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

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

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

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

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Ok let’s get started!

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

Sword

Crack Texture

Step 1

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

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

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

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

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

and you will have the following effect for the selection:

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

Step 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

and you will have the following effect:

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

Step 3

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

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

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

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

and here is the effect so far:

Step 4

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

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

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

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

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

You will have the following effect:

Step 5

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

Color Balance

Curves

and you will have the following effect:

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

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

Till next time, have a great day!

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this Grungy Style Artwork, Mixing with Great Lighting and Shattered Effect in Photoshop. This is an intermediate level tutorial and some steps can be tricky, but why not just have a try :)

Along the way, we will cover creating shattered/disintegration effect, lighting effect, how to generate more depth to your image, as well as using Pen Tool to create awesome abstract lines. This tutorial is also a great opportunity to practice your brush painting skills.

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

Alternatvie version with different colour scheme: (click to enlarge)

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Ok let’s get started!

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

Female Model

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000px * 1000px, fill the background with black colour. Create a new layer on top of the background called “grunge texture”, download a choice of your grungy brushset from sites such as qbrushes.net or brusheezy.com, load it into Photoshop, and use them to paint a light-grey background on this texture layer, as shown below: (make sure you set the flow and opacity of the brush to a low level, around 20-30%)

Once you’re happy with the texture, duplicate this layer once, and resize the duplicated layer as shown below:

Now here is a trick you can use to quickly add some depth to the image – after resizing the image, don’t cancel the selection, straight-away right-click and choose “perspective”, as shown below:

Perspective your selection as shown below:

Erase the upper edge this layer as shown below, so the two layers can sort of blend together:

And you can by doing so, we add depth to the background texture so making it easier to add the model onto the canvas later on:

Step 2

Load the Female Model stock image into Photoshop, use whatever method you like to extract the gril out, copy and paste her onto our canvas, resize and position it as shown below:

Name this layer as “model”.

Apply the following Smart Sharpen filter on this model layer:

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

Black and white

Make sure to change the blending mode of this Black and White layer to “Vivid Light”

Curves

Vibrance

and you will have the following effect:

duplicate the orginal model and drag the duplicated layer to the top, apply the following Spatter filter to it: (Filter > Brush Stroke > Spatter)

You will now see the whole girl image is covered by the shattered piece – of course we don’t want that. So add the following layer mask to hide those parts we don’t wish to see:

By doing so, we only leave the shoulder and the upper legs part to have shattered effect.

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

Step 3

Duplicate the original model layer once more and drag it on top of all previous layers. Apply the following motion blur settings to it:

Add the following mask to the motion blur layer:

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

Optionally, you can duplicate this motion blur layer a few more times, and drag them around the model’s body for more effect.

Step 4

Now let’s create some abstract lines. Firstly turn off all previous layers (except the background grungy texture layer) we made so that we have more space to use our creativity. Create a new layer above the grungy texture layer, grab the Pen Tool and draw a path as shown below:

Stroke the path as shown below with a 3-5px soft brush: (You can choose any colour you like)

You will have the following effect or similar:

After stroking the path, duplicate it once and apply the following Gaussian Blur settings to it:

You will have the following effect:

You can see by doing so we add a glowing effect to the abstract line we created.

To futher enhance this layer, we merge this two layers, duplicate the merge layer once, and change the blending mode to “Vivid Light”, you will have the following effect: (I resized this line a bit):

That’s all for create the abstract line. Then we can simply duplicate, position those lines around the model, as shown below:

Step 5

Now we can add a bit of shadow for the model because I intend to have light coming from the top. So we simply create a new layer called “shadow” just below the original model layer, grab a soft black brush, paint some shadow on the bottom:

Create a new layer, use the grungy brushset you donwloaded or choose a different brushset, paint some grungy texture around the model’s body, as shown below:

This step can be a bit tricky to complete – try mixing different brushes in the set, set the opacity and flow to a low level around 30-40%, and use the tip mentioned in the screenshot. It’s all about getting used to the brushset and find the feeling :)

Once you finish the painting, duplicate this layer once, apply the following Motion Blur setting to it:

and you will have the following effect:

Add the following three adjustment layer on top of it, with respective layer masks:

Curves

Curves Mask (Use Eraser with Grungy Brushset, along with soft round brush to create this effect)

Levels

Levels Mask

Color Balance

You will have the following effect so far:

Step 6

Now let’s add some final touch-up for the image. To do this, I decided to use Len Flare + Cloud Filter to add some highlight to the model’s body.

