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Create a Fantasy City Using Architectural Photographs

Jonas De Ro — Thu, 23 May 2013 07:00:28 PDT

Because matte painting often involves combining several photos to achieve an end-result, matte paintings can be great practice for anyone who wants to learn how to create photo manipulations. In this tutorial, we will show you how to create a fantasy city that is built on a rock structure, similar to Minas Tirith from "The Lord of the Rings." In the process, you will learn several techniques to help you incorporate architectural photos into your artwork. Let’s get started!

Speed Art Video

Before you begin, watch this amazing speed art video that shows the entire process of creating this artwork.

Tutorial Assets

The following assets were used during the production of this tutorial. Please make sure to download them before you begin work. Often, third-party content is moved or deleted over time. If photos are not available, you will want to find alternative imagery before you start. Special thanks to Marcel Vijfwinkel for the use of his photography in this tutorial.

1. Cut Out Resources

Step 1

First, open one of the resource images. Let us start by cutting the sky out of our resource images so we can use them more easily later.

Step 2

Select the Magic Wand Tool.

Step 3

Click on the sky until you’ve selected all of it.

Be sure to check the tool settings to improve your selection. I’ve used these settings.

Step 4

Now let us go into Refine Edge to get a better selection.

Depending on the image you might want to play around with the Edge Dedection settings. Once the selection looks good just use the Delete key to get rid of the sky. It should look something like this.

Step 5

Now take the Rectangular Marquee Tool and select the part we need to keep.

Step 6

Next, crop the image by going to Image/Crop.

Step 7

We can now save the image for later use. Saving it as a PNG file allows us to keep the transparency.

Step 8

The previous steps are applicable to all the images we need to cut out, but let’s go through it again. Open up another resource image.

Step 9

Select the sky around the image.

Step 10

Be careful around more difficult areas such as trees. For these situations it is better to zoom in.

Step 11

Once we cut out the sky the image should look like this.

Step 12

Again, the Refine Edge option can be handy to enhance the selection.

Step 13

Now spend a little time repeating the previous process to all the images we are going to need. Once we have all of our cut out architecture as PNG files we can move on to the next part of the tutorial.

2. Building Our City

Step 1

Now we can start the real work; building our fantasy city. First, open our main image of Mont Saint-Michel, which we will use as a base for our city. We can work on this image, it should be large enough. If your computer is a bit slow however you might want to reduce the size of the image.

Step 2

Use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to select one of the towers.

Step 3

Copy it and move it over to another part of the image to add more towers. You can add as many as you like.

Step 4

Now select the Rectangular Marquee Tool.

Step 5

Select a chunk of a building and use it to cover up other parts of the image. You can also use the Spot Healing Brush Tool and Clone Stamp Tool.

We want to get rid of anything that looks modern or unwanted such as metal scaffolding, tourists, modern shop signs, etc… A well patched up image should look something like this.

Comparing the original to the edited version shows how unwanted elements have been removed. Don’t worry about the cars for now, we will take care of them later.

Step 6

With the Polygonal Lasso Tool, select the main tower of our structure. Cut and paste it into a new layer, we will keep this for later.

Step 7

Open up our image of the dome from the St. Pauls Cathedral.

Step 8

Select the image and copy and paste it into our main file. We will keep all the new parts of architecture on a separate layer for easier use later.

Step 9

To match the contrast of the images lets go to Image/Adjustments/Levels. We want to play around with both input and output levels until it seems to match. We will do this with all future images we paste into our main composition.

Step 10

Duplicate our new layer, we’re going to cover up the hole underneath the dome.

Step 11

Move the image down to close the hole.

Step 12

We want to chop up the top section of the dome a bit to make it less recognizable. Select a chunk and cut it out.

Let us keep the top part and move it down, reducing the height of the dome’s spire.

Step 13

Open our second image with a dome.

Step 14

Copy and paste the image and scale it down using Free Transform.

Step 15

We will need to adjust the levels of the image again to match it.

Step 16

Now we’ll select a chunk of a roof to use as a connection between our two domes. Copy it and move it over.

Step 17

To add some more detail, copy some of the smaller spires.

Step 18

Make two copies and flip one of them around so we have a total of four spires. Use Image/Transform/Flip Horizontal.

Step 19

Move it over to the side as shown in the image.

Step 20

We can use another copy to add more spires to other parts of our city. Anything that takes it away from the original photo helps.

Step 21

Select a piece of railing from a rooftop to add more detail to our newly added images. Cut off any unwanted bits.

Step 22

Bring up our tower that we previously cut off the image.

Step 23

Select the three arches.

