In this tutorial, I will show you how you can Create this Awesome Abstract Photo Effect via Layer Masking and Custom Patterns. Some steps can be a little tricky, but why not have a try!

Along the way, I will show you some interesting method of making custom, abstract style patterns by mixing hard and soft round brush, plus some lighting techniques.

Here is a preview of the final effect we will be aiming to achieve: (click to enlarge)

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You will need the following stock to complete this tutorial:

Model

Cloud Brush

Smoke Brush

Star Brush 1

Star Brush 2

OK let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 800px * 1044px, fill the background layer with black colour. Create a new layer called “background light” and use the Cloud Brush and big soft white brush, create some random light as shown below:

Load the Model image into Photoshop, cut out the model and paste it onto our document. Don’t worry if edges appear to be a bit rough – this is not important for this tutorial as we will be masking them out later on.

We will be doing a bit of retouching for this model. If you look closely, you will see some black spots on the girl’s cheek. We will remove them by using the healing brush, as shown below:

This is the effect after applying the healing brush:

Grab the Sharpen Tool from the toolbox, set strength to around 20%, apply some sharp effect onto the girl:

Hair

Lips

Step 2

We can create some abstract pattern by mixing Soft and Hard Circle round brush. As you can see, below is a big soft white brush with 0% hardness (a single-click):

Now grab the eraser tool, set the brush hardness to 100% for the round brush, do a single-click to the position shown below:

Then use the free tranform tool to warp it, distort it, whatever you like:

You can create abstract shape like this, which you can then apply to the image:

Meanwhile, you can add some shining stripes by doing the followings:

Firstly use a soft white brush to do a single-click on the top edge:

Then compress it down using the free-transform tool:

Rotate it to an angle you prefer:

By repeating the steps shown above, we can create some cool abstract patten quickly and use the to spice up the effect:

and this is the overall effect so far: (you effect may look different, as the pattern you create may be different from mine)

Step 3

Now let’s add a layer mask on the model layer, use a combination of hard, soft and smoke brush sets on it. Use your own creativity on the mask, and see what result it brings you:

and here is my effect after messing up with my layer mask:

Add a Curves adjustment layer to the top of the model layer: (make sure to tick the “use previous layer as clipping mask” option when adding them)

As you can see, by adjusting the channels on the curves adjustment layer, we can add colours to the image:

I added another levels adjsutment layer as clipping mask to increase the contrast a bit:

Mask on the levels adjustment layer:

here is the effect so far:

Step 4

Now let’s play with the lighting effect for a while. Create a new layer on top of all previous layer called “highlights” and set the blending mode to “overlay”, use a soft white brush to do a single-click to the spot shown below:

Create another light layer on top and use a big soft white brush to do a single-click on the spot shown below:

Optional: duplicate this light layer once for brighter effect:

We can add some light strips to the image. Grab a big soft brush to do a single-click on a new layer:

Then narrow it down by using the free transform tool:

and add those lights on the position shown below:

Step 5

Now let’s use the star brushes we downloaded to paint some star to the image, make sure you use a mixture of big and small stars:

(you can either create a new layer on top of all previous layer to paint star, or you can create layer below the original model layer if you want to add stars behind the model)

Also make sure you use both white and black colour to paint the star.

Once you’re done with the painting, add the following two adjustment layers on top:

Color Balance

Layer Mask on Colour Balance adjustment layer:

Vibrance

Layer Mask on Vibrance adjustment layer:

and here is the effect you will have so far:

For some final lighting touch-ups, you can use the dodge tool (set strength to around 30%) to add some highlights to the girls hair and face, as shown below: (after you flatten the image)

and here is the final effect: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this Photoshop tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful. Until next time, have a great day!

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this gloomy-looking text effect by using the amazing cloud filter in Photoshop. Have a try :)

The purpose of this tutorial is to show you the use of the cloud filter to create various effect, such as light and shadow, as a result bringing more depth to your text effect.

I personally love the cloud filter and I think it’s so versatile and you can use it to generate amazing effect and spice up your design. The trick is how you apply it and what other options do you use to combine it with (such as selection tools, other filter effects, or layer blending mode).

Here is a preview of the final effect:

Alternative darker version: (I adjust the brightness and contrast of the final effect, and some abstract texture to it)

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Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1400px * 600px (in fact size doesn’t really matter much in this tutorial), fill the background with the following gradients:

Personally I like to start with a gradient background with light grey, as it helps setting the mood for the text effect later on we will be created.

On the canvas, type a letter on the centre with a big bold font (I chose this font) as shown below:

On the text layer, apply the following blending options:

Inner Shadow

Gradient Overlay

Pattern Overlay

and you will have the following effect so far:

Step 2

Duplicate the text layer three times, disable the layer effects for those duplicated layers and put them below the original text layer. Alter the font color a bit and adjust the position of the text to the left and right of the original text layer a bit.

Your result should be looking similar to the following screenshot:

Then on each duplicated layer, add a layer mask respectively and erase a portion of the text with a soft brush on the spots as shown below:

The ulimiate goal of this step is to blend the edge of the text with the surrounding, so we can get ready for the next step.

To further increase the depth of the text, we can make a copy of any one of the duplicated text layer, replace the font color with a dark one, apply the following Gaussian Blur to the text layer: (Make sure this layer is beneath the original text layer)

You will have followin effect:

Step 3

Create a new layer on top of all previous layers called “cloud” and grab the Lasso Tool and draw a selection with 25px feather around the text, as shown below:

Go to Filter > Render > Cloud and render some cloud inside it (with white as foreground colour and dark grey as background colour)

Hint: try experimenting with different feather settings for the Lasso Tool, you will see by changing the feather, the cloud with become either thinner or thicker.

Once you finish with the rendering, resize the cloud and position it as shown below:

Duplcate the cloud layer once and position it to the lower position as shown below:

Change the blending mode of both cloud layer to “Hard Light”, you will have the following effect:

Step 4

Duplicate the cloud once more and name the duplicated layer as “shadow”, put it just above the background layer,  hit Ctrl + I to invert the colour and position it on the bottom of the text.

Change the blending mode of the shadow layer to “Normal” and opacity to 40%, you will have the following effect:

Duplicate the Cloud layer once and put it above all previous layer, rotate it to around 60 degree and apply the following motion blur setting to the duplicated layer:

Name this layer as “Light”.

Change the blending mode of  this light layer to be “overlay”, duplicate it a few times and drag them around the text, and you will have the following effect:

Step 5

OK now we can do some fine tuning to the text by adding a Curves adjustment layer to it:

and add some colour over the text by adding another layer on top of the curves adjustment layer with the “overlay” blending mode. Here is my final effect for this tutorial:

Alternative darker version: (I adjust the brightness and contrast of the final effect, and some abstract texture to it)

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! Hopefully I gave you some ideas about the cloud filter and how you can use it for creating light, shadows and adding more depth to text effect.

Till next time, 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)

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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!

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In this tutorial, I will show the processes involved in designing and creating this really cool, Geometric Shaped Typography with Grungy Background in Photoshop. This is a simple tutorial yet the effect looks awesome, have a try!

Along the way, I will also give you some tricks that you can use for creating awesome lighting and smoky effect to spice up your design.

The techniques involved in creating this typo include layer blending, filter effects, image adjustments and custom brushsets. Hope you enjoy it!

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

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OK let’s get started!

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

Font

Brushset

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1200 * 1700px, fill the background layer with black colour. Create a new layer on top of it and grab the brushset we just downloaded and paint some grungy texture as shown below:

The trick here is to set your brush flow and opacity to a reletively low level, both around 30% – 40%, and vary the brushset size when you paint. Also don’t stick with one brushset, try mixing different ones together and see what result that brings you.