The trick is really simple: Create a new layer on top of all previous layers, use the Lasso Tool (with 25px feather) to create a selection, render some cloud inside it then apply the following Lens Flare settings:

and you will have the following effect:

We then change the layer blending mode to “overlay”, “color dodge” or “vivid light”, totally up to you. Make sure you duplicate this layer a few times, and move them around the model’s body for more highlights.

Below image shows the areas I chose to highlight: (I turn off color so you can see the arrows a bit better)

Important: experiment with layer blending mode with this cloud filter + lens flare layer, you will be amazed how interesting this combination would bring you :)

Here is the effect so far:

Final Step

For this final step, I flatten the image, smart sharpen it a bit, changed the color scheme and adjusted the brightness and contrast as well. I will leave those settings up to you so you can experiment with them :)

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

Alternative version: (click to enlarge)

That’s it! Hope you enjoy this tutorial! Drop me a comment if you have any question, I will try my best to help you out!

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

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

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

Alternative Version:

PSD File Download

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Ok let’s get started!

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

Rainbow Girl

Step 1

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

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

Name this layer as “girl”.

Step 2

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

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

Spot Healing Brush Tool

Healing Brush Tool

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

Here is my effect after the clean up:

Step 3

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

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

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

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

Step 4

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

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

Curves

Brightness and Contrast

And here is the effect so far:

Step 5

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

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

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

And here is the effect after you stroke the path:

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

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

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

Step 6

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

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Tick “Smoothing” option.

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

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

Step 7

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

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

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

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

And here is the effect so far:

Step 8

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

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

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

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

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

Step 9

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

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

And here is the effect so far:

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

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

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

Further Reading

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

An Introduction to Photoshop Brush Engine

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

Cheers and have a nice day!

This mood/colour tones changing method can be particularly useful for images that are reletively dark and lack of colour depth. We will be using a lof image adjustment tool, masking techniques and layer blending options. Have a go!

Here is a previous of the before and after effect:

Before

After

And alternative version with reduced colour saturation:

Ok let’s get started!

To complete this tutorial, you will the following stock:

Mountain

Cloud Brush

Step 1

Load the “Mountain” image into Photoshop, duplicate the background layer once.

Now we can see there are some hard rock/stone on the left bottom corner. Because the overall effect we would like to achieve for the final image is a soft, misty mountain scene,  we should first tackle this particular area of the photo.

So on the duplicated layer, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, apply the following settings:

Stay on the duplicated layer, add a layer mask onto it and on the mask, grab the Eraser Tool with a soft round brush setting, gently eraser the following area:

Drop the layer opacity of this duplicated layer to 55%, you can see the left bottom cornor because softer:

Step 2

Duplicate the background layer three times and drag all three duplicated layers above the previous blurred layer.

From bottom to top, change the blending mode of the first duplicated layer to “Color Dodge” and you will have the following effect:

Change the blending mode the second duplicate layer to “Multiply” and you will have the following effect:

On the third duplicated layer, change the blending mode to “Screen” and apply the following Gaussian Blur settings:

Again we add a layer mask to it, and use the Eraser Tool with a soft round brushset to erase the following area:

Drop the layer opacity to 75% and you will have the following effect so far:

You can see now the overall image is much softer than the original and this is exactly what we want.

Step 3

Now we’re onto the interesting part of this tutorial – adding the Mist! The method I use here is simply the Gradient Fill tool :)

So we go to Layer > New Fill layer > Gradient Fill and add a new gradient fill layer with the following settings on top of all other layers:

Duplicate this Gradient Fill layer Three Times.

On the first duplicated layer, apply the following layer mask:

Change the blending mode of this layer to “Screen” and drop its opacity to 35%, you will have the following effect:

On the second duplicated layer, apply the following layer mask:

Change its blending mode to “Color Dodge” and opacity to 60%, you will have the following effect:

On the third duplicated layer, apply the following layer mask: (Use the Cloud Brush we downloaded for some fine-tuning and create uneven effect)

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

You will see now we have created some very realstic misty effect for our image.

