In this tutorial, I will show you 5 very simple, however very important techniques for Photoshop beginners when it comes to photo retouch. You will discover how easy it is to add more contrast and depths to the image to make it look better. This tutorial is really simple but effective, Have a try!

We will take a random image and apply those 5 techniques to enhance the overall effect of the photo. Here is a summary of the five topics we will cover in this tutorial:

1. Remove Black Spots with Spot Healing Brush
2. Make Your Eyes Look More Obvious
3. Use Surface Blur to Smooth Skin, instead of Gaussian Blur
4. Make Her Lips Look Even More Delicious
5. Add Colour Depth and Lighting Contrast to Hair

This is a before and after preview of the final result:

Before

After

Ok Let’s get started!

In this tutorial, I use the following stock for demonstration purpose – Self 16. by ~The1stGrape-stock

The reason I chose this particular image is that it doesn’t look too bad from the beginning, however there are still things can be improved, perfect for beginners to get some practices on.

Remove Black Spots with Spot Healing Brush

Firstly if we take a look at the photo, we can see there are several black dots on her skin, as shown below:

To fix these, we can use the Spot Healing Brush tool, as shown below in the toolbox:

Simply grab the Spot Healing Brush, adjust the size of the brush to be slightly large than the black spot, and do a single-click on it:

You can see after the single-click, the black spot disappers:

Basically, what happen is that with the Spot Healing Brush tool, it takes samples of the surrounding skin colour pixels and use them to replace the black spot colour pixel. Magical, isn’t it?

Let’s use the same method to remove all black spots on her face, here is the effect so far:

Make Your Eyes Look More Obvious

Now let’s pay attention to her eyes, which are beautiful even without any retouching :) but, we can give them a bit more depth, here is how:

Duplicate the background layer once, set the blending mode as “Soft Light” for the duplicated layer, you will have the following effect:

You can see by doing so we in fact darken the whole image. However here we only want to add depth the eyes, so we need to hide the rest of the layer. To do so, go to layer > layer mask > hide all, then on the layer mask, use a White Brush to paint inside the eyes, as shown below:

By doing so we reveal the eyes portion of the layer only. Here is the effect after the painting:

Use Surface Blur to Smooth Skin, instead of Gaussian Blur

Now let’s make her skin go smoother a bit. To do so, we use Surface Blur. The reason I chose Surface Blur is because unlike Gaussian Blur (which blurs the whole image), Surface Blur retains the edge details. This eliminate the needs of adding a layer mask on the duplicated layer to reveal the edges.

So let’s duplicate the orginal background layer once, and apply the following Surface Blur settings to it:

Drop the opacity of the duplicated layer to around 70%, and you will have the following effect:

Make Her Lips Look Even More Delicious

To do so, we use the Lasso Tool to make a rough selection of the lips as shown below:

Hit Ctrl + J twice to make two duplicates of the selection, change the blending mode of the first copy to “Multiply“, with 100% opacity. Change the blending mode of the second duplicated layer to “Linear Light“, with 55% opacity.

Use a soft, round eraser to gently erase the edge of the lips, you will have the following effect:

Add another layer on top of all other layers, grab a soft round brush with White colour, gently paint around the lower lip to add some extra light:

Hint: set brush flow and opacity to both around 40%, this way we can gradually apply the brush effect.

Add Colour Depth and Lighting Contrast to Hair

Lastly, we can add some more depth to this girl’s hair. To do this, we can simply add a Curves Adjustment layer with the following settings:

Add the following layer mask to the Curves adjustment layer:

Here is our final effect: (You can see by adding the layer mask, we leave only the hair portion highlighted)

Optionally we add duplicate the orginal background layer and set the blending mode of the duplicated layer to “overlay”, reduce the opacity to 45%, you will have the following final effect: (click to enlarge)

PSD File for this Tutorial

Having trouble with this awesome tutorial? You can buy this PSD File for only $2.00! Click the link below and you will be taken to the Paypal checkout page, after payment you will be given a download link automatically.

That’s for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful, drop me a comment if you have any question, I will try my best to help you out.

Cheers and have a nice day!