If you want to skip this step, you can simply download a copy of this background texture here.

Now we want to make a space for our text and create some depth for the image. To do so, on the texture layer, add the following layer mask to it:

To adjust the lighting contrast a bit, we can add a Curves adjustment layer on top of all previous layers:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 2

Use the font we download before, type and position the text as shown below: (Use a dark gray colour as font colour)

Tips: type the texts on seperate layers, use the free transform tool (Ctrl + T) to rotate and fit them together.

Once you’re happy with the position, rasterise and merge those text layers and apply the following layer blending option to the merged layer:

Drop Shadow

Bevel and Emboss

Gradient Overlay

and you will have the following effect:

Now we’re in the fun part of this tutorial – Duplicate this merged text layer five times, and set each layer’s opacity as shown below:

Use your up and right arrow key on your keyboard, repeatly type them until each layer seperates from each other and form this effect as shown below:

Step 3

Load the selection of the last text layer (hold ctrl + left-click the thumbnail image of that text layer on the layer pallette), and apply the following refine edge settings:

Maintain the selection, create a new layer called “cloud” and render some cloud in it: (Black and White colour)

Duplicate this cloud layer three times, and drag the last text layer on top of the duplicated cloud layer, you will have the following effect:

Duplicate the cloud layer twice, and drag the two layers on top of text layer, change their blending mode to “overlay” and you will have the following effect:

Step 4

Now we can add some colours onto the image to spice it up a bit. To do this, I simply create a new layer called “colour 1″ on top of all previous layers, and grab a big soft round brush and select some colour I like to paint over it:

Change the blending mode of this layer to “overlay”.

I also want to highlight the edge of the grungy background, so I add another layer called “colour 2″ and grab a brown colour brush to paint around the edges:

Set the blending mode of this layer to “colour dodge”.

You can also highlight some part of the text, simply create another layer called “highlight” and grab a white soft round, big size brush and paint over desired area:

Change thie blending mode of this layer to “soft light”.

For final refinement, I added two adjustment layers on top of all previous layers:

Curves

Colour balance

Apply the following mask to the colour balance adjustment layer:

Overall, you will have the following effect:

Ok that’s pretty much it for this tutorial! Of course this doesn’t stop you from enhancing it and put it some your own creativity to it.

I further added some lines and apply some of this brushset around the edge of the text.

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

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

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In this tutorial, I will show you how you can utilise the amazing power of image adjustment layers to make colour, contrast and lighting change for any chosen image in Photoshop, by walking you through the design process of this man jumping scene.

The reason I put up this basic tutorial is that lately I have receive some requests from people wishing to learn some techniques involved in using adjustment layers.

Along the way, not only I will be using image adjustment layers techniques, but also I will show you some skills I use to create break-apart effects, pen tool and layer blendings. Have a try!

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

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OK let’s get started!

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

Jump

Step 1

Load the “Jump” stock image into Photoshop, double-click on the background layer inside the layer pallatte to unlock it. Then create a new layer called “bg” , fill it with black colour and put it under the background layer we just unlock.

Use whatever selection tool you perfer to clear out the surroundings, and leave just the jumping man on the canvas:

It doesn’t really matter if the selection isn’t perfect. The tutorial is not about teaching you how to make the perfect human selection (However if you do want to learn, here is a tutorial for you).

Step 2

Now let’s head straight to the image adjustment layers. You will find those options under Layer > New Adjustment Layer > … , as shown below:

In this tutorial, I will be using three adjustment layers to retouch this jumping man: colour balance, curves and brightness and contrast. In my opinion, these are probably the most frequent used adjustment layers you will be using for whatever design you’re doing.

Step 3

Let’s go ahead and apply those adjustment layers. From bottom to top,

Color Balance

Curves

Brightness and Contrast

And you will have the following effect:

You will see now the colour tone and the lightness of the image are completely changed, just by adding those three adjustment layers. And the good thing about them is that you can have more flexibility if you do want to make changes later on, because the original layer is not altered.

Also, because those adjustment layers are in fact layer, you can apply mask, or change the blending mode for them, to experience different result.

Step 4

Now I will show you a quick way I use to create this cool dis-integration effect. Firstly let’s create a custom brushset.

Select a 5px, soft round brush, and apply the following brush dynamics to it:

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

and tick Noise, Airbrush and Smoothing options.

Now load the selection of the jumping man layer by Ctrl + left click the thumbnail image of that layer, click the rectangular marquee tool, then right-click inside the selection and choose “Make work path”:

Then define the Feather as 2px, and you will have the following effect:

After you made the work path, create a new layer called “stroke” and put it just under the jumping man layer, then click on the Pen Tool icon, and right-click on the work path and choose “stroke path”:

Make sure the brushset you just created is still selected and choose “Brush” in the next window, leave “simulate pressure” option un-checked.

Change the layer blending mode of this stroke layer to be “Screen” and drop the opacity to 40%. You will now have this effect:

Step 5

To create some motion for the image, we can duplicate the “stroke” layer from the previous layer once, drag the duplicated layer to the top of the jumping man layer, and apply the following radial blur:

Change the blending mode to “Hard Light” for this duplicated layer, and duplicate it once again. You will now have this effect:

Step 6

To add some more effect to the image, we can grab this Debris brushset and create a new layer just below the “Brightness and Contrast” adjustment layer, and paint some debris on it:

And that’s pretty much it for this tutorial! I added some abstract lines stretching from his arm to make this image more vibrant. This require some basic use of the Pen Tool, if you’re interested, I have a pretty neat tutorial here showing you how to make this sort of effect.

Here is the final effect I have 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!

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In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to design this chilling and icy text effect in Photoshop. Yesterday and today are both really hot in my city (suppose to be winter right now here!!), so I though I can make something to cool myself down :)

Along the way, we will be practicing a lot of layer blending technques, applying texture, selection technique, and an interesting method to create snowy/foggy effect.  Have a try!

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

Alternative version: (click to enlarge)

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Ok let’s get started!

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

Ice Grunge Brushset

Font

Ice Package

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000px * 600px, leave the background colour as white, and let’s firstly make a background to work on.

Grab the Ice Grunge Brushset we just downloaded, paint around the edges of the background layer as shown below: (tip: set the opacity and flow of the brush to around 50%, and try to use a variety of brushes in the set so we can have a mixture of patterns)

Optionally, you can apply the Star Brushset for extra effect.

We can now add some cooling effect to the background. To do so, I added two adjustment layers to it:

Colour Balance

Brightness and Contrast

and here is the effect so far:

Step 2

Use the font we just downloaded and type some texts onto the document:

Apply the following layer blending option to this text layer:

Drop Shadow

Inner Shadow

Outer Glow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Color Overlay

Gradient Overlay

Pattern Overlay

Stroke

and you will have the following effect:

Step 3

Load any one image from the Ice Package into Photoshop (I chose the ice6_0174 image), select a distinct portion of the image use the Rectangluar Marquee Tool, copy and paste the selection onto our document, rotate it slightly as shown below:

Rename this layer as “Icy Texture right” and change its blending mode to “Screen”, use the ice brushset we download to erase the edge of this layer so only the centre part of the image remains:

Duplicate this “Icy Texture right” layer once and drag the duplicated layer to the left, rename the layer as “”Icy Texture Left”, keep the blending mode as “Screen”, and you will have the following effect:

Step 4

Now let’s create some shattered ice around the text.

