Diversification

In an effort to diversify my portfolio as well as to expand my skills, I have started doing odd projects, such as this piece posted below. I saw a tutorial on PSDTuts.com and decided to try and emulate it as best as I could. The end result turned out fairly nice. I really like the textures and how it all came together.

My dream has always been to get into game development. Perhaps someday I will.

July 6, 2009 at 10:57 am | Design | No Comments »

Force Bubble: How to make it…

Some folks have wondered how I did the ‘force bubble’ in my previous piece, so I decided to create another wallpaper using it and give a link to the tutorial I used create the bubble, which can be found Here. The tutorial goes into a lot of detail and is somewhat different than the overall effect that I use, but if you follow steps 6 through 14, you can achieve the same style.

Here is the finished piece:

In this piece, I wanted to create a foreshadow into the future.

Thanks to B-Squared-Stock on Deviant art for the stock desert scene, found here.

The city scene can be found here.

April 29, 2009 at 10:37 am | Design, Tutorials | 1 Comment »

Playing with Color Saturation

Have you ever looked at one of those cute cards that have the two little children being portrayed as adults? One of the kids usually has some kind of flowers, usually roses. In full color, they really don’t have that much impact on the viewer, but the real effect that draws you in is that they tend to be done in black and white. However, the flowers are colored still.

Many Photoshop users already understand how color substitution works, but for those of us that do not, getting this type of effect can be a daunting task. Thankfully, this type of effect can easily be done in just a few simple steps.

In today’s tutorial, we’ll be exploring the art of color substitution using adjustment layers, with the intent of course to preserve the pixels in the original picture.

Here is what our final result will look like:

Step 1:

Select the picture that you want to create this effect on. I chose a lovely picture of a rose and some baby’s breath that I found on http://www.sxc.hu.

Step 2:

Open the photo in Photoshop and while pressing Alt, double click on the layer to unlock the layer. Add a Hue and Saturation layer, and reduce the Saturation to -100 as shown below. This essentially removes all of the color information from the picture, but because we created a layer mask to do this, the integrity of the original layer is left intact.

Step 3:

Click on the mask portion of the Hue & Saturation layer. Select the brush tool and remembering the rule “White allows, Black suppresses” unmask the portion of the picture that you would like to allow the color to show through.

Step 4:
Finally, add a Color Selection layer. Notice that there is a drop down that you can change all the different colors with. The only one we need to be concerned with is the Reds. Adjust the values as shown below.

There you have it! A desaturated ‘old style’ photograph. Feel free to stylize the photo in different ways to achieve different results. I hope you enjoyed today’s tut!

April 6, 2009 at 10:34 am | Design, Tutorials | 2 Comments »

4 Great Sites for Photoshop Brushes

If you’re like me, inspiration is sometimes no more than a new brush away. Sometimes I just like to poke through different compilations of Photoshop brushes and find a new set that I find interesting. It’s hard sometimes to know where exactly to look.

Today I’m going to compile a short list of sites that you can go to find all sorts of new and interesting brushes. Spark inspiration, find that finishing touch, or maybe just play around. Whatever you use brushes for, here is a few sites that you can go to find brushes.

Brusheezy.com - This site is a fantastic site to find brushes of all kinds. Grunge, holiday, objects, you name it. Here you will find hundreds of brushes all neatly organized in various categories. It’s simple and easy to search or browse for a new set of brushes. It is the first place I always look when I’m searching for a new brush set to use.

DeviantArt.com - This is another great site for brushes. It takes a little bit of work though to find what you want, but if you’re not opposed browsing, then this site won’t be too hard on you. The brushes are not very organized, but there is a lot of them in varying levels of quality. It is a community of artists that submit all kinds of different artwork, including Photoshop brushes. In addition to the brushes, you can also get inspiration from user submitted works of art in many different formats.

Myphotoshopbrushes.com - This is a somewhat new site to me. Until today, I did not know that this site existed. It is neatly organized, with the ability to browse through various categories. There are several hundred brushes available here.

psbrushes.net - This site has just over 500 brushes sorted into various categories. The site is neatly organized and offers some really nice brushes.

