Design.CreativeFan

Create a Stunning Liquid Text Effect in Photoshop

Joe Moore — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:51:42 +0000

To sort of wrap up our series on using liquid effects for design, today, we will look at how to use liquid photostocks to create a gorgeous and stunning liquid text effect in Photoshop. By using some clever techniques, we can warp liquids into a variety of shapes to meet our needs. In this case, you’ll learn how to create letters from liquids, and then add in some extra effects for a dynamic composition.

All you need is Photoshop and some free stock images, so let’s get started!

Also, don’t forget to suggest tutorials in the comments!

Tools used:

Adobe Photoshop
Various stock images

Final Image Preview:

Step 1: Document creation and water stock selection

To start off we will need to create a new document. We will be working with a canvas size of 3000*2000; once the image is finished we can size the image down to 1200*800.

Now we will need a mass selection of stock images to create our text. I have used various stocks that I have collected from shutter stock however if you do not want to get your stocks from shutter stock than you can use stock images from sites such as SXC and Deviantart. Below is a list of stocks that you can use for this.
Stock links:

Step 2: Water stock manipulation

Once you have obtained your stock images you will need to begin to mold them into your water letters. I will show you how I molded the images in the steps below. Keep in mind thought that my canvas is white during the screenshots; however the canvas size should be black. Also in case you didn’t know, if you set the liquid layer down as a screen layer then the back ground will be removed , anything that still remains after this can be fixed with the level editor and or the eraser tool. For more information you can read the following tutorial that explains how to manipulate water stocks. http://design.creativefan.com/create-a-vibrant-colorful-alcohol-product-ad/

My stock images look like the below screen shots:

To start off I used my curved stock image and dropped it into my canvas.

Next I duplicated it and filled it 180 degrees. Once that was done I pushed the two curves together to create my splash S.

Once that was done I merged the two layers down into one layer and cleaned it up a bit with the eraser tool and level editor.

Next I started on the P. To do this I again used my curved stock, I free transformed it so it would sit upright and then erased out a few segments so it appeared like a hook.

Next I grabbed my curved stock and turned it so it would complete the circle at the top of the P.

Next I used the same curve stock to lengthen the tail of the P.

Next I used a single stock image to construct the L.

Now just continue on until you have created your water ‘splash’! Keep in mind that you will want to keep the hard edges away as best as possible and also that you can use filters such as the liquefy filter to help aid in the creation of the letters forms.

Step 3: Incorporating stock elements and designs into your splash text.

Once all of the letters have been created it is time to start contemplating your design. To start off we need some color. To do this create a new layer above the splash layer and draw all over it with a blue brush; any brush will do for this.

Now apply two Gaussian blurs, each with a radius of 250. Once this is done set the layers opacity to 15%.

Next create a new layer underneath the text layer and repeat this process. This time however use a lighter blue and set the opacity higher than the previous layer, depending on how bright you want your colors to appear. I went with an opacity of about 25%.

Now that we have created the basic layout for our scene we need to start building it up and what better way than with a few jelly fishes? So we can now go head over to SXC (you will need an account, but its free so sign up!) to grab the first jelly fish stock http://www.sxc.hu/photo/843107 Now just copy this jellyfish into our document in Photoshop so we can begin editing it into our piece.

We will begin our editing process by performing an auto level adjustment. This will adjust the brightness, darkness and contrast based upon the scene. Once this has been done your jellyfish should look similar to mine (minus the white backdrop).

Now we can press ‘E’ on the keyboard to grab the eraser tool; we will then right click and grab the standard 300px soft brush, we want to change the hardness to 100% rather than 0. Once we have our brush set up we will just quickly erase all the debris that are floating around in there with him. Try and get the strange over saturated red patches as well as all the little floating things. Once you have erased all you can see your image should look like mine below.

Now to further enhance the jellyfish we will be doing a manual edit of the levels. To do this we will need to pres ‘CTRL L’ on the keyboard, we will be moving the far left triangle over to the right a little bit and then pressing ok or ‘ENTER’ on the keyboard. Doing the manual adjustment will darken all the blacks in the scene and cause the grays to become pitch black which is a very good thing.

Now just place it in your scene and set the layer as a screen layer.

Now we can repeat this process with the following stock image and then place it as we have done with the previous stock. http://www.sxc.hu/pic/l/z/ze/zenpixel/234636_6457.jpg

Next we will start adding in some fish! The first of which can be found here

http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=download&id=895395

So head over to Sxc again and grab and drop this into your document as I have done.

Now we can use the magic wand tool just like we did with the phone. So to start off we will press ‘W’ on the keyboard to grab the wand tool, we will leave its tolerance at 25%. With the magic wand tool enabled we can start clicking around our fish, if we hold the ‘SHIFT’ key down after the initial click we should be able to keep the current selection and only add to it. Once you have clicked all around the fish your selection should look similar to mine in the below screenshot.