Load a different image from the ice package into Photoshop (I chose ice6_0176.jpg file) and use the same method as described above, select a portion of the image, copy and paste it onto our document, and put it just beneath text layer:

Use the ice grunge brushset to erase the edge and leave just the bits in the centre. (Tip: repeatly left-click the centre of this image for the shattering effect)

Rename this layer as “Background Ice Texture Right”, Add the following adjustment layers to this layer (make sure to tick “use previous layer as clipping mask” option)

Black and White

Colour Balance

and you will have the following effect:

Duplicate the above three layers, and drag them to the left, you will have the following effect:

And we can add some extra effect under the text. To do this, grab the Ellipitical Marquee Tool with 20px feather, create a new layer just below the text layer, draw a selection as shown below:

Maintain the selection, again grab the ice brushset we downloaded, paint inside the selection. You will have the following effect:

Step 5

Now we can fine-tune the image a bit. Firstly, we flatten the image (don’t forget to save a copy of the original before flatten it) and duplicate the background layer once, apply the following motion blur settings to the duplicate layer:

Now we come to the interesting part: change the blending mode of this duplicated layer to “Pin Light”, keep the opacity of this layer to 100%, and hit Ctrl + T and resize the duplicate layer as shown below:

Erase the edges of the duplicated layer.

You can see by doing so, we created a nice snowy/foggy to our icy text.

Now we can finalise the image by adding the following adjustment layers:

Curves

Hue/Saturation

Colour Balance

and here is the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Of course you can further enhance the image effect by mixing lighting effect, change hue/saturation settings, etc.

Here is an alternative version I have after I change a few things (Decided to give it a darker/groovy theme): (click to enlarge)

Hope you enjoy it! Drop me a comment if you have any question, I will try my best to help you out.

Till next time, have a great day!

In this tutorial, I will show you the processes I use to create this fantasy style, really cool distant desert city scene with an awesome energy ray blasting through the sky in Photoshop.

Along the way, we will be using tons of layer blending techniques, and I will show you how to merge the images together effectively and efficiently. We will also explore skills such as masking, filter effects and various custom brushsets.

This is an intermediate-level tutorial, have a try!

Here is a preview of my final effect for this tutorial: (Click to enlarge)

Alternative version

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OK Let’s get started!

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

Desert

Mist Brushset

Misty Rock

Sunset Sky

Distant City

Star Brushset

Lightning

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1280px * 800px, leave the background colour as White. Load the “Desert” stock image into Photoshop, copy and paste the entire image onto our document, position it as shown below:

Name the new layer as “Desert”, add a layer mask onto it. On the layer mask, use the “Mist Brushset” we have just download (any brush in the set), erase the top part of the image as shown below:

This will form a nice misty effect for the image and make it easier for the layer blending later on:

Now duplicate this “Desert” layer once and on the duplicated layer, go to filter > blur > gaussian blur and apply the following settings:

Change the blending mode of the duplicated layer to “Screen” and drop its opacity to 70%, you will have the following effect:

Now we have a very nice, dusty and misty desert scene with a lot of room to expand our imagination.

Step 2

To further adjust the colour balance and contrast of the desert, I add the following three adjustment layers on top of the previous two layers: (from bottom to top)

Color Balance

Curves

Levels

and you will have the following effect:

Step 3

Now I feel that only the desert is a bit boring, so I decided to add some object into it so to create some depth for the image. So let’s load the “misty rock” image into Photoshop, copy and paste the entire image onto our document and name the new layer as “rock”, apply the following mask on the rock layer:

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

Add a Black and White adjustment layer on top of this rock layer, make sure to tick “use previous layer as clipping mask” option:

Then duplicate the “rock” layer once and drag it to the top, change the blending option of the duplicate layer to “overlay”, you will have the following effect so far:

Step 4

Load the “Sunset Sky” image into Photoshop, copy and paste it onto our document and name this new layer as “sky”, resize and position it as shown below:

Add a layer mask to this sky layer, on the mask, use a soft round brush to gently erase the bottom part of the sky layer, as shown below:

and you will have the following effect:

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

Color Balance

Curves

Then duplicate the original Sky layer once and drag it to the top. On the first duplicated sky layer, apply the following motion blur setting to it:

After applying the motion blur filter, duplicate this layer once and change the duplicate layer’s blending mode to “Hard light”, you will have the following effect:

You can see now we have a very nice sky on top of the desert, which makes the image more vibrant.

Step 5

Load the Distant City stock into Photoshop, cut out the city bit with any selection tool you like to use, copy and paste the selection on our document, name the new layer as “city” and use a big, soft brush to erase the surrounding, and leave only the centre of the city selection as shown below:

Duplicate this city layer twice, change the first duplicated layer’s blending mode to “Soft light”, and leave the second layer’s blending mode as “Normal”, but drop the opacity to 45%.

You will have the following effect:

Step 6

Now we’re onto creating the energy blast. Firsty we can make some background highlight for the blast. To do this, create a new layer called “highlight” and grab a soft round brush with white colour, gently paint over the centre area above the city.

Make sure to set the blending mode of this layer to “Hard Light” with an opacity of around 35%:

Now on top of this layer, create a new layer called “laser”, grab the Rectangular Marquee Tool with a 10px feather, make a selection and fill it with white colour as shown below:

Apply the following layer blending option to this layer:

Outer glow

Inner glow

and you will now have this effect:

Step 7

Create a new layer called “Sparkle” on top of all previous layers, set its blending mode to “overlay”. Load the “Star Brushset” we download in and use it to paint around the laser line to create some sparkling effect:

Duplicate the “Sparkle” layer once, and apply the following Radial Blur setting to the duplicated layer:

Name this layer “Radial” and maintain its blending mode to “overlay” and duplicate it twice more, you will have the following effect:

Then duplicate those three layers together once, use the Free Transform Tool to transfrom them to the left side, as shown below:

Step 8

Now we want to work on to the top part (sky) of the laser energy ray. Create a new layer named “sky highlight” and again use a soft brush with white colour to paint over the top centre of the sky, and set the layer blending mode to “overlay”, with opacity around 40%:

Then create a new layer on top of all previous layer and name it as “light top”, fill the layer with black colour and go to Filter > Render > Lens Flare and apply the following settings:

Change this blending mode of this layer to “Screen”, use a soft brush to erase all areas expect the centre portion, as shown below:

Duplicate this layer once, and move it the bottom of the city and change the blending mode to “overlay”, you will have the following effect:

Step 9

Now we can add some lightning effec to the top for further effect. Load the “Lightning” stock image into Photoshop, copy and paste the entire image onto our document and use a soft brush to erase the outer portion of the image.

Change the blending mode of the new layer to “screen” and you will have the following effect:

Duplicate this layer once and free transform (Ctrl + T)  the duplicated layer as shown below:

To futher touchup the image, we can add the following adjustment layers:

Curves

Color Balance

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

That’s it for this tutorial! Of course you can further enhance the image effect by mixing lighting effect, change hue/saturation settings, etc.

Here is an alternative version I have after I change a few things: (click to enlarge)

Hope you enjoy it! Drop me a comment if you have any question, I will try my best to help you out.

In this tutorial, I will show the steps I took to create this really cool, watercolour style “City on Cloud” Artwork in Photoshop. I was experimenting the new brushsets and textures I downloaded today and thought I could combine them together and see what result they can bring :)

Along the way, we will be using a lot of photo manipulation techniques such as masking, filter effects, layer blending options, and custom brushsets.

