Zeezed

Big Changes will come.

2010-07-18T21:00:00.001-07:00

A new website is in development! Coming soon!

We're moving from blogspot to a real website! At the moment everything is in motion and we're working hard on many new exciting features! We hope to have the new site up sometime after summer but there are no promises because our hosting is expensive, and we are bound to hit a few problems.

Thank you.

Summer Photo Effect Tutorial

2010-07-17T16:45:00.001-07:00

Summer photo effect tutorial!

Its summer, and I need something special for summer for this site right? So... I've decided to make you a tutorial and since the photo retouch tutorial was a big smash I decided to do it on a photo effect! Now I keep seeing all these yellow tinged summer "themed" photos, yet I've never find out how they make there is! So after awhile tinkering in photoshop I found out how, and this is what I got:

Looks pretty good, at the bottom are some more examples!

Lets begin. First find a picture you want to edit ( or use the stock I have found ), there are some restrictions to this though, and they are as followed;

-Must be outside ( being a summer theme this helps )
-Tree/plant backgrounds work best ( better for the effect )
-Bright day/exposed.

After following those guild lines and finding/taking a picture you want to edit we can actually begin to start! Open up photoshop, as always I will be using cs4. The first thing we will tackle is exposure. You'll want to go ahead and open that, it can be located at the bottom of the layer menu, like so:

Now adjust everything how I have it below:

Here comes the annoying part of it all. You will need to make a new adjustment layer, like you did for the exposure, accept instead of clicking on exposure click on selective color. Its going to bring you to this screen.

Go threw all the drop down options and under the Yellow change it all to 100%. It will give you something that looks horrid! But don't worry we will fix that! You're going to need to change the layer blending mode to "Hue", you can find that like so:

Yet another adjustment layer! this time you'll need to select Brightness/Contrast. Change you setting to the following:

one last step, we need to add a "light source" from the bottom of this, you're going to need to select your gradient tool ( its with the paint bucket tool ) and change the gradient setting as follows:

create a new layer and click and drag, making sure the dark half is at the top, change the blending mode to Screen and you're done!

If the effect is to strong, select all the layers you have added and group them ( ctrl+g ) and change opacity down to a suitable strength. I turned mine to 75%. Final effect.

Tutorial Center

2010-07-07T20:31:00.000-07:00

I just worked some of my coding magic and created a simple but effective way to browse threw my tutorials! I hope you enjoy it! You can get there by clicking on the right side bar under " Pages " or follow the link below! Have fun!

Tutorial Center

Polariod Photoshop Effect By Zeezed

2010-07-06T23:39:00.000-07:00

A Polaroid effect can be the perfect achieve a retro effect! Today I will be teaching you how to make an incredible style using a Polaroid effect in Photoshop! This is what we're going to be aiming for today:

This effect only took me 10 minutes to do ( provided I had all the resources needed ) and should be less then an hour to learn. I am using Photoshop CS4 and I'm working under the essentials workspace. Lets begin!

First you're going to need to find a few images, 4-8 usually give the best effect, I will be using 5 images today. These are the images below:

Now create a new document, depending on the purposes you're going to use the image for this size will vary, but for learning purposes we will make it 500px by 500px. You should have a blank canvas in front of you.

From here you will want to make to use the rectangle tool and cover the entire surface like so:

Now navigate to the upper control bar, and find the Subtract From Shape Area as shown below and click it.

You will need to make a rectangle shape inside the shape you made before that looks like this:

now you see its starting to look like a Polaroid!

Double click on the layer thumbnail located beside the layer name

this window should pop up:

Change it so white.

At the bottom of the layer window look for an icon that says FX click on it and look for Gradient Overlay.

Change the setting to what I have below

Select you background layer!!! <- Very important. Go into file>place...
and locate the files you wish you use.
Place each on accordingly and when done sizing and fitting hit enter.

This is what you should get

Now its time for the fun part! We have all the elements of our design done, now we need to bring them together! Create a new document ( keep the polariod document open ), this can be anysize you please but for the tutorial I will make it 1500px by1000px.