Now enable a layer mask and invert it to make only the fish visible.

Now just clean up around your fish and tada! He is all isolated out!

Now we can place him around our splash text.

The next stock fish we will use is located on deviantart which can be found here http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs11/i/2006/248/7/9/Fish_Stock_1_by_Shoofly_Stock.jpg

Once you have copied and pasted the fish’s into your document we will start by pressing ‘M’ on our keyboard to bring the marquee tool back up. With the marquee tool back up we can make a selection around the middle fish. Once you have made a selection around him you can press ‘CTRL C’ and followed by ‘CTRL V’ this will copy what we had selected and then paste it. Once we have pasted the duplicate of our fish we can hide the original layer by selecting the eye icon on the layer toolbar. With the original layer hidden we can begin isolating our fish with the magic wand tool. So press ‘W’ on the keyboard to bring the magic wand tool back up and select the white around the fish, once you have selected the white you can press ‘DEL’ on your keyboard to remove it and now our fish is isolated!

Now we can continue on using various fish stocks until we have the canvas filled to our liking. Below I have compiled a list of fish stocks that you can use to finish this step in your design, the main thing here is to keep it varied, you don’t want any conformity in your scene.
Fish stocks

Be sure to vary your fishs size as well, this will help break away from any conformity! Also as you can see in the below images; I have also isolated some fish and set their opacity very low, to help create a sense of depth, I would suggest you do the same but its not a requirement.

My image now looks something like the below screen shot.

Once I had dropped all of my fish in I went ahead and isolated a turtle and placed it inside of my A.

When doing this the most important factor was that I erased all of the water that covered the turtle.

If you would like to add the turtle into your scene you can find a similar one located on SXC at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/833619

Step 4: Adding in extra splashes and closing.

As of now the piece could be considered done. However I wanted to add something a tad bit extra, to do this I used an blurred water stock located on SXC. This stock image is located here http://www.sxc.hu/photo/884261

We will set this layer up as a screen as we did with our first water stocks and then erase everything but the top splashes.
Now just duplicate it and transform it around a few times and your done!

My final image looks like the below screen shot.
I hope you enjoyed my tutorial and have picked up a few tricks or two along the way. If you have any questions regarding a step or need any assistance don’t hesitate to ask!

Create a Vibrant and Eye-Catching Drink Composition using Photoshop

Joe Moore — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:59:20 +0000

One of the most popular tutorials we’ve published here at CreativeFan was our ‘Create a Vibrant Colorful Alcohol Product Ad‘, which covered some fun effects that you can create using liquids. We decided to revisit the concept of using liquids for a product ad, and this time show you some more effects and techniques you can use in your designs and photomanipulations to create eye-catching artworks.

In this Photoshop tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a Sobe fruit drink advertisement using some simple water stock images and a lot of easy to use techniques that will yield high quality results.

As always, we love hearing feedback and suggestions from you, so please, if you want to see a tutorial on a given effect, let us know by using the contact form or leaving a comment!

Tools used:

Adobe Photoshop
Various stock images
Wacom, not required

Final Image Preview:

Step 1: Water stock selection.

To start off you will need a water stock. You can choose any stocks you like but its best if choose one that has a lot of movement. I obtained my stock from ShutterStock, but if you don’t want to go that route there are plenty of other stock sites to choose from such as Sxc, Deviantart or even Google images and Wiki Commons. The stock image I used is below.

Once you obtain your stock, if it is on a black background you will need to go ahead and invert it since we will be using a white canvas. If need be, clean up any spots that aren’t the way you want them and then we can continue on.

Step 2: Fruit manipulation

*Note that from this point on I will assume that you are using the same stock I am.*

Ok, so now that we have our water stock and we changed the blending mode to multiply we can continue on with or design. So now we need to start dropping in a few fruits. Our first stock will be a cherry located on SXC. http://www.sxc.hu/pic/l/l/lo/lockstockb/977595_29456105.jpg

Now we need to isolate out just the cherry. To do this you should use whatever your most comfortable with, I used a layer mask and the paint brush. Once the stock is isolated drop it into your canvas and place it somewhere you think looks nice!

Now we will take our hard edged eraser (size 25) and erase away a section of the cherry to give the effect that it is under water. But before doing this make a duplicate of your cherry and set it to overlay and hide it.

Now that you have erased out a section of the cherry turn your overlay layer back on and erase all of the cherry that is out of the water. This way the overlay layer is only showing were the original cherry was erased.

Once you have done that we can proceed to get our next stock image. This time we will be using a orange, which like the last image, is also located on SXC. http://www.sxc.hu/pic/l/l/lo/lockstockb/1097244_46620521.jpg

We will be using the orange on the left hand side. So once you have copied it into your canvas its time to go ahead and isolate it out.

