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Animated Swirls in Adobe After Effects

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:02:00 +0000

Animated swirls are all the rage in the motion graphics world, and there are some pretty cool things that can be done with them. But creating and animating such elements is really not as difficult and time-consuming as it would seem, even if the shapes are detailed and intricate. Bring on the swirls!
[To download a preview version of this swirls in after effects technique, follow this link. All files are for personal use only.]
1 CREATE ILLUSTRATOR SWIRL
Let’s start out in Adobe Illustrator CS3, by far the best tool for creating such design elements—and as you’ll see, hugely important in providing the actual animation paths for us also (yes, you read that right!). Create a new document called “Swirls” at 720×540 pixels, and set the Color Mode to RGB. Click OK, then using the Pen tool, create the main stem for the left side of your design. Then switch to the Spiral tool to draw the swirl on the right. With the Direct Selection tool, select the right end point of the Pen tool path and the left end point of the swirl path and go to Object>Path>Join to create a single path.

2 ADJUST FILL; ADD LAYER & STROKE
With the path selected, go to either the Toolbox or Color panel, click the Fill icon then the None icon to remove the default white fill, leaving only the black 1-point stroke (going to View>Show Transparency Grid can help confirm this is done). In the Layers panel, double-click Layer 1, rename it “Stem,” and click OK. Then click the Create New Layer icon, rename the new layer “Branch 1,” and use the Spiral tool to draw another swirl coming out from the stem, as shown above.

3 ADD LAYERS & STROKES
Continue the same steps (new layer, draw new branch swirl, check fill is None) for as many branches you would like to have coming from the main stem. Make sure the branches start at the stem as accurately as possible. (Note: To draw a swirl in the opposite direction, click once on the artboard with the Spiral tool and select the other Style in the Spiral dialog.) In this case, I’ve created a total of four extra branches. Save your document as Swirls.ai at this point, then go to Window>Brush Libraries>Default Brushes, and choose Basic RGB.

4 ADD BRUSH STROKE; ADJUST WIDTH
With the Selection tool, select all of the stem and branch elements, and click on the second brush graphic in the Basic RGB panel to apply that style. Feel free to use any of the other Brush Libraries, or indeed create your own, to suit your taste. In the Stroke panel, adjust the Stroke Weight accordingly to achieve the desired effect (1.5 pt in this example). Save the file once more, then switch to After Effects.

5 CREATE MASTER COMP; IMPORT SWIRLS
Click the Create a New Composition icon at the bottom of the Project panel, name it “Little Swirls,” and set it to NTSC D1 Square Pixel (720×540) for consistency. Set the length to 8 seconds or so, and click OK. Now, double-click in the Project panel to bring up the Import File dialog, locate Swirls.ai, choose Import As Composition – Cropped Layers, and click Open. Double-click the new Swirls comp in the Project panel to open it. Go to Composition>Background Color and choose white so you can see the swirl elements.

6 EDIT ORIGINAL IN ILLUSTRATOR
Believe it or not, you’ve done the hardest part of the project, and have also unknowingly created the animation paths that will “reveal” the strokes perfectly. Select the main Stem layer in the Timeline, then press Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E) to Edit Original back in Illustrator. Once in the program, go to View>Outline—this is how we want After Effects to see our path shape, as we’re going to copy and paste it. Due to the fact we have a custom brush applied, however, this will most likely not work. So…

7 REMOVE STROKES; COPY & PASTE
Press Command-A (PC: Ctrl-A) to Select All of the lines, go to the Color panel, click the Stroke icon, and click the None icon to remove the brush stroke. As long as we don’t save this document, our brush strokes won’t be affected. Now target just the Stem layer, and press Command-C (PC: Ctrl-C) to Copy the path into memory. Switch back to AE, and with the Stem layer still selected, press Command-V (PC: Ctrl-V) to Paste the path as a mask shape onto the layer. Double-click on the right side of the path in the Composition panel and drag to align with the brush stroke. Press Enter when you’re done.

8 REPEAT PROCESS(ES)
Now switch back to Illustrator and do the same process for the remaining strokes: Target one of the paths in the Layers panel, copy it, switch to After Effects, select the corresponding layer, paste the path as a mask, then nudge it into position if necessary. When all the paths have been copied and pasted, switch back to Illustrator, close the file, and do not save the changes.

9 ADD STROKE EFFECT; ADJUST
Starting with the stem now, we can create one animation technique that can be re-used on all the other layers. Select the Stem layer and go to Effect>Generate>Stroke; a white stroke will appear on the layer. In the Effect Controls panel (ECP), you’ll see that Mask 1 is selected as the path being stroked. Adjust the Brush Size and Brush Hardness until the original black line is hidden; in my case, a 6-pixel stroke and 100% hardness cover it just fine.

10 ANIMATE STROKE
Now drag on the End value and you’ll see your stem drawing perfectly back and forth. See, I told you it was easy, didn’t I? All you need to do now is animate the End value across time. At 0 seconds, click the Stopwatch to set a keyframe for the End value at 0%, move along the Timeline to 2 seconds, and set the End value to 100%. Then Control-click (PC: Right-click) the second keyframe and choose Keyframe Assistant>Easy Ease In. You’ll notice the line is actually erasing itself at this point, but that will change in the next step. Note: Depending on how you created the shape, you may need to animate the Start point instead.

11 SET MASK
Very cool indeed! There’s one more step, however. If you go to Composition>Background Color and set the color to a blue, you can see all we are doing is using a white stroke to hide/reveal a black stroke—which is no good if you intend to composite these swirls on a different background. Back in the ECP, simply set the Paint Style to Reveal Original Image—perfect! You’re animation should now be drawing the line instead of erasing it, as well.

12 COPY & PASTE EFFECT; ADJUST TIMING
Now the same Stroke effect, including keyframes, can be re-used for the branches. In the ECP, select the Stroke effect name at the top and Copy it. At 0 seconds in the Timeline, select the branch layers and Paste. Now, simply click-and-drag the keyframes in the Timeline to adjust the timing for each branch so that they start to reveal just after the stem has passed by, and your swirl animation is complete!

13 COMPOSITE BACKGROUND; CHANGE COLOR
Now switch to the initial Composition you created in Step 5. Import a textured background image, such as this one from iStockphoto.com (#3855804), drag it into the Timeline at 0 seconds, and scale accordingly. Then drag your animated Swirls composition over the top, and duplicate, scale, position and rotate accordingly. Now, go to Effect>Generate>Fill, change the color to white, and set the layer Blend Mode in the Timeline to Overlay. Repeat this step for each of the Swirls comp layers in the Timeline.

PHOTO CREDIT: ©ISTOCKPHOTO/BULENT INCE
14 ADJUSTMENT LAYER; GLOW
At 0 seconds, go to Layer>New>Adjustment Layer, then Effect>Color Correction>Tritone. In the ECP, change the Highlights swatch to a slight off-white, and the Midtones swatch to orange. Now choose Effect>Stylize>Glow, and set the Glow Threshold to 100% (experiment with the settings based on the background you’re using). Hit 0 on the keypad for a final RAM Preview, and your simple, single-line vector swirls from Illustrator look completely different now, not to mention that their own paths essentially self-animated! Use them creatively. Enjoy!