Step 4

To add more depths to the image, we can add a new Curve Adjusment layer by going to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves and apply the following settings:

Here is the effect after applying the Curves adjustment:

Optional: I feel the bottom part of the image is a bit dark, so I apply the following mask to this Curves adjustment layer:

And here is the effect so far:

Step 5

You may now think: umm, the top left part of the sky looks a bit empty! No problem, we can easily fix this by using the Cloud Brushes we download and add some cloud over there.

Use the Eyedropper Tool (I) and left-click the following spot:

And grab any of those cloud brushsets you like and drop its opacity to 50% and flow to 50%, create a new layer and simply paint over the empty portion of the sky:

We can further adjust the colour balance of the image a bit. So go ahead and add a new Color Balance adjustment layer (Layer > Adjustment layer > Color balance) and apply the following settings:

Shadows

Midtones

Highlights

And here is the final effect:

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

Here is my final image for this tutorial: (I slightly adjusted the colour contrast and add some more cloudy effect ) – Click to enlarge:

And alternative version with reduced colour saturation:

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!

I have been asked many times in this past about making one of this type of tutorial that contains both of the above techniques so here it is :)

Along the way, we will be practicing a lot of Photoshop skills relevant to them, including selection, masking, and layer blending options. We will also be using a lot of layer adjustments and Photoshop Filters. Have a try!

Also I would love to know what other method you use to achieve the same effect, drop me a line below!

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

Black and white version:

PSD File Download

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

Ok let’s get started!

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stock images: (I’m non-religious, but I do love temples ^^)

Grungy Texture

Temple Stock 1

Temple Stock 2

Temple Stock 3

Cloud

Step 1

Let’s prepare some background to work on first. Load the “Grungy Texture” image into Photoshop, make a duplicate of the background layer. (Personally I think this is a good habit because in case you mess up something, you always revert back to the original image quickly.)

Set the blending mode of the duplicated layer to “Darken” and you will have the following image:

Duplicate the background layer once more and drag the duplicated layer to the top, apply the following the following vector mask to the layer:

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

Add a new Curves Adjustment Layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves) and apply the following settings:

And you will have the following effect:

Step 2

Now we have a very grungy-looking background to work on. We can now add our objects onto it.

Load the “Temple Stock 1″ into Photoshop.  Use any selection tool you prefer to make a selection around the temple (I would recommand you have a practice with Pen Tool, it’s a good tool and in the future you may use it a lot for a variety of purpose ^^)

If you did use Pen Tool to draw the Path, make sure after you close the path, right-click and choose the option called “Make selection…” and set the feather radius to 0px.

Then hit ctrl+alt+R and apply the following Refine Edge settings:

You selection will look similar as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection onto our document, resize (Ctrl + T) and position it as shown below:

Rename this layer as “Temple 1″. On top of this layer, create two adjustment layers as shown below and make both of them Clipping Mask to the “Temple 1″ layer:

Curves

Black and white

Then set the “Temple 1″ layer blending mode to “Multiply” and you will have the following effect:

Step 3

Load “Temple Texture 2″ into Photoshop. Again we use any selection tool to make a selection around the temple building as shown below:

Hint: use the Refine Edge tool to further adjust the edges of the selection, the goal is to make the selection as smooth and seamless as possible, so it will be easier to blend it into our work later on.

Copy and paste the selection onto our document, resize, rotate it and place it onto the position as shown below:

Name this layer as “Temple 2″ and add a vector mask on it as shown below:

You will now see the bottom part of the “Temple 2″ layer is not under the mask:

On top of the “Temple 2″ layer, add two adjustment layers – curves and black and white and make both of them Clipping Mask to the “Temple 2″ layer:

Curves

Black and White

Set the blending mode of this “Temple 2″ layer to “Multiply” and you will have the following effect:

Step 4

Load “Temple Stock 3″ image into Photoshop. Again we extract the temple building out of the image by making the selection as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection onto our document, resize, rotate it and place it onto the position as shown below:

Name this layer as “Temple 3″ and add a vector mask on it as shown below:

And you will see the bottom part of the building is now hidden:

On top of the “Temple 3″ layer, add two adjustment layers – curves and black and white and make both of them Clipping Mask to the “Temple 3″ layer:

Curves

Black and White

And you will have the following effect:

Step 5

We can see the the centre of the canvas look a bi empty – why not add some cloud in there. (I personally love cloudy effect and I think it can be used in all sorts of occasions)