This time I placed my orange near my cherry. I didn’t think that it needed the above process done so I left it as is. However this was largely due to the placement, if you think your orange needs to be given the underwater treatment (see above) then by all means go ahead.

Now once again, we can head over to SXC to grab another stock, this time a banana. http://www.sxc.hu/pic/l/b/br/brokenarts/229578_9291.jpg

Once you have your banana proceed to isolate it out as we have done with our prior fruits.

Since I placed my banana by a ‘lip’ in the water we will erase the banana as we did with the cherry but we will not apply a overlay layer. If you are placing yours in a area that appears as if it should have the overlay layer then by all means do so.

Next we will be using a water melon located at: http://www.sxc.hu/pic/l/u/ug/ugaldew/494856_83457949.jpg

Once you have obtained the water melon stock go ahead and isolate it out. Once that is done just drop it under your water layer and move it to one of the more transparent sections. Since our water layer is set to multiply our water melon should still be visible.

Now we need to continue this process. You will want to place down a ton of fruit so below I have a list of wonderful stock images you can use to drop into your water arrangement. So just repeat the above steps until your canvas starts to fill up and then we can continue on to the next step.

Fruit Stocks:

You can see in the above and below screen shots that I have sized my fruits randomly, this is key to create something that does not appear ‘repetitive’.

Also place a few large fruit around the canvas and apply a Gaussian blur with a radius of about 9 as I have done in the below screen shots. This will help to achieve a depth of field which will make our design more interesting in the end.

Step 3: Water saturation

Now we will be changing the colors of our water just a tad. This will help make the piece more vibrant and also help blend everything into one cohesive mesh.

So to start off we will grab our brush tool and set it up as I have below.

Then we will grab a few colors (since our water is blue I used mainly green, purple, orange and blue for this) and draw all over the water. This should be done on a layer that is under the fruit layers. Any fruits that are under the water layer will just have to be colored along with it!

Now we can apply a light Gaussian blur (something around a radius of 25) and then set the opacity to something around 50%-100%, depending on how dark you want your colors. Also be sure to use an eraser and clean up any of the coloring that is not under the water!

Now we can repeat this process a few times (depending on what your looking for) and also play with the colors more.

Once you are done with your coloring we can continue on to the next step. At this point my canvas looks like the below image.

Step 4: Sketching and line work.

Now we can start our line work and sketching. Here at CreativeFan we have discussed (at nauseam) how to create the line effects used in this piece along with how I sketch (which will also be used). So if your unsure of how to create these effects, below are two links (tutorials by me!) which I suggest you read before continuing on.

http://design.creativefan.com/create-a-cosmic-xbox-using-custom-brushes/

http://design.creativefan.com/create-a-shattering-3d-composition-using-sketching-techniques/

Now that you are well versed in how we create the lines that we will be using its time to get started! I used both techniques (sketching and shear tool) at the same time and suggest that you do the same. Start off by placing a few lines around some of your shapes, have some of the lines over cross the shape.

It’s also important to vary your colors, as you will see in the below screen shot I used red even though the banana is yellow. This is of course not to say that later on you don’t want to use an orange line on an orange though, it’s just food for thought, the more diverse your design is the better the end outcome will be!

It’s also nice to just add some diversity to your line work in other ways aside from color. For instance in the below screen shot I drew a drip with the standard hard brush, its not difficult to do, but it adds more diversity than just a simple line so I would suggest you experiment with this as well.

Step 4.5: line work continued and splatters introduced.

Splats as well as line work has also been beaten to death and there’s no reason to keep beating a dead horse. So if you do not have any splat/brush stroke brushes check out the below tutorial before continuing on.

http://design.creativefan.com/combining-custom-brushes-for-wild-effects-in-photoshop/

Now while continuing our sketching and line work we can also start to throw down some splats. Like the line work this is were we can bring in new colors and make our design more exciting to the viewer. I started off by creating a new layer, just for splats, under the sketch/line layer. Once you have created a new layer to cater to your splats, just start dropping some splats on your fruits and water areas. Be sure that you don’t hide anything when doing this step. We don’t want to take anything away from our design ever, just add to it. I started off by splattering the water melon rein (with green), throwing some blue on top of my banana and apply a small brush to the orange.

Now continue to draw lines and use your shear lines but also drop a splat in or two along the way. I added in a few low opacity lines and then applied a white splat or two.

Next just keep doing it. You can also apply a few low opacity splats on the water to give it more color/texture if you want as I have done in the below screen shots.

Once you feel that you have dropped in enough line work and splats we can continue on the next step of the tutorial.

Step 5: Product placement and closing.