This is an intermediate tutorial and some steps can be a bit tricky, but why not have a try :)

Here is a preview of the final effect 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:

Dirt Brushsets

Cloud Brushsets

Cloud Texture 1

City

Stroke Brushsets

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1200px * 700px with White Background. Create a new layer on top of the background layer called “background texture”, and load the Dirt Brushsets into Photoshop, choose a mixture of those brushes and paint over this newly-created layer:

Make sure to set the brush flow and opacity to around 30-40% and colour to be Black, since we only want a light cover of the dirt texture as a background:

Create a new layer called “cloud 1″, paint some cloud over this layer using the Cloud Brushset we downloaded, in the position as shown below: (apply a slightly darker brush comparing with the previous step)

Step 2

Load the “Cloud Texture 1″ image into Photoshop. Copy and paste the entire image onto our document and name this layer as “Cloud Texture 1″:

Apply the following layer mask onto this “cloud texture 1″ layer:

and you will have the following effect:

Duplicate this cloud texture layer twice as shown below:

Change the blending mode of the “Cloud Texture 1 copy 2″ layer to “Soft Light“, and you will have the following effect:

Add a new Curves Adjustment layer on top of all previous layer with the following settings:

and you will have the following effect:

Step 3

Load the City image into Photoshop, copy and paste the whole image onto our document and name the new layer “city”, position it as shown below:

Add a layer mask to this layer, on the mask, erase the outer portion of the city image by using a soft, round brush, mixing with the cloud brush we just download for edge effects:

Here is what I have after the erasing:

I decided to alter the Hue and Saturation of the city layer a bit, so I added a new Hue and Saturation adjustment layer with the following settings: (be sure to tick “use previous layer to create clipping mask” option when adding the adjustment layer)

and here is the effect so far:

Step 4

Duplicate the “city” layer once and drag the duplicated layer to the top, change its blending mode to “Screen”, you will have the following effect:

Then I add a new Black and White adjustment layer with the following settings:

change the blending mode of this black and white adjustment layer to “Multiply”, and you will have the following effect:

Step 5

Duplicate the “city” layer three times, apply the following layer blending option to each duplicated layer:

On the “City copy 2″ layer, go to Filter > Artistic > Watercolor and apply the following settings:

On the “City copy 4″ layer, change the layer blending mode to “soft light”, and apply the following layer mask (use the Stroke Brushsets to paint the edges)

You will see now we have the right side of the image highlighted, therefore adding more depth to the image:

Step 6

To add more cloud effect on the bottom part of image, we can duplicate the “Cloud texture” layer twice and drag both duplicated layer to the top, change their layer blending mode “overlay”, and you will have the following effect:

To add some more watercolour effect onto the effect, we can simply create a new layer (set blending mode to “overlay”), and grab the “Stroke Brush” we downloaded, paint over the new layer with a light grey colour:

Step 7

For final adjustments, I added some floral brush painting and a new Color Balance layer with the following settings:

And add the following mask to this colour balance adjustment layer:

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

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it! 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 demonstrate the processes I used to design this soft and smooth, fresh feeling text effect with leaves and stone texture in Photoshop. I was having a play with Photoshop on the weekend (when the site was down) and discovered the interesting effect accidentally :)

Along the way, we will be using and revising techniques such as masking, layer blending options, adjustment layers, and a quick way of creating uneven lighting effect. I will also show you how I create a light source in conjunction with the shadow effect on the text. Have a go!

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

OK let’s get started!

Step 1

Firstly we need to download the following textures:

Wall Texture

Leaves

Load the wall texture in photoshop, duplicate the background layer once and set it as “soft light”, you can see the background texture darken a bit: (Personally I would like to make the overall light darker a bit and later on it will be easier to create light source and other lighting effects)

Make another duplicate of the background layer and drag it to the top, add a vector mask to the duplicated layer. Hold down the Alt key and left click on the mask thumbnail on the layer palette, use a big soft brush to draw a black line across the centre of the canvas:

You will see the centre portion of the image is now highlighted, whereas the rest of the image being further darkened. We will be placing our text on the highlighted area:

Step 2

Type some texts using this font you just downloaded on the centre of the canvas:

Apply the following blending options:

General Blending

Drop Shadow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Contour

Gradient Overlay

And you will have the following effect (the text become transparent and you can see the stone texture appears on the text)

Step 3

Now let’s add some freshness onto the text. Load the “Leaves” texture into photoshop, go back to our document and load the selection of the text layer (ctrl+left-click the thumb of the text layer on the layer palette). Drag the selection onto the leaf texture as shown below:

Copy the selection and paste in back to our document:

Name the newly created layer as “leaf”. Apply the following Gaussian Blur setting to it:

Change the layer blending option as shown below:

Duplicate the leaf layer once and apply the following blending option to the duplicated layer:

And you will have the following effect to the text:

Step 4

Now let’s create some uneven lighting and give some depth to the image. Create a new layer and name it as “lighting overall”, use the Lasso Tool with a 30px feather to draw a selection as shown below:

Go to Filter > Render > Cloud (set foreground colour to #555555 and background colour to black) and render some cloud inside the selection:

Set the blending mode of this layer to “Soft light” and duplicate it a couple of times. You will have the following effect: (The centre portion of the image become highlighted so it’s easier to focus on the text)

Step 5

Now let’s create a light source for this image. Duplicate the “lighting overall” layer one more time and rename it “light source”. Drag this layer to the top and go to Filter > Render > Lens Flare and apply the following settings:

Then use the Free Transform Tool (Ctrl + T), rotate, distort this layer until it look similar to the image shown below (light coming from the top right corner)

Set the blending mode to “overlay” and you will have the following effect:

Step 6

To further adjust the lighting contrast, we can add a few new adjustment layers on top of all previous layers. Firstly we can add a new curves adjustment layer and apply the following settings:

Then add a new Level adjustment layer and apply the following settings:

And you will have the following image as a result:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! You can have a play with layer blending options and add a few more adjustment layers (hue and saturation, channel mixer) and see what result it gives you!

Here is my final image for this tutorial: (I added some colours and reduce the saturation a bit)

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 create this really cool “Mystic Dancer” scene by using natural grass texture in Photoshop. I came across the original image while browsing for free stock image and I thought: what if I combine it with some natural pattern and texture?

Together we can explore various image adjustment tools, filter effects, layer blending mode, dynamic brush settings and more. Some parts of this tutorial can be a bit tricky, but why not have a try :)

Here a before and after preview:

Before

After

Alternative version:

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Download a copy of this image from stockvault.net and load it into Photoshop.

If you can take some time to observe the image, you can the image itself primarily consist of some dark and cold concrete wall, with a only a line of the light source in the middle.

The first step is to add a few extra light to the overall image. To do this, duplicate the background layer once and hit Ctrl + M and bring up the Curve Tool, apply the following settings:

Then hit Ctrl + Alt + Shift + B to bring up the Black and White Image Adjustment Tool, apply the following settings:

And here is the effect so far:

Step 2

Still on this layer, use the Eraser Tool (E) to erase the distracting white bits of the woman’s upper body:

Duplicate the “Background Copy” layer once, set its blending mode to “overlay” and you will have the following effect:

Step 3

Now we want to add some texture on the concrete wall so it looks not so boring. Download a copy of this Grass image and load it into Photoshop. (This image is of my own stock and you can use it wherever and for whatever purpose).

Then go back to our document, hit Ctrl + A and select the whole canvas and drag that selection over to the grass image, copy and paste back to our document and name the newly-formed layer as “grass texture”.

Change the blending option of “grass texture” layer to “overlay” and you will have the following effect:

Then go to Image > Adjustment > Channel Mixer and apply the following settings:

Change the layer blending mode to “overlay”, and you will see the following effect:

Optional: you can erase the texture overlay on the dancer or keep it, that’s totally up to you.