You will need to find a background for your new document, I am using a wooden texture that I have enhanced, you may use the same one:

( Click to enlarge )

Now go to your polariod document and hit:
CTRL+A
Select the image you'd like ( make the rest invisible by clicking on the eye beside layer )
Hit:
Shift+CTRL+C
Now go to the other document and paste it ( CTRL+V ).

Repeat For all images.

Should look like this in your layer window:

Now free tranfer them ( Edit>Free Transfer / CTRL+T ) and rotate/move them around the way you'd like. Here is what I got:

One more step! Select a Polaroid layer and add a layer style like you did with the gradient overlay but this time choose Drop Shadow and adjust the setting for the best look. Repeat for the other Polaroid images.This is the final product:

I hope you enjoyed this Polaroid Photoshop tutorial by zeezed! This tutorial was written by Scott Hutchison and in no way do you have the right to use without back linking to this page, thank you.

Another Template?

2010-07-03T22:45:00.000-07:00

Yes I know it wasn't to long ago I made a template for the website, but that was only a temporary template. So I made a new template! There is a few more things I must do before this template is 100% done but all the Photoshop and Dream Weaver work is over so I can at least put up what I have. I hope this one is a little more eye pleasing the the other one, I think so... So enjoy!

Oh yes by the way, there is going to be 2 more surprising coming up soon for this website, but they involve some serious coding and graphics so give it time, but I'm hoping with these two new functions this site will become a lot more helpful. It will still be related to graphics, Photoshop and tutorials :)

Hope you enjoy the update!

Pen up girl

2010-07-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

I was determined to get some sorta inspiration from my little trip to Windsor Ontario ( Where I just spent the last week with a friend ) and I found it in a tattoo "shop". It wasn't quite the shop that gave me the idea but I still wanted to do something, so pin-up lady came to mind. I hope you enjoy it, one day I might finish it, who knows, I might color it as well but I don't know, I say a lot of things and never get around to them. I hope you enjoy this, made it in photoshop, took me almost only 30 minutes but I still had fun with my tablet, good practice in photoshop.

Most Useful Short keys In Photoshop

2010-06-25T20:29:00.000-07:00

I always see people doing things the long way in Photoshop, and not getting anywhere fast, so I've decided to share some useful keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop. These shortcuts I heavily use instead of clicking on tools and it can make your life 50x simpler. So take some time and read this! It could save you a lot of time when using Photoshop

CTRL+C	Copy
CTRL+C+CTRL	Copy Merge
CTRL+V	Paste
CTRL+E	Merge Down
[	Brush Size Increase
]	Brush Size Decrease
CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+S	Save For Web
ALT+SCROLL	Zoom Out/In
CTRL+J	Duplicate Layer
CTRL+D	Deselect
CTRL+G	Group Layer(s)
CTRL+A	Select All
CTRL+T	Free Tranform
CTRL+R	Show/Hide Ruler
CTRL+Z	Undo!
CTRL+Z+ALT	Step Back ( Super Undo )

This Tutorial Was Written For PC's, Macs are different and the shortcuts do vary.

If you learn to use Photoshop shortcuts you will notice everything becomes a lot faster. There are many more short keys, but these are most of the basics and most useful ones.

Don't forget to look around at my other tutorials!

-Zeezed

My New Kitty

2010-06-19T10:59:00.001-07:00

We have no name :3. We currently do not have name for the little fella' but non the less he is cute :) So like always I had to take our my camera and take some photos of the cute kitten. New photography model? I think so. Be sure to keep your eye open for more photos of this cute guy!

Panda and I!

2010-06-16T14:00:00.001-07:00

This was just something I did for fun, I haven't made anything for a long time sooo.... here you go. Little bit of photoshop and some photography can go along way ;)

and yes this means zeezed is panda friendly.

Photoshop Photo Animation Tutorial

2010-06-11T20:49:00.001-07:00

Hello and welcome to my new photoshop animation tutorial made for zeezed! This weeks tutorial I will be teaching you how to make simple animations! Lets get started shall we!

For this tutorial I've created a 200x200 ( 72 res. ) file with two layers, one being "a" and one being "b".

We'll be playing around with these two layers. Things you need open:

-Layers
-Animation

These can be located in the photoshop drop down menu "windows" like below:

after you've done that you should get this window at the bottom:

Here is a diagram in case this is foreign area of photoshop for you
diagram

Before we start I will tell you the first effect we'll be learning today, sliding. Pretty simple, frame b will be sliding left across frame a. You'll need to select the move tool (V) and slide your frame all the way to the left so you cannot see it.