Now that our design is close to its completion we can start considering product placement. So since we have been working with fruity water I thought it would be a good idea to use a water/juice product to advertise. So we will be using a stock image of Sobe’s Life Water. The image is located here :

http://popsop.ru/wp-content/uploads/pepsico_sobe_life_water.jpg

You can use any of the three bottles you like or even use your hue and saturation editor to create your own color scheme; however I went with the blue/purple bottle as seen below.

Once you have chosen your bottle (and edited it, if you like) its time to isolate it out. Once you have isolated the bottle you need to put it dead smack in the middle of your wave. This way our product (the Sobe bottle) will be in the dead center of our manipulation.

Next we need to duplicate the bottle and set it as overlay; this will help the bottle pop out more and also help it appear not as flat as it once did.

Now we can start incorporating our bottle into the design. To do this start off by painting a drip (preferably with a small hard eraser, I use a 3 px) from one of your fruits. Have the drip splash onto the side of the bottle. If your having difficulties creating the drip you can also just use your splat brushes or a combination of the two!

Next throw done some shear lines (preferably thin ones) around your bottle and your done!

Once you have applied the last lines around the bottle we are finished. Of course it doesn’t have to be done yet, you could continue adding in other elements such as 3D shapes, but you don’t have to. I hope you enjoyed reading my tutorial and have come up with a design you like or some tips/inspiration for you to use in your next upcoming design endeavors! If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask!

Design and Photomanipulate a Gorgeous Outdoor Cadillac Car Advertisement

Joe Moore — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 21:22:05 +0000

The automotive industry invests millions, if not billions of dollars annually on advertisements for their vehicles. With a wide variety of offerings, including luxury sedans, SUVs, offroad vehicles, trucks that can haul giant payloads, or eco-friendly electric cars, it’s no wonder that designers work frequently with car-related advertisements.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to start with a basic texture, then photomanipulate a beautiful outdoor scene and blend it into the texture for an effective base. You’ll learn how to use custom brushes effectively in a workflow, and you’ll learn how to composite a car into the advertisement.

Let’s get started!

Tools Used:

Adobe Photoshop
Stock images
Scans or Brushes
Tablet (not required)

Final Image Preview:

Step 1: Document setup and custom brush discussion

To start off we need to create a new document. Now despite my usual tastes this document should be set up at about 1450*2175.

Once you have the document created you will need a stock image. I will be using a image I created a while back using a few images of paper I scanned and pieced together however you can find similar stocks all over the net. In fact I would suggest you use a stock similar to this one http://bashcorpo.deviantart.com/art/Grungy-paper-texture-v-6-37649221
My background looks like the below screen shot.

Now you will need to gather up your water color brushes! If you don’t have any you can check out my tutorial on created fan located on http://design.creativefan.com/combining-custom-brushes-for-wild-effects-in-photoshop/ or you can browse through the mass amounts located on the internet. However you want to go just make sure you have plenty to go around!

Step 2: Stock isolation and the first steps of the manipulation

To start off the rest of our piece we need to head over to http://cdn-www.rsportscars.com/images/cadillac/2010-cadillac-srx/cadillac-srx-2010-front-main.jpg and grab the stock so we can isolate it out.

Just simply drop it into your document and isolate the car out.

Now we need to hide our car so all that is left visible is the canvas. Now we need to go ahead and grab our first landscape stock image. The first landscape stock image is located at : http://www.sxc.hu/pic/l/p/pg/pgrim/592978_25003174.jpg

You want to copy this into your document and move it about halfway up the document and place it as I have in the below screen shot.

Now you will want to isolate everything out except the dirt/dirt hills on either side. You can use your pen tool to do this but I used a size 5px hard eraser. The main reason I used the eraser for this is because unlike a normal isolation process, for instance a human, a mountain (or hill) has no real soft curves or rounded edges; all of the hills edges are sharp and hard. My image looks like the below screen shot now.

Here comes the fun part! Now we need to apply a layer mask (if you haven’t already done so) and whip out your brushes. The idea here is to erase pieces of the dirt randomly with your water color brushes. However you will only want to do this with an erase that has about 25/45% opacity.

You can also use the opposite colors so you get the opposite effect. But as I say try to match my opacity, it should be very low but enough to give some texture.

Now you need to pay special attention to the bottom of our stock. No one likes the large hard edges so what you want to do here is erase large quantities of this section and the brush them back over all the time using your watercolor brushes.

My document now looks something like the below screen shot.

Now we need to create a new layer underneath this layer. What we will do here is apply some brushes so they are showing through the slight transparencies of the dirt layer. Its imperative however that you use colors similar to that of the colors in our dirt stock image. In fact I used my eye drop tool to select colors from the dirt while doing this process.