I chose to erase the grass texture off because I felt I would have more room later on for adding something else:

Step 4

Now we can add a bit of motion into the image: Duplicate the “Grass Texture” layer once more, then go to Filter > Blur > Radial Blur and apply the following settings:

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

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

Step 5

Now we can add something around the dancer to create a better connection between her and the rest of the image. Pen Tool + Dynamic Brush is usually a good choice for this :)

Create a new layer called “Stuff around the dancer”, grab the Brush tool and apply the following brush dynamics:

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Texture:

Dual Brush

Color Dynamics

And tick “Airbrush” and “Smoothing” options.

Then we use the Pen Tool to briefly outline the dancer as shown below:

Then right-click and choose “stroke path” with brush, and you will see the following effect:

Step 6

We can add some additional lighting effect for the dancer so the image looks more realistic. Create a new layer called “extra light”, grab a soft round brush and paint as shown below:

Change the layer blending mode to “overlay” and you will see the following effect:

Step 7

Lastly we can add some cloud in the middle of the image to give the photo some extra flavor. To do this,  create a new layer called “cloud”, grab the lasso tool and set its feather to 100px, make a selection as shown below:

Then go to Filter > Render > Cloud (Make sure you set White as foreground colour, Black as background colour) and render some cloud inside:

Then duplicate the “cloud” layer three times, change the blending mode of each duplicated layer as below:

Cloud Copy – Multiply

Cloud Copy 2 – Overlay

Cloud Copy 3 – Soft Light

and you will have the following effect:

Step 8

Lastly, we can add a light source to the image. To do this, create a new layer called “source light”, fill it with black colour and go to Filter > Render > Lens flare and apply the following settings:

Change the layer blending option to “screen” and erase some unnecessary bits down the bottom, you will have the following effect:

I also added some flying bird on the top of the image, you can download this brush from qbrushes.com and load it into Photoshop. For those who don’t know how to load brushes, here is a handy link for you.

Here is the effect so far:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! You can of course further enhance it and add whatever effect you feel like to it!

Here is my final image for this tutorial: (Add some colour and rainy effect)

Alternative colour scheme:

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 steps I took to design this cool-looking, urban city photo-montage in Ph0toshop. You will learn how to combine several stock images together to achieve surreal photo effect.

This tutorial involves techniques such as layer blending options, image adjustments, tranformation techniques, filter effects and lighting effect rendering. The tutorial itself is quite simple but the end result looks good in my opinion, have a go!

Here is a preview of the final results:

Black and White version:

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OK let’s get started!

Step 1

We start off by download the following four stock images from stockvault.net and cgtexture.com:

City Image

High-rise Image

Little Girl Image

Grunge Splatter

Load the “Grunge Splatter” image into Photoshop, duplicate the Background layer once and set the blending mode to “Overlay”:

Save this document to a new psd file and name it “urban city”.

Step 2

Load the “City Image” into Photoshop, drag the entire image onto the “urban city” document, use the free transform tool (Ctrl + T) to resize it until it fits the canvas size:

Name this layer as “city” and change the layer blending option to “vivid light”. You will have the following effect:

Step 3

On the “City” layer, hit Ctrl+Alt+Shift+B and bring up the Black and White adjustment tool (for those who don’t have CS3, try use the Channel Mixer with Monochrome option enabled), apply the following settings:

Then hit Ctrl + M and bring up the Curves tool, adjust the Red channel a bit:

And here is the effect so far:

Step 4

Duplicate the “city” layer once, apply the following Gaussian Blur Setting to the duplicated layer:

Duplicate this layer once more and merge them together, then change the blending mode of the merged layer to “Darken”. You will have the following effect:

Step 5

Load the “high-rise image” into the Photoshop, drag the entire image onto our canvas, resize and erase (with a big soft brush) the cloud/sky + bottom part of the image. (please also note that you can use layer mask to achieve this) Name this layer as “high-rise”.

Again we apply the black and white adjustments to this layer using the same settings as in the previous layer: (Make sure you set the whole document as RGB color mode)

And the effect so far should look like this:

Step 6

Change blending mode of the “high-rise” layer to “overlay” and you should see the high-rise image blend into the grunge texture:

To add some shape dynamics and depth onto the image, we can duplicate the high-rise layer a few more times, resize and position the duplicated layers as shown below:

Step 7

Load the “Little Girl” image into Photoshop. Again we drag the entire image onto our canvas, but this time we don’t resize it. Instead, we move the image to the position as shown below: (where we see only the girl and the sky)

Erase the sky portion as well as the build to right using a soft brush, and change the layer blending option to “Hard Light”.

The effect so far will look like this:

Name this layer as “little girl” and duplicate this layer once, set the blending mode of the duplicate layer to “overlay” and you will have the following effect:

Step 8

Lastly we can add a bit of shining effect to the image so it won’t look boring. To do this, create a new layer called “lighting effect”, use the Lasso Tool with a 40px feather, draw a selection in any area (I chose a place where it meets with the direction the girl is looking towards) and render some cloud and lens flare in:

Change the layer blending mode to “Color Dodge” and apply the following gaussian blur settings:

You will have the following effect:

Duplicate the layer a few more times and drag them in areas you would like to lightup, and you will have this result image:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! I further adjusted the image hue/satuation a bit and here is my final result: (click to enlarge)

Black and White version: (click to enlarge)

You can of course further enhance this text effect by applying some more filter effects, or combining it with some background texture, that’s totally up to you :)

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 soft and fluffy text effect in Photoshop without using any third party images.

Along the way, we will be using techniques such as gradient fill, various layer blending options, dynamic brush settings and filter effect. I combine this soft text effect with a solid stone wall texture at the end of this tutorial, thought it would be interesting to see! It’s a simple tutorial, have a go!

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

Black and White version:

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document in Photoshop, size doesn’t really matter in the tutorial (I chose 1200 x 800 px). Fill the background layer with Black colour.

Now let’s create some background lighting. To do this, simply grab the Gradient Tool (G) and choose the Radial Gradient option, Fill the background layer as shown below:

Step 2

On the background layer, type some texts on it. You may choose any font you like, I used this font for this tutorial.

For this tutorial, I seperate each letter into different layers so I will have more freedom playing with each of them:

I place the letters as shown below (you can of course alter the position of text yourselves):

Rasterise the text and merge the layers together when you’re happy with the text position. Name the merged layer as “Text”.

Step 3

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

Drop Shadow

Bevel and Emboss

Contour

Gradient Overlay

Stroke

And you will have this effect so far:

Step 4

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

Then press M key to select the Rectangular Marquee Tool, right-click on the selection and choose “Make work path”:

Set tolerance to 1.0 pixel:

And you will see now the selection become a work path:

Step 5

Create a new layer called “fluffy effect”. Now let’s make a dynamic brush to create some fluffy effect!

Grab the following brush and set its size to 70px:

Then apply the following brush dynamics to it:

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Other Dynamics

Don’t forget to tick “Smoothing” option as well.

Now Press “P” key to select the Pen Tool, right-click on the work path and choose “Stroke Path” then choose the “Brush” option. You will have the following effect:

Press “ESC” key to cancel the path.

Step 6

To add a bit more texture effect onto text, you can duplicate “fluffy effect” layer once, and go to Filter > Sketch > Reticulation and apply the following settings:

Add the following Bevel and Emboss setting to the duplicated layer:

Change the layer blending option of the duplicated layer to “Overlay”, and the effect will look like this:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! Of course you can futher enhance this text effect by applying some more texture effect, or simply add some background effect to it.