Now while holding down shift hit your right arrow key once. Now you'll have this

now go down to your animation box and click on the duplicate frame button:

and repeat this step until the B layer has went from one side to. You'll get this:

-------------------------------------------------------

EXTRAS

------------------------------------------------------
The next style we'll be doing it fading. In adobe animations you can also edit the opacity so you can make cool fade effects. This is how:

Start off with your B frame showing and edit the opacity and take away 10% and duplicate frame like you did above. Continue to do so till your get to 0%. You're done, should look like this:
-------------------------------------------------------
Take all opacity off of layer B ( or you can click on the eye icon and make it invisible ) and duplicated frame and change opacity to 100% ( or if you make it invisible turn on the visibility ).

Photoshop photo retouching zeezed style

2010-06-05T12:18:00.000-07:00

Photoshop is an amazing tool and here at zeezed I'm going to teach you my own personal secret way of enhancing any photo with simple steps! First you will need to locate the photo you want to enhance, head shots work the best for this. Here is the photo I found online;

by ~PorcelainStock
porcelainstock.deviantart.com/art/plain-face-49780353

As you can see I selected a photo of the most natural looking, no makeup or any distractions in the background, as natural as it gets and quite beautiful. So lets start editing!

The first thing in photoshop we need to tackle is the bags under her eyes, unfortunately if you're a normal person you never get enough sleep in a day and these bags will develop. So how do we take them out? Stamp Tool! Which is located at the left tool bar or you can press (s).

While holding down ALT select right under the dark area ( Be sure to have a soft brush selected! ) and slowly start removing the darkness under the eye by clicking multiple times ( if you're new to this tool try messing around at first in another document to get use to it ). This is what I got:

By the way I have my clone brush settings to this:

So now that we're done the biggest "problem" of this photo we need to start editing the skin tones! The easiest thing ever!

Make a new layer. ( name doesn't matter )

Go to your brush tool.

Select the color #f2d1a6 ( this may vary with different skin colors ). The reason I picked this skin flesh color is because its bright and will lighten up the skin.

Apply color all over the face like so;

and now change the layer blending mode to soft light.Take a your eraser tool and use a soft brush to remove anything that isn't the face, it should look like this:

Repeat this step for the eyes( switch the color to a brighter color of their eye color ). Then change the opacity of the layer to make it look natural. and you're done! You can further edit it with an adjustment layer, which I did to get a more enhanced look:

Once again I really urge you to check out :

PorcelainStock

There are a lot of great stock photos!

I hope you liked my tutorial, this was written strictly for Zeezed and you have no right to use this without permission. If you would like to use this tutorial please contact me.

Photoshop basics, Color Theory

2010-06-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

Zeezed's Color theory

Everything with design has color theory and photoshop comes at no acceptation . Today I will be showing you the basics of color theory and showing you a wonderful site to make your like 20x easier! So lets get started!

First off, what is color theory?

in the visual arts, color theory is a body of practical guidance to color mixing and the visual impacts of specific color combinations.

-Wikipedia.

That about sums it up, and in basic sense, it makes things look hot.

Now there is a very practical way of learning color theory, and its called a color wheel. Here is what one looks like ( colors may be off slightly ):

Now there is much more complex color wheels but this one is the basic one. This chart can be divided into three groups, as shown in the following diagram:

I do not refer to these charts when I am using photoshop or doing any other design like thing, I memorized it, its like learning your ABC's but for art, just something you got to learn.

We now know the color wheel but how can we use it? There are many ways to use it and I will show you the most popular one.

Complementary:

Have you ever noticed the colors of Christmas? Red and green, well those are complementary colors! Pick a color on the color wheel and whatever is on the opposite side is its complementary color. Simple enough, like so:

There are also more color scheme which can be used in your photoshop designs (what have you), like:
Analogous Color Scheme

Split Complementary Color Scheme

Triadic Color Scheme

Tetradic Color Scheme

Now if you want to get a perfect color scheme every time there is an online application that you can use from adobe. Adobe made this a few years ago its called Adobe Kuler. I use this site all the time when I use photoshop. User friendly so just go wild!