Popping Animation Effect in Adobe After Effects

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:01:00 +0000

Flower Power

Combining vector art and shapes inside After Effects can yield some great and unexpected results. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to set up the popular “popping” animation effect with very little effort. Then we’ll add the new CS4 Wiggle Transform operator combined with the Repeater to explore some fun and random animations.
If you’d like to download a finished movie for this tutorial, just click here. All files are for personal use only.
1 PREPARE LAYERED ARTWORK
I always prepare my graphics in Illustrator, because of its vector qualities. This workflow allows me to keep all the layers (as with Photoshop) and yields a much clearer and crisper result even when scaled up within After Effects. One important note: Make sure to set the layer structure correctly and always name your layers in a logical manner. Working in an organized way will make the animation process faster, making life much easier if you need to go back and change things later on.

2 IMPORT FOOTAGE; CREATE BACKGROUND
Import your artwork into After Effects by choosing File>Import>File. Be sure to set Import Footage to Composition and set the Footage Dimensions to Layer Size. The spec for this project (Composition>Composition Settings) is a square-pixel comp of 720×534 pixels (from the Preset drop-down menu, choose NTSC D1 Square Pixel—these are the new CS4 corrected PAR dimensions for NTSC and should come up automatically if you set it in Illustrator), 29.97 fps, and 5 seconds in length. Double-click the imported comp (ours is “Flower Power”) to open it, ensure nothing is selected, and then double-click the Rectangle tool (Q) to create your first shape background.

3 DESIGN BACKGROUND
Select Shape Layer 1 and in the Toolbar, set the Stroke to 0 px, click the word Fill, choose a Radial Gradient, then click OK. Next we’ll define two suitable colors that will blend well with the design. Click on the Gradient Fill icon in the Toolbar and click on each color stop to set the colors to fit your design (we used dark purple and warm orange). Press OK to confirm, then return to the Selection tool (V), and drag the tiny right circle on the screen until you’ve reached the edge of the comp, which will define a nice even gradient from the middle to the edge of the screen.

4 REORDER LAYERS; CLICK SOLO
With the shape layer selected in the Timeline, press Return (PC: Enter), rename it “Background,” and then use the keyboard shortcut Shift-Command- (PC: Ctrl-) to send it beneath all the layers.
Next, we want to set an interesting popping animation that reveals all the layers sequentially. We only need to set it for one layer and then use the same settings for the other layers, with minor adjustments as needed. Let’s start by selecting any one of the artwork layers and press S to show the Scale properties. At this point, I’d also suggest clicking the Solo switch to visually isolate this layer.

5 CREATE MAIN “POP” ANIMATION
Go to 10 frames along the Timeline and click the Stopwatch next to Scale to set a keyframe with the current value of 100%. Return to the first frame (0) and change the Scale to 0%. Next, we want to change the velocity and the ease so the animation will grow a bit beyond full size before ending at 100%, and we can use the Graph Editor very nicely for this. Click the Graph Editor icon in the Timeline, select the last keyframe, click the Easy Ease In icon to convert the keyframe, then adjust the curve handle upward to extend the scale above 100%, before it drops back in.

6 DUPLICATE ANIMATION
Click the Graph Editor icon to return to the regular Timeline view, then Shift-select both keyframes for the Scale property. Copy them to memory (Command-C PC: Ctrl-C). Now, select the rest of the layers in the comp (excluding the Background and the layer you’re copying from), and Paste (Command-V PC: Ctrl-V) to apply the same animation to all of them. “Un-Solo” the layer you worked on originally, then press 0 on the keypad for a RAM preview, and confirm that all layers now have the same “pop” scale animation.

7 TRIM AND DISTRIBUTE LAYERS
Our basic animation is now in place, but the timing is the same on all layers. Let’s fix that with a few short steps. First, select the bottommost artwork layer (not the shape background), then hold down Shift and select the topmost artwork layer. This is very important, as it will set the order of the layer sequencing. Now go to 10 frames on the Timeline, press Option- (PC: Alt-) to trim all the layers to 10 frames, then Control-click (PC: Right-click) on any selected layer and choose Keyframe Assistant>Sequence Layers.

8 SET OVERLAP
In the Sequence Layers dialog, check the Overlap box on, set the Duration to 5 frames, and Transition to Off, then click OK—this now offsets the layers by 5 frames in time sequentially. Now, while the layers are still selected, go to the end of the Timeline and press Option- (PC:Alt-) to extend their visibility till the end. Create a RAM Preview to see the new results—nice!
That was easy, wasn’t it? But we’re not done yet—you’ll want to work on each element individually and set the correct Anchor point, so the growing effect will take place from the correct part of the layer.

9 ADJUST ANCHOR POINTS
The easiest way to do this is to use the Pan Behind tool (Y). Deselect all the layers (F2), select your first layer, and then drag the center Anchor Point to the desired point from which the animation needs to occur. In this step, we selected and adjusted the Leaves layer’s anchor point, so the animation now occurs from its bottom-left corner. Repeat this process for each of your artwork layers, and you’ll really notice the difference!

10 EMBELLISHMENT SUGGESTIONS
To enhance the motion, I’ve added a Rotation spin on top of the scale to the Lines layer, and for my Rainbow layer, I’ve used the Radial Wipe effect to reveal it. You might want to add some changes to the timing to add more variations to your design.
Next, we’ll spice up our scene by adding a few elements from inside After Effects, starting with a simple shape layer in order to take advantage of the brand-new Wiggle Transform operation in CS4.

11 SHAPE BUILDING
Deselect all, choose the Ellipse tool (nested under the Rectangle tool Q), and create a small circle in the center of the screen. Move this layer to begin at 1 second along the Timeline. Solo this element, and let’s modify it. Twirl down the Ellipse 1 property in the Timeline and shut the Eye for the Gradient Fill. Twirl down Stroke 1. Use the Eyedropper next to Color and sample one of the colors (bright green in our example), and set the Stroke Width to 5 px. Name this layer “Bubbles” and let’s have some fun with it….

12 WIGGLE TRANSFORM
Select the Bubbles layer and in the Timeline choose Add>Repeater. Twirl open Repeater 1 and change the Copies to 20. Then twirl open Transform: Repeater 1; set the Position to 50, 0; and set the Scale to 80%. Now for the fun part—from the same Add menu, choose the new Wiggle Transform operator. Before we adjust it, drag Wiggle Transform 1 to below Repeater 1 so it will wiggle all the repeater’s copies individually! Now twirl it open, set the Wiggles/Second to 0.5 and the Correlation to 20%. Twirl down Transform, and change the values until you’re satisfied.

13 WIGGLE ADJUSTMENTS
In my comp, I’ve set the numbers pretty high so the circles are flying all over the place, giving the illusion of fast, popping bubbles. Pay attention to the fact that you must change the default values if you want the Wiggle Transform to work well. Feel free to change the position of the Bubbles layer until it looks the best overall, and change its layer order as desired to integrate the bubbles better into the design. Finally, set a global Scale animation to reveal the whole layer (copy-and-paste the Scale keyframes as we did in Step 6).

14 FINAL TOUCH
Let’s add a small airplane to circle the art. Select the Text tool, choose the Wingdings font in the Character panel, move to 1 second along the Timeline, click in the comp, and press Shift-Q (PC: Shift-J) for the airplane symbol. Select the Text layer and create a circle mask around the art with the Ellipse tool. In the text layer, twirl open Text and then Path Options and set the Path to Mask 1 to align the airplane to the circle path. Set Reverse Path to On and set keyframes for the First Margin value at the start and end of this layer, adjusting them until you’re happy with the position and speed of the animation. Enjoy!