Related posts:

1. Design an Shining Girl Poster with Awesome Lighting Effect in Photoshop
2. Easily Transform Your Photo into a Watercolour Painting in Photoshop
3. How to Drastically Change the Mood and Colour Tone of Your Image in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this really cool, shining girl poster by using the powerful photoshop brush engine, plus previously mentioned cloud warpping and some basic photo retouch techniques. Have a try!

Along the way, we will go through some photo retouch techniques, make a brush then tweak with the Photoshop brush engine, also we will use the cloud filter to create some awesome lighting effect.

This is an intermediate level tutorial so some steps can be a bit tricky, if you get stuck, just drop a comment below and I will try my best to help you out.

Here is a preview of the final effect for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

Alternative Version:

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stock:

Rainbow Girl

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized  800px * 1200px and fill the background layer with Black colour. Load the Rainbow Girl image into Photoshop and cut the girl out by using whatever selection method you like to use. (I used Channel Mask technique here, if you’re interested, here is a tutorial for it)

Copy and paste the girl image onto our document, as shown below:

Name this layer as “girl”.

Step 2

Now we’re into the interesting part of retouching. As you may have noticed, we have some facial impection here as shown below:

To clean them up, simply grab the Spot Healing Brush Tool and the Healing Brush Tool, apply the following settings:

Spot Healing Brush Tool

Healing Brush Tool

With the Spot Healing Brush Tool, simply do a single click on the black spot you like to get rid of. If you found it’s not quite working, you the healing brush tool to sample a good piece of skin, then heal the black spot with it.

Here is my effect after the clean up:

Step 3

Now we can smooth her skin a bit. To do this, simply duplicate the girl layer, go to Filter > Blur > Surface Blur and apply the following settings:

Because we only want her face and the should skin to be blurred, so we can hide the rest of the layer by adding a layer mask to it, as shown below:

Reduce the layer opacity of this duplicated layer to around 50%.

And here is the effect so far, you can see now we have a much better girl image:

Step 4

Let’s add some lighting effect on the image. Create a new layer called light on top of the “girl copy” layer and grab a soft white brush, paint over the area as shown below:

Set the blendng mode of this light layer to “Overlay”, drop the opacity to around 50%. Add the following two adjustment layers on top of the light layer:

Curves

Brightness and Contrast

And here is the effect so far:

Step 5

Now let’s make a simple custom brush, which we will then use to create the background of this image.

Create a new document (size doesn’t matter here) and fill the background with Black. Grab the Rectangular Tool as shown below:

Create a new layer on top of the background layer, draw a rectangular shape on the canvas, then right-click it and choose “Stroke Path”, choose the option “Pencil” (Make sure you set the pencil size to be 1px, with a light grey colour)

And here is the effect after you stroke the path:

Now we want to get rid of the part outside the square. To do so, go to Image > Trim and apply the following settings:

You will see the black part outside the square is now gone. Now hide the background layer, go to Edit > Define Brush Preset and save the brushset as “square”:

And you will see the brush appears in the brush panel:

Step 6

Let apply this brushset to our image. Create a new layer named “square brush texture” under the original girl layer, click on the brush we just made, apply the following brush dynamic to it:

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Tick “Smoothing” option.

And paint away with this brushset on the texture layer around the girl edge, adjust the brush size for variations:

Optionally, you can cancel the dynamics and just use the original brush, for different effect:

Step 7

Now we can add some cloud on top of the shapes texture layer. Create a new layer on top of the square shape texture layer called “cloud”, use the Lasso Tool with a 20px feather, draw a selection and render some cloud inside it, change the blending mode of this layer to “Colour Dodge”:

Duplicate the cloud layer once and drag it onto the feet position, so to create some highlight on her feet: (Resize it a bit with the free transform tool)

Now duplicate the cloud layer a few more times and change the blending mode of those layers to “Normal”. On each duplcated layer, hit Ctrl + T and right-click to choose the “Warp” option, warp the cloud to different shapes around the girl’s body:

This step is entirely up to you want kind of the shapes you like, here is my effect:

And here is the effect so far:

Step 8

Ok we’re almost there! Now let’s do some final adjustment for the image. On top of all previous layers, add a Black and White adjustment layer on the top:

Change the blending mode of this black and white layer to “Overlay”, apply the following layer mask to it:

You can see by adding the mask, we created some depth to the image:

Duplicate this black and white layer twice, maintain the blending mode as “Overlay”. Add aonther Vibrance adjustment layer on top of the duplicated layer:

Create a new layer on top of every other layer and set the blending mode of it to “color”, grab a big soft brush with colour of your choice and simply paint on desired area. You will have the following effect:

Step 9

OK we can do some fine-tuning of the final image by adding some light strips. To do this, simply flatten the image, duplicate the background layer once, and apply the following motion blur setting to the duplicated layer:

Change the blending mode of this motion blur layer to “Screen”. Here we don’t really want to the whole image to be covered by blur, so we add a layer mask to the motion blur layer to hide a portion of it:

And here is the effect so far:

Optional: you can duplicate this motion blur layer a few times and try out different blending mode. The result will amaze you :)

Here is my final effect for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

Alternative version: (I added some abstract brushset on the girl feet)

Further Reading

Just an interesting article I found on the net about Photoshop Brush Engine, great for beginners:

An Introduction to Photoshop Brush Engine

PSD File for this Tutorial

Having trouble with this awesome tutorial? You can buy this PSD File for only $2.00! Click the link below and you will be taken to the Paypal checkout page, after payment you will be given a download link automatically.

That’s for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful, drop me a comment if you have any question, I will try my best to help you out.

Cheers and have a nice day!

Related posts:

1. Seamlessly Combine Multiple Objects and Create Awesome Lighting Effect in Photoshop
2. Design an Awesome Urban City Photo-Montage In Photoshop
3. Design an Awesome Watercolour Style “City on Cloud” Artwork in Photoshop

Welcome to the 14th volume of “Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group”, which is a showcase I run fortnightly here on psdvault.com featuring some fantastic, highly-creative design works in the PSD Vault Flickr Group.

Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational! Meanwhile, if you have some cool designs and would like to share them here, you can simply join the PSD Vault Flickr group.

Here goes the list, enjoy! (You can click on the image to view the author’s flickr page)

That’s it for the 14th volume of Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group! Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational. I would love to hear your thoughts of those works, just drop a comment below :)

Till next time,  have a nice day!

Related posts:

1. Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group – Vol. 13
2. Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group – Vol. 12
3. Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group – Vol. 10

I remembered when I first started learning Photoshop many years ago, there are many features I never knew how to use, or just don’t bother use them at all. Well, I was wrong, and I have since realised everything has their uses and they’re there for a purpose :)

In this tutorial, I will show you 5 Highly Applicable, Yet Easily Ignored Features in Photoshop -  and How to Best Use Them. Hopefully they’re of use to you as a starter, thus make your life as a photoshopper a bit easier right from the beginning.

Meanwhile, I guess even if you’re an experienced Photoshopper already, it nevers hurt to have a read :) Perhaps you’d like to share some tips and tricks too? Just drop me a comment below :)

Ok enough talk, let’s get started!

Turn on the Alignment Options in Move Tool

Let’s face this: you create a new document, copy and paste a new image onto the canvas, and try to position it to the center. If you’re a beginner, you may try to judge the center point by your eyes (I did it once). But believe me, your eyes don’t always tell the truth!

That’s when the alignment options come in handy. Simply click on the Move Tool (V), then you will see the alignment options appears on the top:

And let’s say you want to position an object in the center of the canvas, simply Ctrl + A to select the whole canvas, and you will see some alignment option become clickable:

And then you simply click “Align vertical centers” and “Align horizontal centers”, you will see the object is now positioned in the center of the canvas:

Also if you wish to align your object to a different spot, simply change the selection range instead of the whole canvas.

Image > Trim…

Ok, there will be time that you will face the following situation: you will have image sitting on top of a transparent or a single solid colour background, and you will want to get rid of all the background and leave just the image object.

Naturally you will want to use the Crop tool, however that can sometimes be tricky. So the Trim function can come in handy. (Image > Trim…)

What trim function does is that it lets you instantly crop your document’s canvas to the outer border of your image and clear out the rest of the image, as along as you have a transparent background or a solid colour background. Here is a demo: (I have a solid white background)

Before Trim

After Trim

Isn’t this much easier than cropping?