Step 24

Move a copy over to the main structure holding the top of our city. We’re going to use it to add some detail.

Step 25

We’ll need more arches so scale it down a bit and add another copy next to it.

Step 26

Select the part below the arches and copy it a few times. Then stack these copies to create the illusion that the arches are running deep down the wall.

Step 27

We can apply the same technique to add more arches to other walls.

Step 28

Next we’re going to add some large walls. Select a piece of an empty wall from one of the houses.

Step 29

Make a few duplicates so we can have a bigger wall.

Step 30

To mix it up a bit we can use other parts of walls as well.

Step 31

Place and transform these pieces on our wall pieces. You can use the Eraser Tool to get rid of any unwanted seams.

Now we have a couple of nice looking structures that expand our city.

Step 32

Open up the image that has our cut out towers of the London Tower Bridge.

Step 33

Paste it and scale it to match the scale of our city. A good reference is to look at the size of the windows or bricks.

Step 34

Once again we need to match the lighting and contrast a bit before proceeding.

Step 35

To change the architecture of the iconic tower, let us do some cutting and pasting to change it a bit. Play around with scaling, copying and rotating.

Step 36

Once we’re happy we can start building a bridge to connect the tower to the main structure of our city. Open up the image of our beautiful castle in Belgium.

Step 37

When zooming in, we can see the entrance gate makes a great piece of a bridge. Select it and copy it into our main composition.

Step 38

With a few copies we can tessellate the gate to make it look like a bridge.

Step 39

Select, copy and paste a suitable chunk of our main city to use as a support pillar for our bridge. If necessary, use multiple copies until the pillar reaches the ground level.

Step 40

We still have our original tower. Select the top spire.

Step 41

Move the spire over to our new tower. By changing the top of the roof we are altering the look of the iconic building.

Step 42

Open up another one of our resource images and select the right tower.

Step 43

Place it into the city at the correct scale.

Step 44

We can also add a copy of our tower and bridge to this side of the city. To match the perspective we can flip it around horizontally.

Step 45

Cut off the top of the tower.

Step 46

Use a copy of our previously created four spires to decorate the tower.

Step 47

Select a chunk of our round tower, we’ll use it to build another tower at the top of the city.

Step 48

With a couple of copies we can make the tower a lot higher.

Step 49

Select one half of the tower and use a flipped copy to widen the base.

Step 50

Make the tower even higher with another copy. Also add a copy of the spire of our original tower to make the entire thing look like a giant needle. Don’t forget to fix any lighting or contrast issues.

Step 51

Use another copy of our bridge to connect the tower to the main dome.

Step 52

We’ve used a lot of different architecture from different periods. To make this less noticeable we can copy features to other parts of our image. Select one of the windows of our spire tower.

Step 53

Use copies of this window to match the look of the spire tower to that of our main dome.

Step 54

The city is looking good. Let’s finish up with adjusting the base outer wall. Select a large portion of the wall and use a flipped version to fill in the other side.

Step 55

To close the remaining gap in the middle, select and copy another piece of the wall. Erase out any seams you might find. However since the source material matches so well you do not have to be that precise.

3. Background & Lighting

Step 1

Now it’s time to place our creation into a nice background and finish up the image. Open up one of our sky resources and place it behind the structure.

Step 2

The image doesn’t cover the entire background. Just select parts and stretch them out to fill the frame.

Step 3

Open up our image of the Nevada desert and place it in front of our city.

Step 4

We’re going to use masks to reveal parts of our image. Add a Layer Mask and use the Brush Tool with colors black to cover areas and white to reveal them. We can use a standard round brush for this.

This is a good time to cover the cars that were parked in front of the original structure, or any other unwanted elements in the foreground.

Step 5

The scene needs to be correctly lit so we’ll adjust our layers so that the back layer is the lightest and the front one the darkest. Since the sun is coming from the back, this makes sense.

Step 6

I’ve changed my mind about the sky. Let’s open the new sky and place it in our scene the same way we did before. The dim light of this sky seems to better fit our scene.

Step 7

Add a new layer and set the transfer mode to Linear Dodge. Place the layer between the foreground and our city, we’re going to paint some dust kicking up to show more depth.

Step 8

We’ll use the same standard round brush and a color that is already found in our scene such as a dark brown or grey. Now just paint simple bits of smoke and dust as shown in the images.

Step 9

Copy our foreground layer and set the transfer mode to Color Dodge. Add another mask to it and paint in where the sunlight would hit the ground. Keep it subtle and think about where the sun would lit the ground and where we’d have shade from the enourmous city.

