In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this cool Abstract Artwork via Custom Brushsets and Particle Effect in Photoshop. I will demonstrate how you can create your own brushset and use them to add particle effect to the image to spice it up. Have a try!

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

Alternative Light Version:

PSD File Download

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OK let’s get started!

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

Girl

Some Grunge Brushes

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1200px * 800px, fill the background with a light grey colour, and some random lighting and grungy texture on it as shown below:

Load the “girl” stock image into Photoshop, cut out the girl from the rest of the image, place her to the lower left side of the canvas:

To bring out some light on the girl image, add the folloing two adjustment layers onto it (make sure to tick the “use previous layer as clipping mask” option when adding them)

Levels

Curves

and here is the effect so far:

Step 2

Now create new layer, and random paint some abstract textures around the girl:

Now apply a layer mask on this abstract painting layer. On the layer mask, use a mixture of grungy, halftone, and hard circle brush, as shown below:

Now let’s add some light strips. Create a new layer and grab a soft round brush, do a single click on the top edge of the canvas:

Compress it down as shown below:

Rotate this light strip as shown below:

Duplicate this light strip layer a few times, scatter them around the girl for more effect:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 3

I decided to turn this image into a darker version (just my personal taste), so I went ahead and add the following two adjustment layers on top of all previous layers:

Levels

Add the following layer mask on the Levels adjustment layer: (as you can see, I apply some light grungy texture, plus some hard circle brush on where the girl is)

Curves

Layer Mask on the Curves adjustment layer:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 4

Now we can practice some Pen Tool techniques. Create a new layer and draw a work path as shown below:

Right-click on the path and choose “Stroke Path” with a 9px hard circle brush:

Make sure you tick the “Simulate Pressure” setting:

Now you will have a curvy line, you can use free transform to distort, rotate it for more variety:

In the mean time, you can try a softer and bigger brush for stroking the path, also scatter the duplicated curvy lines around for more effect:

Step 5

Now let’s make a custom brush for adding some little particle effect. Create a new file called “brush” (size 200px * 200px) and use a the Pen Tool to draw a shape like this:

Right-click on the shape and choose “Fill Path …”:

Fill it with black colour:

Now make the background layer transparent: (after you fill the shape with black colour)

Now go to “Edit > Define Brush Preset…”:

Save this brushset, then bring up the brush presets (F5) and apply the following settings:

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Other Dynamics

Tick the Airbrush, Smoothing, Protect Texture options. Then try and do some random painting on the canvas (create a new layer first) and test out the effect:

Combine the Free Transform tool, distort, rotate and warp the particles for extra effects:

Apply the particles random on the canvas as shown below: (you can also adjust the brush size, flow and opacity as you go)

Step 6

OK let’s do some final tune-ups. I flattened the image and duplicated the background layer, apply the following Smart Sharpen filter on the duplicated layer:

Color Balance

Layer Mask on the Color Balance Adjustment Layer:

Levels

and here is the effect you’ll have:

The main part of the tutorial concludes here, however you can still experiment different colour balance settings, filter effect and so on:

a light version:

OK that’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful and inspirational. If you have any question, drop a comment below and I will try my best to help you out.

Cheers and have a nice day!

Hi there, welcome to the 1st volume of the “Inspirational and Creative Web Links From PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page” series! In this post, I hand-picked 15 Inspirational and Creative Web Links From PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page, out of hundreds of links I collected in the past few months.

Due to time limitation I can only select 15 best, and most popular links from the fanpage. So if you wish to get more, simply join the PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page now. Fresh Photoshop and design links are added every day.

For your convenience, I have put those links into three categories: Photoshop tutorials, Design inspirations and other Photoshop resources.

Here goes the list, hope you enjoy them and find them useful.

Photoshop Tutorials

Create a Realistic Landscape from Scratch with a Graphic Tablet

Combine 3D Shapes and Vectors for a Dynamic Composition

Sci-fi Environment Concept

Create a Dark Steampunk Digital Painting

How To Create A Grungy And “Sticky” Icon With Photoshop

Design Inspirations

Spectacular Photos of Crepuscular Rays

90 Creative Advertisements You Will Listen To

High Speed Photography : Frozen in Time

Examples of Amazing Animal PhotoManipulation

50 Beautiful Print Advertisements for Inspiration

Other Photoshop Resources

100+ Photography Enhancing Photoshop Actions

45 breathtakingly realistic CG Portraits of women + Tutorials

40 Best Photoshop Tutorials for Creating Fantasy Scenes

40 Outstanding Photo Manipulation Tutorials

30+ Free High Quality Gadget PSD Files

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy this collection and find those links useful. Cheers and have a great day!

Personally speaking, I love vintage textures – although we’re living in a high-tech society where everything is shining and glossy, sometimes we need a bit of old, ancient feeling to get a balance and taste the history. Not to mention if you’re working on a design project requiring the vintage touches, you will find those textures and Photoshop brushes extremely useful.