Now we will do the same process with a new layer but this time the new layer will be on top of the dirt layer and this time we should use some lower opacities brushes so we don’t lose any of the texture from the original stock image.

When doing this step apply a great deal of brushes to the hard edge that we previously removed. This will help the transition from the dirt to the dirty canvas.

I used some drip brushes here to apply a little bit more detail but this is not required.

You can also gather up some splatter brushes to apply some fine splatters to the canvas below the dirt. This will also help in the transition.

My image now looks like the below screen shots.

Now we can unhide the car and free transform it down and place it on top of our dirt layers.

Once that is done we can create a new layer underneath the car. Once this is done grab one of your standard brushes, something between 5-10px and just draw underneath it in black.

Once that is done we can apply a Gaussian blur with a radius of about 25%. Your image should look like the below image as of now. However if yours is too dark just decrease the opacity!

Step 3: Stock isolation and manipulation continued

Now we need to head back over to SXC and grab our second landscape stock image. The next stock image is located at: http://www.sxc.hu/pic/l/c/cr/creativewa/719311_65896163.jpg

This layer should be beneath all your other layers and placed around halfway up as we did prior.

Now just isolate it out as we did the previous one. This time we just want the mountains, no sky.

Once it is isolated we can erase pieces of it using the layer mask as we did with the last stock image.

Now we can start apply brushes above and below the mountain stock layer. This time we will try to match the colors as we did with the previous stock, however its ok to use white, black and blue more predominantly then it appears on the mountains. For example I used straight black (with a low opacity) for the shadows and used blue all over.

My canvas now looks like the below screen shot.

Now we can grab up our last stock. Our last stock is located again at SXC http://www.sxc.hu/pic/l/p/pi/piro/1205586_72226551.jpg

We will drop it underneath the other stock layers and place it so the image ends at the top of our canvas.
This time we will do the erasing differently because we don’t want patchy clouds. Just use your largest brushes and erase large sections all over the canvas. This will make it appear as if the opacity for this layer is about 15% lower than it actually is and that is fine.

Now we will only apply brushes beneath the sky layer. This time only use blues so the sky still looks clean, just lightly textured. An up close screen shot of my cloud layer looks like the below screen shot.

Step 4: Doodles and closing

As of now we could be done. But why finish it off this quickly! So now we will create a new layer on top of all of our other layers. Once you have done that you can grab your standard 3px brush.

Like with the brush strokes we will want to use similar or like colors for the area we are sketching on. For instance I used a dark brown color and started sketching down at the bottom.

Now just move up to the mountains! I used yellow as well as blue, black and white on the mountains but the yellow is just a suggestion and is not extremely visible.

Now we can save our document, merge it down and sharpen it! Once that is done duplicate the layer and go to your filter drop down menu, select other and choose the highpass filter. Set the high pass filter as high as it will go and press ok. Once you have done that turn this layer into an overlay layer and set the opacity to about 30%. Now we are done! I hope you enjoyed reading my tutorial and have learned at least one trick or maybe came out with a piece you created that you are proud of! If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask. My final image looks like the below screen shot.

Combining Custom Brushes for Wild Effects in Photoshop

Joe Moore — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 19:56:52 +0000

Custom brushes can be an incredibly powerful way to add a touch of originality to your work. By photographing or otherwise capturing given effects such as splatters, drips and watercolor textures, you can easily create your own custom brushes in Photoshop, and apply them to your own work right away to make it stand out.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create some custom brushes based on scans of different types, and then you’ll instantly put them to use to come up with a wild finished result. You’ll see how simple custom brushes can make all the difference, and you’ll learn some great tips on how to get the best results.

Let’s get started.

Tools Used:

Adobe Photoshop
A scanner (not required but preferred)
Stock Images

Final Image Preview:

Step 1: Document setup

We will start this pressing ‘CTRL N’ on your keyboard; this will bring up the new document dialog box. We will use this to setup the width and height for our new document. We will now set our document as 2000*3000 which is a great ratio for a piece like this. This is especially a good thing because once we are done we can size our document down to 800*1200 without any cropping.

Once our document is up we will head over to Deviant Art to grab a texture for our background. Since we are trying to create something between illustration and photo manipulation we will use a background that looks like a traditional texture. So go to http://bashcorpo.deviantart.com/art/Grungy-paper-texture-v-6-37649221 and copy the image and paste it into our document. If you have a texture you have made, found or purchased that you liked more than the above texture then by all means use it, I will be using one I made. Once you paste it into Photoshop make sure the top hits the top of the document and the sides are matching. Your document should look similar to mine below.