Step 10

Now set the transfer mode of your brush to Linear Dodge. Until now we’ve kept all of our added architectural elements seperate, now we can use this to paint dust and light at the bottom and help seperate the layers.

Step 11

Copy our city layer and set the transfer mode to Linear Dodge. Add a black mask to make the new layer invisible for now.

Step 12

Select parts of the structure where the sunlight would hit. Keep it subtle, we can leave most of the city in the dark.

We can use the same brush as earlier now to just paint into the selection. This technique will give as nice crisp edges. Use a white brush to paint into your mask, revealing our previously added layer.

Step 13

The composition of our image is a bit too central. Move the city a bit to the left and paste in another one of our image resources. We’ll use this to add some structures outside the city walls. Be sure that everything stays in scale.

Step 14

Let’s also take some less fancy looking buildings from our main city and copy those.

Step 15

One piece of the building is enough so let’s cut it out and match the lighting with the rest of the scene.

Below you can see the result of copying some more elements. Add as many as you like. You can always move the city more to the left if you need space for more buildings.

Step 16

We’re nearly done, we just need to paint in some spilling sunlight to give all of it a nice glowing touch. Create a new Linear Dodge layer. Then pick a nice warm tone to paint our sunlight with. Experiment with less or more saturation.

Step 17

Our final step is to paint in the sun and light around the scene. We’re using the same simple round brush. Try finding a balance between too much and too little.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned how to cut and paste parts of photos and match them to create great looking structures. Remember to always keep scale and perspective in mind and to match the lighting and colors of all your elements. When you’re done, remember to use a bit of Photoshop’s great lighting capabilities to give everything that slightly magical touch. Have fun!

Quick Tip: How to Create an Indoor Panorama

Martin Perhiniak — Tue, 21 May 2013 07:00:29 PDT

In this quick tip tutorial, we will show you how to use Photoshop’s automated features to combine several photos to create a seamless panoramic photo of a room. In the process, we will show you how to use several Photoshop tools including Auto-Align, Auto-Blend Layers, Geometric Distortion Correction, as well as Adaptive Wide Angle. Let’s get started!

Create Action-Packed Zombie Apocalypse Concept Art in Photoshop

Johnson Ting — Mon, 20 May 2013 07:30:10 PDT

One of the most effective ways to improve your concept art is to introduce motion into the scene. In this tutorial, we will show you how to create concept art for a zombie-themed video game. This piece will portray a couple of police officers fending off a hoard of zombies in the pouring rain. This tutorial also includes a stunning speed painting video, so make sure to watch it before you begin. Let’s get started!

Speed Painting Video

Before you begin, take a look at this stunning speed painting video that shows the entire process.

Tutorial Assets

To complete the tutorial, you will need the following assets:

1. Sketching it out

Step 1

Create a new document by going to File > New. The document can be any size you prefer. I typically use A4 at 300 dpi just in case I want to print it later. For this piece, I am going to paint it in landscape at a 16:9 ratio as if I am working on a rough storyboard for a film.

Feel free to reduce the size or resolution if your computer is not powerful enough to work in these dimensions.

Step 2

Start by sketching out simple skeleton forms (As shown below). Get wild and don’t restrict yourself, explore and have fun at this stage, it opens up to a lot of possibilities when you’re doing this. If you already have a certain scene in mind, just jump in and start putting the lines in.

You can use a default Photoshop chalk brush for the sketch, the brush you use doesn’t matter, just pick something you’re comfortable with and let it flow.

After that you can also try sketching out the mass of your character (As shown below), by using simple lines to roughly draw out the figure, but always check the proportion and the anatomy, practice makes perfect!

Then put in some rough lines so you have a better idea of what you’re going to paint, try not to go in to too much detail, just a rough sketch will do. If you’re going into the details at this stage, you’ll end up sub-consciously restricting yourself from further exploration of the painting, so try to avoid a super neat outline.

Step 3

Choose any brush and start sketching out the painting as shown below. Don’t restrain yourself too much at this stage, keep the flow going and loosen your hand a little.

You can turn off the skeleton forms layer while you’re sketching.

Once you’re finished sketching the focus point (In this case its the two guys with guns) of the painting, you can start sketching the rough background.

2. Bringing in the values.

Step 1

Create a new layer under your sketch, and fill it with a Mid Tone Grey (#7d7d7d) as shown in the image.

To fill the color, you can just use the shortcut Alt + Backspace with the color you have picked.

Step 2

Pick a default round brush or soft brush, and set the Brush mode to Multiply (as shown in image), the multiply mode makes the brush act like a coat of darker values and Darkens anywhere you paint.