There are many other sites out there for Photoshop brushes. What are some of your favorite sites for brushes?

March 30, 2009 at 11:14 am | Design | No Comments »

Easy Atmosphere Effects Tutorial

Man has always been fascinated with space and everything in it. Planets, stars, black holes, solar systems…these objects have been the subject of many forms of art. With Photoshop, designing space art has never been easier. Today’s tutorial is actually quite simple.

I’m going to show you how to create an atmosphere that one might see around a planet. Keep in mind that this technique can be used to create a really nice glow effect for a lot of different projects as well.

To start off, create a new photoshop document. Make it 1000 pixels wide by 1000 pixels high.

Set your foreground color to black and with the paint bucket tool, fill the current layer with black. Create a new layer, and call it Planet.

Select the Ellipse Marquee tool and holding down the shift key, drag a fairly good sized circle. Fill it with black. You won’t see the circle because we’ve got a black circle on a black background. If you look at the layers window, you can see that there is indeed a black circle.

Now click on the Layer Styles button. Use the values in the screen shots below to add an Outer Glow and an Inner Glow.

Right click over the FX icon in the Planet layer and click on Create Layers. This takes the effects that we added and makes them into separate layers so we can more easily manipulate our atmosphere effects.

Add a Layer Mask to each of the effect layers, and remembering the rule “white allows, black suppresses” mask out a portion of the glows as shown.

Congratulations, you have successfully created a dark planet with atmosphere. There are other things you can do such as adding texture to the planet or creating a star field that can be placed behind your planet to give it a more natural setting. In the one below, I toned down the outer glow a bit and created a textured planet that looks more natural.

For more tutorials and other design tidbits, check back often!

March 27, 2009 at 9:37 am | Design, Tutorials | 3 Comments »

Things I learned about Design from the Terminator

With the new Terminator Salvation movie in full advertising mode, preparing for a (hopefully) triumphant release this summer, there are articles popping up everywhere. One article I read talked about the Terminator as a metaphor on life. (source)

I got to thinking, what can you learn about design from the Terminator? I realized that you can learn quite a bit. And so, in light of that, I give you:

Things I learned about Design from the Terminator.

• If a design doesn’t quite work the way you want it to the first time, change it up and try again. If it doesn’t work right the second time, try again. In fact, no matter how many times it just doesn’t work…try again and again until it DOES work. T-100, T-1000 and T-X are just Skynet’s way of trying again…and again…and again.

  You don’t have to change the actual design itself. Maybe you need to change the playlist of music you’re listening to in order to see or feel out a different angle. Go watch a movie and come back to the design, maybe you’ll be inspired by an event in the movie. If all else fails, scrap it and start over.

• Learning something new is always a good thing. Terminators always seemed to know exactly what to do in every situation. In design, learning a new method of doing something that you have always done a particular way. This can help you be much more versatile.

• Using the right tool for the right job is always a great idea, but sometimes you can use a different tool to get the same effect. Terminators always seem to have just the right tools available to complete their mission. If all else fails, try the big semi truck!

  Using the layer effects tool can often achieve quick and easy results on a given project. For example, using the Layer Effects toolbox you can achieve really nice light and shadow effects. But you can achieve the same effects by using additional layers and the brush tools. It might take you a little more work, but sometimes you can get better results through the use of your brush tools.

• When designing for a client, getting additional and more specific information is always a good idea. In the first Terminator, Arnold had to look through a phone and systematically terminated every Sarah Connor on the list. Despite the script, if Skynet had done it’s homework and gave Arnold additional information, the job could have been a lot more successful.

  If you don’t have all the information from the client, your job can be a lot more difficult that it needs to be.

• Contracts. Every Terminator knows exactly what it’s supposed to do and what it is responsible for. Make sure you know what you are responsible for before you even start on a project, and get it in writing. When you have a well written contract in your possession, it’s hard to be surprised when the client says, “But you didn’t tell me I had to provide all the content.”