In this post, I will share my collection of 100+ Great Vintage Textures and Photoshop Brushsets to Decorate Your Design. Hopefully they will be of use to you and expand your own vintage collection.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

Textures

Pretty Things – icon texture 1 by ~manila-craze

Vintage III Texture Pack by =cloaks

vintage texture 1 by ~H-D-STOCK

15 textures: art + vintage by =jocosity

vintage diamonds by *DyingBeautyStock

Textures02 – Vintage Floral by ~crazymegan

Vintage Textures Pk1 by =inspyretash-stock

Cracked Wallpaper by ~AboveVintage

Vintage Grunge Texture Pack by =powerpuffjazz

Vintage Musk by ~AsunderStock

Photoshop Brushes

Old Postage Stamp Brushes

vintage grunge brushes by ~alex16

Vintage Images + Ephmera by ~akw04

11 brushes of vintage Harley-Davidson’s

1940 Cosmopolitan Brushes

Vintage Fractal Grunge Brushes by ~WebTreatsETC

Vintage Paper Brushes by ~fiftyfivepixels

Vintage Toys Photoshop Brushes by ~FidgetResources

Vintage Clocks-PS Brushes by ~fiftyfivepixels

Wanted Poster

Old Paper Brushes V by ~lailomeiel

That’s it for this post! Hopefully you will find those textures and brushes useful for your vintage design.

Until next time, have a great day!

When you first started with Photoshop, you might be overwhelmed by the amount of features and functionalities built for various graphic design tasks and basically don’t know where to begin. So what can we do to overcome this initial difficulty? Just like learning every other thing in life, we start with the easiest part.

In this post, I will provide 5 Simple, Yet Useful Photoshop “How-to”s for Absolute Beginners. Take a look and hopefully you will see after all, Photoshop is not that hard to start with!

Before we start, please note that this tutorial is made in Windows with Adobe Photoshop CS3 and CS4, options may vary in version and OS platform.

How to Draw a Perfect Circle/Square

This might be the first question every beginner would ask. So let’s take a look at the toolbox and find the set of drawing tools as shown below: (to expand, left-click on the rectangular tool and hold)

and You can use those tools to draw rectangule or oval shapes, as shown below:

Now here is the trick: if you would like to draw a PERFECT circle or a square, you must hold down the Shift Key while dragging your mouse:

How to Adjust Brush Opacity and Flow

This is an interest topic – it may seem to be really simple, but the amount of emails and comments I received in regards to this question made me think to include it here.

The options are in fact quite easy to find – if you select the brush tool first, on the option bar above you will the opacity and flow adjustment right there, as shown below:

How to Load Custom Brushsets into Photoshop

These days there are many free Photoshop brushsets you can download from the net, but how to load those beautiful brushset into Photoshop? Here are the steps:

Click on the Brush Tool in the toolbox and click on the drop down arrow next to the brush shape symbol, as shown below”

Next, click on the right arrow on the right hand side of the brush pallette:

You will see a list of options appearing, select the “Load Brushes” option from the list:

and a window will pop up, choose the brushset from the folder and click on “load”:

and that’s it! You will see the newly loaded brushsets in the brush panel:

How to Draw Paths with Pen Tool

Pen Tool can be use to create paths – however, it’s not enabled by default. If you select Pen Tool and straight away to use it, you will see Shapes instead of Paths, as shown below:

So to change it to Path, follow the steps below:

Click onthe Pen Tool in the toolbox and you will a bunch of options appearing on the top bar, click on the second symbol as shown below to change it to Paths:

and that’s it, you can now draw pure paths on your canvas as shown below:

How to Quickly Create Guides in Photoshop

Personally I think this is a rather important and useful function in Photoshop. When you design interfaces (eg. website mockups), you will need to create a sets of guides to ensure precision. But exactly how do we do this?

Here are the steps:

Firstly, if you haven’t turn the Ruler option on, Press Ctrl + R to turn it on, you will see the rulers appearing on top and right of the canvas:

Now if you move your mouse over on the ruler, then left-click and drag, you will see the guides appears on the canvas, as shown below:

and if you would like to clear the guides, simply go to View > Clear Guides

One extra tip with guides: if you right-click on the ruler, you will see a list of options to change the measurements, as shown below:

That’s it for this post! Hope you find it helpful and if you have any further question, just drop me a comment below and I will try my best to assist.

Cheers and have a great day!

I love space artworks – mainly because there is alway certain degree of mystery in them. After all, that’s a place far beyond our reach and most of us will never get to experience the real space.

Photoshop, on the other hand, give us the freedom to put our imagination into some sort of “reality”. By using Photoshop, we’re able to transform our thoughts about how space would look into digital artworks. And also we can combine different types of space element into our design and create surreal, fantasy effect with them.

