock pot is one of the best tools for low-effort cooking, especially for meals designed to cook over several hours. If you're adapting a regular soup recipe for the crock pot, however, you probably don't need all the liquid specified. More »

Window Monsters — Easy, Cheap DIY Halloween Decorations

2011-10-28T15:29:08Z

I love Halloween, but my wife and I rarely find ourselves with enough time and energy in late October to do much in the way of house decoration beyond carving pumpkins. So when I came across an idea on Reddit for an easy and inexpensive, yet really different and effective, way to decorate, my wife and I decided to go for it.

It’s really just about as simple as you could hope for. The materials needed are: black posterboard or black-painted cardboard; colored cellophane or tissue paper; and tape. The only tools needed are: measuring tape; some sort of drawing implement — chalk works really well; and scissors and/or X-Acto knife. And while you need some drawing talent, the scale is big enough and the need for precision little enough that you don’t need that much.

The steps are probably pretty obvious, but here they are anyway:

Measure the windows on the front of your house that are most visible from the street and the walkway trick-or-treaters will be taking.
Mark off or cut your posterboard to fit the measurements, so you don’t make your monsters too big.
Draw your monsters. You can use the photos here or on the Reddit post as inspiration, or just come up with them on your own.
Cut out the monsters, leaving empty space for eyes and mouths as appropriate.
Cut your cellophane or tissue paper (yellow, red, and green are good colors) to fit the eyes and mouths, and tape it on.
Tape the monsters in your windows.
At night, leave a light on in the room(s) where the windows are.

Have a great Halloween, everybody!

Monster art by Jen Blum; Photos by Matt Blum.

WPTavern: Checklist Of Things To Do Before Switching Themes

2011-10-24T17:00:20Z

Great checklist created by WPBeginner of things to do before switching to a different theme. Out of everything they presented, number three hit home for me. After using a new theme for a few months, I decided to look at my Google Analytics and discovered that no stats were being saved from the date I switched my theme to the present. I obviously forgot to add the tracking code to the new theme. OOPS.

Blackboard courseware opens up for open classes, CC-licensed materials

2011-10-27T18:33:56Z

Blackboard, the ubiquitous, hedge-fund-backed classroom software found on campuses around the world, has just changed its billing structure to make it possible for schools to share their courseware without having to pay fees for members of the public who audit the course or download its materials.

This is a pretty substantial shift. As EFF co-founder Mitch Kapor said, "Architecture is politics," and when your campus runs on a service that is architecturally incapable of hosting an open course, by default it becomes a place where courses must be closed.

The last time I taught a course on a Blackboard campus, I found the product so cumbersome and walled off that I threw it out in favor of a mailing list, a wiki, and a Blogspot blog that the students all belonged to. It was slightly more work to set up (mostly because I had to manually add all the students to each of those services), but it gave me the flexibility I needed to teach the course I'd been asked to deliver.

Mr. Henderson said that in the past 18 to 24 months he has heard increasing requests from colleges officials to allow sharing. He said that he wanted to make the change sooner, but that it is easier for him to win the argument now that the company, which was publicly held, has been sold to a private-equity firm, Providence Equity Partners.
“This is something that is easier to do as a private company more easily than as a public company because the risk of being misunderstood by investors is less,” says Mr. Henderson. “The investor community was skeptical about that and worried” about an open policy, he says, adding that in the new ownership model, “we had to tell three people about that at Providence, who immediately got it.”
One key to Blackboard’s new “Share” feature is a partnership with Creative Commons, which offers licenses for free content. When professors choose to make their courses free, they will be presented with options to easily attach a Creative Commons license, something they otherwise would have to do manually.

In Victory for Open-Education Movement, Blackboard Embraces Sharing (Thanks, Dad!)

Justin Bieber vs FreeBieber

2011-10-28T14:02:21Z

The FreeBieber campaign -- which seeks to raise awareness of the US illegal streaming bill that criminalizes the kind of YouTube cover songs Bieber launched his career with -- has received a legal threat from Justin Bieber's lawyers, who allege that the campaign infringes on Bieber's publicity rights. But as this reply letter from the Electronic Frontier Foundation

What’s a little unusual here is that Bieber is also complaining that the campaign violates his publicity rights. The right of publicity usually prohibits the unauthorized use of a person’s name, likeness, voice, or other identifiable characteristic for a commercial purposes. However, the law is clear that an individual’s right to control uses of his or her name and likeness must be weighed against important free speech rights. The First Amendment protects transformative uses (like the ones at freebieber.org), especially those that do not intrude on a celebrity’s market for her own identifiable characteristics. So it’s hard to believe that Bieber’s lawyers really think he can prohibit this lawful (and effective) use of his image. More likely they, like so many others, were just hoping to scare Fight for the Future out of exercising its free speech rights.