Roughly put in a few strokes on the two main characters to make them stand out from the background, use a Default Soft Airbrush to darken the top and bottom parts of the painting as well.

Continue to darken the painting, plan a little ahead on where you want the focus point to be and where will the light be coming from, in this painting I’m thinking of doing a backlight for these two characters, so they should appear a little bit darker than the background since less light will shine on them. I’ve also roughly blocked out some values for the zombies in the background.

Step 3

Next, I’ll show you how to add in some fences. The fence shown below was created using a brush that you can download in the Tutorial Assets above. To create them, I created a new layer on top of the painting and duplicated it to create a seamless pattern.

After you’re done piecing together the fence, set the layer’s Blending Mode to Multiply, and you’ll have something that looks like this:

With the layer of the texture selected, press Command/Ctrl + T (Transform Tool) and right click on it, it will display a small menu that shows a list of transformations available, in this case, we’re going to distort and warp the fence in various directions. The Warp selection works best. You can move certain points as shown in the image to get the flow to the direction you have in mind for the texture, for instance, I’ve nudge a few points (Red Arrows) with my mouse to get the flow and shape I wanted.

Step 4

After that you can lighten up a little bit of your painting but don’t overdo it, it’s just for yourself to indicate where you want the lights to be coming from. With the same steps as Step 2, pick a default round brush or soft brush, and set the Brush mode to Overlay (as shown in image).

The Overlay mode works in a different way than the Multiply mode, it darkens an area if you’re using a darker color/value, but lightens an area if you’re using a lighter color/value. Basically, it lighten things up if you’re brushing it with a White palette, but it darken things down when you’re brushing it with a Black palette.

Using the same techniques as Step 2. After a few dots with the round brush, change it to a soft brush with the Linear Dodge mode selected. The Linear Dodge mode works just like a highlighter, except it gets lighter everytime you paint over it again and again. For example, use a softer brush and lightly dodged it on top of the round dot you’ve previously done. A soft edge around a hard edge circle as a spotlight would be more believable, as light tends to spread and gets disperse when looked through a camera lens.

3. Painting

Step 1

Set the color and mood of your scene by adjusting the color balance as shown below Command/Ctrl + B. I chose a desaturated blue since this scene is taking place at night.

With the base color set, you can now proceed with painting your scene. Start off by darkening some of the areas by painting from Dark to Light is a good technique to use, the concept is to fill in the darkest areas, and slowly introduce the lighter values into the silhouette, gradually pushing up the brightness of the subject one step at a time.

The technique applied here is as same as Step 2 from “2. Painting the base”

At this stage, there are no restrictions on what you should do and what you shouldn’t. You can start by painting the focus point. Slowly start painting out from the dark silhouette, and introduce the details bit by bit.

Step 2

Adding some sci-fi elements into the painting will enhance the theme, you can add a user-interface onto their wrists, since it’s going to be something like a projected hologram, it’s going to function just like how a light would function, so setting the blending mode to Linear Dodge would be the best bet. Add these elements using brushes that you can download from this site.

First, place your texture onto the painting, set the mode to Linear Dodge and put it on top of the layer of your painting.

Just like the fence, make sure the perspective fits the painting. Use the Distort tool this time as shown below.

While you paint, use the following brush blending modes to block in colors, paint highlights, and to darken values.

These are simple explanations of the different modes, but it takes time to get used to them and you might get confused at first. Practice makes perfect! Just keep exploring the blending modes and have fun with it.

Step 3

To paint fog and smoke, you can use a cloud brush, a soft brush, and the smudge tool. Cloud brushes can be found easily on sites like Brusheezy or Deviant Art.

Paint your clouds directly on a new layer above your artwork. In this example, we used a color that would stand out a bit more.

First, lightly paint a few strokes over the painting using the cloud brush, after that choose the soft brush and brush lightly around the cloud brush strokes to soften it up. Refer to the video and the image below.

Then use the smudge tool to smoothen the edges and distort it a little to blend.

Outcome.

4. Using textures

Step 1

Textures can play a very important role in coming up with quick concepts, they cut down the time required to paint the details and add realism to the painting. For this image, I used a texture this web page to create the muzzle flash. The image that I chose is a bit low resolution but you can search out others if you need to. Place it into the painting, set the blending mode to Linear Dodge.

Step 2

Once it’s in the painting, you can use the distort tool (Command/Ctrl + T > Right click > Distort) to make sure the angle is correct.

Merge the layers once you have the position correct. Once merged, choose a soft brush and set the brush mode to Color Dodge. Color pick (ALT with the Brush Tool selected) an orange color from the muzzle flash and lightly brush over the flare. This will create a soft glowing edge around it to make it more realistic.