Creating an Eclipse in After Effects

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:58:00 +0000

In the first part of this two-part project tutorial, J. Schuh demonstrates how he creates a bright sun and then blocks it out in part 2.
PART 1
There is a final version of this Eclipse project available for download here.

PART 2.
In the second part of this tutorial, J Schuh shows how to take the sun animation composed in part one and block it out, then add some text.
There is a final version of this Eclipse project available for download here.

This video requires Adobe Flash Player.

Audio Visualization in After Effects

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:55:00 +0000

Using Adobe After Effects to create graphic visualization of an audio track.

This video requires Adobe Flash Player.

3D Motion and Position of Text Characters with After Effects

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:52:00 +0000

Typography is one of the qualities upon which we base most of our design work, and the type animation engine in After Effects offers a gamut of ways to express typographic flair. One of my favorites is the ability to control the 3D motion and position of text characters. When combined with simple camera moves, depth of field, and some real-world studio tricks we use every day, the results can be—literally—powerful. Let’s get started.
1 CREATE PROJECT; ADD BACKGROUND, TYPE
Create a New Composition, named “Power of Words,” at HDTV 1280×720 resolution with a 6-second duration, and then double-click the Project panel to import an image to use as a background. For this example, I purchased a vector illustration of blurry lights (#4292586 from www.istockphoto.com). Drag the image into the Timeline at 0 seconds and use any effects to adjust color or contrast, as well as an Effect>Blur & Sharpen>Fast Blur to soften focus. Go to Layer>New>Text, and enter the main text. We’ve styled ours using Helvetica Neue (85 Heavy and 35 Thin), 30-px size, Optical kerning, Tracking 10, black, and centered.

2 ADD AND EDIT 3D CAMERA
Now, go to Layer>New>Camera, choose 15mm from the Preset drop-down menu in the dialog, and click OK (if you get a 2D warning dialog, just ignore it for now). Press P on your keyboard to reveal the camera’s Position properties, and adjust the Z position value to –600 for the time being. Now go to Layer>Transform>Auto-Orient, choose Off, and click OK.

3 ADJUST 3D POSITIONS
Click the 3D Layer switch next to both the text and background image layers in the Timeline, then select the background image layer, hit P, and set the Z position to 3000 in the far distance. Now, press Shift-S to show the Scale property also, and scale the background image until it touches the edges of the full composition.

4 DUPLICATE AND ADJUST TEXT
Twirl up the background image layer’s properties, select the text layer, and press Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D) to duplicate it. Click the Solo box on the left of the Timeline for that layer and in the Character panel, change its color to white. (Note: Go to Composition>Background Color and change the color to black so you can see your white text.) Now, change the Font family to be the same throughout—in this case Helvetica Neue 45 Light, the Size to 24 px, and the Tracking to 100.

5 EDIT TEXT; RENAME LAYER
Now, double-click the T icon next to the layer’s name, then type in a series of words or sentences of your choice. The longer the line, the better the finished 3D strings of text will be, so feel free to type and copy-and-paste to extend the lines. You’ll notice that the layer’s name becomes rather awkward to work with, so when finished, click on the name of the layer, press Return (PC: Enter), and rename it to “Long line of type” or something short to that effect.

6 ADD FIRST TEXT ANIMATOR
Now for the animators! Twirl down the Long line of type layer, twirl down Text, then click the arrow to the right of the word “Animate” and choose Anchor Point to add your first Animator. Click on the name of the Animator, press Return (PC: Enter), and rename it “Animator 1 – Anchor Point” for easy recognition. Go back to Animate and choose Enable Per-Character 3D from the menu, then adjust the Anchor Point Animator’s Y value to sit in the vertical middle of the type—in our example, around –9. This enables rotators we add later to spin from the center of the letters, not their baseline.

7 ADD SECOND TEXT ANIMATOR
Twirl up and deselect Animator 1, then go back to the Animate menu and choose Position, which adds a second animator. Rename it “Animator 2 – Position Wiggle,” then next to the new name, click Add and choose Selector>Wiggly. This is where the fun and creativity really begin!

8 ADJUST POSITION AND WIGGLE VALUES
In the Position value within the animator, adjust the XYZ values to 400, 600, 400, respectively. As you can see, this blows the characters far apart easily. And if you scrub the Timeline, it looks crazy too—but this is easy to control. Twirl down Wiggly Selector 1, set the Wiggles/Second to 0.05 (it will show 0.1 when you press Return [PC: Enter]), and most importantly, set the Correlation to 96%. This causes the letters to remain more in line with each other, forming a gently rippling line of type.

9 ADD THIRD TEXT ANIMATOR
Deselect all, go back to the Animate menu, select Rotation, and next to the new animator, click Add and choose Selector>Wiggly. Rename this animator “Animator 3 – Rotation Wiggle,” then adjust the X, Y, and Z Rotation selectors to 1x, 2x, 1x, respectively. Now twirl down Wiggly Selector 1 and adjust the Wiggles/Second to 0.35 and the Correlation to 0%, and scrub the Timeline. This correlation value allows the random rotation to apply to the characters individually, which looks very cool.

10 ADD FINAL ANIMATOR
Deselect all, go back to the Animate menu, choose Character Offset, and then add a Wiggly Selector into that new animator. Rename this animator “Animator 4 – Character Offset,” then go to the newly added Character Offset value and set it to 10, and the Character Alignment to Center. Now adjust its Wiggles/Second to 2 and its Correlation to 0%, then view the results. Looking pretty cool!

11 ADD RANDOM LAYER ORIENTATION
Now to adjust the entire layer’s rotation in anticipation of the next step, twirl up the entire text layer, then hit R to reveal its Rotation property. Hold down Option (PC: Alt), click on the Stopwatch for X Rotation to add an expression field, and type in wiggle(0,180), then hit Enter to confirm. This will randomly rotate the layer up to 180° on the x-axis, but with no motion. Now repeat this process to add expressions to both the y- and z-axes, using wiggle(0,360) and wiggle(0,180), respectively.

12 DUPLICATE, DUPLICATE, DUPLICATE
Everything we’ve created so far is referencing Wiggle values, which are created randomly in After Effects on a layer-by-layer basis, so if we duplicate this layer, we’ll get wildly different results. Twirl up the text layer, select it, then press Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D) to duplicate it. Not only do you see a new spread of text characters in completely different positions, but the layer name has added “2” to the end, which is why we renamed it. Now, duplicate as many times as you like to suit your design.

13 ADJUST AND ANIMATE CAMERA
Turn off the Solo icon for all of the type layers, then select the Camera 1 layer and change its Z Position value to –900. At 00:00 seconds, click the Position Stopwatch to add a keyframe, then scrub to 04:00 seconds and change the Z position value to –300. Select that second keyframe and go to Animation>Keyframe Assistant>Easy Ease In (PC: Shift-F9), or adjust the velocity to suit your own design.