In this post, I put in 100+ Brilliant Space Photoshop Brushes to Beautify Your Design + 6 Amazing Space Artworks to Inspire You as a designer. Hopefully you will find them useful and give you some inspiration towards your design.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

Photoshop Brushes

Deep Space by ~Scully7491

Starfield Brush Set by ~gvalkyrie

S.P.A.C.E. Photoshop Brushes by ~JaneDoeStock

Star Brushes by =DemosthenesVoice

planetrenderspack-2 by ~ocd1c-stock

Rabies Star Brushset by ~Rabieshund

Lost In Space Brushes – PS7+ by ~KeepWaiting

Starfield brush set by ~Sakura222-stock

Star Brushes 3 by *LadyVictoire

Moon Brushes by hawksmont Universe

Spacy 2 by ~Scully7491

Awesome Space Digital Artworks to Inspire You

That’s for this post! Hope you enjoy it and found it useful and inspirational!

Until next time, have a great day!

In this post, I will share with you 25 really cool, high-res abstract style Photoshop brush sets I have in my bookmarks for your next design project. Hope you like them and find them useful :)

Personally I love those abstract style brushset because I found them quite useful when you want to add a bit of finishing touches to spice up the image. Mixing them with colors and filters, you can produce very nice effects for your image.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

Xtreme Set by ~JavierZhX

Dreamy Fantasies 2 by *TreehouseCharms

Crystalline Brush

Abstract Brushes by ~Metal-CX

Wicked Abstract III by ~Graphix-Networks

Starry Grunge by ~Rhyme2k

Fractal Chaos by ~JavierZhX

Ardcor’s Rings

N-Q Abstract Brush Set 2 by ~N-Q

Dawn Brushes by ~differentxdreamz

Debris Brush

Dreamy Fantasies 1 by *TreehouseCharms

Lionheart Abstract Brush Pack by *Bleekster

Abstract Smudge Brushes by *FortuneGfx

Silky Lights

ZIAs Smooth Abstract

Abstract Brushset XV

Enigma Brushes

Raging Dawn Brushes

Abstract Brushes Vol 8

Abstract Brushes by ~kRAKOGRAFF

Rise Brushes

Comet Brushes

Euphoria Brushes

Burning Soul

That’s it! Hope you enjoy this collection and find it useful!

Until next time, have a great day and Merry Christmas!!

Silky Lights

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In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this really great-looking, abstract style text effect by using custom brushset (which we will be making one of our own) with dynamics, plus adding artistic effect with Photoshop filters. Have a try!

This is an intermediate level tutorial so some steps can be a bit tricky :)

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

PSD File Download

You can download the PSD File for this tutorial via the VIP Members Area for only $4.95/Month (or less)! You will not only get this PSD File, but also 40+ 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!

Step 1

Create a new document sized  1400px * 650px, fill the background layer with the following gradients:

Step 2

Create a new layer on top of the background called “light top”, grab a big soft round brush with a white color, do a single click on the top centre region of the canvas:

Create another create called “light bottom” and use a similar brush as mentioned above, do a single click on the centre of the canvas, resize and perspective it with free transform tool (Ctrl + T) to produce more depth for it:

Here is the effect so far:

Step 3

Type some texts on top of all previous layers we created. You can use any font you like but I preferred a big, bold font (download it here):

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

Drop Shadow

Bevel and Emboss

Gradient Overlay

Stroke

Here is the effect so far:

Optional: to add a bit more depth to the text, make a duplicate this text layer, drop the opacity of the duplicated layer to around 20% and move it to the left of the original text layer a bit:

Step 4

Now let’s start make a simple brushset. Create a new document with a size of 200px * 200px, leave the background layer as white, and grab the polygon tool and draw a shape as shown below (use the distort option from the free-transform tool to adjust the shape):

The Polygon Tool:

Polygon Tool Settings:

Draw the shape:

Tip: use the trim tool to get rid of the extra height and width of the canvas.

Important: after drawing the shape, make sure you rastersize this shape layer. and make the background layer tranparent.

Once you finish the aboves, go to Edit > DefineBrush Preset:

In the box popped up, type a name for this brushset and hit “OK”, you will see the newly created brush appearing in the brush list:

Step 5

Select this newly created brush, apply the following brush dynamics to it:

Shape dynamics

Scattering

And tick the “Airbrushing” and “Smoothing” options.

Create a new layer underneath the orginal text layer, draw some random patterns as shown below with this dynamic brush, as shown below: (try adjusting the brush size)

Step 6

Now let’s spice up the effect a bit by adding some cloud over the text. So create a new layer called  “cloud”, render some cloud inside it with the cloud filter (set foreground color to a dark grey, and black background colour).

Before you render the cloud, you have to make a selection with the Lasso Tool around the text (with around 20px feather settting), then render the cloud inside the seletion.