5. Adding elements in motion

Step 1

Adding motion into a painting can be done in many different ways, in this example you can use bullet casings to bring out a sense of motion.

First, create a new layer, then paint out a rectangle by filling it with a base color, then choose a darker color to add one bold stroke in the middle of the rectangle, after that choose a brighter gold color and paint two bold strokes on both sides of the rectangle, then you’ll have a simple looking bullet casing. You can then duplicate as many as you like and place it around to your liking.

Step 2

Use the lasso tool (L) to select the bullets you want to apply the motion blur, then open up Filter > Blur > Motion Blur, you can slide the strength of the blur you want it to be and you can change the direction of the blur by clicking and dragging on the circular diagram above the slider. Apply this on the other bullets and make sure they all are blurred from the right direction.

6. Make it rain.

Step 1

First, create a new layer and fill it with a full black, the purpose of this is too make sure you can see the rain. Then create another layer on top, choose any grainy brush you like, make sure the color is a pure white, and then paint one strong and thin stroke on the new layer. Afterwards just randomly duplicate alot of them and put it all around the canvas as shown below. You can rotate them by using the transform tool (Command/Ctrl + T), or flipping them horizontally and vertically (Command/Ctrl + T > Right click > Flip horizontal/vertical).

Step 2

Apply motion blur to the strokes you just created.

Step 3

Remove the black layer and set the rain layer to Color Dodge.

You can also duplicate the Rain layer a couple of times and set it to the same blending mode to make it more obvious.

Step 4

On the same Color Dodge layer, choose a hard edge round brush, with a white color selected, and start dotting it around areas where the rain hits the character, it doesn’t have to be really accurate, but just an impression will work good enough for the audience to interpret it.

Make sure the dots are small!

7. Chromatic Aberration and Lens Blur

Step 1

Usually these filters are used as a finishing touch to the painting, the Chromatic Aberration filter adds in a red and green offset look to the painting, it looks like something printed, it’s useful in presenting some certain scenes where it’s supposed to feel more like its taken from a film camera. As for the Lens Blur filter, it helps adding a quick depth of field into the painting and gives a more “camera” look to the painting.

Make sure the layers are merged, so now you have one single layer of the painting. Now duplicate the layer two times, and rename them as Green and Red. Follow the description in the images below and see what happens!

Step 2

Now merge the Green and Red layers into one. Duplicate that layer, make sure it’s on top of the original layer and go to Filter > Blur > Lens Blur. I usually keep my settings like the image below, but you can change it to your liking. Press OK to apply the blur and it might take awhile to render.

You should have one big blurred image right now, but having the original painting as the layer behind, you can erase the blurred layer with a soft brush and reveal the layer behind, erase your focus point and your foreground elements to keep it more realistic, the more behind the things are, the more it’s blurred.

8. Adding foreground elements

Step 1

As the painting is coming to an end, let’s add some quick finishing touches to give it a little bit more depth. By adding foreground elements you can enhance the focus point and add more depth of field to the scene.

First, paint a rough looking barbed wire, it doesn’t have to be detailed, just the silhouette will do. Create a new layer, chose a round brush with black and paint it on the white background.

Step 2

Since this is a foreground element, and not my main focus point, it’s going to be blurred just like how a camera shoots an object. The Gaussian Blur works well in this situation, since all we need to blur right now is a simple shape, it take less time to render than Lens Blur.

Step 3

Set the layer’s blending mode to Multiply, you can touch up a little bit more here and there with the same technique as Step 1 & 2, you can add more wires, or different elements such as a warning sign or a flying debris. Just keep it mind that it needs to be darker and blurred so it doesn’t not affect the painting in losing the focus point.

You should have an outcome similar to this. The barbed wire I’ve drawn above in not used in the painting below, it was done afterwards, but the technique is the same.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we showed you how to paint a scene with a sense of depth and texture. Along the way, we demonstrated some useful skills that you can use in your workflow. With a bit of practice you should be able to easily create your own concept art for video games. Good luck!

The Remarkable Concept Art and Environments of Jonas De Ro

Grant Friedman — Fri, 17 May 2013 06:00:07 PDT

Jonas De Ro is a Belgian concept artist, currently residing in the United Kingdom. In this article, we will take a look at some of our favorite work from his portfolio.