Unlock the Background Layer

Trust me, there will be time comes that you will want to unlock the background layer, for whatever purpose. To do so, simply double-click the background layer on the layer pallette, as shown below:

You will then be prompted with a new window, simply click “OK”:

And you will now see the lock on the background layer is gone, that means the background layer is now unlocked:

You can now drag this background layer up and down, just like all other unlocked layers.

An even quicker to unlock the background layer: (Thanks to dietoself86)

Actually the quickest way to unlock the background layer is to alt-double click on the layer.

Convert to Smart Object

Since Photoshop CS2, there is a new feather called Smart Object being introduced. We may know it’s there, however many of us may never use it until now.

This feature is available when you right-click the image layer on the layer palette, as show below:

I won’t go into great detail about the use of smart object here, however what I would like to talk about is that by converting your image into smart object, you can overcome the issue whan resize the image, it becomes blurred when enlarge back to the original size. Below is the screenshot of comparison:

Without converting to smart object, after resizing back to original size:

Converted to smart object, after resizing back to original size:

You can see by converting the image to smart object, it preserves the details and no matter how many times you resize it, it won’t go blurry.

More smart object options are available under Layer > Smart Object, as shown below:

Further Readings about Smart Object:

Photoshop Smarter: Smart Objects

Photoshop How-To: Get Smart About Smart Objects

A Word of Caution for using Smart Object: (Thanks to B. Moore for commenting this)

Using smart objects will increase the file size by a large amount. It all depends on size of the original piece thats was turned into a smart object. Using lots of high rez smart objects will make a HUGE increase to file size.

The Info Window

As a photoshop beginner, every now and then you will need extra information about the image you’re working on. And you may ask: How do I work out the size, colour and see extra information about the tools I’m using?

That’s when the info window come in real handy. To bring it up, simply go to Window > Info or press F8:

Once you have the info window open, it display some real handy information about the tool you’re using, and the size of the selection you’re drawing, etc.

Here is a example info window I have when I draw a rectangular marquee selection on a white canvas:

As you can see, it displays information about the rectangluar marquee tool I’m using, the size of the selection (in pixel) I’m drawing, the X/Y position of the selection, and the colour mode stats.

Those information would be quite useful especially when you need precise measurement, such as web graphic, prints, etc.

Ok that’s all for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find those information useful. Cheers and have a great day!

Related posts:

1. Selecting Objects in Photoshop
2. Create an Abstract Style, Vibrant Jumping Man Scene in Photoshop
3. 10 Practical Tutorials to Get You Started with Photoshop Tools – Part I

Cloud Texture is always one of the most likable texture amongst the designers. I personally love them because I can use them for a wide range of occasions and add extra effect to the design. Last weekend we had a bit of storm here and I took some photos of the storm cloud, just before the rain came. Thought I would share them with  you guys :)

In this texture pack, I bundled 4 High Resolution Storm Cloud Textures, free for personal or commercial use. Hopefully you will enjoy them and find them useful!

Click here to download this texture pack

Here is the low-res preview of the cloud textures:

Click here to download this texture pack

And lastly, I know it sounds both useless and annoying, but please DO NOT redistribute them and sell them online. Thanks and happy Photoshopping!

Related posts:

1. Freebies From the Vault: High Resolution Natural Texture Pack
2. Freebies From the Vault: High Resolution Brick and Stone Texture Pack
3. 3 Lucky Readers to Win a Free MASTER PACK from Stock Graphic Designs – Contest Has Now Ended

I collect wallpaper for my computer all the time as a hobby, and I do use them as a source for inspiration. Recently I discoverd a great new site called Wallpaperart.org, where they collect a set of high quality wallpaper from designers around the world – and the great thing about this site is they not only collect wallpaper, but also to interview the author/designers who made them. What a great combination! You get to download the wallpaper, plus reading into the info those great designers share!

In this post, I will showcase you 5 (Really) Amazing Collection of Wallpaper + Designer Interviews from Wallpaperart.org. Hope you enjoy them and find them inspirational. For more, hop onto their website and take a look yourself :)

Here is what’s on their “About” page, thought the message was quite unique:

WallpaperArt is not just another random wallpaper library. Our goal is to select the most exclusive, the most special, the most incredible wallpapers you can possibly find online and at the same time bring the artist and the user closer together.