You will have the following effect:

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

You can also duplicate, resize this cloud layer and move those duplicated layer around for more effects, as show below:

Resize

Duplicate

Step 7

To produce even more depth for the text, here is a quick way to do it: create a new layer just above the original text layer, set the blending mode of this layer to “Vivid Light”, grab a soft brush to paint some color onto it:

Add a black and white adjustment layer on top of all layers, adjust the settings accordingly, until you see there is a shadow appearing on the bottom of the text:

Here is the effect you’re aiming to achieve: (you can see now because we have a shadow under the text, the overall effect looks deeper and more attractive)

Add another color layer on top of the black and white adjustment layer, set the blending mode to “color” and paint some color on it, you will have the following effect:

Step 8

Now we’re on the best part of this tut – apply the filter effects! Firstly we flatten the image, then duplicate the background layer once and apply the following Reduce Noise filter to the duplicated layer:

and you will see the text look much clearer and the overall image looks sharper:

Duplicate this sharpened layer once, and apply the following motion blur settings to it:

You will have the following effect:

Change the blending mode of this motion blur layer to “Hard Light” and erase the portion shown blow with a big soft brush (we don’t want the whole text to be blurred)

Step 9

Go back to the sharpened text layer and make another duplication of it, drag it to the top and apply the reticulation filter to it (Filter > Sketch > Reticulation):

You will see the following effect:

Change the blending mode to “color dodge” and erase the edge of the layer off, you will have the following effect:

Optional: go to site5 such as qbrushes.net and find some grungy brushsets, and create a new layer with the blending mode set to “overlay”, paint on it with your choice of grungy brush.

Here is my effect so far:

Step 10

We’re almost done! To add some final touches, we can create a new layer on top of all other layers, render some cloud inside it and set the blending mode to “soft light”, you will have the following effect:

I also added a colour balance adjustment layer on top of all layer to finish the effect off:

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

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! Just one last word: always try out different layer blending modes and see what effect that bring you! Sometimes you will be surprised to see some real cool effects :)

I hope you enjoy it and find it useful and inspirational!

Until next time, have a nice day!

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

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

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

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

Before

After

PSD File for this Tutorial

You can have this PSD File for only $2.00 via Paypal! Click the link below and you will be taken to the Paypal checkout page, after payment you will be redirect to the download page automatically.

Ok Let’s get started!

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

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

Remove Black Spots with Spot Healing Brush

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make Your Eyes Look More Obvious

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

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

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

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

Use Surface Blur to Smooth Skin, instead of Gaussian Blur

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

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

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

Make Her Lips Look Even More Delicious

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

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

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

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

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

Add Colour Depth and Lighting Contrast to Hair

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

Add the following layer mask to the Curves adjustment layer:

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

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

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

Cheers and have a nice day!

Find out how to make great wall posters and ship them to family and friends.

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

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

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

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

Alternative Version:

PSD File Download

You can download the PSD File for this tutorial via the VIP Members Area for only $4.95/Month (or less)! You will not only get this PSD File, but also 40+ 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:

Rainbow Girl

Step 1

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

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

Name this layer as “girl”.

Step 2

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

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

Spot Healing Brush Tool

Healing Brush Tool

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

Here is my effect after the clean up:

Step 3

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

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

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

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

Step 4

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

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

Curves

Brightness and Contrast

And here is the effect so far:

Step 5

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

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

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

And here is the effect after you stroke the path:

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

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

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

Step 6

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

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Tick “Smoothing” option.

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

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

Step 7

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

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

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

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

And here is the effect so far:

Step 8

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

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

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

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

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

Step 9

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

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

And here is the effect so far:

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

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

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

Further Reading

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

An Introduction to Photoshop Brush Engine

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

Cheers and have a nice day!

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

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

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

Have a try :)

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

PSD File Download

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Ok let’s get started!

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

Grass Texture

Cloud Brushset

Step 1

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

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

So grab those brushes as shown below:

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

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

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

Step 2

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

Curves

Colour Balance

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

And here is the effect I have after the painting:

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

Step 3

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

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

Apply the Smart Sharpen Filter on the grass texture layer:

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

Levels

Vibrance

Curves

And here is the effect so far:

Step 4

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

Apply the following blending optiono to this text layer:

General Blending

Drop Shadow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

And here is the effect after apply those blending options:

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

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

Step 5

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

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

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

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

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

Vibrance

Curves

And here is the effect so far:

Step 6

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

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

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

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

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

In this tutorial, I will show you the design processes I used to make this Rather Interesting, Wavy and Curving Abstract Shape Effect in Photoshop.

I was just playing around with the Photoshop the other day and discovered this funny effect by accident, thought it looks good and perhaps can be added to some of the photo effect you’re creating, or use it as some sorts of website background.

Along the way, we will be using the brush tool, filter effects, layer blending and some image adjustments. The steps of this tutorial is extremely simple and will be suitable for a PS beginner. Have a try!

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

PSD File Download

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

Crack Brushset

OK let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000px * 600px, fill the background layer with black colour. Create a new layer on top of the background and called it “light”, grab a 600px soft round brush with white colour, do a single click on the position shown below:

Then Hit Ctrl + T and free-transform this light layer as shown below:

Reduce the layer opacity of this light layer to around 85%, you will have the following effect:

Step 2

Drag this “light” layer to the centre of our canvas, then go to Filter > Distort > Twirl and apply the following settings:

And you will the following effect:

Duplicate this layer a few times, try using the free-transform tool on different layers to create depth and shape variations. Here is the effect I can after the duplication and free-transformation:

To bring out more lighting contrast, I added the following Curves adjustment layer on top of all previous duplicated layers:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 3

I then decided to have a try and see if I add some cloud to those shape, what effect that can bring me. So I create a new layer called “Cloud”, use the Lasso Tool with a 25px feather to draw a selection, then go to Filter > Render > Cloud and render the cloud as shown below:

Change the blending mode of this cloud layer to “Soft Light” and you will have the following effect:

Download a copy of this crack brushset and create a new layer called “crack” on top of all layers, change its blending mode to “Overlay”, grab any crack brush from the set and paint on it.