14 ADD DEPTH OF FIELD; MOTION BLUR
Finally, press AA to reveal the Camera Options, then turn Depth of Field to On. Change the Focus Distance to 300 and the Aperture to 80 pixels—this gives us perfect focus on the final wording line at 04:00. Feel free to turn on the Motion Blur switch for all of the text layers, then render your final movie.
A really powerful, and even slightly disturbing, motion piece created easily and quickly thanks to some careful planning, animators, wigglers, and expressions, and of course some good “Energi.” Enjoy!

Animate Paint in After Effects

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:50:00 +0000

Franklin McMahon experiments with the paint tool in After Effects and demonstrates how to paint on top of a video using overlay with a color mode.

This video requires Adobe Flash Player.

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:46:00 +0000

Here is a video tutorial I have made that demonstrates how I ink and color an image in photoshop as well as add shadows and highlights.

Final Result

Give Your Photos a Retro Comic Book Effect

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:40:00 +0000

How about a fun effect for your incredibly boring photo albums? Creating a old comic book effect for your photos is easy and the results are visually appealing. More fun is achieved when adding captions to your photos using comic book fonts and design elements.
This tutorial will show you how to give a comic book look to your photos using a couple of filters and some additional decorations.

Click on the image below to see a larger and more clear image of the final results.

Original image by Rubén Colorado

Old halftone print effect

Download and open this photo in Photoshop. Now we are going to increase the overall contrast of the picture by burning it a bit. Go to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > LEVELS…With this image we are going to set the INPUT LEVELS to 60 / 1.00 / 220. But this is only for this example. Choose the best settings for each photo.

In this step we are going to give the photo an illustrated look with some graininess to give the illusion of an old and bad quality paper. It is not a realistic effect, it is just some distortion to the image to help us achieve the final look. Go to FILTERS > ARTISTIC > FILM GRAIN. In this case we are going to use: GRAIN: 4, HIGHLIGHT AREA: 0, INTENSITY: 10. Try different settings for different photos.

Duplicate the layer and name the new layer HALFTONE

In this step we are going apply a halftone pattern to the image to give the final old comic book printing effect. Go to FILTER > PIXELATE > COLOR HALFTONE. Set MAX RADIUS: 4 and leave the rest with the default values. Press OK and then go to the LAYERS PALETTE and set the BLENDING MODE to DARKEN.

Adding comic book elements to the picture

The effect looks nice so far. It is not a realistic old comic book effect, it simple resembles that look. To make it more real, now comes the fun part. We are going to add some unique elements that are very popular on comic books and strips
Select the HALFTONE layer and set a STROKE LAYER STYLE of WIDTH: 20px, POSITION: Inside and COLOR: #F5ECE1.

Add a new layer and draw a small rectangle at the top left of the frame of the image. Give it a STROKE of 3 pixels and paint it orange. An orange to yellow gradient looks better. Draw another rectangle, a bit larger this time, on the lower left corner of the frame. Give it a STROKE of 3 pixels and paint it white. The final result should be like the one below:

Lets add a border to the image: Add a new empty layer above the layer containing the rectangles we created in the previous step. Select the RECTANGLE SELECTION TOOL from the TOOLS PALETTE. Draw a selection from the top left (right inside the frame) to the bottom right border of the image.

Go to EDIT > STROKE, set WIDTH: 4px, COLOR: BLACK, LOCATION CENTER and press OK.
DESELECT the current selection and go to FILTER > BLUR > BLUR MORE. Then apply a small distortion using FILTER > DISTORT > RIPPLE… (Amount 20%, Size Medium). Now, lets sharpen the stroke a bit with FILTER > SHARPEN MORE and there you have a nice simulated hand drawn border.

Adding captions using a comic book font

To add captions to the photo you can use any font you like, but only using fonts specially designed for comic books you will be able to achieve the desired look. Download the free font Digital Strip and install it. At the end of this article you will find a lot of free and commercial comic book fonts and resources.
Using the Digital Strip font you’ve just downloaded, type a date on the top orange rectangle. Play with the first letter of the text by adding a stroke, a shadow and a bright contrasting color.
Then write a caption for the photo at the bottom white rectangle. Highlighting some words in bold also looks good.
And that’s all. Your image should look similar to the one below:

Click on the image to see a larger and uncompressed version.

Adding other comic book elements to your photos

If you want to learn more about comic book design, you can browse sites like Comic Book Fonts or Balloon Tales for some inspiration. Balloon Tales has published a fantastic comic book lettering tutorial that you should read if you want to make some stunning sound effects. There are lots of comic book resources, but these two are very colorful and loaded with design tips and examples.
As an example, I’ve created two images using other design elements such as balloons and sound effects:

Click on the images to see a larger and uncompressed version of each one

Original images by Mary R. Vogt and Rupert Jefferies

How to Turn an Ordinary Photo Into an Extraordinary Photo

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:36:00 +0000

I’ve often been asked about my process for tweaking photos. I thought I’d use one of my favorite photos and show how I took it from initial capture to final public display. I had forgotten how far I had taken this image from its initial capture:

(click image to see a larger version)
As with all tools, there are many ways to accomplish the same thing. I found a set of techniques that work really well for taking a photo that doesn’t have the best light or isn’t shot at the perfect time of day and amping it up. You may have better or different techniques to accomplish similar things and I say to you things like, “Keep the hope alive.” And: “Awesome!”
I generally don’t like writing tutorials, because my assumptions about everything are usually wrong. In this case, I wanted to write a fairly straightforward tutorial, but after showing a draft to Heather, decided to rework it substantially, with more screenshots and better explanations of the steps. This is not a beginner tutorial for Photoshop. This is an advanced tutorial. I hope it doesn’t frustrate you or confuse you.
Some assumptions
—You have access to Photoshop and know your way around some of the palettes. In particular, the Layer Palette. There are several buttons at the bottom of the Layer Palette. There are two that I’ll be making reference to; 1) The New Layer/Duplicate Layer and; 2) the Adjustment Layer button.

When I mention duplicating layers below, I mean you select the thumbnail/icon of the layer you want to duplicate and drag it to the New Layer button (#1 in the above illustration). This duplicates the layer and positions it above the layer you clicked and dragged.
—You have a photo that you’d like to tweak.
—You aren’t afraid to play around with sliders and settings.
Taking the picture
I might muck about with some settings on the camera, but I want to capture the vision in my head as close as I can while I’m in the moment. I might think about post-processing, but that’s pretty rare. I usually make a mental note of the kind of thing I want, click the shot and move on. This isn’t always the best way to work, but it’s how the image I’m using in this tutorial evolved.
So here’s our starter image:

(click image to see a larger version)
Photoshop time
I always keep a layer in Photoshop of my original file, untouched and at the bottom of the stack in the Layer Palette. So the first thing I do is select the background layer and drag it to the New Layer button. This creates a layer of the same image that I can edit, calm in the assurance that if I do anything untoward, I can revert to my original without too much pain. After doing this, the Layers Palette looks like this:

The photo has pretty flat light and not a lot of mood. I love the low angle and of the six shots I took of the building and hydrant, this image shows the most promise by far. That pesky tall grass really is distracting. In my first sharing of this photo, I left it in throughout the processing. Big mistake. It’s out. I’m going to use the stamp tool and get rid of a few strands of tall grass. Since this is optional on whatever you might be working on, I’ll skip all the technique and screenshots, as that would likely be enough information to be its own tutorial. After several hours of painstaking use of the stamp tool it’s time to perform an Unsharp Mask:

This is an entirely subjective thing. Use the three sliders to make your image sharper, without making it look like it came out of a digital camera circa 1997. Which would look like ass. Avoid looking like ass. I use the Amount and Radius settings to get what I want. There are times when the Threshold slider can help, but for speed, it’s all about a .4 to .9 pixel radius and a setting between 80% and 150% on the Amount slider. As with all the steps, the values you might use depend on your image resolution and degree of sharpness you want:

With that, we are here:

(click image to see a larger version)
Note that because this is a screenshot of a large image, you might not see much difference between the previous image and this one; when you do it yourself, you’ll see a dramatic difference that will change how you look at photos.
Time to Blur
The image is still very flat and there is very little contrast. Let’s take the layer we did the work on and duplicate it by selecting the layer and dragging it to the New Layer button. This will create the third layer in the image on top of the source/Background and the copy of the source we just finished working on. The Layers Palette looks like this:

Apply a Gaussian Blur:

You’ll want to vary this based on how large your source image is. The larger the image, the higher you can set the blur. Our image now looks like this:

(click image to see a larger version)
Bear with me. You’ll take this layer and change it’s layer settings in the Layer Palette. We’ll set the transparency mode to Multiply by clicking on the drop down menu that says “Normal” and selecting Multiply:

Still a little dark:

(click image to see a larger version)
Don’t panic yet. Set the Opacity of this blurred layer to 33%. This is in the top section of the Layer Palette next to the transparency drop down menu:

I know. Still a little dark, but we’re building a foundation. Of love:

(click image to see a larger version)
Mask It: It’s Like Cheese!
This is where the tutorial will take a turn for the fourth dimension. Masking images can be daunting and takes some time to get used to the concept and how layers can work for us. Think of the layers as a sandwich. The layer we will mask is the cheese layer of the sandwich. We’re going to take that cheese layer and turn it into Swiss cheese. We’ll use the mask to make holes in the image that will allow what is underneath to show through.
This step will rectify the darkness somewhat and is going to require some layer masking and painting on the masked portion of the layer. To do this, we’ll duplicate the blurred layer (the layer I’ve called “blur”) and add a Layer Mask to this new layer, selecting “Reveal All” in the submenu:

The effect we’re trying to get is to make the blacks darker and then mask out the parts of the image we want to keep light. This is where the drama and focal points come into play. In our case, the building and the hydrant are the two focal points we want to emphasize. This is what I saw in my head when I took the shot and what I want to achieve with the rest of the steps.
Your Layer Palette should have a mask icon next to the thumbnail of the image:

I took this shot after I did the work, to show what a Layer mask icon in the Layer Palette looks like. I used the brush tool and selected a basic brush with a blurred fall-off:

Make sure you select the mask icon in the Layer Palette before you start brushing, as you’ll destroy your masterpiece and want to throw things. Important: Masks are painted in grayscale, so I usually paint with black selected as the brush color and use varying flow rates and brush sizes to mask. In this case, I’ve painted black over the building and the hydrant. You’ll notice that it masks out the dark layer we just created and reveals the lighter layer underneath:

(click image to see a larger version)
Save the Drama
We’ve started to make the image more dramatic. Now we need to work with Colors, Curves and Levels. We’ll be using Adjustment Layers, which are your best friend when doing work like this. Adjustment layers are non-destructive layers that sit in the palette wherever you’d like and can make playing around a lot less time consuming (reducing the number of Undos). The Adjustment Layer button is at the bottom of the Layers Palette (it’s the half dark/half light one):

As you can see, there are a ton of options to play with. We’re going to start with Selective Color, as I want to bump up the yellows and reds:

(click image to see a larger version)
Still not quite where it needs to be, but much closer. I’d share shots of the color selections I did, but it’s always different for every photo. So while you can see my settings, they wouldn’t necessarily apply to the image you might be working on. Remember, it’s non-destructive. So tweak away. After we’re done, the Layers Palette looks like this:

We need to add some contrast, and I like using Levels for this, because I can control the blacks, whites and midrange with more precision than just using Brightness/Contrast. We’ll add another Adjustment Layer by clicking on the button in the Layer Palette and selecting “Levels”. This looks just like the regular Photoshop “Levels” command under the image adjustments submenu. Except this is non-destructive and as an Adjustment Layer, holds your settings should you want to tweak them later. After we do the Level adjustments, our Layers Palette looks like this:

Which gives us:

(click image to see a larger version)
Almost Done
The image is very close to being done. But I want just a tiny bit more light on the hydrant and a hint of a vignette. There are many ways to do this, but at the time I worked on this image, Photoshop didn’t have either Camera Raw or the Lens filters to add vignettes. So I did it using Lighting Effects.
We’ll take the blurred layer that isn’t masked and duplicate it. So we’ll be selecting the layer called “blur”, dragging it to the New Layer/Duplicate Layer button. Once the layer is created, we’ll drag it in the Layer Palette so that it is at the top of the palette, above the two adjustment layers we just made. Our Layers Palette looks like this:

Then we’ll select this layer and do the Lighting Effects:

I used these settings in the Lighting Effects panel:

Set the transparency on this layer to Overlay and the Opacity to 33%:

We are almost there. It still needs just a touch of lightening overall, and I like to use Curves to accomplish this. We’ll make a new Adjustment Layer by clicking the icon in the Layers Palette and selecting “Curves”. A simple adjustment lightens up the image enough to recapture some of our highlights. Our Layer Palette looks like this:

And boom. We’re there. o

PHOTOSHOP PHOTOSHOP Matte Painting

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:33:00 +0000

This tutorial is actually a "making of" where I explain how I proceeded to achieve this matte painting.
I use a Wacom Intuos² A4 board, if you don't have any graphic board this is going to be hard but not impossible.
At each step of the matte painting, useless to remind you to create a new layer so that the work will be easier and mistakes avoided !

First of all, find a good res picture. I chose to use a picture of a house I found on the web. You can find very nice pics for free, just look around !
The first step is to isolate the house by putting it on a separate layer and by erasing the rest. In this example I used the polygonal lasso tool for the house, and a soft eraser for the bushes.
Now you need a new background. You can either find a good pic, either paint one yourself. I chose the former because it is less time consuming, and the result is far better than what I would have gotten had I painted a background myself. I found this image on the web, unfortunately I do not remember the site I got it from.
Put the sky behind the house (by putting the sky layer under the house layer), and apply a little perspective effect to give more depth to the sky, make it less flat. Here the house picture was taken from a low angle, which makes our work easier.
Now look at the edges of the house. They still are the color of the original sky. We'll fix that.
Using the magic wand tool, select the empty zone of the house layer. Then, Select > Modify > Expand, to make your selection wider. Pick a value that includes the zone we need to color correct. In the menu : Image > Adjust > Hue / Saturation and color correct the edges by matching them with the color of the roof.
Still using Hue / Saturation and also Color Balance, adjust the colors of the house and sky layers so that they perfectly blend together.
Now we want to get rid of that palm tree that hides a part of the house. That tree has nothing to do there since we want to create a morbid mood. This is probably the most delicate step because we have to hand paint the missing part of the house. For that I mostly used the clone stamp tool, tool that allows you to paint something using another part of the picture for reference. For instance, the tiles located between the lower and middle windows were painted using similar tiles of the house, using the clone stamp tool.
Why not add a lightning bolt to make the scene a little more disturbing ? Using the simple non feathered brush, this is simple. Draw your lightning, duplicate the layer, and blur the copies to make the lightning glow. Then, use the Dodge tool to brighten the clouds from where the lightning is originating.
Paint dead trees behind the house, or use existing ones from pictures. Of course, make the colors and luminosity match.
The fun part, now ! Let's break down the house. Well, not all of it. To make it look older, I added a hole in the rood, painted with brushes.
Don't be afraid to add broken parts ! The house is supposed to still be standing, so don't go too far. You can see that I broke a wooden beam, a pipe, a board, another part of the roof, and a window. When you break something, use the clone stamp tool to fill in the empty space you created.
Make it look dirty. First of all, the windows. I used a non regular brush and painted the windows with a matte color. Then, change the transfer mode of the dirt layer to make sure that dirt and windows blend nicely together. For this example I chose the Luminosity mode.
Repeat that step, only do it on the entire house. Paint with a dirtier color and set your layer to Multiply. Make sure you make joints and edges look filthy too, because that's where dirt appears most. This is one of the longest steps, but take your time and don't mindlessly add dirt everywhere !
Here, the porch, zoomed in.
The last step is to create a Levels adjustment layer to get the final contrast of the matte painting.

