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)

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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 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 how to bring colour and light out of an ordinary image through simple layer blending and image adjustments. I also would like to introduce the idea of “non-destructive” photo editing, which I think will be beneficial for you as a designer.

The techniques used in this tutorial includes various image adjustment tools, layer blending options and the surface blur filter.

Here is some helpful tips I would like to share with you guys:

1. The purpose of duplicating layers is to achieve non-destructive editing, which means the original image is not affected and you will have greater flexibility when it comes to retouching your image.
2. Make use of various image adjustment tool (Curve, Level, Black and White, Hue and Saturation), they are the tools to boost your image colour and lighting constrast.
3. Layer blending mode such as “Overlay”, “Soft Light”, “Color” are always useful for bringing out extra light and colour for your image.
4. Use Dodge/Burn Tool to give certain portion of your image additional lighting contrast.
5. Use Surface blur instead of Gaussian blur for image blending.

Some info I found on the web about Non-destructive Photo Editing:

The great advantage of non-destructive editing in Photoshop is that you can easily adjust image effects or adjustments, even weeks or months later. They also allow quick editing and increased flexibility. Everyone who uses Photoshop should know these techniques, because they really make Photoshop so powerful.

- http://www.lunacore.com/photoshop/tutorials/tut013.htm

Here is a preview of the final result:

Step 1

Load a photo of your choice into Photoshop. Alternatively, you can download a copy of this image if you want to follow this tutorial precisely according to each step.

After loading your photo, duplicate the background layer five times:

Then hide the top 4 layers and leave just the “Background copy” layer visible.

Step 2

On the “Background copy” layer, hit Ctrl + M to bring up the Curve Tool and apply the following settings:

Then change the blending mode of this layer to “Overlay” with an opacity of 60%, and you will have the following image:

Step 3

Un-hide the “Background copy 2″ layer and select it, hit Ctrl + Alt + Shift key to bring up the Black and White image adjustment tool and apply the following settings:

(Please note the settings may be different if you use your own photo, but the idea is to put more emphasis toward certain colours in the image and bring them out a bit more)

Change the layer blending mode to “Soft Light” with an opacity of 70%.

The effect so far will look like this:

Step 4

Now we can some more exposure to the image. Un-hide the “Background Copy 3″ layer and select it, go to Image > Adjustments > Exposure and apply the following settings:

Then change the layer blending mode to “Color” and you will have the following effect:

Step 5

Un-hide the “Background copy 4″ layer and select it, go to Image > Mode > Lab Color and change the image mode to LAB.

The go the Channel Palette and select the “lightness” channel:

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

Change the image mode back to RGB mode. When you’re prompted to flatten the image, choose “Don’t Flatten”.

Change to layer blending option to “Soft Light” with an opacity of 50% and you will have the following effect:

Step 6

Now we can add some extra soft light onto the image.

Un-hide “Background layer 5″ and select it, go to Filter > Blur > Surface Blur and apply the following settings:

Change the layer blending mode to “Screen” with an opacity of 60% and you will have the following image:

Step 7

This is an optional step. As you can see after several layer blendings, the mountain on the right has become a black spot without any tree to be seen. We can bring the trees back by using the dodge tool.

Duplicate the background layer once more and put the duplicated layer just above the background layer, but beneath any other layer.

Hit “o” key to select the dodge tool, apply the following settings:

Brush over the mountain until the trees are back.

You can reduce the layer opacity a bit to get a better result, also adjust the brush size for the dodge tool if necessary.

And here is the final effect:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! Remember you can always use the layer blending modes, curve/level tools and blur filter to bring out light and contrast for your image.

Hope you enjoy this tutorial and 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 average forest Photo into a Dark and Crimson Forest Scene, inspired by the Japanese Survival Horror Playstation game “Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly”.

We will explore various layer blending options, an interesting way of rendering light and various image adjustment options.

Here is a preview of the the final result:

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Download this image off the net and use it as a starting point of this tutorial.

Load the image into Photoshop and duplicate the background layer. Set the blending option of the duplicated layer to “Hard Light”.

Step 2

Duplicate the background layer again and put this duplicated layer on top of the one in the previous step.

Hit Ctrl + U to bring the Hue and Saturation Image adjustment tool, apply the following settings:

Change the layer blending option to “Soft Light” and keep all other blending options unchanged.

Here is the effect so far:

Step 3

Create a new Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer (see below for detailed path)

Apply the following Hue and Saturation Settings:

The effect so far will look like this:

Step 4

This is an optional step. Personally I feel the image is a bit saturated and feel a bit hard. So i decided to add some softness to the image and desaturate it a bit.

To desaturate the image, duplicate the “Background Copy 2″ layer, hit Ctrl + Alt + Shift + B to bring up the Black and White image adjustment tool, apply the following settings:

Still on this layer, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and apply the following settings:

Here is the image so far:

Step 5

Now we can add some butterflies on the image. Create a new layer called “Butterfly” and load the “Special Effect Brushes” brush preset (see image below for details):

Paint some butterfly on the image as shown below (be aware that your result may look slightly different to mine because the brush dynamics).

Hint: User the Eraser Tool with 50% opacity and flow to erase some parts of the butterfly to create some depth. You may also hit Ctrl + T to bring up the free transformation Tool to adjust the shape of the butterfly a bit.

After painting the butterflies, set the layer blending option of this layer to “Color Dodge”:

Step 6

We can add some extra lighting effect to image. To do this, create a new layer called “lighting”, use the Rectangular Marquee Tool to make a selection. Fill the selection with black colour:

Maintain the current selection, go to Filter > Render > Fiber and apply the following setting:

Hit Crtl + T to bring up Free Transformation Tool, rotate the selection as shown below:

Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and apply the following settings:

After rendering motion blur, change the layer blending option of this layer to “Overlay” and you will have the following image:

Ok let’s it for this tutorial~ You may add some more lighting effect, adjust the colour balance, or test applying some more texture onto it! Always remember not to limit your creativity!

Here is my final image for this tutorial:

If you have any question, simply drop me a line!

Thank you very much and have a nice day!