You will have this effect (or similar) so far:

Step 4

Now let’s add some colours to those shapes we created. To do so, simply create a new layer on top of all previous layers, change the new layer’s blending mode to “soft light”, and grab a big soft brush with some colour and paint on it:

To add a bit of extra lighting depth to the image, I simply duplicate the original “cloud” layer and drag the duplicated layer to the top, change its blending mode to “Vivid Light”, and apply the following motion blur settings to it:

Duplicate this motion blur layer a few times and drag each duplicated layer to different position of the canvas. You will have the following effect:

To touch up the image, I finally added this following curves adjustment layer:

with the following mask attached to it:

And this is the final effect I have for this tutorial: (Click to enlarge)

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

In this tutorial, I will show you the method I use to design a simple, yet elegant abstract spectrum lines in Photoshop. You will see how easy it is to achieve this nice effect and you can use it a wide range of occasions including perhaps site header backgrounds, logos, or add extra flavor to your photo manipulations.

This tutorial is suitable for beginners and I included the ways of creating new brush presets and also the use of Pen Tool. You will ample opportunities to practive layer blending, filters and Free Transform Tools. Have a try!

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

PSD File Download

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Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create  a new document with black background, for size I chose 980px * 400px however you can change this according to your own preference. Use 72 pixel/inch for resolution since we’re creating an image used for website.

Now let’s make a new brush preset. To do this, firstly select the brush tool with the following brush:

Then apply the following brush dynamics to it:

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Other Dynamics

Make sure you also select the Airbrush and Smoothing option.

After finishing making this brush, let’s save it as a new brush preset so that we can use it in the future too. To do this, left-click the down tri-angle on the top right and click “new brush preset”:

And Enter the following into the window popup:

Then you will see the brush preset appear in the brush selection window:

Step 2

Create a new layer call “lines”, grab the Pen Tool and draw the following working path:

Hint: hold down Shift key and drag your mouse upwards approximately 45 degree for both archor points.

Then right-click and select the option “Stroke Path”:

Then choose the option “brush” and tick the “Simulate Pressure”:

And you will have the following effect:

Step 3

Still on this “lines” layer, go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and apply the following settings:

Then hit Ctrl + F and apply the motion blur filter again, and you will have the following effect:

Apply the following Gradient Overlay blending option to this layer:

Then duplicate this layer 4 times and merge the duplicated layer together, you will have the following effect:

Rename this layer as “lines” after the merge.

Step 4

Again we duplicate the “lines” layers 3 times, and you will see the colour of the the spectrum become clearer:

Then we merge those duplicated layer together, then use the Free Transform tool to resize it into the following:

Then we can use the Warp Tool (Ctrl + T and right-click select “Warp”), transform it into the following shape:

And here is the effect after warping:

Step 5

Now we can really just use our imagination and simply duplicate this “lines” layer a few times, rotate and resize each duplicated layer until the outcome is desirable:

Here is my effect so far:

Merge the duplicate layer together.

We can also add a bit of glowing effect to the spectrum lines. To do this, simple duplicate the merged layer and apply the following Gaussian Blur settings: (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur)

Change the blending mode the duplicated layer to “Linear light” and you will have the following effect:

To add some final touches, remember we created a new brush preset in Step 1? We can use it to add some nice dots on the abstract line.

Create a new layer called “dots” on top of all other layers, grab that brush preset and simply paint over the lines:

Then Change the layer blending mode to “Overlay” and you will have the following effect:

Duplicate this “dots” layer and change the blending mode of the duplicated layer back to “normal”, then reduce its opacity to 15% and erase some excessive parts.

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 a bit of cloudy effect and sharpen the image )

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

Cheers and have a nice day!

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

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Let’s get started!

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

Font

Dry Soil

Floral Brushes

Cloud Brushes

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!

In this tutorial, I will show you an interesting technique I use to produce realistic break-apart/disintegration effect in Photoshop by using debris brushes, with a watercolour background attached. There are many tutorials on the web showing techniques about break-aparts but, it never hurts to learn more :)

It will be a bit boring if the whole tut is just to break something apart, so I also combined a bit of photo retouch techniques along side and hopefully they can be useful to you as well. Together we will be using layer blending options, masking, the pen tool, adjustment layers and of course, brushsets. Have a try!

Here is a preview of the final effect:

Alternative version:

OK let’s get started!

