Extra Unique Adobe Photoshop Tutorials - PSD Vault » ancient

Design an Ancient Cracked Sword in Photoshop

James Qu — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:13:24 +0000

If want to make your career in web designing then join 000-200 web designing course and learn the best web design practices using our HP2-E32 design resources and self paced 70-270 study guide guides.

In this tutorial, I will show the processes I took to create this cool-looking, ancient cracked sword in Photoshop. Personally I think the steps aren’t hard to follow and the end result looks good, Have a go :)

The technique I would like to emphasise in this tutorial is how you can use the cloud filter to add contrast to object, and the important of using the correct blending mode for layers to maximise the effect.

You will also see by choosing a great quality texture, you can easily add extra effect to your design with mimimum effort.

Here is a preview of the final image: (click to enlarge)

PSD File Download

You can download the PSD File for this tutorial via the VIP Members Area for only $6.95/Month (or less)! You will not only get this PSD File, but also 70+ other PSD Files + Extra Goodies + Exclusive Photoshop tutorial there. Signup now and get exclusive :) Find out more about the VIP Members Areas

Ok let’s get started!

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

Sword

Crack Texture

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000px * 1300px, fill the background layer with black color. Load the “Sword” texture into Photoshop and cut out the sword using whatever method you prefer (I used the magic wand here, set tolerance to 32px), then paste it onto our canvas, as shown below:

You can choose a different angle for the sword if you like, totally up to you. The steps below will still apply.

Name this layer as “sword”. On this layer, apply the following “Reduce Noise” settings to it:

and you will see by doing so, we managed to get a few more details out of the sword image, as shown below:

Load the selection of the sword layer by holding down Ctrl key + left-click the thumbnail image of the sword layer on the layer palette. Then hit Ctrl + Alt + R to bring up the Refine Edge tool, apply the following settings:

and you will have the following effect for the selection:

Now we’re ready for the cloud rendering in the next step.

Step 2

Create a new layer called “cloud 1″ on top of the “sword” layer, maintain the selection we did in previous step, render some cloud within the selection, as shown below: (set back and foreground colour to be black and white)

Now hit Ctrl + L and bring up the Levels adjustment tool, apply the following settings to it:

Now the settings for Levels might differ slightly depending on the cloud render outcome, however the ultimate goal is to bring more contrast to the cloud so it gives us more lighting variation, as shown below:

Change the blending mode of the cloud layer to “Color Dodge”, you will have the following effect:

Now here is the interest part of the tutorial – we’re going to max-out the effect by playing with the cloud layer.

Duplicate the cloud layer a few times, apply following layer blending mode, opacity and layer mask to each layer:

and you will have the following effect:

You can see now we have some very dynamic contrast placed on the sword. They will look good when we apply the crack texture later on in the tutorial.

Step 3

Go back to the background layer, grab a big soft round brush with a 30% flow and opacity settings, do a few single clicks as shown below:

You will see now we light up the background a bit – however not too much. This effect will reflect when we add the crack texture later on in the tutorial.

I decide to add some effect on the bottom of the sword. So I duplicate the original cloud layer once, change the blending mode to “Normal” and drag it below the sword layer and above the background layer, use the Free Transform tool to resize it to a small size, position it as shown below:

Name this layer as “light”, duplicate it a few times, and position them as shown below:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 4

We can now add the crack texture onto the sword. Load the Crack Texture into Photoshop, select a portion of it with the Lasso tool (40px feather), copy and paste it onto the canvas and put it on top of all previous layers, name the layer as “crack”:

Make sure you resize the layer to roughly the size of the sword, as shown below:

Change the blending mode of the crack layer to be “color dodge”. Duplicate the crack layer a few times, position each duplicated layer as shown below:

Maintain the blending mode for all crack texture layers to be “color dodge”, apply layer mask according to the screenshot above.

For the top crack texture layer, add the following levels adjustment layer to it (with clipping mask optin enabled):

You will have the following effect:

Step 5

Now we can add some image adjustments layers to fine-tune the effect. I have the following two adjustment layers on top of all layers:

Color Balance

Curves

and you will have the following effect:

That’s it pretty much it! For the final effect I added some brushwork on the top, here is my end result: (click to enlarge)

That’s all for this tutorial! I hope this can give you more ideas about the use of layer blending, cloud filter and applying textures in Photoshop. Hopefully you will find those steps in the tutorial useful and the end result inspiratinal :)

Till next time, have a great day!