Here it is ! You can compare the original image and the matte painting !

Create a Sleek, High-End Web Design from Scratch

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:29:00 +0000

In this tutorial, we’ll put together a high-end Web design using a crisp, thin font, gorgeous background images, and clever use of space and layout. You can easily use the technique to create your own unique designs.
Then when you’re finished reading this tutorial, you can cross over to our sister site NETTUTS and follow along as we build the design into clean and simple HTML. OK let’s rock’n'roll!

The End Design

First the design we’ll be putting together. (Click the image below for a larger view)
It’s quite an elegant design, which would probably suit a designer portfolio-type site, but really could be altered for all sorts of purposes. It relies on having elegant typography, a structured layout, and a visually interesting background.
The real power of this design is to show you what can be accomplished by keeping it simple. At the end of this Photoshop part of the tutorial, I’ll show you how we can easily swap backgrounds and fonts and explain why this design works well.

It’s a simple structure: horizontal menu, main heading panel, and content area. Although this is a homepage design, you could imagine an interior page would simply have a different heading panel and new content area. For the purposes of simplicity, we’ll only be putting together the homepage design.

Step 1

First of all, create a new document. Mine is 1100px wide x 1100px high. This is so that I can create a Web site made for 1024px wide, but still have space to decide what is going to happen outside the viewable area so that it degrades nicely even on larger screens.
Now our first task is to create a nice abstract background. To do this we’ll draw a linear gradient down using these two colors: #1b204c to #472373.

Step 2

Now we want a visually interesting background which is abstract enough that it doesn’t distract from the text. Fortunately, there is an awesome watercolor image available free via GoMedia’s Arsenal, click on the freebie section and you’ll find two watercolors; the one we want is the greenish one.
Now while it’s very pleasant as is, it’s much cooler if we press CTRL+I and invert it so it’s that nice pink/purple on black.

Step 3

Now copy the watercolor onto our main canvas and press Ctrl+T to transform it down to a reasonable size. Our aim here is to have it fade to black on the right (so that we can build our HTML later with greater ease). Additionally, we don’t want it too long vertically, either, so it’s best to erase a little of the excess. To do this grab a paint brush and paint in black to just remove the bottom parts.
Note that it’s best to get a brush that has some texture so it’s not obvious that we erased parts. If you scroll down your brush list, there is a brush that comes with Photoshop that looks like the one shown. It’s not a bad brush to use. Of course, you might have some even nicer paint brushes and feel free to use those.
When you’re done, fill in any areas on the right and bottom with black so that the whole canvas is covered by this layer.

Step 4

Now decrease the opacity of the watercolor layer to about 70% and set its blend mode to Overlay. That way, some of the coloring passes through to create a nicer look.

Step 5

Now in a new layer above the watercolor layer, and drawing straight up, make a Linear Gradient going from black to transparency so that afterwards your canvas basically fades to black down the bottom.

Step 6

Next in two new layers, draw a couple of Radial Gradients from white to transparency, one larger than the other. Set these to Overlay and 40% and 100% Opacities for the larger and smaller ones respectively.
Basically, you should be making a highlight on our image to give it a bit more texture.

Step 7

So here’s the finished background. It’s dark, abstract, and quite elegant with the coloring. Of course, pink might not be your particular choice of color usually, and if that’s the case, feel free to add a color adjustment layer on top and use it to adjust the coloring. I kinda like the pink/purple, so am going to run with it!

Step 8

Now we create a new layer and add a "logo". I don’t really have a purpose with this design, so I decided just to put some text in and pretend that’s my logo. Because this tutorial is half PSDTUTS and then half NETTUTS, I wrote out a neat little "psd vs net".
The fonts I’m using here are Egyptian505 BT Bold and Egyptian505 LT BT Light (the lighter version of the font is what I’ve used for the ‘vs’).
To make the ‘vs’ bit raise up a little you can use the baseline control in the Character Palette (shown in the second image below).
Finally, I also added a little layer style to the text with a faint Gradient Overlay as shown and a 1px Inner Glow with white.

Step 9

Now at this point, I switched on my Rulers (Ctrl+R) and drew a couple of guides. I divided my page into three columns with lines at 50px, 320px, 610px, 900px. At least those are the numbers I should have used. Looking at my screenshot I just realized my third line is off … d’oh!
Anyways, the point is that I’m defining the space I’ll be placing all me elements in, and if I were to make multiple pages I could use this grid in different ways. As it is, with only the homepage being designed, I’m just going to use those three columns once—a little later on.

Step 10

OK, so now we draw in our first black box. With your rulers and guides still on, create a new layer and draw a Rectangular Marquee (M) going from one side to the other. Fill it with black, then set this layer to 80% Opacity, right-click the layer, and choose Blending Options. Then click on Stroke and add a 1px white stroke on the Outside and set to Overlay. This will give us a really cool border that will make the box look much sharper.

Step 11

Now duplicate the box layer, and using Ctrl+T, transform the box so that it’s the same width but much shorter (as shown below). This will be our navigation box.
Change the Opacity to 40% and the Fill to 50%. This will make our box much fainter and give some depth to the two boxes, making one seem more important and imposing than the other.
This sort of contrast between the two boxes is a great way of setting visual precedence between elements. When the user comes to the page, we want them to see our big message first, and then the navigation bar. By having it faded out we tell the user that the less prominent one is to be looked at second.

Step 12

OK, now we add some text. Again I’ve used Egyptian Light here for the big headline copy (that will be an image in the final HTML) and Arial for the menu items (that will be HTML text links).
Now a word on typography. This design relies heavily on the fact that we’ve used a simple, clean typeface. Having the text nice and large makes it appear very bold, but at the same time because it’s a very thin typeface, it comes out looking elegant.
If you’re looking for a high-end design look, thin, classic typefaces are hard to beat. When I first discovered Helvetica Ultralight, I remember I went crazy designing all these designs that looked really minimal and up-market.
Additionally, this particular font—Egyptian—has a very sharp, slab serif, combined with a sort of squarishness that makes it look quite cool (I think).
There are plenty of other awesome fonts you could use. As a general rule though, you want something more classic looking. Or in other words, unless you know what you’re doing, you’d want to stay away from really weird looking fonts—e.g. something that looks very futuristic. Actually as a good, general rule, unless you’re super confident, it tends to be better to veer towards more ordinary fonts.
Another kind of typeface that would work really well here is something that is a a bit technology-looking like this font that Chris Garrett Media uses. I have no idea what font that is, or what that type of font is called, but it’s pretty neat. Maybe a kind typophile might illuminate us in the comments

Step 13

Anyhow, after seeing Chris Garrett Media’s site, I decided it would be pretty cool to add a gradient overlay to my type and give it a bit of a shine. So as you can see below, here we’re adding a Gradient Overlay from black to white, faded out a bit and on Overlay mode.