• “Nice Jacket” Don’t be afraid of criticism, good or bad. Being able to take criticism and turn it into something that you can learn from is always handy. Too many people don’t take bad comments very well. The idea is to learn from what people like and don’t like.

  At the same time, don’t be afraid to give good criticism. Knowing how to give good comments is just as important as being able to take it. When you tell someone ‘That looks like crap’ you’re not really helping anyone.

  Instead, give them an idea of what you think makes or breaks that particular design. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t feel like that shade of blue goes with that shade of yellow. Maybe you could try a different shade of blue?’ This goes over a lot better for both you and other designer.

What things have you learned from watching the Terminator?



March 24, 2009 at 1:41 pm | Design | No Comments »

Create a Custom Photoshop Brush

The concept of creating a custom brush in Photoshop is quite simple. Most of the work involved is nothing more than creating your brush! What I’m going to show you today is not going to be fancy, nor time consuming. So without further adieu, let’s do this thing!

Create a design in Photoshop that you would like to be able to easily replicate or that you would like to use as a brush. There are a couple things to keep in mind here:

• 1. Brushes retain transparency. If your brush design has any transparency whatsoever, this will translate into the final product.
• 2. Brushes do not retain color. If you create a multi colored design that you would like to turn into a brush, the colors will translate into various states of transparency depending on the color and what’s in the background. For this reason, it is generally best that you stick with a greyscale theme. You can create a color design, but the chances of the transparencies translating incorrectly are pretty high

Ok, so open a new Photoshop Document. Set the size to 500px wide by 500px high. We want the resolution of this brush to be really good, so set the resolution to 300 pixels/inch.



new document

Now fill the current layer with white, and then create a new layer. Create your brush design in blacks and different scales of grey, depending on what portions you wish to have transparent. I went with a simple zombie style smiley face in black and white with no transparent pieces.



braaaains!

Now comes the fun part. Click on Edit > Define Brush Preset. In the window that pops up, give your brush a descriptive name, then click OK.



Name it something good!

Now your brush is set. Go to your brush tool and you can now select the new brush that you created. Feel free to play around with it in a new document.



select the brush, and use it!

Finally, we want to be able to use our new brush later and just in case we override our current palette of brushes, we need to save our brush set. So open your brush palette, and open up the brush menu, in the screenshot the brush menu is opened by clicking the circle with a black arrow in it.



save the brush!

In the brush menu, choose Save Brushes. Name it something that you’ll remember and click Save.

Congratulations! You’ve created a custom brush and saved a brush set. You can now create many more brushes that you can use anytime you need.

Thank you for going through this tutorial. Please check back often for more fantastic Photoshop tutorials.



March 19, 2009 at 9:25 am | Design, Tutorials | No Comments »

Designer’s Commandment: Thou shalt not destroy pixels!

I learned early on the value of preserving pixels. Often I would be working on a project, carelessly adding elements into a piece only to discover that I wanted to go a different direction. What I failed to realize at the time was that unless you are consciously using pixel saving methods, it is very difficult to go back. With Photoshop, you generally only have up to 20 history points that you can go back to. (you can set this value higher in Edit > Preferences)

So if you are doing a lot of digital painting or drawing, or you’re messing around with blending options…those 20 spots of history can go really fast. This is why the art of preserving pixels is so important. There are a few methods you can use to preserve your pixels, and if you’re of a mindset to use them often, it can save you time and keep your original materials from being destroyed if you were to accidentally save over them.

In today’s tutorial, I’ll go over the methods that I use the most.

1. Save a copy. This method is literally the easiest possible way to preserve your original pixels. If you are working with original .jpg files, open the original and immediately save it as a photoshop document (.psd). This can help to prevent data and pixel corruption of the original files. The down side to this method is that it can start to take up a lot of space on your hard drive. With the size of hard drives growing rapidly, this is rapidly becoming a null issue.