Here is my final image for this tutorial (I combine it with an abstract image I created a while ago with rocky texture on it, just interested to see what would the end result be like)

You can click the image to enlarge.

Black and White 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!

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In this tutorial, I will demonstrate the processes I used to design this snowy rock text effect in Photoshop. The inspiration of this design came from a snowy mountain photo I saw the other day, and I thought I could create a similar text effect which might look interesting!

Along the way, we will use various layer blending options, some selection techniques, a number of filter effects and brush dynamics. It’s a simple tutorial suitable for Photoshop beginners. Have a try :)

Here is a preview of  my final image for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

Here is alternative version which I added a bit of cloud and colour onto it:

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

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

Let’s create some lighting effect for the background to work with. Use the Gradient Tool (G) tool and select the Radial Gradient options, Fill the background layer as shown below:

Step 2

Download a copy of this font from dafont.com and type some texts onto the background layer. Resize (if necessary) and position it in the centre of the canvas:

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

Drop Shadow

Inner Shadow

Outer Glow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Gradient Overlay

Here is the effect so far:

Step 3

Donwload a copy of this rock image from cgtextures.com and load it into Photoshop.  Then go back to our document and load the selection of the our text layer (holding down your Ctrl key and left-click on the thumbnail of the text layer in the layer palette):

Then drag the selection onto the rock image we just loaded:

Copy and paste the selection back to our text document and name the newly created layer “rock texture”.  You will see the following effect:

Step 4

Duplicate the “rock texture” layer once.  Hide the duplicated layer for now.

Go back to  the original rock texture layer, apply the following Black and White adjustment options:

Change the blending option of this layer to “Screen”.

Unhide the “rock texture copy” layer, change its blending option to “overlay”. The effect now should look like this:

Step 5

Pfrom the previous step, we can see the white part of the text looks like snow, but it is not realistic enough in my opinion and we can add some more texture to make it look better!

To do this, download a copy of this snow image from cgtextures.com and load it into Photoshop. Then Go back to our text document and use the same method described in Step 3 to load the text selection. This time we go one step further with the text selection: select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M), hold down the Alt key and at the same time draw a rectangular selection for the lower part of the text. (We would like to preserve this part of the rock texture and leave the upper part for the snowy effect)

The selection will now look like this:

Hit Alt + Ctrl + D and assign a 10px feather to the selection. Drag this selection onto the snow image we just loaded, copy and paste some snow back to our text document:

If you feel there isn’t enough snow on the text, you can use the Clone Stamp Tool (S) with a small soft brush to clone some more: (Tip: load the selection of the text again, and clone inside the selection so the snow won’t go beyond the text border)

Name this layer as “snow texture” and apply the following Curves adjustment settings:

The effect so far will look like this:

Step 6

To add a bit more dynamic to the text effect, we can simply create a new layer called “falling snow”, grab a 3px soft round brush with the following brush dynamics:

Also Tick the “Smoothing” option.

On the “falling snow”, use this brush to paint around the text layer as shown below:

To add a bit of softness to the falling snow, we can duplicate the “falling snow” layer once and apply the following Gaussian Blur settings:

The effect will now look like this:

Ok that’s pretty much it for this tutorial. I added some more rocky texture down the bottom, also did minor adjustment for hue and saturation and alter the angle of the text.

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

Here is alternative version which I added a bit of cloud and colour onto it:

You can of course further enhance this text effect by applying some more filter effects, or combining it with some background texture, that’s totally up to you :)

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 transform an average daylight photo into a realistic lightning storm scene in photoshop.

Along the way, we will take about interesting ways of darken your image and reduce noise non-destructively, and also a simple way of rendering rain effect and making. water splashes. Have a try :)

Here is a before and after preview:

Before

After

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Download a copy of this image and load it into Photoshop.

Because we’re creating a rainy image, so firstly we can make the image a bit darker.

To do this, duplicate the background layer once and change it the blending option of the duplicated layer to “Multiply”. This will darken the whole image and the effect is shown blew:

Step 2

Then we can tackle the sky area and make it darker. Hide the “Background copy” layer for now and Press “L” to select the Lasso Tool.  Draw a selection around the sky area.

Hit Ctrl + J to make a layer via Copy, name the new layer as “sky” and drag it on top of all other layers.

Then hit Ctrl + Alt + Shift + B and bring up the Black and White image adjustment Tool, apply the following settings:

Then hit Ctrl + M to bring up the Curve Adjustment Tool, apply the following settings:

You can also use the Blur/Smudge Tool to patch up the “sky” layer so it blending more seamlessly to the houses and trees below:

Once you’re happy with the result, change the blending option of this “sky” layer to “Multiply”, and the effect will look like this:

Step 3

Now you will notice that we have quite  a few noise on the “Sky” layer, which you may want to get rid of. So to do this, duplicate the “Sky” layer once. On the duplicated layer, go to Filter > Blur > Surface Blur and apply the following settings:

Then change the layer blending of the duplicated layer to “Hard Light” and you will have the following effect:

Step 4

Now we will add some lightning effect to image. As you may know the previous image I used for this part was removed due to copyright issue (a lesson learnt). Also thanks to the copyright owner for accepting my apology. Also if you guys are interested, you can check out his work at www.jeffsmithusa.com.

So i used an alternative image from stockvault.net instead. Download a copy of this lightning image and load it into Photoshop. Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool to select a portion, copy and paste the selection back to our document. Put this layer on top of all other layers and name it “Lightning”:

Then use the Eraser Tool to gently erase the unnecessary portion of the image and leave only the lightning bits:

Step 5

Still on the “lightning” layer, go to Image > Adjustment > Channel Mixer and apply te following settings:

Then change the layer blending option of this lightning layer to “Screen”, duplicate this layer a couple of times and you shoud have the following effect:

Step 6

Still on the “lightning” layer, use the Clone Stamp Tool (S) to clone a few portion from the existing lighning and create some dynamic lightning effect:

Tip: use a big soft brush and adjust the flow and opacity to make lightning more dynamic.

Step 7

Now we can render some rainy effect on the image. Create a new layer called “Rain” on top of all other layers, grab a small White brush (3px) and apply the following brush options:

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Once you set the brush, simply paint over the sky area, then apply the following motion blur settings:

After that, change the layer blending option to “Overlay” and you will have the following effect:

Step 8

To add a bit of water splashes on the lake so it look a bit more realistic, we can duplicate the background layer once more and put the duplicated layer just above the background layer, go to Filter > Distort > Ocean Ripple and apply the following settings:

And the effect should look like the following image:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! Hope you find it useful and inspirational :)

Here is my final image for this tutorial: (I adjusted the Hue/Saturation of the image a bit) – Click to Enlarge

If you have any questions, just drop me a comment :)

Cheers and have a nice day!

In this tutorial, I will show you the process I used to design this refreshing, cool-looking natural text effect in Photoshop. I was having a walk in the nearby park and suddenly had this thought coming into my mind :)

Along the way, we will be using techniques such as layer blending options, image adjustments tool and some simple selection tools. You will see how easy it is to transform an average texture image into something unique by using Photoshop. Have a go!

Here is my final result of this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1200 x 600 px, fill the background layer with Black colour. Choose a font you like (I used this font from urbanfonts.com) and type some texts onto the background layer.

This will automatically create a new layer on top of the background layer, name it “text” and position it in the centre of the canvas as shown below:

Rasterise the text once you’re satisfy with its size and position.

Step 2

On “text” layer, apply the following Layer Blending options:

Inner Shadow

Outer Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Contour

Please note there is no need for applying the Gradient Overlay.