Mandira

Hammercross

Temple Ruins

A Place Called Home

Singapore Ruins

Stonehold

Railroad

The Dark Ages

After Class

Rain

Noctis

The House of Spikes

Oak’s Crossing

Temple Lagoon

Forgotten Glory

Making Complex Selections (Part 2)

Martin Perhiniak — Thu, 16 May 2013 10:01:49 PDT

Making very complex selections can be quite a difficult and time-consuming task. In this tutorial, we will focus on pixel masks to help us to create a complicated selection of a furry animal. We will use several Photoshop tools including Color Range, the Lasso Tool, as well as custom Brushes. Let’s get started!

Tutorial Assets

The following assets were used during the production of this tutorial.

Lion

Tuts+ Premium Cash Back Offer: 3 Days to Go

Joel Bankhead — Thu, 16 May 2013 07:00:38 PDT

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Create a Fantasy Storybook Illustration – Tuts+ Premium Tutorial

Liran Szeiman — Tue, 14 May 2013 06:30:04 PDT

Good storybook illustrators know how to tap into a child’s imagination. In this Tuts+ Premium tutorial by Liran Szeiman, we will show you how to create a fantasy storybook illustration that depicts a child riding a pet spider. This tutorial is available exclusively to Tuts+ Premium Members and includes both written and video content. If you are looking to take your digital illustration and character design skills to the next level then Log in or Join Now to get started!

Speed Painting Video

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Photoshop’s Role in a Web Design Workflow

Ian Yates — Mon, 13 May 2013 07:30:41 PDT

The web has undergone some serious changes in recent years and the way in which the web is designed is changing along with it. Photoshop may still be the “go-to” tool for many web designers, but for some, Photoshop is no longer king. In this article, Ian Yates, Editor of Webdesigntuts+ will explain how Photoshop was used in the past, how it can be used in the future, and why.

What is it Good For?

Technically speaking, Photoshop is an application for manipulating imagery (forgive me for stating the obvious there) but it’s also packed with tools for building graphics from scratch. Shape, vector, type, fills and effects, all of these (and more) lend themselves very well to constructing graphic layouts.

Not too long ago, web browsers were incapable of directly generating these kinds of effects themselves, but they could display bitmap images perfectly well. In order to explore graphic design within a browser it was only logical to reach for Photoshop, create your visuals, save them as images and use them within a web page.

Gradients, shadows, patterns, angles; all easy to create with Photoshop’s tools – not too easy to create with anything else.

Building for the web was also relatively complex (far less streamlined than nowadays) so mocking up a layout in Photoshop was always going to be easier and quicker than battling with Dreamweaver. Why wouldn’t you design in a graphics application, get approval from the client, then actually build for the web? Today’s designers have grown up using Photoshop because it offered the quickest way to visualize a hi-fidelity design concept.

kuhboom.com: Densely textured web designs will have you reaching for the slice tool.

The Legacy of Print Design

Back when the web was an emerging medium there were no “web agencies”, so the task of crafting it fell to print designers. These guys did what was logical; they took their digital print design experience, values, techniques, processes and tools, then applied them to this brave new world. They effectively ported print design to the screen, so the workflow already existed:

All that needed altering was the final output. As such, Photoshop witnessed the changes and went along for the ride, further rooting itself as the graphic designer’s best friend.

What are its Limitations?

Times they are a-changin’ (as Bob Dylan said). The web is a different place these days and Photoshop’s role in the process of designing for that web is also changing. Why?

A big part of the issue lies in technological advancements which have driven huge change in web design over recent years. We’ve seen the internet grow from a library of static documents to an interactive pool of services and applications. Network providers have spread their fingers into almost every corner of the globe, bandwidth and speed have increased to science fiction-like levels. Internet enabled devices such as smartphones, tablets, even watches, are manufactured affordably and rapidly. All of this has revolutionized the way in which we use the web – and it’s drastically altered our perception of how we should be designing for it.

A Fluid Web

Print designers begin with constraints (the fixed dimensions of a page) then design within them. When first designing for the web this was also a logical starting point; establish a fixed canvas and work inwards. To figure out what those fixed dimensions should be, designers had to make assumptions about end user screen sizes. Very early on 800x600px was most common. Later, 1024x800px was the norm. Working to a grid of 960px made sense because it fit most screens (larger screens were rare, owners of smaller screens would just have to upgrade eventually) and was divisible by a range of column widths.

These assumptions were wrong then (forcing a user to adjust their browsing to your design?!) and are even more so these days. How big is a web page today?

From Brad Frost’s This is the Web

Back in May 2010 a chap called Ethan Marcotte wrote about a brilliant idea he’d conceived. Taking existing technologies and methods he proposed an approach “Responsive Web Design” which utilized fluid layouts (not fixed), flexible images (which grow and shrink with the layout) and CSS Media Queries (which allow layouts to change depending on the screen size and other factors).