My Guest Post on My Ink Blog – Design A Surreal, Ancient Fantasy Scene in Photoshop

James Qu — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:04:48 +0000

Recently I was invited by Andrew from My Ink Blog to write a guest post and here is what I came up with – A surreal, ancient Fantasy Scene made in Photoshop. (I personally always love fantasy style!) My Ink Blog is a site that always enjoy hopping onto and I’m really happy that I was given an opportunity to be a small part of it :)

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this work. We will take several real world objects and seamlessly blend them together to form this artwork. We will also use a number of Photoshop brushes to spice up the effect. The techniquses involved in this tutorial include layer blending, image adjustments, filter effects, custom brush tools, adding layer mask, etc.

This is a 10 steps tutorial, very simple, yet the effect is good. Have a try!

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

Please click here to view this tutorial on My Ink Blog.

If you have any problem, drop me a comment and I will try my best to help you out. Cheers and have a great day!

Design a Surreal Ancient Ruin and Coastal Island Scenery in Photoshop

James Qu — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:16:11 +0000

In this tutorial, I will show you the processes involved in creating this beautiful, fantasy-styled surreal ancient ruin and coastal island scenary in Photoshop. Hope you enjoy it!

Along the way, we will go through a variety of technqiues such as layer blending, image adjustments, a bit of matte painting skills and filter effects. This is an intermediate level tutorial so some steps can be a bit tricky. Practices always make thing easier for the future, so go ahead and have a try :)

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

PSD File Download

OK let’s get started!

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

Beautiful Sitting Lady

Step 1

Load the “Coastal Cliff Scene” stock image into Photoshop, we will use this as our starting point. Firstly I’d like to make the overall soften a bit, so I duplicate the background layer, and apply the following Gaussian Blur settings to the duplicated layer:

After apply the Gaussian Blur settings, duplicate this blurred layer once and change the blending mode of the duplicated layer to “Color Burn”, you will have the following effect:

On this colour burn layer, add a layer mask and on the layer mask, erase the area indicated above (within the selection), so that only the colour of the ocean darkened: (Hint: erase using a big, soft brush)

Now add the following adjustments layer on top of all previous layers:

Curves:

Colour Balance:

On top of the adjustment layers, add a gradient fill layer as shown below:

And you will have the following effect so far:

Step 2

Now we have a pretty nice grass on the lower part of our image, but the sky portion is simply a disaster right now. To fix this, simply load the Island Sky image into Photoshop, and drag the entire image onto our document, name this layer as “sky” and position, resize it as shown below:

Use a big soft brush to erase the bottom part of the “sky” layer, so we have the sky portion of the image left:

Add the following “Curves” adjustment layer to the “Sky” layer, make sure to tick “use previous layer as clipping mask” option:

Duplicate the “sky” layer and drag the duplicated layer to the top, apply the following Motion Blur settings to it:

Change the motion blur sky layer’s blending mode to “Screen” and opacity to 70%, you will have the following effect:

Step 3

Now we can work on adding some dynamic lighting effect to the edges of the cliff. Let’s grab the Lasso Tool (L) and set its feather to 30px, draw a selection around the bottom edge of the cliff, and render some cloud (choose a dark grey as background colour, and white as foreground colour) within it:

Name this layer as “light bottom” and drop its opacity to 70%.

Duplicate the “light bottom” layer once and change the blending mode of the duplicated layer to “overlay”.

And on the cliff edge to the right, we use the same method to render some cloud around it. (For quicker result, simply duplicate the original “light bottom” layer and position it as shown below:

and change the layer name to “lighting right”, duplicate it once and change the blending mode of the duplicated layer to “overlay”, you will have the following effect:

For more lighting variations, we can add a Brightness and Contrast adjustment layer with the following settings and mask:

and you will have the following effect:

Step 4

We can now add a far distance island to the ocean. Load the Rock Island image into Photoshop and drag it onto our document. Erase the surrounding and leave only the rock island and name this layer as “island”:

Add a colour balance adjustment layer to this “island” layer, make sure to tick “use previous layer as clipping mask” option:

Now duplicate the “island” layer three times and drag them all to the top, change their blending mode as shown below:

And your effect should be similar to the following:

Step 5

Now we can add some waterfall to the island (well, it supposes to be a surreal image!). I decide to add one to each side. So load the Waterfall 1 image into Photoshop and drag it onto our document. Erase all the unnecessary parts only leave the main waterfall scene, resize and position it as shown below:

Name this layer as “waterfall 1″ and duplicate it once to make it bolder. Add the following Colour Balance adjustment layer to the duplicated layer, make sure to tick “use previous layer as clipping mask” option:

and you will have the following effect:

Load the Waterfall 2 image into Photoshop and again drag it to our document. Name this layer as “waterfall 2″ and put it on top of all other layers.