The effect so far will look like this:

Step 3

Still on the “Text” layer, load the selection of the text by holding down the Ctrl key and left-click the thumbnail image of “Text” layer on the layer palette:

Then go to Select > Modify > Expand and expand the image by 15px, then go to Select > Modify > Feather and apply a 15px feather to the selection.

The selection should now look like this:

Step 4

Download a copy of this grass texture and load it into Photoshop. This image is of my own stock and you can use it wherever you want.

Go back to our own document and drag the selection onto our the grass texture:

Copy and paste the selection back to the our document and name the newly-created layer “Grass”. The effect so far will look like this:

Step 5

Change the layer blending option to “Grass” layer to “Hard Light”, hit Ctrl + L and apply the following level adjustments:

The effect so far will look like this:

Optional: if you would like to add more leaves and grass onto it, you may duplicate this grass layer a couple of times, and keep its blending option to “Hard Light”.

Once you’re happy with the grass texture, grab the Eraser Toll with a soft round brush (set the opacity and flow to 50%), gently erase the area where the text sits beneath so the texts can be revealed and become clearer:

Step 6

Ok now we can add some wooden texture for text so it look a bit more natural.

Download a copy of this wooden texture and load it into Photoshop. Go back to our own document and use the Lasso Tool (40px feather) and draw a selection underneath the text as shown below:

Again we drag the selection onto the wooden texture, copy a random portion and paste back to our text document and name the newly created layer “Wood”. Drag this layer below all previous layer and just above the background layer.

The effect is shown below:

Step 7

On the “Wood” layer, apply the following Black and White image adjustments (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + B) and apply the following settings:

Duplicate the “Wood” layer once and go to Filter > Brush Strokes > Accented Edges, apply the following settings on the duplicated layer:

Change the layer blending option of the duplicated wood layer to “Overlay” and duplicate it a couple of times more, you will see this adds a glowing effect to the wood texture:

Here is the effect so far:

Step 8

To add some depth the text effect, we can do a multi-select of all layers (hold down Shift key and left-click the top and bottom once respectively)

Then hit Ctrl + T and use the free transform tool and distort the text until you reach the effect shown below:

For final touchup, you can create a new layer called “cloud” and again use the Lasso Tool to draw a selection, fill the selection with Black and render some cloud in there:

And apply the following Level Adjustments (Ctrl + L) to the “Cloud” layer:

Then apply the following Curve Adjustments (Ctrl + M) settings:

Then put the “Cloud” layer just above the “Wood Copy 2″ layer, change the blending option to “Screen” and you will have the following resulting effect:

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

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

If you have any questions, simply drop me a line below.

Cheers and have a nice day!

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to transform an ordinary mountain image into a realistic volcano eruption scene with lava effect in Photoshop.

The techniques I used in this tutorial include various image adjustment tools, a number of filters, layer blending options and some basic selection skills. This is a very simple tutorial with just 4 steps, however you will be amazed with the end result. Have a try :)

Here is a before and after preview:

Before

After (click to enlarge)

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Download a copy of this image and load it into Photoshop. This image is of my own stock and you can use it for any purpose.

Firstly we can make the image a bit darker. To do this, duplicate the background layer once. On the duplicated layer hit Ctrl + M to bring up the Curves Adjustment Tool, apply the following settings:

Then hit Ctrl + L and bring up the Levels Adjustments Tool, apply the following settings:

Change the layer blending mode of this duplicated layer to “Multiply”. Duplicate this layer a few times, by doing so it will further darken the image.

The effect so far will look like this:

Merge the duplicated layer together once you’re satisfy with the result. Name the merged layer as “Darken Colour” and keep its layer blending mode as “Multiply”.

Step 2

Duplicate the “Darken Colour” layer once and name the duplicated layer as “colour overlay”, then go to Image > Adjustment > Channel Mixer and apply the following settings:

Then go to Image > Adjustment > Color Balance and apply the following settings:

Midtones

Shadows

Then hit Ctrl + M and apply the following Curves Adjustments:

After applying those image adjustments, change the layer blending options to “Color” and you should have the following effect:

Step 3

Create a new layer called “Lava” and use the Lasso Tool with a 40px feather to draw a selection as shown below:

Then go to Filter > Render > Cloud and render some cloud inside the selection: (Make sure you set black as background colour and white as foreground colour)

Then go to Filter > Render > Difference Cloud and apply this filter 4-5 times: (Please note your cloud effect would be slightly different from mine)

The use the Levels Adjustment Tool and apply settings similar to the following ones:

Then apply the following Colour Balance Settings:

Midtones

Shadows

To add a bit more fluid effect onto the lava, we can go to Filter > Artistic > Plastic Wrap and apply the following settings:

Change the layer blending mode of this “Lava” layer to “Screen” and you should have the following effect:

Step 4

Download a copy of this fire image (image 3) and load it into Photoshop. Press Ctrl + A to select the whole image, copy and paste the selection to our document.

Name this layer as “Explosion” and put it below the “Lava” layer.

Use the Eraser Tool to get rid of the edges and leave the burning fire bits, resize the layer by hitting the Ctrl + T free transformation Tool and move it on top of the mountain.

See Below screenshot for detailed fire position:

Duplicate the “Explosion” Layer a couple of times, resize and rotate the duplicated layers so to make some dynamic explosion effect: (Use the Levels or Curves Tool where necessary)

Here is the effect so far:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! Although it’s a short one, I hope you find it useful and inspirational!

Below is my final image result: (Click to enlarge)

As usual If you have any questions, just drop me a comment :)

Cheers and have a nice day!

In this tutorial, I will show you the processes I used to transform a single piece of plain paper into a dark, mysterious hard rock mountain scene in Photoshop. I discovered this interesting effect by accident and thought I could share it with you guys :)

Along the way I will be using various image adjustment tools, a bunch of filters, layer blending options and some basic selection techniques. Have a try!

Below is a before and after preview:

Before

After

Alternative version

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Download a copy of this paper image from CG Texture and load it into Photoshop.

Duplicate the Background Layer Once, hit Ctrl + M and apply the following Curve Adjustment to the duplicated layer:

Apply applying Curve Adjustments, go to Image > Adjustment > Channel Mixer and apply the following settings:

The effect will now look like this:

Step 2

Now we are onto making some rocky feeling for the image. Duplicate the “Background Copy” layer once, go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharpen Mask and apply the following settings:

Then change the blending mode of this layer to “overlay”. Your image should look like this now:

Optionally, if you feel like to get rid of some noise on the image, you can duplicate this layer once more and set the blending mode to “Soft Light”, then go to Filter > Noise > Despeckle and apply this filter a couple of times.

You can also use the Blur Tool (R Key) with a big soft brush to brush over this layer after applying despeckle filter.

Combining Despeckle and Blur Tool will make your image look more smooth:

You can the image has turned from a piece of paper into a rock mountain scene.

Step 3

Duplicate the “Backgourd Copy 2″ once and apply the Surface Blur filter with the following settings:

Apply the Surface Blur Settings 2-3 times on the duplicated layer, then change the layer blending mode to “Soft Light” and you will have the following effect:

Step 4

Duplicate the “Background Copy 2″ layer once more and drag it on top of all other layers, go to Filter > Artistic > Smudge Stick and apply the following settings. Through this we will be able to bring in more lighting contrast into image while giving the image a more stone-like feeling.

You image will now look like this:

Step 5

Create a new layer called “Darken Area” on top of all other layers, set its blending mode to “Multiple”.

Set the Foreground Colour to Black and grab a big soft round brush (300px, 0% hardness, flow and opacity to 80%), paint over the area you would like to make it a bit darker then the others.