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

Female stock

Debris Brush

Watercolor Brush

Step 1

Create a new document sized 3100px * 3600px with White background. Open the “Female Stock” image in Photoshop, use Pen Tool (or whatever selection method you prefer) to make a working path around the model:

If you chose to use Pen Tool, make sure to make a selection after you close the path (by right-click inside the path with Pen Tool selected):

After clicking “Make Selection …”, keep the Feather radius to 0px and tick the “Anti-aliased” checkbox as shown below:

If your selection isn’t perfact, you can hit Ctrl + Alt + R and bring up the refine edge option and apply the following settings:

Then copy and paste the selection on our document and name this newly-created layer as “model”, resize and position it as shown below:

Step 2

Duplicate the “model” layer twice. Then on the first duplicated layer, change the blending option to “linear burn”:

Add a vector mask and grab a soft round brush, gently erase the portion as shown below:

This is the effect after apply the layer mask, you can see the dask parts are now gone:

Then on the second duplicated layer, change its blending mode to “Screen”, then also grab a soft round brush and apply the following mask onto it:

Here is the effect so far:

Step 3

I decided to add some black and white adjustment to the model however preserve the yellow and orange parts of the image.

So we can go to Layer > New adjustment Layer > Black and White and apply the followng options:

On the mask of this adjustment layer, use the Eraser tool with a soft brush to erase the following part of the image:

I also feel like to preserve the lip colour for the model, so I used the Eraser Tool (with a opacity of 40%) to gently erase the lip part on the mask of this adjustment layer:

And you will have the following effect:

We can adjust the lighting contrast a bit for the model. So go to Layer > New adjustment layer > Curves and apply the following settings:

And here is the effect so far:

Step 4

Now we’re on the break-apart bit of the tutorial! Firstly load the “Debris Brush” into Photoshop, then create a new layer called “break apart” on top of all other layers:

Grab one of the brush in the “Debris Brush” set, use a colour match the background colour (in this case it’s white), then use the lasso tool with 100px feather to draw a selection in the area you would like to break apart, simply paint over it:

Duplicate this “break apart” layer, hit Ctrl + I and invert the colour on the duplicated layer:

Add a layer mask on the duplicated layer, this time use the Eraser tool with the Debris Brush, eraser the area and reduce the density of the black part:

Also use the Warp Tool (Ctrl + T and right-click choose Warp) to add a bit of motion:

Also tidy up the bits and pieces arund the hair with a soft eraser:

Here is the effect I have after apply the above steps:

Step 5

Now we can use the watercolour brush to add some background for this image. Create a new layer just above the background layer, load the “Watercolor Brush” into Photoshop and simply paint over it (great chance to use your creativity!)

Here is what I have after the painting:

We can futher add some colour onto our image. To do this, simple create a new layer on top of all other layers, set its blending option to “overlay”, use a big soft brush and paint over it.

Here is my effect so far:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! You can of course add some of your own texture or filter effect and see what the end results are!

Here is my final image for this tutorial: (I slightly adjusted the colour balance and curves ) – Click to enlarge:

Alternative version:

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!

In this tutorial, I will show you the processes I used to design a really cool, abstract style flaming bird in Photoshop. This bird is created purely based on brush and filter effects in Photoshop, without the use of any third party images!

Along the way, we will learn how to load customized brushes, the use the various filters effect and image adjustments tools. Some techniques used in the tutorial could be a bit tricky. Have a try and see how your image turns out :)

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

An alternative version with shining effect:

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document in Photoshop with a size of your choice. I chose 1200  x 800 px because that’s size fit my monitor the best.

Firstly we tackle the bird’s wing. We need a customized brush to draw the fundation of the wing. Donwload a copy of this brushset from qbrushes.com and load it into Photoshop. If you’re a beginner in Photoshop and not sure how to do so, here is a handy tutorial showing how to load brushes into Photoshop.

Fill the background layer with Black Colour and create a new layer called “wing”. Use the following brush and make a single click on the “wing” layer:

Step 2

Still on “wing” layer, go to Filter > Distort > Twirl and apply the following settings:

Then go to Filter > Distort > Shear and apply the following settings:

The image will now look like this:

Step 3

Still on “layer”, hit Ctrl + T and bring the free transform tool, right-click and choose “Warp”. Transform the image as shown below:

This step requires a bit of practice and patience if you’re new to Photoshop. If you’re not successful for the first time, don’t give up :)

After warping the image, go to Filter > Liquidify and use a small brush to apply a few liquidify effect around the edge of the wing to make it more realistic:

Step 4

Duplicate the “wing” layer once. On the duplicate layer, go to Filter > Distort > Ripple and apply the following settings:

Apply this filter a couple of times, then change the layer blending option to “Exclusion”. The effect so far will look like this:

Step 5

Create a new layer called “cloud” on top of all other layers. Go back to the original “wing” layer and load its selection by holding down your Ctrl key and left-click on the thumbnail of the text layer in the layer palette.

Expand the selection by 15px and set a 20px feather to it, your selection will now look like this:

Set the foreground colour to white and background colour to black,  load the selection of the orginal “wing” layer, render some cloud inside it by going to Filter > Render > Cloud.