Our aim is to inform our readers about the latest Wallpaper trends and information about the artists behind the beautiful artwork. By providing interviews with the designers and a look behind the scene we try to bring the wallpaper scene to a new level.

- Source: Wallpaperart.org

Ok enough talk, here goes the list, enjoy!

Luuk Vermeyden

Luuk Vermeyden, a young respected artist from the Netherlands also known as Jaxe, has made us an exclusive wallpaper. His beautiful retouching skills and creative mind truly worked their magic on this amazing composition. Get the know this wonderful artist and grab this gorgeous eye-candy for your desktop.

Igor Scekic

Igor Šćekić, who doesn’t know him? Well if you don’t, this should be a truly interesting interview. For those who’re not sure, he’s also known as Virus69 on deviantArt and art groups like slashTHREE and evokeONE. Igor has made a truly amazing wallpaper to be featured on WallpaperArt. So now you’ve two good reasons to click that “read more” button and find out more about this amazing artist and his exclusive wallpaper.

Rogier de Boeve

What it even makes better is that we returned with a new interview with Belgian artist Rogier de Boevé! He’ s been so kind to make us a truly wicked wallpaper and took the time to give his opinion about online community activity and what has been his inspiration for his wonderful work. Get to know this great artists and grab his lovely artwork to put on your desktop.

Skam

Maksimilijan Gečević is a Croatian artist also know as Skam. He’s a member of Slashthree Art group and is a truly master in photo manipulation. In the following interview he will explain you how he got in to it and how he learned it! He also made this wonderful wallpaper for you, free to download in this post ! Enjoy !

Saad Moosajee

This week we had a chance to finish an interview with 15 year-old self-taught illustrator, Saad Moosaje . Let’s have a chat about how a young artist like him combines school with client work. Sit back and enjoy the interview..

In fact this interview freaks me out a bit … I wondered what was I doing when I was 15, studying Chemistry in High School perhaps…

Ok that’s it for this post, hope you enjoy those wallpaper and interviews from wallpaperart.org and find them inspirational!

Related posts:

1. Amazing Wallpaper Crafted by Digital Artist Moustafa Hassan
2. 30 Amazing HD Wallpaper to Spice Up Your Desktop
3. 20 Ultra-Creative, High Quality Free Wallpaper for Your Beloved iPhone

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this Trasparent Text Effect, mixing with Fresh Grass Texture and Cloud Brushset. You can use the text effect in a wide range of occasions – such as website header background, part of a natural themed design, etc.

Along the way, I would like to show you my use of brushsets and the way I use them to draw background textures, then mixing the background texture with real-world object.

Some steps of this tutorial require the use of features available on CS4, but I guess there is always alternative way you can use, although the end effect may differ slightly.

Have a try :)

Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:

Grass Texture

Cloud Brushset

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000 * 600px, leave the background colour as White and create a new layer on top of it named “background texture”. Now let’s paint some background on it.

I decided instead of getting some ground/soil texture, using pure the default Photoshop brushsets can be fun and good for practicing some painting skills.

So grab those brushes as shown below:

The painting secret here is to try set the flow and opacity of the brush to a reletively low level, and try to mix all three brushsetss together and adjust the size of the brush when necessary, for maximum effect.

Here is what I have after the painting (You can see

You can see I gave the centre of the image – where the grass and the text will sit, a dark colour then the rest of the image.

Step 2

This step is optional if you’re happy with result from previous step. Otherwise, we can do some lighting and colour adjustment for the background texture layer. Add the following two adjustment layers to the image:

Curves

Colour Balance

And we can add a new layer called “light top right” and grab this brushset below with white colour and paint some light rays from the top right: (remember also to set brush flow and opacity to low level)

And here is the effect I have after the painting:

If you find it difficult to paint the background, you can download a copy of the background image here. Then import it into Photoshop. However I would suggest you have a try at least, it doesn’t matter if it didn’t turn as good.