Adobe Kuler

I hope you liked my tutorial, this was written strictly for Zeezed and you have no right to use this without permission. If you would like to use this tutorial please contact me.

Problems. UPDATE

2010-06-02T17:19:00.001-07:00

I've had some technical issues with my external hard drive, I've lost everything on it so I posting is going to stop for a week or two. Also all other projects for zeezed will be on hold for a little while till I can rebuild and remake a few things that are essential. Also I must remake a few things in photoshop for this site again ( example: logo ).

But...

I will make this up to you, I will be writing more photoshop tutorials and I have a few things in my mind for this blog, a few things that will really push this blog further. Also I will be introducing some of my own photoshop resources for download! So I promise you stick around and wait because it will be worth it.

Have a great day! ! !

New Template!

2010-05-29T14:24:00.001-07:00

After a little while in dreamweaver I have finally got the site in a more zeezed looking style :) The purple theme is not the only new update but I am not done the other features, so keep an eye open for a few new features in the website!! Hope you enjoy it! Still have a few things to photoshop and code but this is basically it. Enjoy!

Also, I am hoping to post some new photoshop tutorials here for zeezed but photoshop tutorials can take awhile to make so be patient!

-Zeezed

Bright Black And White Portrait Photoshop Tutorial

2010-05-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

Another personal tutorial! This style is a very easy way to make a professional looking black and white portrait using photoshop. I learned this awhile ago and used it on a few pictures but it only works for certain image.

Suggested elements of your photo:

Light Background ( at least most/some of it )
SMILE!

What You'll Need
-Photoshop ( I suggest cs1+ )
-10-20 minutes
-Basic understanding of photoshop

First you will need to find a picture, this is one I found of myself took about a month ago and it will work very nicely for what we are going to be doing.

In this tutorial you will need to know how to use layer adjustments. Depending on what version of photoshop this can be easy to access or a little more hidden. Here it where it is on a lot of photoshops:

Some of the adjustments might be missing depending on your photoshop version.

We will be first adding an adjustment layer, this adjustment is called exposure:

Set them to my setting for the time being ( You can come back and adjust the setting for fine tuning at the end )

The next step is adding a gradient map. This is a what gives it the look you need. This is what it should look like ( looks may vary )

You're going to need to edit this gradient by double clicking on the gradient preview image. This is what pops up:

Where I have the red circle in the image above, you will want to double click that to edit the color. This window will pop up:

Change the color to #777777 ( it should be a mid tone grey if you're going to use another shade. ).

You're almost done my friend! If you've followed the steps correctly you image should look like this:

Now one more step! Add a Brightness&Contrast layer Adjustment. You can play around with the setting to fine tune your design but these are my settings:

Congratulations You're Done! Hope you had fun, please browse around for more tutorials! Happy Photoshop 'in days to you!

Art Trading Cards

2010-05-26T12:40:00.000-07:00

My art teacher, Lady Kubu, has this "addiction" to art cards. If you're not knowing what art cards are, they're just like trading cards except you make them yourself. So during today art class I came up with some art cards, well only two. She is going to sell them for a dollar for a charity, so I guess its worth putting some time into ;) Anyways here they're, exclusive to Zeezed! Remember if you're going to be sharing this with anyone be sure to give me ( Scott Hutchison ) some credit! Good day!

If you would like to know more about art cards I found this neat little site tells you plenty about them!

www.art-cards.org

Llama

2010-05-25T18:33:00.001-07:00

This is inspired by a man who goes by the name of Alex Pardee, his style isn't hard, but the technique and ideas behind his paintings are hard to come up with...Anyways my tribute to a painter with a sick mind for wicked paintings...I present to you my Llama!! I hope you enjoy it! I made it just for Zeezed, no meaning behind it, no thoughts, just for fun :) I might experiment with this style a little more just for fun, I have a few ideas, but i would obviously put my own spin on it, so look forward to that!

Anyways! I hope you like it! Enjoy!

Click For Larger Version >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

This was presented by Scott Hutchison For Zeezed

Just Another Way

2010-05-23T19:13:00.001-07:00

Rawr!