As you can see our background doesn’t fit all the way, there’s a big gap at the bottom. We can fix this with the clone stamp tool. The clone stamp tool simply grabs sections of an image and duplicates it where you tell it to. So press ‘S’ on your keyboard to select the clone stamp tool and right click on the document to bring up the brush settings as we have done before. We will be using a similar brush as before this time just a little bit smaller. Make sure you have your hardness set to 0%, this is very important otherwise your duplicated pieces will not blend together due to their hard edges.

Now holding the ‘ALT’ key on your keyboard click on the document around three quarters of the way up and all the way to the left; this is where we will be duplicating from, so any where we click it will duplicate from this area. However once you click the selection we will be copying from will move; this is very good since we don’t want to duplicate the same section over and over again. Once you have held the ‘ALT’ key and clicked we can now go to the left side of the white space and click and drag to the right. If you’re new to the clone stamp tool it might help to press ‘CTRL SHIFT N’ to create a new layer once you have selected your start point. That way anything you stamp can easily be done by deleting the layer.

Once you have dragged the mouse to the right you might need to grab a few more locations to just make sure everything blends well. Once you are satisfied with the end result yours should look similar to mine. Make sure you have copied over all of the white on the canvas before you continue though!

Now this should be fine for your document, but remember if you have one you like more then use it! I’m using a personal stock that looks like the below.

Step 2: Custom brush creation.

Alright so we will start off by creating our own custom brushes to use, if you have your own or a set you downloaded go ahead and use those; if not head ever to http://www.sxc.hu and grab this splatter: http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=download&id=524477 Do note that to download the stock images from Sxc you will need an account. They are free so if you don’t have one go ahead and set it up so you can follow along. Once you have downloaded or copied the image open up Photoshop and create a new document. Set the size for this new document to 4500*4500 as I have in the below screen shot.

Now this is one big document, but that’s ok, we will be working with different stocks at different resolutions so it’s nice to have some breathing room. Once you have created the document press ‘CRTL V’ on your keyboard, this will paste the image we have copied into our document. If you did not copy the image, just go to the file tab and find where you saved it at and drag it into our document.

Once the image is in our new document we can start isolating it so we can make a brush out of it. Since the background is white we don’t really have to isolate the image much at all. This will be more of less a cleanup procedure so we won’t have any issues using the brush later on in the image. Start off by pressing ‘M’ on your keyboard; this will equip the marquee tool. Be sure your marquee tool is set to the rectangle marquee and has no feather. Once you have the marquee tool set up properly we will grab the outer edges of our layer as I have, we don’t want any hard edges in the final image or any strange cut offs. Now that it is selected we can just press ‘DEL’ on the keyboard to clear this selection and move on to the next step!

Now press ‘CTRL SHIFT D’ to deselect the selection if it’s still up. Once that is done you can press ‘CTRL L’ on your keyboard, this will bring up the manual level editor. We will not be using the auto level tool for this because we want to keep the majority of the splat semi transparent. Using the auto leveler might cause the grays in our image to become absolute black which would not be good. So with your level editor up slide the middle triangle way over to the black triangle, not all the way though you want to stop at about ’1.44′. This will cause our image to become much brighter which is fine; it will also help if there are any strange grays around the edges that we cannot see to become pure white. And as I said before, we don’t want any strange edges.

Once you have hit the ok button we will start the final process. That is to remove any last remaining unwanted splats or grey lines that might linger around in the stock image. We will do this by pressing ‘E’ on our keyboard to bring out the eraser tool. Now right click on the screen and a new dialog box should appear; this dialog box will be how we adjust the settings for our eraser brush. Set your brush up as mine is below, don’t be to concerned about the size of the brush the document and image are both huge. Once your brush is set up as mine you can set the opacity to around 45% and eraser along the outer edges of the layer. Try not to erase anything to far to the center of the image, we just want to clean up the image, not destroy it!

We will now grab the marquee tool once again, which is ‘M’ on your keyboard. This time we will select everything we want to become our brush. Remember that everything that is white will become transparent and all that is black will be our brush. With all of that selected press ‘CTRL SHIFT U’, this will desaturate our selection so that our brush becomes black and white.

Go up to the edit tab, located between the file and image tabs, and select define brush preset. By clicking the define brush preset button we will be creating our brush. Everything that is black will be 100% opacity on our final brush, the grays will be around 50% opacity and the whites will not exist. The dialog should look something like mine does, once it comes up type in the name for your new brush and select ok.

Now you can browse through your brush dialog and see that your brush is ready to use!
Before we get all excited there are more brushes to be made. So we will go back to Sxc and grab this image: http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=download&id=277806 We will paste it into the document the same way we did with the other stock image. However this time since the white is so much brighter and there are no strange outlines our isolation will be much simpler.