Again we erase all unnecessary parts of the waterfall image, and position it as shown below:

Add the following image adjustment layer to the “waterfall 2″ layer, make sure to tick “use previous layer as clipping mask” option:

Curves

Colour Balance

To highlight the island a bit, we can add a new colour balance adjustment layer without ticking the clipping mask option on top of all other layers, with the following settings and mask:

Mask

and you will have the following effect so far:

Step 6

Now we’re onto add the Ancinet Ruin part. Simply load the Ancient Ruin image into Photoshop and drag it onto our document, resize and position it as shonw below:

Name this layer as “ruin” Erase the bottom part (use a small soft brush) and the sky portion off the image: (hint: use the magic wand tool to select the sky part, and go to Edit > Clear to get rid of it)

Optional: you can add a colour balance adjustment layer to this ruin layer, however I decide to leave it as it is for now, with the original lighting effect.

Duplicate this “ruin” layer once, flip it horizontally and rezise a bit, fit it on top of our island as shown below:

Step 7

We can now spice up the image a bit by adding the beautiful lady image outlooking the distant sea to our scene. So load the “beautiful sitting lady” image into Photoshop. Cut the lady from the rest of the image and paste it onto our document, name this layer as “lady”:

Resize and position it as shown below:

Add the following three adjustment layers to the lady layer, make sure to tick “use previous layer as clipping mask” option:

Curves

Colour Balance

Brightness and Contrast

Duplicate the original “lady” layer once, and put it on top of all other layers, change the blending mode to “multiply”, you will have the following effect:

And now we can painting a bit of shadow for the lady. So create a new layer just below the orginal lady layer, use a soft round brush with black colour, set the brush flow and opacity to 50%, and paint in the area as shown below:

Step 8

For some final touchups, we can add two more adjustment layers with the following settings and mask:

Colour Balance

Brightness and Contrast

And you will have the following final effect:

Step 9

To further enhance the image effect, I flatten the image and apply the following smart sharpen settings to the flattened image:

And to add some sunlight, I simply duplicated the background layer, and apply the following radial blur settings:

Change the blending mode to “Screen” for this duplicated layer and drop its opacity to around 40%.

I further alter the colour balance and saturation of the image, and here is my final image result for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

Hope you enjoy this tutorial, drop me a comment if you have any question, I will try my best to help you out.

Cheers and have a nice day!

Create an Ancient Typography with Dry Soil Texture and Floral Brushset in Photoshop

James Qu — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:34:34 +0000

Learn with testking how to create typography in photoshop! Go through 650-195 tutorials and other 350-018 stuff to become expert in web design work.

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this cool, ancient-style typography using dry soil texture and floral brushset in Photoshop. I will also share with you the technique I learnt for creating some really cool light strips for your image.

Along the way, we will be using a lot of layer blending technqiues, musking, image adjustment tools and adjustment layers, plus the gradient tool and blur tool. This is an intermediate tutorial so beginners may find it a bit tricky. Well, never hurt to have a try!

Here is preview of the final effect: (click to enlarge)

PSD File Download

Let’s get started!

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

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000 * 800 px with white background. Create a new layer called “radial gradient” and grab the Gradient Tool (G) and select the radial gradient fill option, fill this layer as shown below:

Step 2

On top of the “Radial Gradient” layer, use the font we have just downloaded, type some text onto it. ( I only typed a letter “A” however you may type whatever text you want)

Apply the following layer blending option to this layer:

Drop Shadow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Color Overlay

Gradient Overlay

And you will have the following effect:

Step 3

Load the selection of the text layer by holding down the Ctrl key and left-click the layer thumbnail image on the layer palette:

Hit Ctrl + Alt + R and bring up the Refine Edge Tool, apply the following settings:

Load the “Dry Soil” texture into Photoshop and drag the selection of the text layer (To do this, select the Rectangular Marquee Tool, move your mouse over the selection, left-click and hold to drag):

Copy and paste the selection back to our document, you will have the following effect:

Name this newly-created layer as “dry soil texture” and change its blending mode to “Hard Light” and you will have the following effect:

Step 4

On top of the “dry soil texture” layer, add the following adjustment layers with the respective settings (make sure you tick the “use previous layer as clipping mask” option for all adjustment layers)