2. Snapshot tool.




The snap shot tool


When you click the icon, Photoshop takes a snap shot of the current state of your project. Keep in mind that unless you use this tool often, it won’t do a whole lot of good for you. However, if you wanted to try out a few different things on a particular project, this is a great way to set a starting point. Simply click the icon and atop the history window, you’ll see a new ‘history layer’ appear. If you work on your project for a while and decide that maybe you didn’t want to go that direction on it, just click the new ‘history layer’ and it will revert back to the state it was when you created a snapshot.

3. Masks
This is perhaps my most favorite pixel saving method. There are a few different ways to go about using this particular tool. The simplest mask is a Layer Mask and is located as you see in the screen shot.




The tool is located in the bottom of the screen shot.

When you click the button, Photoshop places a blank mask layer on the same layer that you were working with. As you can also see in the screen shot, there is a white rectangle located next to the current layer you were working with.

Keep in mind a very simple rule when working with the Layer Mask tool:
White Allows. Black Suppresses
When you implement a Layer Mask, it automatically selects the mask portion of the layer. If you have doubts, check that there is an extra box around that white rectangle, and not the original layer. If you click once on either layer, you can see how it shows the selection with a thin white rectangle.

Now to begin using the Layer Mask, select a brush and start painting over the portion of the project you wish to hide. Remember the rule? White Allows. Black Suppresses When you paint in BLACK it will cover over the layer you are working on. When you paint in WHITE, it will reveal whatever you have painted on.



Mask Example

You can see here how I’ve used a Layer Mask to paint over the castle in the picture. I’ve also used the layer mask to get rid of some jagged looking white edges when I took out the sky background in the picture seen below.



You can see the jagged white edges here.

I used the layer mask to preserve the entire picture so that I could go back at any time and not have to redo everything all over again. The white jagged pieces as well as the original sky background is still there. It’s just hidden from view.

You can do this with adjustment layers (the 2 tone circle button next to the Layer Mask button) as well to adjust or change colors in a given layer without destroying the pixels of your original materials.

These techniques can really save you a lot of time and preserve the original materials you may be working on. Keep checking back from time to time, there is a LOT of different techniques and tools in Photoshop that can make your life that much easier.



March 17, 2009 at 10:27 am | Design, Tutorials | No Comments »

Inspiration on the Go

Over the last few years, my brain has changed the way it views the world. It used to be that when I’d drive down the road, I would generally not give a second thought to the things that I saw out the window.

Having taken several courses in Design and Design Theory, the way in which I see the world has changed.

Color combinations, typographic layouts, letters in odd places: Design is everywhere! Inspiration for design is closer than you think.

Next time you hop into your car or take a walk down the street, look around you. What do you see that draws your eye? How does the Type on the billboard look? Does it mesh well with the colors?

Look at the rusty grate below your feet. How do the colors catch your eye? Are the shapes and colors of the rust arranged in a way that catches your eye? Pull out your cellphone and snap a quick picture. Take it back to your desk and draw a little bit. Let your surroundings be your inspiration!

I had to force myself to keep my eyes on the road, because the colors of the plateaus and the shrubbery pulled my vision in a hundred different directions at once. At one point, I looked up at the dark rain clouds that were scattered across the sky. There was a slight opening in the clouds and a shaft of light came down to rest on a spot of greenery. The result was breathtaking: the colors and the light were simply amazing.

I read something from a photography blog recently. It suggested that you take your camera everywhere you go, because you never know when something will catch your eye.

I would add something to that suggestion: Take a pad of paper too. If you see something you like, snap a picture. Jot down a few notes about a quote you saw, or maybe some typography you particularly enjoyed.

Above all, keep an eye open…Inspiration can be anywhere!



March 9, 2009 at 8:06 pm | Design | No Comments »

Digital Photography and Photoshop

With the advent of digital photography, it has never been easier to get stunning photos at a moment’s notice. Many people these days at least carry a cellphone with a built in digital camera. Granted the photos taken with most of these camera phones do not have the kind of quality you would see in National Geographic, but you can still get some decent photography out of them.