We will press ‘CTRL SHIFT U’ the same way we did before just to make sure everything is black and white. Once that is done we will press ‘CTRL T’ this will bring up our free transform tool. Since the image is much larger than the previous stock image it must be sized down before Photoshop will allow us to define it as a brush. Once the free transform tool comes up select the chain link in between the width and height settings so that we do not skew our stock. Now we will just change the size settings as I have in the below screen shot.

Now that our stock has been sized down we can grab the marquee tool one last time by pressing ‘M’ on your keyboard. This time we will make a very tight selection, keeping the dashed lines as close to the stock as we can get them, this will ensure that our brush does not exceed the size limitations (2500px).

Once the selection has been made we will go back to the edit tab and define our selection as a brush preset.
If you really want to create a completely opaque brush you can just duplicate the splat layer twice and set both of the new duplicated layers as a multiply at 100%. This should make the image completely black.

Now we will just repeat this process many times over. If you don’t have a scanner I have provided links to images on Sxc that you can use the same way we have in the above steps. If you do have a scanner you can just throw some paint, ink, finger nail polish, dye or really anything that will dry and look the same way our stocks have. Once you have splatterd or brushed your chosen liquid onto the paper just wait for it to dry, scan it and manipulate it to create a brush the same way we have in the previous steps.
If you are without a scanner here is a large list of stocks, if you don’t want to fool with all of that there are plenty of splatter and brush stroke brush packs around on the net just go looking!
Stocks:

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1083404
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/277790
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/626005
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/524461
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/524460
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/524478
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1192353
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/902891
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/826501
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1079392
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1058438
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/615813
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/826508
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/826507
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/886378
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/193172
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/277771
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/906249
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/277759
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/331123
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/277805

So by now you should have quite a bit of brushes. However you may want more. So go looking for stocks! Look on google images, stocks sites etc… the more you have the better your images will appear. Also if I was not clear, if you have a scanner spat some ink on some paper, scan it in and isolate it the same way we did the above stocks.

Step 3: Stock selection and manipulation

Stock selection for a piece such as this is very important. However you do have a wide variety of stock types you could choose from. Below is a list of tips you should keep in mind when looking for yours, also if your having trouble deciding you can always check out my gallery (www.soad2k.deviantart.com) I have quite a few pieces in this style.

Size, go big. The bigger the stock the easier it will be later on when creating the crops and deciding where to start.
Choose one that looks good! It’s a very popular trend to use a beautiful woman for this style of manipulation but you don’t have to! Just make sure your stock looks good!
If you are not going to create a monotone piece like we are here then make sure you choose one with clear vibrant colors.
Choose a image with a nice amount of contrast.
Most importantly just choose a good stock image!

The below screen shot is the stock image I will be using.

Now that you have a stock image just follow along as I show you how I create the final image. From now on I will continue on as if you are using the same stock image I’m using, just to make things a bit easier.

So to start off we need to make a layer mask and then fill in the area of the face. You can use the pen tool for this or the brush tool. The way I did it was to apply a layer mask and then with a 3px small brush I drew in black on the mask to cover the face. Once the face was covered I just inverted the mask and ta da! I would suggest that you do this the same way or use the pen tool if your better with it.

As of now my canvas looks like the below screen shot.

Once you have isolated out your face so that only it is visible we can continue on to the brush work.
So this image is created by using a white brush on a layer mask. This means that everything that is white will become visible on the final image. This is why the transparency of your brushes is very important. But its also very important to keep in mind that if you ever mess up you can switch your color to black and use your splatter brushes as erasers. Also keep in mind that patience is the key here! Take your time.
So to start off you want to use any splatter brush you like and just lay down about 2 or 3 brushes coming off of one side of the face.

If your brushes are more opaque then you want (they should be about 70%) then just turn the opacity down to match what you are looking for. Also keep in mind that you don’t need to just throw spat brushes around you need to make them blend into your stock image and create a flow of sorts. Just have patience with the process and you shall be rewarded!
Next we just need attack the other side of the figures head. The below screen shot is what my image looks like as of now.

Now we need to create a new layer underneath the stock image. Once you have done this we need to grab one of our brushes and apply it underneath the head to create an abstract hair like effect. I applied 2 or 3 brushes to achieve the effect I wanted. The below screenshots are what my image looks like as of now.

Now our tutorial will take a change of sorts. The following screenshots will show the process of creating the flowing and dripping effect. I have found a stock that is extremely similar to the dripping lines that I used. To use this stock apply the layer as a multiply.

The stock can be found here : http://cgtextures.com/login.php?&texid=10302&destination=texview.php?id=10302&PHPSESSID=66254d7f423b0658bb4b2d23649b4ead

My canvas now looks like the below screenshot.

Now we need to create a layer above the stock image. Once you have done this grab one of your brushes and throw it down so it appears as if its black tears as I have done in the below screen shot.

Next, while on this layer we need to enable the standard 3px hard brush.