Then go to Filter > Render > Difference Cloud and render difference cloud. You image will look similar to this:

Change the layer blending option of this layer to “Color Dodge” and you will have the following effect:

Step 6

To add a bit of motion into the image, we can duplicate the original wing layer once more and put the duplicated layer just above it, go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and apply the following settings:

This is the effect after apply motion blur:

Step 7

To add a bit colour and ligthing contrast to the image, we can again duplicate the original “wing” layer, and apply the following Black and White adjustments to the duplicated layer:

After apply the Black and White adjustments, hit Ctrl + J and duplicate this layer about 5 times (This will add more contrast to the image).

The effect will now look like this:

Step 8

Now we can simply group all previous layers together, duplicate the group and flip the duplicated group honrizontally.

The effect is shown as below: (I also adjusted the angle a bit)

Then I again duplicate the group layer twice more, resize them in the middle and this formed the below image of the fire bird:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! I further adjusted a colour and curve of the image a bit and here is the final image: (click to enlarge)

An alternative version with shining effect:

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!

In this post, I will introduce a list of 10 highly useful, must-read articles for Photoshop Beginners, which I think will be a great help to those who just started Photoshoping. If you’re an advanced designer, you may still find those articles useful just by revising them and find more design inspirations.

I remembered when I first started playing Photoshop back in the old days, it was really difficult for me to find info such as tutorial, inspiration and resources, especially for beginners who don’t have much experience in it. That’s why I did this little roundup for you and hopefully that will benefit you right at the beginning of your design career :) Well, those articles helped me a lot, at least!

Ok enough talk, here goes the list:

35 Basic Tutorials to Get You Started with Photoshop

18 Exceptionally Useful Photoshop Shortcuts

12 Common Photoshop Mistakes and Malpractice

Simple and Effective Photographic Results for Beginners

Top 50 Free Photoshop Brushes Resource Sites

Top 25 Free Stock Image Resource Sites

101+ Places To Get Design Inspiration

40 Promotional Sites Where To Submit Your Design Related Links

60 Most Wanted Photoshop Tutorials, Brushes, .PSDs and Resources

20 of the best Free Photoshop Plugins and Filters

I hope you will those articles helpful! Let me know what you think of them.

Thank you very much and have a nice day :)

In this tutorial, I will show you the processes I took to draw a realistic planet by applying waterstream texture in Photoshop. I’m sure you have seen heaps of planet drawing tutorials around, but you can still use this tutorial as a supplement to others :)

Along the way, we will be going through the use gradient tool, clipping mask, image adjustment tools, various filters and some selection techniques.

Here is a preview of the final images for this tutorial:

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 800px * 800px, fill the background with Black Colour.

Create a new layer called “planet”, use the Elliptical Marquee Tool (M Key) to draw a circle. (Hold Down Shift Key while dragging the mouse to draw a perfect circle)

See image below for the position of the circle:

Step 2

Still on the “planet” layer, DO NOT deselect the selection, Use the Gradient Tool (G Key) andset the foreground colour to “#ffffff” and the background colour to “#282828″.

Fill the selection as shown below:

For more lighting contrast, use the Curve Image Adjustment Tool with the setting similar to this: (the setting maybe slightly different for each person, but the general idea is to increase the light from the top right corner)

Here is the effect you will want to achieve after the Curve Adjustment:

Step 3

Now we will apply some waterstream texture for our planet . Downloaded a copy of this image and load it into Photoshop, select the following portion of this image:

Copy and paste the selection to our document, resize it to the roughly size of the planet:

Name this layer as “water texture” and right-click the layer, select “create clipping mask”. Change the blending mode to “Overlay”.

Here is the effect so far:

Step 4

On the “water texture” layer, apply the following Black and White Adjustment Settings:

Then duplicate the “water texture” layer, go to Filter > Distort > Ocean Ripple and apply the following settings:

go to Filter > Distort > Glass and apply the following setting:

go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and apply the following settings:

Here is the effect after applying those filters:

Step 5

Create a New layer on top of the “water texture copy” layer and name it “cloud”. User the Elliptical Selection Tool with a 50px feather, draw a circle around the planet:

Go to Filter > Render > Cloud and render some cloud:

Step 6

Still on the “cloud” layer, apply the following Curve Adjustments:

Then apply the following Level Adjustment Settings:

Then Change the layer blending option to “overlay” with an opacity of 70%. Your image will now look like this:

Step 7

We will now add some motions to the cloud. Duplicate the “cloud” layer once, then go to Filter > Distort > Pinch and apply the following settings on the duplicated layer:

After pinching the cloud, apply the following level adjustments:

And your should have the following effect:

Step 8

Now we go back to the “Cloud”, grab a big soft brush and reduce to opacity and flow to 30%, choose a colour you like and simply brush over the layer:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! The rest is left upon you own creativity. You can add some lighting effect and render some lens flare to create more dynamic light.

Below is my final image for this tutorial:

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

Cheers and have a nice day!