Step 14

Now we can draw an additional big black box for the content area. Actually, you can just duplicate the earlier layer and transform it again.
And that gets us to the point shown in the image below. Looking pretty cool!!

Step 15

Now we add a bit of dummy content in the content box. Here I’ve again used Arial for most of the text, but for the headings rather than use Egyptian, I’ve gone with Georgia. Georgia is not quite as elegant, but is a standard font which means I can make these headings in plain old HTML instead of relying on images (or Flash).
Actually, with Windows Vista’s release there is also another semi-standard font that would work well here called Cambria. But Cambria has some weird rendering problems in Firefox on Macs at certain sizes, so we’ll stick with good ol’ Georgia for the moment.

Step 16

Finally, I created a new layer at the bottom, filled it with a dark purplish color, added a 1px border to the top, and voila we have a footer.

Ready for Building

Putting it all together, the site is ready to build.

Alternate Background 1

Now one of the cool things about this design is we can easily swap the background and the design still looks awesome. Here’s I’ve swapped it for an image from iStockPhoto called Passion, with a similar color scheme. It’s a very cool 3D rendering of light, and like our current background, it is also abstract and visually beautiful.

Alternate Background / Colours 2

Here I’ve used another abstract image from iStockPhoto called Blue Energy. Because the color has changed, I’ve also gone through and amended the colors in a few places—particularly the text—and also added a big glow to the main copy.

Why it Works

Now it’s unlikely you’re ever going to have need of this exact design—now that I’ve written a whole tutorial on it. So let’s talk a little about why it works well, because that will help you use the principles to create your own unique look.
There are several things that come together to make a design that works here:

First, I’ve picked really stunning backgrounds. The ones from iStock and the one from GoMedia would make nice images all by themselves. They are interesting to look at but they don’t fight for dominance. They also all fade out really easily. Photos that fade out easily are always easier to work with.
Great images are the perfect partner for simple and clean typography. Because the images are so lovely, you don’t need to do overdo it with the typography. It can just be clean, clear, and organized.
Another factor that goes into making this work is that there is plenty of space. With a complicated background, it would be easy to wind up looking cluttered. So it’s important to make sure there is plenty of space between things, and inside the boxes, and so on. Space also is a great way of making a design look more high-end. Nothing screams low-end like clutter.

Of course, there are plenty more things we could talk about like color and precedence, but I think the main design things you should be looking at here are the typography in conjunction with the background. As a final statement to that end, here is a little image that says it all

Now the HTML/CSS

Now enough of this nambi-pambi Photoshop stuff, let’s go do some HTML/CSS! Follow on to the second part of this tutorial where we build our design into a working Web site over at NETTUTS—Web Development Tutorials!

Easily Create a Beautiful, Unique Website Header

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:25:00 +0000

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how you can create a beautiful, unique, abstract website header in just a few easy steps. This abstract lighting technique is one you’ll “Wow” a lot of visitors with!

What We’re Making

This is a technique that I’ve recently used on personal projects of my own, and have impressed a lot of people with. It only made sense to me to share how to accomplish this look with our loyal viewers here at Tutorial9! Here’s a quick look at the effect we’re going to make in this tutorial:

I’ve never been a huge fan of the standard “Lens Flare” effects Adobe Photoshop had to offer, which is the main reason I came up with this effect.
Now, let’s begin!

Step 1: Setting Up

Create a new document in Photoshop, and use the Paint Bucket Tool to fill the Background layer with a dark color. In my document, I used #191919 — Something dark, but not completely black.

Step 2: Adding Some Light

This effect is ALL about experimenting with color, placement, and size. To create the unique lighting effect, we are going to use a Large, Soft Brush Tool. Select a standard round brush from the options bar or brushes palette, and increase the brush size to around 400px, and the Hardness to 0%.
Now select a bright, vibrant Foreground Color. For my first color, I’ll be using a nice sky blue, #61a6f4. Create a new Layer, and create a splash of color somewhere along the top edge of your banner. Set this layers blending mode to Linear Dodge (This will let it mix with other colors we use later on a bit nicer than the Normal Blending Mode).

Step 3: Additional Colors and Blending Modes

We’re going to introduce a few new colors into the fray to make things a little more interesting. One important thing to note here is that each new brush and color you use should be painted on separate layers. Doing so will really make it easy to experiment with blending modes and positioning later on!
Let’s throw a new color onto a new layer. I’m going to be using a bright, pale orange, like #fbb85a. I’m also going to adjust the size of my brush to something a bit smaller, like 300px. After painting, I’m going to change the blending mode for this layer to Overlay.

To brighten this area up a bit, I’m going to create a New Layer, and use a soft, White brush with the blending mode set to Overlay directly above the Orange I just created in the document.

Continue to add new colors using varying brush sizes, and different blending modes. After about 5 more layers, using Overlay, Lighten, Linear Dodge, & Hard Light with the 3 colors I’ve used, here is what I’ve got:

Step 4: Adding an Awesome Lens Flare

This is probably the most difficult part of the effect, but only because it requires a little creativity on the designers part. Like I mentioned earlier, I’m really not a fan of the Lens Flare Filter Photoshop has to offer — Which is why we are going to create our own, simpler flare.

On a new Layer, using the same colors we’ve been using so far (Only this time, with the blending mode set to Normal), use your creativity to put together a flare effect of your own. It’s really a lot easier than it sounds. Establish a direction for your flare in your mind, and then create a series of blotches that follow that direction. To make things easier, you can follow the stages I took in the diagram to create something similar to what I have.
Remember, this is all on the same layer to make things simpler for us. You’ll need to plan what order you paint your colors in though so they overlap correctly.
Here is our finished flare above our other layers:

Step 5: Blending the Flare

It’s obvious that the flare in it’s current state simply won’t do. Don’t worry, it’s an easy fix. Remember all those layers you created earlier with different blending modes? All you have to do is position your flare underneath some of those layers (You’ll have to experiment to see what looks best), and the blending modes will mix the colors and hopefully look very nice!

It’s just that Simple!

That’s really all there is to the effect. Not a bad look for something so easy to make.
If you want my opinion, I think this effect is a great touch for a minimalist layout that uses dark colors, as it’s soft, and not very distracting. Text can easily be read over the lighting (provided it’s not to bright or dark where you place your text).
For reference, you’re welcome to grab the PSD File we used in this tutorial

How To Create a Stunning Vista Inspired Menu

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:22:00 +0000

This tutorial will show you how to make a semi-transparent Vista-inspired menu using gradients, shadows, and blurring to produce a stunning modern effect.