Free FreeBieber.org! Fight for the Future Faces Bogus Legal Threats

Scott Olsen, Iraq veteran injured in police raid of Occupy Oakland: how you can help

2011-10-27T22:05:52Z

Update, Oct. 27, 5pm Pacific: Olsen will undergo brain surgery "within the next one or two days."

In the photo above, Veterans For Peace member Scott Olsen, who is identified as a former U.S. Marine and Iraq war veteran, lies on the street after being struck in the head by a police projectile in Oakland, California, during eviction of the Occupy Oakland encampment.

The police attack occurred Tuesday night, and was captured in video blogged in previous Boing Boing posts.

How to help: Iraq Veterans Against The War has a link here and Veterans for Peace has a link here where you can donate to help cover Olsen's medical expenses.

At the time of this blog post, Olsen remains in a hospital in Oakland, CA, in "fair" condition, upgraded from "critical." He received skull fractures. Yesterday he was in a medically-induced coma, and he has undergone surgery. His roommate Keith Shannon reported to Current TV's Keith Olbermann today that Olsen can now breathe on his own, but will likely need more surgery.

UPDATE: The Guardian reports:

Scott Olsen requires surgery to relive the pressure on his brain, according to his roommate Keith Shannon. "Neurosurgeons have decided he needs surgery to relieve the pressure on his brain and it will happen in a day or two," Shannon said. He added that Olsen's parents should be arriving at the hospital to be with their son shortly.

The name and affiliation of the officer who threw a projectile at Olson and the protesters who were helping him has not yet been publicly reported.

Don't Let Mario Kart Facebook Scam Spin You Out

2011-10-28T13:45:00Z

Those who toil away on free-to-play Facebook games may have built up a false sense of security as they blindly click on all the permission buttons in order to get to the good stuff. But an ad that claims to offer Facebookers access to a free Mario Kart game is a trap, like one of those upside down question blocks in the real version of the game.

Sophos Naked Security reports a scam masquerading as access to the non-existent game is popping up as status updates and messages, tricking users into filling out a seemingly endless stream of online surveys and possibly asking users to install dubious software, as well as an offer to attempt to win a non-existent "iPhone 5."

If you run across this offer as a message or post, you'll probably want to delete it to stop it from spreading.

Mario Kart on Facebook? Fast-spreading scam hits many users' accounts [Sophos Naked Security via Kotaku]

Enjoy Your Last Weekend Of $1 Redbox Rentals

2011-10-28T12:15:00Z

The era of $1-per-night movie rentals was too sweet to last into November. Perhaps seeing some opportunity to up profits in the wake of Netflix's bumbling, Redbox announced its nightly DVD rental rate will rise to $1.20 on Monday. For now, Blu-rays will stick at $1.50 and video games will remain $2 per night.

Engadget reports Redbox has momentum, with its share of the disc rental market having grown from 24.4 percent to 34.7 percent in the span of a year.

The increase of 20 cents may seem paltry, but for regular users the 20 percent hike will add up over time, especially because Netflix disc plan exiles will probably rely on Redbox more frequently.

Redbox's $1 per night DVD rentals jump to $1.20 October 31st, Blu-ray and games stay the same [Engadget]

TARDIS Jack-o'-Lantern

2011-10-27T23:16:54Z

Sean Fallon says “I’ve got to say, there was wayyyyyyy more innards in there than I expected. Took forever to clean out.” I can’t top that line, but I started watching Doctor Who last week, so maybe one day I can.

Link -via Nerd Approved

Gingerdead Men Cookie Cutter

2011-10-27T23:11:55Z

Gingerdead Men Cookie Cutter – $6.95

Do you know someone who makes cookies that are to die for? Get them the Gingerdead Men Cookie Cutter from the NeatoShop. This jumbo 5″ cookie cutter / cookie stamp lets you create your own skeleton cookies.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fun Kitchen Gadgets!

Link

Adorable & Spooky Sock Monkeys

2011-10-27T21:05:03Z

If you love sock monkeys, but are tired of the classic brown and white design, then you might want to check out Sockmonkey Drawer’s collection of one-of-a-kind designs. I’m particularly taken with creator Kim-Ian Cornell’s special Halloween line of Spooky Sock Monkeys.

Link Via Laughing Squid

Bookmobile could be nearing end of the road - TheNewsTribune.com

2011-10-27T07:21:36Z

Bellingham Herald

Bookmobile could be nearing end of the road
TheNewsTribune.com
When Gerald Pryde visits his bookmobile stop in Browns Point, library workers have waiting for him a handful of the audio books he likes: mysteries, spy tales and war stories. Griffin Schnetz, 10 of Roy, checks out books and DVDs from the Pierce County ...
County bookmobile could be nearing end of roadBellingham Herald

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