Step 3

Load the “Grass Texture” image into Photoshop, use the Lasso Tool with 20px feather to select a portion as shown below, copy and paste a patch of the grass texture onto our document, resize and distort it if necessary:

Use the Eraser Tool with soft brush to erase the edge of the grass texture, as shown below:

Apply the Smart Sharpen Filter on the grass texture layer:

Add the following three adjustment layers to the grass texture layer (tick the “use previous layer to create layer mask” option)

Levels

Vibrance

Curves

And here is the effect so far:

Step 4

Now let’s type some text onto it. I used the “Myriad Pro” font but you can pretty much choose any bold font you like, type one letter on the canvas, on top of all previous layers:

Apply the following blending optiono to this text layer:

General Blending

Drop Shadow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

And here is the effect after apply those blending options:

Duplicate this text layer and re-type each layer with a new letter, rotate and position them as shown below:

Optional: duplicate each text layer to make the text bolder:

Step 5

Now we’re pretty much done with the text, let’s add some lighting effect.

Firstly create a new layer called “text highlight” with “Overlay” blendng mode just under the first text layer, and grab a round soft brush with white colour, set the flow and opacity to both around 50%, and paint to the area as shown below:

Add another layer on top of the “text highlight” layer, and use the same brush as we used for the highlight layer, but with a dark colour, gently paint on the areas as shown below: (may have to adjust the brush size accordingly)

Add another layer just under the grass texture layer, and paint some shadow under it:

Add two more adjustment layer on top of all previous layers:

Vibrance

Curves

And here is the effect so far:

Step 6

Finally, we add the cloud on the top of the image by create a new layer on top of the new layer, and paint with the cloud brush set we downloaded:

And we add some shining dots around the text, by using a soft, round white brush:

OK that’s it for this tutorial! You can of course further enhance it by adding some more effect.

Here is my final result for this tutorial (Added some cracked texture under the grass, and some abstract lines)

Hope you enjoy this tutorial and find it useful. Have a great day!

Related posts:

1. Design a Smooth and Fresh Text Effect with Leaves and Stone Texture in Photoshop
2. Create an Ancient Typography with Dry Soil Texture and Floral Brushset in Photoshop
3. Create a Scratched Metal Text Effect in Photoshop

In my opinion, landscape photo manipulation is probably one of the most interesting, however difficult to master Photoshop technique – especially identifying the light source, how to best merge a few stock images together, etc.

In this post, I will showcase 25 Absolutely Magnificant Landscape Scenary Photo Manipulation + 5 Great PS Tutorials Showing How to Make Them. Those images are hand-picked by me from deviantArt.com and I personally enjoy them very much. The tutorials are also part of my browers favourites and I hope they’re useful to you when it comes to produce great scenary photo manipulations.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

Tutorials  (From Basic to Advance)

Warm Golden Sunsets With Gradient Maps

When I think of the perfect sunset photo, my mind immediately fills with lots of warm reds, oranges and yellows as the sun gently sets across the water or beyond the hills. Sunsets are one of the most commonly photographed aspects of nature, and yet photos rarely manage to capture their intense beauty. What was once a sky filled with rich, golden hues often ends up looking cooler, less vivid, and ultimately less interesting.

- Source: photoshopessentials.com

Blending Two Different Natural Elements

Blending waterfall-castle-sky by =night-fate is an easy to follow tutorial aimed at those that are new to photomanipulation.In this tutorial night-fate explains to us just one of the many ways of how to successfully blend images together to make a seamless background for a dark an emotive scene.This is just one of the many resources she has to offer.

- Source: DeviantArt.com

Planet Integration Tutorial

In this tutorial, I won’t show you how to make planet or something like that, just how to integrate finished planet in to the photo.

- Source: DeviantArt.com

The Soft Sea Light

This lesson is about how to create by three pictures only a tender collage of sea-piece. A peculiarity of this collage is that we will do the effect of soft light. For work I took pictures from the Internet, to the authors – thank you.

- Source: psdtop.com

Add Dynamic Lighting to a Flat Photograph

In this tutorial, I will show you how to spice up a fairly dull and flat photograph. It’s very easy and fast! Go from flat photo to a uniquely lit style.

- Source: psdtuts.com

That’s all for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy this collection and find those tutorials useful. Cheers and have a great day!