Step 1

Open a new canvas that is 600×335px. Begin by showing rulers (View>Rulers), then create two guides similar to the image below. Create one at 285px and the other at 310px.

Step 2

Create a Rectangle (U) that fills the lower ruled area and label the layer “lower bar.” Open up the Effects Menu for the layer. Navigate to the Gradient Overlay property and apply a gradient between #000000 and #0c0c0c at 90 degrees.
Now create another rectangle in the upper rules area and name the layer “upper bar.” Again open up the effects menu and apply a Gradient Overlay between #35393d and #787b7d at 90 degrees. Select the two rectangles created so far and change the Opacity to 90%. When a background is added later, this will provide a nice effect, as it allows the background to slightly show through.

Step 3

The next step is to add a highlight to the menu using the Line Tool (U). Select the Line Tool and change the weight to 2px. Draw a line across the bar and change the color to #9fa2a4. Rename this layer to “lower highlight.” Now draw another line directly above the previous and change the color to #484b4d and change the name to “upper highlight.” Group these layers with bar layers in a group called “bar.” This stage completes the basis of the menu.

Step 4

Now that the menu bar is complete, we can create a set of dividers to go between the text. Select the Line Tool again and leave the weight at 2px. Draw a vertical line from the center ruler mark that stops a few pixels before the highlight. This does not need to be exact and can easily be adjusted later. Open the effects menu and apply a Gradient Overlay at 90 degrees between #676a6d and #4d6672. Label this layer “upper divider.”
Draw another vertical line from the center ruler going down and stopping the same distance from the edge as above. This section does not have a gradient, so change the color to #43474b. Rename this layer to “lower divider.” Group the two sections of the divider and name the group “divider.”

Step 5

Select the Type Tool (T) and change the color to white (#FFFFFF). The font I chose to use for the menu is called Segoe UI because it is the font used in the Vista user interface. However not everyone has this font, so as a replacement Arial will do. Set the size to 11pt and type your links out, spacing them evenly. Group them together and name the group “links.”
Now copy your dividers and space them in between the links. You should end up with something similar to this.

Step 6

Now the menu bar is basically completed, so you can add a background of your choice. The background I chose is a photograph of grass. Anything colorful or scenic will do.

Copy your background into the menu and rename the layer Background. Make sure this layer is at the back in your layers palette. Note the transparency in the menu allows the background to show through without overpowering.

Step 7

This step will create the blurred rounded rectangle that is behind the text. This effect is quite common in Vista and is a good technique. It takes the focus of the background and places it on the text, but still shows the beautiful scene behind.
First of all, duplicate the background. This layer is not permanent, but we will be cutting a selection out of it. Then using the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), draw a shape that starts past the left edge of the canvas. This means that the shape only has two rounded edges.
Rasterize the layer and then using the Magic Wand Tool (W), select the rectangle and delete the color while keeping the outline. Now select the background copy and cut from that layer. Delete the background copy layer and add another new layer called “blur.”
Paste the shape in the layer called “blur” and then apply a Gaussian Blur of 5px (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur). Then apply a Drop Shadow as shown below.

Step 8

Now add your text inside the blur. Using the same typeface as the links (Segoe UI) type your name and tagline. Select some of the text and make it bold and keep some normal, apply a Drop Shadow, and a Gradient. This produces a modern-looking text that has a striking look.

Step 9

This step is optional, as it will produce the blue highlighted glow that will become our hover effect. Draw a large Ellipse (U) that fills the area between the dividers. Change the color of the ellipse to #5c94c5 and apply a Gaussian blur of 10px. The shape has now become a raster layer, and you can clean up the excess blur by using the Marquee Tool (M).

Conclusion

This menu produces a stunning effect when coupled with a bright scenic background. It uses transparency to great effect as well as modern gradients. The use of highlights is a great trick to providing a cutting-edge modern look to pictures. This menu would be quite easy to slice up and turn into a very functional web-based menu with hover states.

To create a planet in Adobe Premiere Pro

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:42:00 +0000

How to create a planet in Adobe Premiere Pro

1. Create a color matte and place it in video1.

2. In Effects panel open the Generate bin and drag Ramp into video1.

3. Import a Texture into the Project panel, and then drag it into video 2. Make sure the size of the texture is at least twice as big as the size of your composition setting.

4. Open the GPU Transitions bin. Select the Sphere and drag it into video 2. Open the Effects Control panel and set it as the picture below.

5. Stretch the duration of Sphere effect.

6. Add the Emboss effect to video 2.

7. To make the texture of sphere smoother add a Gaussian Blur.

8. Go to the frame one in Time-line panel, and then add a position Key frame in Effects Control panel. Now go to the last frame and drag the texture to the right or left.

9. Add a Lens Flare to your background.

… and set it as the picture below.

10. Export your Movie.

ENJOY..!

TO MAKE a ROMANTIC SCENE..in ADOBE PREMIERE

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:39:00 +0000

Its for all those who really likes to make romantic scenes

first see the output...

ITS a scene from a video made by me...

now HOW TO MAKE It...

1. collect 3-4 scenes of your couple just playing..n shot should be taken nt close...I mean it shld not be a close up..both shld be fully visible...

2. take a scene of couple's close up of face prefably... like the one in that scene..

3. place those 3-4 scenes one after other in main layer...with suitable transitions..

4. now the main thing... apply ur close up scene on a layer above it...

5. give feather(imp).. n blend with suitable transparency..

NOW YOUR EFFECT IS READY...play with it with more settings..you will learn more..

-

ENJOY..!

Adobe Premiere TUT to create nice effect with stills

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:19:00 +0000

This is the tut to create an awesome effect with a simple picture in a video

I got this effect when i was making a video...i had a pik in the vid...initially all i did was increased the size of the pik as the music progressed...it was looking nice...but i was look in for something more dramatic..so i invented this...

THIS TUTORIAL IS HARD TO UNDERSTAND SO CONCENTRATE..

1. in a start frame make the pik small size n in end frame make it medium (not large)... as video will progress from start frame to end frame its size will also progress..

2.now copy the same image in second layer.. in the start frame... make the size a li'l more smaller and in end frame make the size a li'l more larger( this time make it large)

3. now...apply blending of cross fading with suitable transparency...

4. u can change the transparency of both layers with time to make it look more dramatic...

5. now feather both layers according to the look u want n what looks good according to background n theme

6. this effects looks good if u use dip to black effect of transition

7. use Gaussian blur at suitable time to add cherry to the cake.. i have not specified settings of blending, transparency and feather as it totally depends on content

ENJOY..!

Adobe Premiere TUT to create Past Effect

noreply@blogger.com (ArtistAshish) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:15:00 +0000

This is to create an effect when someone thinks about his past in a video in adobe premiere

1. in the main layer just place a simple scene in which ur hero or wateva is just still n thinking like this

2. now the area around the character is not so important so apply feather on it. it should be in amount according to the area your character occupies on scene.

3. now in a new layer add your scenes of past. use blend settings of crossfade n transparency.. i cant specify these settings as they purely depend on scene content

4. u can use 1 more layer 4 scenes of past blended with 2nd layer as this may give an extremely nice effect if things in scenes are not messed up... it wil be like this

this effect will not work out in a pik...as its a video and the motion is not visible..still u can see what i m doing

4. now increase the speed of past scenes to very high n in background apply suitable music...like the one used in movies in scenes like these..

ENJOY..!