In this tutorial, I am going to show you the steps I took to create this awesome starry text effect in Photoshop. The inspiration of this text effect comes from the EA game “Dead Space”.

Together we will practice some brush techniques, layer blending options, selection techniques and applying various filter effects.

Below is a previous of the final result:

All right let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000×400px, you can adjust this ratio to suit your computer screen. Fill the Background layer with Black.

Choose a font you like, I use this font from dafont.com. Type some texts onto the document and position the text as below:

Name this layer as “Text”.

Step 2

On the “Text” layer, apply the following layer blending options:

Inner Shadow

Outer Glow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Gradient Overlay

Stroke

This effect so far will look like this:

Step 3

Ok here comes the tricky bit :)

Use Ctrl +  Left Mouse Click the select the text, then create a new layer on top of the “Text” Layer and call this layer “Star”. Fill the “Star” layer with Black colour and position it according to the image below:

Keep the selection alive and go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and apply the following settings:

Optional: if you feel there is way too many star/noise, hit Ctrl + L to bring up the Level Adjustment Tool and apply the following settings:

When you finish everything with the “Star Layer”, change the layer blending option to “Soft Light” and you will have the following image:

Step 4

Create a new layer and name it “Star 2″, grab a 9px round soft brush and apply the following brush settings:

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Texture

Dual Brush

After applying the brush settings, use it to paint gently over the text (see below image):

Step 5

Now we’re gonna add some nebula effect on the text.

To do this, create a new layer and name it “Nebula”, use the Lasso Tool with a 20px feather, select the surrounding area of the text (Tip: you can hold down the “Shift” Key while selecting and this will add to your existing selection)

Fill the selection with black colour. Go to Filter > Render > Cloud (choose white as foreground colour and black as background colour) and render some cloud.

Then hit Ctrl + L to bring up the level tool again, apply the following settings:

Drag the “Nebula” layer below all previous layers (but above the background layer) and set its fill opacity to around 80%.

The effect so far looks like:

That’s it for this tutorial! The rest is left upon your own creativity! You can add some more textures in, or create another layer with some colour over it. That’s totally up to you!

Below is my final image for this tutorial:

Hope you enjoy this tutorial and as usual, if you have any question, feel free to drop me a line!

Cheers and have a nice day!

In this tutorial, I will show you the processes I used to make a shining, colourful Computer Case in Photoshop. You can apply the same technique to pretty much any object you like.

We will explore the use of various tools such as dodge/burn tools, brush tool, image transform tool, blur filters and more.

A lot of my friends are computer fanatics and they love putting all sort of fancy gadgets on their computer to make it look cool. Sometimes I saw they have some shinning fans or heat-sinkers lighting up from inside the PC Case – that’s where I got the inspiration from for this tutorial!

Below is a preview of the final image:

Let’s get started and light up your PC case – In Photoshop :)

Step 1

Find an computer case image on the web or take a photo of your own computer case. I used the image below for this tutorial, you can use it if you like:

Step 2

Create a new document, size doesn’t really matter, i chose 800×600px. Press Shift + F5 to fill the background layer with black colour.

Load the case image you just downloaded into Photoshop and outline the case (using any selection tool you feel comfortable with, but I would suggest you do some practice with the Pen tool), then copy and paste it onto the newly created document, name the layer as “case”

Step 3

Use the sponge tool to kill some colour and lighting, because this way it’s easy to add some of colour of our own later on. Detailed setting see below:

After that, you a big circle brush with overlay mode enable, set the opacity and flow to around 30 percent, gently brush the surface of the case.

Step 4

It looks a bit bored with just case standing there, so we can add some reflection for it. Firstly duplicated the “case” layer once, name it “reflection”, put it under the “case” layer, use the flip vertical tool to flip it, and apply a gradient overlay blending to it. Tip: you can hold down left mouse button to move the gradient overlay until achieving desired effect.

Detailed setting see below:

Flip image vertically

Layer Blending Mode

Gradient Overlay

Step 5

Duplicate the “case” layer twice, than apply radial blur filter on the first one, and motion blur on the second one. Apply relevant layer blending options to each of the two layers.

Detailed settings see below:

Radial blur Setting:

Radial layer blending option:

Motion blur setting:

Motion Blur layer blending option:

Step 6

Create a new layer on top of all previous layers and set its blending option to color dodge, name the layer “cloud” and render cloud using white as foreground colour and black for background colour.

Detailed Blending setting see below:

This is the effect so far, yours may not be exactly the same.

Step 7

Create a new layer called “light and colour”, set the layer blending style to colour dodge. Now use a combination of the brush tool, dodge tool, sponge tool to add some lighting and colours! This is fun part of this tutorial and there is really no limit to what type of tool you use to create the effect.

I have the following result image:

That’s it for this tutorial. As usual I left room for you to maximise your own creativity. Remember, you can always try different blending options, apply different filters on the image.

Below is a the final work of mine, I added some extra lighting and adjust the hue and colour balance a bit:

Hope you enjoy this tutorial, any commnet or feedback just drop me a line! Thanks~

Till next time, have a great day!