With these ideas the web changed, irreversibly.

Thanks to Ethan’s concepts, web designers have come to realize that they should be thinking from the content outwards, not the page boundaries inwards (though it should be noted that this approach isn’t compulsory). We don’t know how big a web page is, so we need to design our content to fit into whatever boundaries it’s faced with. Think of web content as being like liquid; capable of being poured into all manner of vessels.

Herein lies a problem for Photoshop. Photoshop inherently works to fixed boundaries. Shapes, type and objects within its layouts are fixed, whereas web pages increasingly aren’t. Producing a comp to present to a client used to be quickly achieved in Photoshop, but how can you effectively present a fluid layout as a static snapshot?

The Next Web as presented by mediaqueri.es

The Problem With Pixels – I

Typography is another great example of print designers trying to force constraints onto end users. Every user’s browser gives them the power to set their default type size; after all, some people prefer smaller lettering, whilst others might prefer an easier reading experience with larger type. By default, browsers usually set type at 16px, so unless a designer states otherwise, or a user alters the default, that’s how big body copy will be.

Print designers, however, have real difficulty in relinquishing this control. “How can you let the user define the size of the type?! Have you any idea what that will do to the rest of the layout?!”

Locking down the font-size within a web design (through CSS) will go a long way in preventing anything unpredictable from happening, but it’s hardly user-friendly. These days, it’s considered best practice to size page elements and typography using ems instead of pixels; relative units of measurement which are based on the default font-size. Therefore if a browser happens to have a different default font size the whole design can flex in response to that.

This flexibility, again, highlights the limitations of designing static comps in Photoshop.

The Problem With Pixels – II

Browsers are developing very quickly these days and images are no longer needed for many effects on the web. CSS is capable of producing accurate gradients, curves, skewed objects, shadows, alpha transparency (the list goes on) and this is just as well given the dawn of Retina screens. Retina displays (or more accurately: high pixel density screens) have really thrown a spanner in the works for web designers. Retina screens have twice as many pixels as normal screens, allowing them the luxury of rendering everything super-sharp. Anything pixel-based, however, is simply blown up twice as wide, twice as high, resulting in comparatively lower quality.

In order that websites retain their sharpness, designers are having to rely as much as possible on what the browser can render itself. In fact, the recent trend towards “Flat Design” is (in part) a reaction to this purely CSS-based web design.

All this takes an enormous chunk of what Photoshop does (producing bitmaps) out of the equation.

Designmodo’s Flat UI kit

Performance Based Design

As we’ve mentioned, the web has gone truly global thanks to the spread of mobile devices. It’s forced us to realise that we can’t know the circumstances under which our content is being accessed. We don’t know whether our end user is sitting on the couch with a Kindle, paragliding with an iPhone or running through the Gobi Desert with a MacBook Pro. We don’t know how big their screen is, what their processor is like and, equally, we can’t assume to know how fast their connection is.

We’re starting to realise that performance is a fundamental part of designing for the web. Again, images play a role in this. Every individual asset (be it an image, a script, a document, whatever) which is pulled from a web server is costly.

Instead of keeping files like images and fonts in a folder called “assets”, I’m going to rename the folder “liabilities”.
— Jeremy Keith (@adactio) February 18, 2013

Not only should they be optimized to be as small as possible, but they should also be as few as possible. Browsers are limited in the amount of assets they can simultaneously download, often to just two at any given time. If your web page holds hundreds of individual images they’ll form a bottleneck, ultimately delivering a negative experience to the end user.

This can be helped, by combining image files into single sprites, but (again) retina screens force some kind of backup plan.

Instead, effects are better achieved with CSS, icons can be embedded through web fonts, logos can be implemented as scalable vector graphics, all of which spells the end for the slice tool.

Doubling of Efforts

Back when the web designer’s workflow was effectively the same as print with the internet tacked onto the end, designing layouts in Photoshop was an integral part of the process:

Familiar tools meant relatively quick layouts.
Presenting static comps to the client was much the same as presenting print layouts.
Pixel-precision meant that measurements could be directly applied to the browser equivalent.
Actual assets were sliced from layout comps for use in the web page.

These days, with less of the final result relying on assets built in a graphics application, designing a whole layout in Photoshop effectively means doubling your efforts. Build it once to get an idea of what it will look like, then build it for real. Then throw the PSD away because it’s no use to anyone.