I chose to paint over the edges of the image. The effect is shown below:

Step 6

Now we can see the mountain sort of turning into a maze, and I thought I could make an exit sign for it. Create a new layer and call it “exit”, use the Lasso Tool with a 40px feather to drew a selection anywhere you want on the image, I chose this spot:

Fill the selection with Black Colour and render some cloud:

Then go to Filter > Render > Lens Flare and apply the following settings:

After applying the Lens Flare, duplicate this layer a couple of times to make it brighter:

Then merge those duplicated layer together and use the Liquify Filter to make it look like this:

Step 7

Now to add more effect to the image, we can create a new layer call “Cloud”, again use the Lasso Tool with a 40px feather, draw a few large selection around the image (Hold down Shift Key to drea multiple selection at once).

Fill the selection with Black and render some cloud inside it, then drop the layer opacity down to about 80%.

Your image will now look like this:

Step 8

We can add a bit of colour onto image. To do this, we can simply create a new layer on top of the existing ones and set its blending mode to “Color”, then use a big soft brush with colour of your choice and paint over it.

Here is my image after adding colours:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! I also added some snow particle effect, which is rendered by using this star brush and applying motion blur.

Below is my final image for this tutorial: (Click to Enlarge)

Alternative version

As usual, if you have any questions, just drop me a comment :)

Thanks very much and have a nice day!

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this really cool, abstract style shattered text effect with Broken Glass Texture in Photoshop.

Together, we will explore various layer blending options, image adjustment and some basic selection techniques. I also included a nice link containing a list of “Clean Text” which you might find useful for your design project.

It’s not a complicate tutorial in my opinion, however the effect looks rather cool. Have a go :)

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

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document size 900 * 700px. Then create a new layer named “Gradient Fill” on top of the background layer. On this layer, we can create some background lighting effect.

On the “Gradient Fill” layer, fill it with #494949 colour, then press “G” key to select the Gradient Tool, use the Radial gradient option and fill the layer with the following colours: (Make sure you select the “Foreground colour to transparent” option as well)

Step 2

Type some texts on top of the “Gradient Fill” layer. This will automatically create a new layer, call it “text”.

As for font choice, I would suggest you use some clean fonts  to maxmise the effect. Here is a nice collection of clean font and you can choose from: Clean font showcase. From the list, I chose this font for the tutorial.

Position the text as shown below:

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

Drop shadow

Bevel and Emboss

Gradient Overlay

The effect so far will look like this:

Step 3

Now can apply the Broken Glass Texture on the text to create shattered effect.

Download a copy of this Broken Glass Texture image (image 1) from CG Texture. Load it into Photoshop. Go back to our document and load the selection of the text layer (To do this, hold down the Ctrl key and left click the thumbnail image of the text layer in the layer palette).

Drag the selection onto the Broken Glass Texture you’ve just downloaded, copy and paste a portion of the texture back to our document. This will create a new layer on top of the “Text” layer, name it as “Glass Texture”.

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

Step 4

On the “Glass Texture” layer, apply the following Black and White adjustments:

Then hit Ctrl + J and duplicate this texture layer 5-6 times and you will have the following effect:

Step 5

Now we have a shattered text, then I thought: umm, perhaps it will be nice to add some water drop on top of it? I guess that will be an interesting effect.

So I downloaded a copy of this image from CG Texture and load it into Photoshop. Go back to our document and load the text selection again, drag it onto the water drop texture, copy and paste a portion of that texture image back onto our text document.

This will again generate a new layer, name it as “Water Drop Texture”.

Change the layer blending option to “Soft Light”, again we duplicate the “Water Drop Layer” 5-6 times, and you will have the following effect:

Step 6

To add a bit of flavour onto the effect, we can create a new layer called “Cloud”, use the Lasso Tool with 40px feather, make a selection around the texture and render some cloud: (Set foreground colour to White, background to Black):

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

Step 7

Download a copy of this image and load it into Photoshop. Copy and paste the entire image onto our document and place it just a above the background layer, but below all other layers. Name this layer as “Glass Shattering”.

Hide the “Gradient Fill” layer for now.

Duplicate the “Glass Shattering” layer a couple times, and on each duplicated layer, use the Free Transform tool (Ctrl + T) to rotate, resize and distort the texture to make some more shattering effect:

Merge the duplicated layers and apply the following Black and White Adjustments:

You will have the following effect as a result:

Step 8

Now we can add some colour overlay on top of the text. A quick way to do this is to create a new layer on top of all other layers and set the blending mode to “Color Dodge”, then grab a big soft round brush with some colour of your choice, and simply paint over the text.

The result effect will look like this:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! You can apply some more texture onto the text itself, or add some background texture, that’s totally up to you :)

Here is my final image for this tutorial: (Click to Enlarge)

If you have any questions, just drop me a comment :)

Cheers and have a nice day!

In this tutorial, I will show you the processes I used to transform an avarage day photo into a really nice golden sunset scene in Photoshop. This tutorial is inspired by this magnificant work from the Ubisoft game Fry Cry 2.

Together we will explore techniques such as layer blending, image adjustments, non-destructive photo editing, use of pen tool and various image filters. It’s an easy tutorial, have a go!

Meanwhile, if you would like to find some more info about non-destructive photo editing, I have another post here:

Bring Colour and Light out of Ordinary Image

Or if you would like to find out some basic info about Pen Tool, I have another post here.

Here is a before and after preview of this tutorial:

Before

After

An alternative Version

OK let’s get started!

Step 1

Download a copy of this image and load it into Photoshop. Duplicate the background layer Three Times as shown below:

Change the layer blending option for “Background copy”, “Background copy 2″, “Background copy 3″ accordingly:

“Background copy” – Overlay

“Background copy” – Hard Light

“Background copy” – Color

And you will have the following image:

Step 2

Duplicate the Background once more and drag the duplicated layer on top of all other previous layers, apply the following Surfuce Blur settings to it:

Change the layer blending of this layer to “Screen” – this will add a glowing effect to the image.

Step 3

Now we will seperate the sky bit from rest of the image so that we could edit it without affecting other part of the image.

To do this, hide all previously duplicate layers and go back to the background layer, use the Pen Tool to create a path around the sky portion of the image:

Then right-click and choose Make Selection, choose 0 px feather and this will transform the path into a selection:

Then hit Ctrl + J to make a layer via copy, name it as “Sky” and Drag it above all other layers. (Optional: you can use the Clone Stamp Tool to refine the edges of the sky so it fits better with the landscape.)

Apply the following Channel Mixer image adjustment to the “Sky” layer:

And the effect so far will look like this:

Step 4

Now duplicate the “Sky” layer once, apply the following Gaussian Blur settings to the duplicate layer:

Change the layer blending option to “Overlay” and this will add some extra softness to the cloud:

Duplicate the “Sky” layer once more and drag this dupcliate layer on top of all other layers, load the selection of this layer by holding down Ctrl key + Left-click the thumbnail of this layer within the layer palette, fill it with colour shown below:

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

Step 5

Now we add some colour for the grass and the landscape as well. To do this, create a Gradient Map on top of all layers:

and apply the following settings:

Change the layer blending mode of this adjustment layer to “Soft Light” and opacity to 80%. And you will have the following effect:

Step 6

If you would like to add some more lighting and reduce the amount of the brightness of the sky a bit, you can go back to the origianl “Sky” layer, use the Eraser Tool with a big round brush and 0% hardness, erase to the parts you want:

Here is the effect so far:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! The rest is again left upon your own creativity :)

Below is my final image for this tutorial: (Click to Enlarge)

An alternative version:

If you have any questions, just drop me a comment :)

Cheers and have a nice day!