So load the “Cloud” texture into Photoshop. Copy and paste the entire image onto our document and place the newly-created layer below the “Temple 1″ layer, resize and position it as shown below:

Rename this layer as “cloud” and add the following vector mask onto it:

And you will have the following effect:

Again on the “Cloud” layer, we add two more adjustment layers and make them both the clipping mask for “Cloud” layer:

Curves

Black and White

Set the blending mode of the “cloud” layer to “Multiply” and you will have the following effect:

Step 6

Create a new layer called “Radial Blur”, fill the layer with Black and go to Filter > Render > Cloud and render some cloud (set foreground colour to white, background colour to black)

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

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

Duplicate the “cloud” once and set the duplicated layer blending mode to “soft light”, you will have the following effect:

Duplicate the “Cloud” layer once more, on the duplicate layer add a vector mask as shown below:

Change the blending mode of this duplicated layer to “colour dodge”, you will see we now have a centre area of the canvas highlighted and more lighting depth is created:

Step 7

Create a new layer called “fiber” on top of all previous layers, fill it with black and go to Filter > Render > Fiber and apply the following settings:

Set the blending mode of this layer to “soft light” and drop the opacity of around 80%:

Step 8

If you’re happy about the colour/contrast of the image so far, this step will become optional for you.

To further adjust the overall colour balance and contrast of the image, we can add the following two adjustment layers on top of all other layers:

Hue/Saturation

Colour Balance

And you will have the following result image:

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

Here is my final image for this tutorial: (I slightly adjusted the colour balance and add some gaussian blur overlay to make the image shining) – Click 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!

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 the steps I took to design this absolutely magical, floating Eiffel Tower scene in Photoshop. The inspiration of this tutorial came from this wonderful design done by matu02 in PSD Vault Flickr Group.

Along the way, we will be using a lot of layer masking techniques, blending options, selection technques, pen tool and dynamic brushes. Hope you enjoy it and find it useful and inspirational!

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

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

Misty Ocean

Dark Water

Tower Image

Moon

Cloudy Scene

Eagle

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Load the “Misty Ocean” stock image into Photoshop. Duplicate the background layer once and set blending mode of the duplicated layer to be “Soft Light”.

We can see the overall image become darker a little bit and the colour contrast increases comparing with the original image:

Rename this layer as “soft light” and make a duplicate of this layer, set the duplicated layer blending mode to “overlay” and this will further increase the light and contrast of the image:

Rename this layer as “light overlay”.

Step 2

Now you will see the ocean portion disappeared and we don’t really want that. To reveal the ocean portion,  add a vector mask to the “light overlay” by clicking the following button on the layer palette:

Click on the mask thumbnail to select it, grab a big soft brush (I chose a 300px round brush), erase the ocean portion off the “light overlay” layer.

You will now see the ocean become more visible:

Optional: I feel the colour tone of the image is a bit dull and a bit more variation will make the image looks a bit more lively. So I add a new Adjustment layer (Color Balance) and apply the following settings:

Change the blending mode of this adjustment layer to “lighten” and you will have the following effect:

Step 3

Now let’s again focus on the ocean portion of the image. Currently we have a very smooth ocean without much movement at all. This can be a bit of problem because the end result we would like to achieve is a dynamic, active image.

So let’s load the “Dark Water” image into Photoshop. Go back to our document and use the Rectangular Marquee Tool with 20px feather to select the ocean portion of the image:

Drag this selection onto the “Dark Water” Texture to position the selection as shown below:

Copy and paste it back to our document, and you will see now the image become a bit dynamic and not so boring:

Step 4

Load the “Tower Image” into Photoshop. Use the Pen Tool to make a working path around the Tower:

Make a selection (Right-click and choose “Make selection”) from the working path (0px feather), copy and paste the selection onto our document. Desaturate the layer, resize and position it as shown below:

Rename this layer as “Tower”. Then add a vector mask to this layer,  grab the Gradient Tool and apply the following gradient to the mask: (You can go the mask by Alt+left-click the mask thumbnail on the layer palette)

Go back to our document and you will see the tower is seamlessly linked to the cloud:

Step 5

Load the “Moon” image into Photoshop, use whatever selection tool you feel comfortable with to make a selection of the moon, as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection back to our document, resize, rotate and position it on the top right corner of the canvas:

Name this layer as “Moon” and change the layer blending mode to “soft light”, you will have the following effect:

Duplicate the “Moon” layer a couple of times, you will see the the Moon become more visible:

Step 6

Load the “cloud scene” image into Photoshop, use the Lasso Tool with 100px feather to make a selection as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection back to our document to the tower position, use Free Transform Tool (Ctrl + T) with Warp, perspective, resize, transform the cloud into a flaming effect:

Name this layer as “Flame” and set its blending mode to “Overlay”. After this, duplicate this layer once, change the duplicated layer blending mode back to normal, use the Eraser Tool to erase off the bottom part of the flame on the duplicated layer:

Step 7

Load the “Eagle” image into Photoshop, use the same Pen Tool technique to make a selection of the eagle. Tip: after you make the selection, use the refine edge option to further enhance your selection: (The setting below can be used as a guideline only, you might have to apply slightly different settings according to your own selection)

Copy and paste the image onto our dcoument to the position as shown below:

Name this layer as “eagle” anc change the layer blending mode to “linear burn”. Make several duplicated of this “eagle” layer, resize and rotate each layer and position the eagles in different places: (Assign different opacity, fill opacity to each duplicated layer as well)

Step 8

Create a new layer called “shining effect” on top of all layers, use the Pen Tool to create a working path like this:

Stroke the path using the following dynamic brush:

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

And you will have the following end result:

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

Here is my final image for this tutorial. I Added a few light beams – If you like to know a quick way of rendering this, I have another tutorial here containing a part about doing so. Also tried aonther 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!

Along the way, we will be using lots of layer blending and image adjustment techniques. Also some basic image transformation techniques will be used to create depth, as well as an interesting way to render some dynamic lighting effect.

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

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000px * 800px, fill the background layer with Black.

Download the following textures from CG Textures and we will use them later on in this tutorial. It might be a good idea to make a new folder and put those textures into it.

Old Building

Rust

Dusk

Grass

Step 2

Load the “Old Building” image into Photoshop, then use the Move Tool (V) to drag the entire image onto our document, resize it to the centre of the canvas:

Name this layer as “Old House”. Use the Eraser Tool (E) with the following settings, remove the sharp edges of the building:

Step 3

Now we can add a bit of lighting contrast to the old house. I would like the upper side of the image to be brighter than the bottom part of the image.

Still on the “old house” layer, apply the following Curves Adjustments (Ctrl + M):

Then apply the following Levels Adjustment settings (Ctrl + L):

Then apply the following Black and White Adjusments (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + B):

The effect so far will look like this:

Step 4

Now we can give this old house some angle and perspectives so it looks not so boring and still.

I used the Free Transformation Tool (Ctrl + T) and apply Distort, Perspecitve and Scale techniques and make the image looks like this:

By doing so you can also expend the depth of the image so later on you will have greater flexibility to add more stuff onto it.

Step 5

Load the “Rust” image into Photoshop, select the centre portion of the image as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection back to our document, this will automatically create a new layer. Name it as “rust texture” and free transform it until it cover the old building:

Then apply the following Curves Adjustments (Ctrl + M) on this layer:

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

Step 6

The is an Optional Step: To further enhance the rusty effect, duplicate the “rust texture” once and go to Filter > Brush Storkes > Dark Stroke and apply the following settings:

Reduce the opacity of the duplicated layer to 60% and you will have the following effect:

Step 7

It still look a bit boring if there is just a building ono the canvas, then I thought: why not add some sky and cloud texture on top of building?

Load the “Dusk” image into Photoshop, select the centre portion of the image as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection to our document and name the layer as “dusk sky” and rotate and position the image as shown below:

Then apply the following Levels Adjustments settings:

And you the effect so far will look like this:

Step 8

We can now add some freshness into the image and it will somehow balance the feel of the image a bit so it won’t look too dark.

Load the “Grass” image into Photoshop. Select a random portion of it as show below:

Copy and paste the selection onto our document and name the layer as “grass texture”. Resize and position it as shown below:

Use the Eraser Tool with a big round brush, set the flow and opacity to 60% and 0% hardness, gently erase the centre portion of the grass texture so it reveal the old house:

I also duplicated the grass layer a couple of times and used the Clone Stamp Tool on the duplicated layer just to increase the density of the grass:

Step 9

To further enhance the lighting contrast and create some dynamic light for the image, we can create a new layer and use the Lasso Tool with a 40px feather, draw a few joint selection and fill them with Black and render some cloud:

Then apply the following Lens Flare Settings:

Then Apply the following Levels Adjustments:

Then change the layer blending of this layer to “soft light” and you will have the following image:

Then you can duplicate the lighting layer a few times and drag it to different positition where you want to add more light:

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

Below is my final image for this tutorial: (I added some more lighting effect and used some brushes I downloaded from qbrushes.com)

Hope you enjoy this tutorial and find it useful and inspirationa!