With this brush enabled just darken the area around the eye lightly. The trick here is to really darken the eye area while still keeping it realistic.

Now we can move over to the other eye.

I also took the opportunity to darken the lips with the 3px brush at this time. As well as to add a few more small details in the splats themselves.

My image now looks like the below screenshot.

Well we are done! My final image is displayed below. There’s more you could add, some small details here and there but for the most part we are finished with our tutorial! I hope you learned a bit about how this style of picture is made and have either came out with some new brushes you like, learned something or at least got an image you like. If you have any questions regarding this don’t hesitate to ask! Thanks for reading!

The Making of “Climb” – An Awesome 3D Text Composition in Photoshop

Leonardo Dentico — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:27:46 +0000

Using textures applied to text is an effective way to create dynamic looking text, and even creating 3D style text effects solely in Photoshop. Using some photomanipulation techniques, textures can be applied and blended together to create a surreal work with a realistic feeling.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create 3D text within Photoshop, along with a nice stylish background, and then apply textures and bring out some awesome details in your work.

Let’s get started. If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know in the comments!

Tools Used:

Adobe Photoshop

Final Image Preview:

Step 1

Open a new document (mine is 2400×1082,we will resize everything in the end, to have better views of details during the work) filled with black. Take a big soft brush, paint a circle on the left to create the source light.

Go to Layer>New adjustment layer>Color balance and do the same as show below:

You’ll have now something like this:

Select a hard brush, low dimensions, and paint a white circle in the middle of your source light, now increase dimensions of the brush, reduce its opacity(you can find opacity percentage on the upper bar), paint another circle. Repeat this process again and again to have a result similar to this:

Step 2

Select, now the text tool (the “T” in the sidebar on left) and write something. In my work i used the word “climb”. Right click on the text level and choose “rasterize”, then press CTRL+T or cmd+T to edit dimensions. Use the warp tool to warp the text (you can find it on the upper bar of PS and it is symbolized with the little figure in Image 1),and try to get a similar result as image 1, shown below.

You have now to apply a nice wall texture you can find on many sites such as CGtextures.com. To apply it to the text you have to create a new level and move the texture on the level above the text, now right click->create clipping mask, and you should get what is shown below:

Many people prefer to use a 3D program for this sort of thing, but I honestly don’t like it, as I want to give an artistic and imperfect style to my works. So, to create depth for the text we will just create a new level, put it in the below to previous text layers one, and paint with an hard brush the various sides of the letter with any color, like below:

After that, we will apply the same wall texture on this level with the same technique we previously used.

This time just use any adjustment such as curves or levels to make the sights brighter since they’re “touched” by light more than the front part. Lighting is key in these artworks.

Use the dodge tool (on the left sidebar), set to “midtones” in the upper bar,to make some parts lighter, just painting where you need light.

Step 3

Make a new layer, take some bricks stock images and put them into the new layer,try to give them a direction with the transform tool (you get it with CTRL+T or cmd+T), so it seems like they are moving all together because of an explosion as like as in Image1. You can either paint this using your mouse, or duplicate and smudge, or duplicate and apply a motion blur.

Burn the ones which are more distant from the light, to create more depth.

Create some colored shapes as in Image 2, using your pen tool:

Simply using the pen tool to make these shapes, duplicate them and put one on each other as in this detail screenshot:

Create different types of them, rectangular, rounded, whatever you want…reduplicate everything, move it a little bit (CTRL or cmd+click and drag) and lower layer’s opacity,you’ll get the “move” effect as in the detail shot above. To create the stroke and the outer glow, just click twice on the shape layer and you’ll get a window, thick “stroke” and chose white as color, thick “outer glow” and choose white again, play with the settings to have a nice result.

Step 4

Burn all parts which aren’t exposed to light,and dodge the ones which are, using burn and dodge tool in the sidebar.

Go to the textures’ layers, make a new layer, right click on the layer and choose “create clipping mask”, as like as “blue blending” in my image.

Set it to “Overlay” and paint some blue parts,to blend the text with the background, reduce layer’s opacity if necessary. This will help the lighting match a bit more.

You will now have something like this:

Step 5

Here we are to the final step, we are going to add grass the same way we created the wall text: paint some grass in a new layer of any colour (in my PSD it’s white).

Next, add a clipping mask and the grass texture:

You’ll have a result like shown below. I also adjusted something with brightness and contrast,increase lights and shadows’ strength.

Our work is almost finished!! you can add details as like trees, windows and ladders, they are just stock images cut and pasted with some blending adjustments. You can also give a final adjustment with curves or levels or whatever you want, image 4 is my final result.

When you’re sure your work is finished reduce the size (800\900 px wide), make a new layer->image->apply image,and after go to filters->sharpen, to make details more visible.