Adding to the Toolkit

Adobe were either resisting change, or simply trying to be accomodating, when they introduced a few web design features in CS6. The CSSHat-like CSS output panel enables you to grab code from your visually created page elements. They also made it possible to paste a hex color (copied from the browser) including hashtag (#ffffff for example) into Photoshop’s color picker without throwing an error.

Paragraph styles (a bit like in InDesign) were introduced to give more global control over typography. Lorem Ipsum found its way in as a standard feature and now you can even choose common device dimensions as document presets!

But we’re in denial here – there’s a big blue elephant standing in the corner of the room.

It’s Time for a Modular, Flexible Workflow

What we’re actually looking at here, isn’t an application which fails to fit web design, but a workflow which is no longer appropriate. In fact, even before the web went all fluid and squishy there were fundamental flaws in the Photoshop web design process as we’ve described it. There was a tendancy to create pixel perfect renderings of web pages before building could even begin. And then, because of the obsession with getting everything 100% perfect in Photoshop, there’d be a similar fanaticism for achieving identical results in all browsers. It’s taken us a long time to realise that web pages don’t have to appear identical in all browsers!

One serious issue with aiming for perfection in Photoshop arises when the client gets involved. This workflow makes it all too easy to become stuck in an infinite loop of clients making pixel–pushing suggestions, inevitably losing sight of the big picture.

What’s needed is a more modular approach to web design and Photoshop can absolutely play a part in that. Consider first the planning stage; gathering of information and content, sketching relationships between areas of the website as a whole – a crucial part of this modular process, but best carried out away from Photoshop.

Wireframing takes the process further; laying out rudimentary interface elements, establishing visual relationships, hierarchy and basic interaction. Again, this isn’t a task Photoshop carries out very well, instead making way for applications such as Omnigraffle and Balsamiq, even Illustrator (and there are many more).

Photoshop lends itself far better to aesthetics. It can’t describe layouts fluidly, but it can explore colors, textures, individual element styles, typography, atmosphere and mood. Style Tiles is a concept suggested by Samantha Warren. They’re essentially Photoshop mood boards, but highlight a way of isolating and presenting the aesthetic phase to the client.

The next module in this workflow is prototyping; building basic, but functional layouts for the browser. And no, this isn’t Photoshop’s cup of tea either. In fact, Adobe is busily working on an alternative line of applications to help out here. Their Edge Tools aim to offer a familiar canvas interface, which outputs fluidly for the browser; ideal for rapid prototyping, but still very much a work in progress.

Each of these modular stages takes an aspect of the design process, isolates it and heavily involves the client, giving them plenty of opportunity to sign off on each stage without affecting the others.

Do note that this is a suggested workflow, nothing is written in stone where design is concerned and there’s often more involved than these general stages. Which leads me to my closing point.

Whatever Works!

Any design process is extremely personal and what works for someone else won’t necessarily work for you. There are plenty of people calling for an end to web design in Photoshop, campaigning for a browser-based workflow instead. The fact is, if Photoshop works for you, use it! At the end of the day, we’re designers – if we want to spend hundreds of man hours pushing pixels and polishing our Dribbble portfolio, let’s allow ourselves to luxuriate in that!

Submit Your Art to This Month’s Typography Challenge

Melody Nieves — Sat, 11 May 2013 08:30:20 PDT

You still have plenty of time to submit your typography for this month’s Psdtuts+ Design Challenge. Join the community on Google+ and upload your art for the chance to get featured in our monthly reviews.

This Month’s Challenge

This month we asked you to Create a Typographic Illustration. And with plenty of time to spare, you can submit your artwork for this challenge using Photoshop accompanied with any additional program or technique of your choice. Take inspiration from a song, or quote the wise words of your favorite author. Just remember, the deadline for this challenge is Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at 12:00 PM EST.

Join The Psdtuts+ Community

Join The Psdtuts+ Google Community and upload your challenge submissions to the wall. Include the #psdtutsdc tag in your posts and feel free to explore, collaborate, and share feedback with fellow artists.

Examples From This Month’s Challenge

Here’s a glimpse at some of the incredible entries from this month’s challenge. Check out the Psdtuts+ Community on Google Plus for more amazing work!

Impakt by Mohamed Reda

Don’t Worry Be Happy by Padraic Rapp

You Said You Wanted To Heal These Wounds by Timothy Diokno

Submit Your Artwork

The Beautiful and Creative 3D Typography of Chris LaBrooy

Grant Friedman — Fri, 10 May 2013 07:00:52 PDT

Chris LaBrooy is a designer and 3D artist from the United Kingdom that creates very high quality 3D typography. In this article, we will take a look at some of our favorite pieces in his portfolio.