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

Cheers and have a nice day!

In this tutorial, I will show the processes involved in making this shining and refreshing transparent text effect with sky and cloud textures.  We had some really interesting clouds on the sky yesterday and that’s where I’ve got the inspiration from :)

The techniques included in this tutorial are layer styles, gradient fills, clone stamp tools, blur filters and various image adjustment and transformation tools. It’s a simple tutorial so have a go!

Here is a preview of the final result:

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 800px * 800px. On the background layer, use the Gradient Fill tool to create some irregular lighting as shown below:

Step 2

On the background layer, type some texts onto it (Make sure you choose a bold font as we need to make room for transparency, I used this font from fontspace.com).

Position the text as shown below:

Step 3

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

Drop Shadow

Inner Shadow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Contour

Gradient Overlay

Stroke

The effect so far will look like this:

Step 4

Now we’re onto apply some nice cloudy texture onto the text. Download a copy of this image (The one on the left) from CG Texture and select a nice portion of it as shown below:

Copy and paste the selected portion onto our text and name this layer as “cloud”.

Use the Eraser Tool (with a big, soft and round brush, set opacity and flow to 60%) to gently erase the outside of the cloud:

Step 5

Still on the “Cloud” layer, use the Clone Stamp Tool (again with a big, soft and round brush setting) and clone the cloud so it covers all of our texts:

Then hit Ctrl + M and apply the following Curve settings:

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

Step 6

Duplicate the “Cloud” layer once, then apply the following Black and White adjustments:

This create some colour depth for the image and you will have the following effect:

Optionally, you can duplicate the “Cloud” layer again and this will add some more colour to the image:

Step 7

Rasterize the text layer and do a multi-select for all the layers created, distort the image until you reach the effect shown below:

Then we can add some light over the text. To do this, create a new layer called “light” and select a rectangle portion just above the text, fill the selection with White colour and render some fiber:

Then de-select the selection, apply the following motion blur settings:

Then hit Ctrl + L and apply the following Levels adjustment settings:

To make the light a bit soft, apply the following gaussian blur settings:

After that, use the Eraser Tool to get rid of the unnecessary bits of the light, and free-transform (or distort, rotate, perspective) it until reaching desired effect:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial, the rest is left your own creativity. You can duplicate the cloud layer a few times, or add some extra lighting to the text. Totally up to you.

Here is my final image for this tutorial:

Hope you enjoy it and find it useful and inspirational! If you have any question, just drop me a comment.

Have a nice day!

We will also explore the use of layer blending options, hue/saturation tool and various filters in Photoshop.

Here is a before and after comparison of the photos:

Before:

After:

OK let’s get started!

Step 1

Grab a photo of your choice. You can use the before image above if you like (It’s of my own stock so no worries). Load it into Photoshop and hit Ctrl + U to bring up the Hue/Saturation adjustment tool and use the following settings:

Step 2

Go to Image > Mode > Lab Color and change the colour mode of the photo to “LAB” (see image below)

Then go to the Channel Palette and select the “Lightness” Channel (see image below)

While the “Lightness” Channel is selected, go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen and apply the following settings: (Make sure you select the “Advanced” option)

Sharpen

Shadow

You should now have the following image:

Step 3

We can add a bit of softness to the photo. Switch back to RGB mode, then duplicate the background layer once. On the duplicated layer, apply “Accented Edges” filter. See image below for details:

Then change the layer blending option of this layer to “Soft Light”

Optional: You may use the dodge/burn tool to further edit the lightness on the dupliated layer.

Here is the effect so far:

That’s for this tutorial! Isn’t that easy?!

I know there are many other way of adjusting lightness in Photoshop, so if you have any good ideas, you’re more welcome to share them here!

With the final version of this work, I added some colour overlays and further edit the lighting contrast:

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Thanks very much and have a great day!