A while ago I bumped into the website of Clark Little and saw a set of his stunning Ocean Wave Photographs. I was really amazed by those photos and thought I would start a series here on PSD Vault – focusing on the collection of beautiful and dramatic nature-themed photos. Although this series is not directly link to Photoshop but I do hope you will find insipartion and design ideas from them. After all, nature is something we all treasure.

In the first volume of this series, I put together a collection of 25 spectacular ocean Photographs. Hope you enjoy them and find them inspirational :)

Here goes the list, enjoy!

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy those photos as much as I did and find them inspirational!

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this really cool-looking, Splashing Ocean Text Effect with Lightning Background in Photoshop. Have a try :)

Along the way, we will be using lots of textures, image adjustments, blending options and various filters. The purpose is to show you how you can use multiple texture images and combine them to create dramatic effect.

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

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

Wave 1

Wave 2

Font

Lightning

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1280px * 800px, fill the background layer with black colour and use font we downloaded (in fact you don’t have to use that font, any bold, thick font would be in this occasion) and type some text onto the canvas as shown below: (lower half of the canvas)

Apply the following layer blending options to this text layer:

Drop shadow

Outer Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Gradient Overlay

Stroke

and you will have the following effect:

Step 2

Now we want to add a bit more lighting contrast to the text so that later on when we add the waves and splashes, the effect would mix it with the surrounding environment.

So load the selection of the text layer by clicking on the thumbnail of the text layer on the layer pallette, as shown below:

Craete a new layar on top of the text layer, go to Filter > Rander > Cloud and render some cloud inside it (set foreground colour as white, background colour as black before you render), set the blending mode of this new cloud layer as “Hard Light”.

You will have the following effect:

Create another new layer on top of the cloud layer, name it as “fibre texture”, maintain the selection of the text layer and fill the selection with black colour on this “fibre texture” layer.

Go to Filter > Render > Fibre and apply the following settings:

Change the blending mode of this fibre layer to “Hard Light”, and reduce the opacity of around 25%, you will have the following effect:

Step 3

Load the Wave 1 stock image into Photoshop, use the lasso tool with a 20px – 30 feature, make a selection to the area shown below:

Copy and paste the selection onto our document, name this new layer as “wave 1″ and put it below the original text layer and just above the background layer. Desaturate this layer, resize it and erase (using a soft round brush) the outer portion of the wave, as shown below:

and you should have the following effect:

Duplicate this “wave 1″ layer once and drag it on top of all previous layers, reduce the opacity to around 85%, you will have the following effect:

You will see now the bottom of the texts are now submerged under the water, and this make the effect look more realistic.

Step 4

No we’re on the splashing effect. Load the Wave 2 stock image into Photoshop, use the lasso tool again with a 25px feather, make a selection as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection onto our canvas, name this new layer as “wave 2″ and put it on top of all previous layers, desaturate the layer and use a big soft brush to erase the edges off.  Then change the layer blending mode of this layer to “hard light”, and reduce the opacity to around 60%.

The effect you aim to achieve is shown below:

Make two duplicates of the “wave 2″ layer, resize it to a small scale, flip both of them vertically and drag them to the positions as shown below:

As you can see this adds a bit more varirations to the wave and make the effect look more interesting:

Nwe we add the ocean portion on our document and blending it in with our text. Go back to the “Wave 1″ stock image, use the rectangular marquee tool to selection and portion of the ocean as shown below:

Copy and paste this selection onto our document, name this layer as “ocean” and put it below the original text layer, but on top of the “wave 1″ layer:  (use the free transform tool to resize it a bit, as shown below)

Reduce the layer opacity of this “ocean” layer to around 90%.

Step 5

Now we’re on to the cloud bit. Go back to the “wave 1″ texture image and selection a portion of the cloud as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection on to our document, name the new layer as “cloud”, desaturate it and position the layer on top centre of the canvas as shown:

Use a big soft brush to erase the edges of this cloud layer so it blends in with the background:

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

Levels

Curves

and you will have the following effect for the cloud:

and this overall effect for the image:

Step 6

Now we can tackle the lightning part of the text effect. Load the Lightning stock image into Photoshop, Ctrl + A to select the entire image and copy paste it onto our document. Name the new layer as “Lightning” and put it just below the “cloud” layer.

Desaturate this lightning layer, resize and position the lightning texture as shown below:

Duplicate this lightning layer a few times, resize them and scatter them around the text, so to make the overall effect look more dramatic:

Add the following Curves adjustment layer on top of all previous layers:

You will have the following effect:

Now we can paint some colour over the it: to do this, basically create a new layer and set its blending mode as “soft light”, grab the colour of your choice and paint over the layer with a big soft brush:

As you can see, I focus on the bottom of the text (with light blue), the lightning (with red), and the cloud (with dark brown). I leave the choice of the colour to you, experiment with different schemes and you may find the feel will be totally different.

Step 7

For final touch-ups, I decided to do two things:

1. Add lights coming down from the sky
2. Add text reflection on ocean water
3. Add radial blur to the lightning bit

Sounds interesting? The steps are quite simple in fact.

So we flatten the image, duplcate the background layer three times. On the first duplicated layer, desaturate the whole layer, apply the following radial blur settings to it:

Change the layer blending mode to “Screen”, drop the layer opacity to around 60%, you will have the following effect:

On the second duplicated layer, filp the layer vertically and resize it to a very thin level, change the blending mode to “Screen” and drop its opacity to 40%:

Erase the edges with a soft brush, you will have the following effect:

On the third duplicated layer, apply the following Radial Blur settings to it:

Drag the layer a bit lower, and you will have the following effect:

Apply the following layer mask on this third duplcated layer:

and you will have the following effect:

OK that’s about it! You can further adjust the contrast, lighting and perhaps apply more textures onto it. Choices are yours :)

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

Hope you enjoy this tutorial! Drop me a comment if you have any question. Cheers and have a great day!

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

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

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

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OK let’s get started!

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

Coastal Cliff Scene

Island Sky

Rock Island

Waterfall 1

Waterfall 2

Ancient Ruin

Beautiful Sitting Lady

Step 1

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

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

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

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

Curves:

Colour Balance:

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

And you will have the following effect so far:

Step 2

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

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

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

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

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

Step 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

and you will have the following effect:

Step 4

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

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

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

And your effect should be similar to the following:

Step 5

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

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

and you will have the following effect:

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

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

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

Curves

Colour Balance

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

Mask

and you will have the following effect so far:

Step 6

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

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

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

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

Step 7

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

Resize and position it as shown below:

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

Curves

Colour Balance

Brightness and Contrast

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

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

Step 8

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

Colour Balance

Brightness and Contrast

And you will have the following final effect:

Step 9

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers and have a nice day!

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!