I spent awhile doing this one. First time trying something along these lines, I'm not use to using the paint brush tool but I am slowly gaining a liking for it. The inspiration is more personal reflection then anything else, the monster represents stress and the little man represents myself. nough' said? Hope you enjoy it!

This project has given the the confidence to try a portrait, so keep an eye open to a portrait :O!

This was presented by Scott Hutchison For Zeezed

Best Friend

2010-05-22T17:16:00.001-07:00

I'd like you to meet my friend Amber. We've been best friends for along time, we've dated, we've broken up, we've made mistakes, we've laughed, we've lived amd in the end me are still best friends, and it will continue to be like this

----------------------

DevaintArt Link

This was presented by Scott Hutchison For Zeezed

Self portrait

2010-05-18T20:46:00.000-07:00

I got bored so I took a picture :) Enjoy.

Deviantart link

This was presented by Scott Hutchison For Zeezed

Zeezed's Basic Fish Eye Effect Tutorial

2010-05-16T16:44:00.001-07:00

Zeezed's Basic Fish Eye Effect Tutorial By Scott Hucthison

First you're going to need to make your image sqaure. To do this take the *crop tool(c)* and Press shift while dragging. This will make a perfect sqaure. Now adjust to where you want it to be.

Press Enter.

Now we're going to need to use the *Lens Correction* filter. Now click on the filter menu at the top, for some it will be at the top, and for others it will be in *Filters > Distort > Lens Correction.*

This should open( it may look different for you ):

You need to find *remove distortion*. When you find this you're going to set a negative input. I like to use -32.00. After adjusting this to your liking click ok.

This is how mine came out:

Find your *ellipse tool(u)*, its should be here;

Go to the far left corner and while pressing shift, click and drag all the way to the bottom right corner. You should get something that looks like this;

If your circle isn't black you can switch it by double clicking the layer thumbnail.

Now you need to go to your *path select tool(a)* and click on the circle. This should activate the nodes and 4 small dots around your circle should appear.

Now all you have to do is press the negative key, (-) and this will invert your shape.

Here are some other ones I quickly did. These are in no way my photos and are only exmaples!

This was presented by Scott Hutchison For Zeezed

Bitter Cold

2010-05-16T15:06:00.001-07:00

Bitter Cold

This was took awhile ago but I finally emptied my memory card and saw it so I am uploading it :) Enjoy!

Oh yeah its also on deviant art! There is a bigger/printable version there!

Bitter Cold Large Version

This was presented by Scott Hutchison For Zeezed

Simple Text Editing

2010-05-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

Today I'm going to teach you how to enhance you text in photoshop. I am using photoshop CS5 in this tutoiral. The font I am using is arial.

First open a new deocument, the size doesn't matter because you're only learning. The size of my document is 600x600 pixels.

Now you're going to need to lay down some text, you will need two words ( doesn't matter what they're ) and they will need to be on seporate lines like so:

So now we can start leanring more about the text tool. Lets go over the basics, on the top bar under the menu bar will be most your text settings. You can change font, font style, size, anit-aliasing method, alignment, color and create a text warp. I will be changing the font style to Bold.You can play around with these settings, see what you can get.

Click below to see larger view of text bar.

So now that we have the basic font setting down, time to go a little more advance. Alot of people do not find these settings because they're a little hidden but they can enhance you text in such amazing ways! So go to;

Windows > Paragraph

and a side menu should open, this is what mine looks like, yours might be different.

You're going to want to select the Character tab so start editing you text;

I've only labelled the first 6 settings. The rest is up to you to edit/change/play around with.

This is what I got after a minute or so;

This was presented by Scott Hutchison For Zeezed

You're Bonkers

2010-05-15T23:55:00.000-07:00

I kinda adore this quote, and it inspired me to create this fine piece of work. I hope you enjoy!!

To see larger version click the image

This was presented by Scott Hutchison For Zeezed

I'd Give You The World

2010-05-15T22:24:00.000-07:00

This was inspired by my girlfriend. 'nough said? Anyways I believe its kinda self explained. The globe balloon represents the world and how I'd give the world to her if I could. Corny, yes but true non the less.

Check it out on my deviant art;

Zeezed.devaintart.com

This was presented by Scott Hutchison For Zeezed