Related posts:

1. 11 Fascinating and Educational Tutorials Teaching You How to Produce Better Photo Effects
2. 8 Elegant, Really Cool Abstract Photoshop Tutorials to Beautify Your Design
3. 30 Stunning, Absolutely Magical Photo Manipulations Focusing on Human Eye

Recently I have been focusing on providing some simple, beginner-leveled Photoshop tutorials here on psdvault.com, aiming to helping Photoshop starters to learn some basic, but useful things towards their design. After all, I do get lots of emails from beginners wanting to learn from the basics.

Therefore, I made a few mini Photoshop tutorials and compiled them into one, big tutorial with some tricks I learnt and discovered in the past.

In this post, I will show you 5 Useful Little Photoshop Tricks to Bring Out That bit of Extra Elegance for Your Design. I think those techniques would be quite useful for a Photoshop beginner, as they give you a good starting and/or finishing point for whatever things you design. Once you learn those skills, you can apply them to a wide range of occasions. Have a try!

The topics I will be focusing on in the post include:

1. Give Your Text A Bit More Depth
2. The Light From the Top (Highlight Specific Area)
3. Clever Use of Motion Blur
4. The Cloud and Warp Tool
5. Distort Your Way into 3D

Give Your Text A Bit More Depth

Here is the problem – You typed some text onto the canvas, but somehow it looks just boring, like this text below:

(Font: Myriad Pro)

Here is how you can easily add some more depth and lighting contrast to the text itself – on the text layer, apply the following layer blending options:

Drop Shadow

Inner Shadow

Bevel and Emboss

Contour

Gradient Overlay

And here is the effect after those blending options applied:

You can see just by adding those very simple layer blending options, you can make you text looks more attractive and contains more lighting depths.

The Light From the Top (Highlight Specific Area)

If you want to bring out some more extra elegance for the text above, you can add some light from the top.

To do this, simply create a new layer on top of the text layer, keep the blending mode as “Normal”, grab a big soft round brush with White colour, do a single click on the position as shown below:

And you will have the following effect: (can reduce the layer opacity to around 80% if you think the light is too bright)

This method can be used widely in lots of different occasions, for anything you want to highlight.

Clever Use of Motion Blur

Sometimes you see a display like this:

and you wonder how this nice shadow is created. Well, simple!

Basically you grab a soft round brush with a dark colour, do a single-click on a spot:

Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and apply the following settings:

Hit Ctrl + F several times to re-apply motion blur several times, then use the free transform tool (Ctrl + T) to reduce the height if necessary. You will have the following effect:

That’s it! If you want to make a dark shadow, just use a darker brush in the beginning.

The Cloud and Warp Tool

Have you ever thought of combining the cloud rendering filter and the Warp Tool together? If not, have a try with those two now, you will be surprised what effect that brings you.

The steps are quite simple: create a new document with black background, use the Lasso Tool with a 50px feather and draw a circle, render some cloud inside it by going to it Filter > Render > Cloud: (with White as Foreground colour, Black as Background colour)

Then Hit Ctrl + T and bring up the Free Transform Tool, right-click on the cloud and choose “Warp”:

Then expriement! Use the warp tool to tweak the cloud into whatever shape you like:

Here is my effect after the warping:

Try out different angles, you will get lots of different effect as a result.

Distort Your Way into 3D

This is a really quick way of making a 3D look with the Distort option available in the Free Transform Tool.

So create a new document with White background and make some rectangular shape filled with different colour on it: (The size of the rectangular shapes are roughly half of the height the canvas)

Duplicate this shape layer, drag the duplicated shapes beneath the original shapes, resize it to fit the canvas:

On the duplicated layer, right-click and choose “Distort”:

Hold down the “Shift” key, click and drag both bottom corner of the shape until you reach the following effect:

For Lighting Contrast, simply add a new layer with blending mode set to “Color Burn”, grab a soft round brush with a dark colour and paint over the desired area:

That’s all for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find those little tricks useful and inspirational! Cheers and have a great day!

Related posts:

1. Design an Awesome Abstract Style Flaming Bird in Photoshop
2. Design a Cool Abstract-Style Shattered Text Effect in Photoshop
3. Design a Fragmented Text Effect with Scrap Texture in Photoshop

Graphic River has launch their awesome re-design of their massive community site. Since the site is a great resource for all graphic designers, I went ahead and digged up some new features and functionality and compiled them into this post, hopefully you guys will find it useful!