Curves

Levels

Color Balance

Bright and Contrast

Black and white

And you will have the following effect:

Step 5

Now I would like to show you an interesting method to add light stripes to the text. Create a new layer on top of all previous layers, grab the rectangular marquee tool to draw a selection as below:

Then grab a big soft brush with white colour (I used 800px) and do a few clicks in the following postition, while maintaining the selection:

Then resize, rotate the selection until it reaches the effect as shown below:

Name this layer as “light strips” and duplicate it a couple of times, move the duplicated layers as shown below:

Merge the duplicated layers and again make several duplication of the merged layer, move them around to the desired position:

When you’re happy with the position, merge all those light strips layers and use the Eraser Tool with a soft round brush to erase the bit where covers the text:

Step 6

To add some more decoration to the text, we can use the two brushsets we downloaded and simply do some painting :)

Create a new layer just above the “Radial Light” layer, use the Cloud Brushes to paint some clouds on the bottom part of the canvas:

Create another layer on top of the cloud layer, use the Floral Brushes to add some nice floral swirls around the text:

Step 7

To add some final touches, add two more adjustment layers on top of all other layers: (Don’t tick “use previous layer as clipping mask” this time)

Curves

Use the following vector musk on Curves Adjusment layer:

Levels

Use the following vector musk on Levels Adjusment layer:

Colour Balance

Use the following vector musk on Color Balance Adjusment layer:

And you will have the following final effect:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! Of course you can further enhance this image by adding some more effect, textures and filters.

Here is my final version for this tutorial: (Added some radial blur, adjusted contrast) – click to enlarge:

Hope you enjoy this tutorial, drop me a comment if you have any question, I will try my best to help you out.

Cheers and have a nice day!

Ancient Golden Text Effect In Photoshop

James Qu — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 11:18:29 +0000

In this tutorial, I will demonstrate the steps I took to make this golden ancient text effect in Photoshop. I always love ancient history and have an interest in reading all sorts of history books.

Along the way, we will be looking into techniques such as layer blending effects, loading and expanding selection and image adjustments.

Below is a preview of the final result:

PSD File Download

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000 x 400 pixel, fill the background layer with Black colour and type some texts onto it. You may use any font you like, I chose this beautiful font from dafont.com.

Position the text as shown below: (You may hit Ctrl + t to bring up the free transformation tool to resize the text a bit)

Step 2

On the text layer, apply the following layer blending options:

Inner Shadow

Outer Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Color Overlay

The effect so far will look like this:

Step 3

Now we’re going to make a selection of the text, which we can use later in the tutorial.

Move your mouse over the text layer, hold down the Ctrl key and left-click on the layer (See below image for the position where you do the left-click):

You will also notice the cursor will change into a hand with a rectangular marquee.

This will load the selection of the text (as shown below): If you are having trouble with this, there is an article on the web you might find useful.

Then go to Select > Modify > Expand (Path shown below)

Apply the following setting:

And the selection of the text should now look a bit wider than before:

Step 4

Now we’re going to add some texture to create some ancient feeling for the text.

Download a copy of this image and load it into photoshop. Go back to our own document and press the “M” key to select the Rectangular Marquee Tool, then move your mouse over the text until the cursor turns into a rectangular marquee shape: (see image below)

Then hold down your left mouse button and drag the entire selection over to the newly loaded texture:

Copy and Paste selected area over to our document – This action will automatically create a new layer, name it as “texture”.

Set the blending mode of this layer to “Overlay” and you should have the following effect so far:

Step 5

Duplicate the “texture” layer three times. Apply changes to layer blending as following:

Change the layer blending mode for “texture copy” layer to “Color Dodge”, with an opacity of 40%

Keey the layer blending mode for “texture copy 2″ layer as “Overlay”, with an opacity of 100%

Change the layer blending mode for “texture copy 3″ layer to “Soft Light”, with an opacity of 90%.

And you should now have the following effect:

Step 6

This is an optional step. I feel like adding some depth into the text, so I duplicate the “texture copy 3″ layer once, then hit Ctrl + Alt + Shift + B to bring up the Black and White adjustment tool and apply the following settings on the duplicted layer:

The effect will now look like this:

OK that’s it for this tutorial! The rest is left upon your own creativity, you can add some more texture, adjust colour balance, etc. Totally up to you :)

Below is my final result for this tutorial: (I added a background texture and further adjusted the colour balance)

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy this tutorial and find it useful and inspirational!

As usual, if you have any question, just leave me a comment below.

Thanks very much and have a nice day!