When you combine digital photography with Photoshop, you get something else entirely. A whole world opens up with even just a few simple clicks.

I’m going to outline a simple technique that I use that often provides a lot of rich color or a few other effects. Keep in mind that I’m going to go through these steps using the shortcut keystrokes in Photoshop.

First things first, you need to understand a little bit about digital picture formats. The most common is .jpg. Other formats include .png, .gif, .psd and .tif. Here are the differences:

• .jpg is a compressed file format. It supports up to 16 million colors. Each time you open a file with this extension and save it again in the .jpg format, it compresses the picture again. If you only ever do this a few times, you will probably never tell the difference, and most people won’t even do this more than 3 or 4 times. If you were to do this 10-20 times however, you may start to see aberrations in the photo such as pixelation of hard edges or other odd anomalies.
• .gif is also a compressed format. It only supports up to 256 colors, which makes it ideal for most web graphics, but should not ever be used for photographs. Another big difference between .gif and .jpg is that .gif will support limited transparency. If you look at the box area around this article, towards the top of it, you can see stars and clouds behind it. That is transparency. .gif files will support one color of transparency. An example of this is solid gray box will let whatever is behind it show through, or a product displaying on a white background.
• .png is a format very similar to .gif files. However, it supports 16.7 million colors. It has full transparency, and so it can support a gradient background as well. A .gif file would not support the fading boxes behind this article, whereas a .png file would.
• .tif and .psd files are very similar and very special. These are the preferred formats to SAVE picture files in. Notice I said save. This is not the same as ‘publishing to web’. .tif and .psd files support layers and thus can easily be edited in Photoshop or other graphic art programs. They are different however. Most graphic art programs support .tif files and can readily edit pictures with layers from that type of format. .psd is a Photoshop only format, and generally can only be edited in Photoshop. Other graphic art programs such as Gimp or Print Shop may be able to open .psd files as well, but don’t count on it.

Now that we understand a little bit about digital picture formats, let’s get to work!

Open up the photo that you’d like to work with. I chose this photo from one of my favorite stock photo websites.




lovely lady

Now, we’re going to change the colors a little bit to make this picture a tad more appealing. We should first save it as a .tif file so that we can preserve our photo for future use.
Press Control + Shift + S to ’save as’, name your file whatever you wish, then from the drop down menu select the .tif format.



Now for the fun stuff!

Select the black arrow tool, and click on the picture to make sure we have it selected. Now duplicate the picture using Control + J. This creates a new layer that holds an exact duplicate of the photo.



duplicate

Just above the layer, you can see a drop down menu with the Normal option selected. This is the Blending Options menu. Click on the drop down menu and select Overlay. This will change the photo, and as you can see, it made the colors a lot more vivid. The skin tones are blown out and it doesn’t look that great right now. That’s ok, because we’re not done yet.

Down at the bottom of the layers box, there are several buttons we can click on. We are looking for the Adjustment Layer option.



adjustment layer

Click on the Adjustment Layer button and then click on Hue / Saturation. In the window that opens up, slide the Hue / Saturation option to the left, about -28. This will subdue the overlay just a little and give us just the right look.



hue & saturation

To the right of the blending options menu, there is an option called Opacity. Select the picture layer and reduce the opacity to about 67%. Then select the Adjustment layer we made previously and press Control + Alt + G.



Adjustment Layer 2

This sets the Adjustment layer to only take effect on a single layer and not the whole deal. Finally, change the opacity of the Adjustment layer to about 75%.

As you can see, we’ve taken the photo of this lovely lady and added a little warmth to the photograph. It’s the simple manipulations like these that can take an already great looking photograph and make it look so much better.

Please check back from time to time, there are so many neat and interesting things to do with Photoshop. We’ve only seen a very small portion of what Photoshop can really do.



voila!



March 6, 2009 at 9:11 am | Design, Tutorials | 1 Comment »

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