For people who hasn’t across them yet, Graphic River is an extremely popular community site where you can buy and sell Layered Photoshop, Vectors, Icons and Add-ons. So if you need any stock files for your design, go ahead and check them out. Or, you’re really good at Photoshop, make some awesome designs and sell them the layered file there.

In this post, I will take you through some exciting new features and functions based on the re-design of GraphicRiver. Take a look, I’m sure you will pleasantly surprised :)

And by the way, Graphic River is an Envato MarketPlace, and here is a bit of intro for Envato:

Since coming on the scene only three years ago in August 2006, the Envato marketplaces have been growing at an unbelievable rate. They now boast highly active communities, have over 200,000 members worldwide, and are home for tens of thousands of digital items available for purchase.

- Source: Envato MarketPlace Press Release

The New logo

Yes, they made a new logo for Graphic River. I’m sure there must be heaps of meaning behind this redesgin (trying to link between graphic and … river, for instance). But I have to say the spotlight of this Logo is that Font – MgOpen Modata. I personally really like it and the best thing is this font is open source!

Also the designer of this logo, Kai Loon, has an interesting post on his blog talking about his experience in terms of the logo re-design, so take a look if you’re interest :)

Enhanced Search Engine

Everyone knows a good site search means everything, espeically for a massive community site like graphicRiver. So without a doubt, they have also greatly enhanced their search engine – as stated on their blog entry:

We have been working hard to improve our search and packaged in with the launch are the ability to search within categories, portfolios, collections, search by tags, search by attributes, search users, search the wiki from support and many other search improvements …

Source: The River Current

With the result page, the layout is clean and easy to follow, and you can sort your result by Relevance, Rating, Sales and Price:

Great, isn’t it? Oh, I forgot to tell you that you can search across multiple categories, too. Just tick all the checkboxes!

Recent Item from Author You Follow

Another awesome feature! Similar to Twitter, this feature allow you to follow your favourite authors and view their latest files on your homepage. Convenient eh!

There is no limit number of author you can follow. Plus, the author that you follow on other Envato marketplace site (e.g. themeforest) will appear on Graphic River, too. In regards to this new feature, here is what the designer has to say:

We’ve created this feature so our community can capitalize on all that social networking has to offer, and now that we’ve laid the foundation for this, we will be really building on it.

- Cyan Ta’eed

Forum Makeover

Yes, the forum also went throught a huge makeover. They’ve brought an all-new UI including first reply and last reply, better styles in the posts, email updates from forum threads, the ability to see threads and posts by a user, and a new recent threads sidebar. And they’ve linked up the marketplace blogs and forums so you can chat about blog posts on the forums as well as see the latest news and announcements from inside the community!

The MarketPlace Wiki

A comprehensive Marketplace Wiki has been added, where you can read articles on all kinds of topics, such as how users can increase their passive income through the marketplace referral program.

It contains tons of articles, tips and FAQs about not just Graphic River, but the whole marketplaces!

Ok that’s for this post! Hopefully you will find these info helpful and if you want to know more about those new features, simply hop onto The River Current – Graphic River Blog!

Related posts:

1. Submit Your Link
2. Psdvault.com Launched!
3. Six High Quality Photoshop Tutorial Sites Apart From PSDTUTS.com – Part III

Lately I have seen a lot of effect done in a style that utilises a lot of shattered, distorted effect, particularly on Human body elements. This really fascinates me because I feel those artworks are simply full mystery. They may look really odd and of course SURREAL, sometimes even dark, however they can convey very strong and powerful emotion to viewers. If used well, those shattering effect can give your design a real boost.

In this post, I will show you a collection of  25 Weird, Yet Powerful Art of The Shattered, Disintegrated and Distorted Human Elements from deviantArt and Flickr. Hope you enjoy them! Let me know your thoughts :)

You can click on the image to access author’s page.

That’s it for this post! You probably had enough and felt shattered yourself already :) but I do hope you enjoy them and find them inspirational!

Till next time, have a great day!

Related posts:

1. 30 Stunning, Absolutely Magical Photo Manipulations Focusing on Human Eye
2. Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group – Vol. 3
3. Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group – Vol. 2