Pic for tutorial 114/365

For my newest tip squirel tutorial :D 

Light Writing

For a tutorial I've been working on :)

Confetti Photoshop Brush Tutorial

Step 1

Open Photoshop and make a new document with a transparent background.

Step 2

Choose the rounded rectangle tool from the tool box and set the radius to 50 pixels. Draw a rectangle on the document – it doesn’t matter how big you make it.

Step 3

Right click on the layer of the rectangle in the Layer Palette and select Rasterize Layer. This will make the shape raster and we can turn it into a brush.

Step 4

Go to Image > Trim and select Based on “Transparent Pixels” and tick top, bottom, left and right. Select okay, this removes all the space that isn’t used.

Step 5

Next go to Edit > Define Brush preset > this will bring up a dialog asking you for a name enter Confetti temp.

Step 6

Select the brush tool from the tool box and press F5 on your keyboard. This will bring up the brush dialog box.

Adjust the settings so they look like this…

Step 7

Next click the little arrow on the top right of the brush dialog

And select new brush preset – enter Confetti

You can now delete confetti temp

Step 8

Now make a new document with a white background and using the new brush make some random patterns.

Step 9

Next change the brush’s blending mode to Clear (in the options bar) and reduce the brushes size. Now go over the patterns with the brush this will delete parts of the confetti making it more random.

I used this technique on my blog…

(http://afictitiouslife.blogspot.com/)

Download the brush here - http://rev-jesse-c-stock.deviantart.com/art/Confetti-brush-149156898

Follow me on twitter @revjesse

My website – http://www.simonrudd.info

© Simon Rudd 2010

Snow Text tutorial

As it’s almost Christmas I’m going to show you how to make a quick and easy snow text effect using the ellipse tool.

Step 1

Make a new Photoshop document – I’m using 1024x768 but please feel free to use what ever you want. Set the back ground to black.

Step 2

Choose the Text Tool and set the font to Arial Black size around 100 and type “Snow”, I then highlighted the “now” bit and lowered the size to 72. For the colour I used a light grey #dddddd.

Step 3

Choose the rectangle tool and draw out a rectangle the slightly covers the bottom of the text. Set the colour to White #ffffff.

Step 4

Choose the ellipse tool and while holding shift draw out a lot of circles at the bottom of the text like in the picture.

Step 5

Do the same at the top of the text

Step 6

First set your foreground colour to # 0076a3 then make a new Gradient Layer – Layer > New Fill Layer > Gradient above the background layer. Set the gradient type to foreground to transparent, angle 90 degrees. As in the picture

This should give us this

Hope everyone has a great Christmas

Visit my website – http://www.simonrudd.info

Follow me on twitter @revjesse

Changing the mood of a photo

We can do a lot of powerful things with Photoshop – in this tutorial we will change the mood and feel of a photo so it appears to be early morning rather than the middle of the day.

Step 1

Download this photo from Sxc.hu - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1234595 and bring it into Photoshop. Now the cow and field is pretty bright so we want to reduce the brightness and saturation a bit. Above the Cow Layer add a new Hue / Saturation Adjustment Layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue / Saturation. Reduce the Saturation to – 24 and the Lightness to -16.

Step 2

The Photo is still a little bright so we add an additional Hue / Saturation Adjustment Layer above the last one. This time click the Colourize button in the bottom right, next change Hue to 198, Saturation to 25, and leave Lightness at 0. Click okay and change the Blending Mode in the Layer Palette to Multiple, set the opacity to 48%.

Step 3

Next we are going to change the sky a bit – grab the Magic Wand Tool and set tolerance to 32 and uncheck Contiguous. Click on the blue sky so it is all selected but the clouds are not.

Step 4

With the Selection still in place we add a Linear Gradient - Layer > New Fill Layer > Gradient >

Then click the gradient at the top of the window – it may look different to the one here.

Next Click the Colour to Transparent gradient type; we need to change the foreground colour by clicking the Lower Left hand arrow followed by the colour picker, which is just below the arrow. (As in the picture below) and change the colour to #F3C8C8

This will make a gradient only in the bits we selected earlier; automatically masking out the bits we don’t want

Step 5

Drag the Gradient Layer below the two Hue / Saturation adjustment Layers, the sky and the clouds will look a little bit to rough and don’t blend that well

So we want to blur the Gradients mask, we do this by Selecting the mask and going to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and setting the amount to around 10 pixels.

This should give us an effect like this

Step 6

Make a new Layer Called Mist and reset to the default Colours by Pressing D on the Keyboard. Next Grab the Rectangle Marquee Tool and draw out a small square. Then Fill this with Clouds. Filter > Render > Clouds.

And pull the anchors to fill the bottom part of the window.

Step 7

Drag the Layer below the Hue / Saturation Layer and set the blending mode to screen. Next we want to add a Layer Mask to this Layer – Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All >. Select the Gradient tool from the tool box, set the gradient type to black and white and drag a gradient out from the top of the grass to the clouds.

Step 8

Make a new Layer at the top of the stack called Stars, choose a 1 pixel hard edge brush and set the foreground colour to white. Now spot some stars over the sky.

This is what we have in the end.

Follow me on twitter @revjesse

Website – http://www.simonrudd.info

Distressed V (the TV series) Logo

Recently I have been enjoying the remake of an old classic V. The logo which is shown at the beginning of every show is a big red V with spray paint splats running down it. I’m going to show you how to create your own version of this in photoshop.

Step 1

Start by making a new document in Photoshop – I used 1024x768 but really you could use any size – but beware if you use a very big size the splats we create later will need to be resized.

Set the background to black (#000000) and make a new Layer (Layer > New > Layer) above this layer called blobs

Step 2

Choose the Text Tool and set the font to Arial – you can use whatever font you want – but I’m using this as most people would have it. Set the colour to red (#9e0b0f) and type a V in the middle of the screen. I set my size to 72 but you can choose what ever size you want. Move the blobs layer above the V layer.

Step 3

On the blobs layer we want to add some noise – well lots of it really – Filter > Noise > Add noise > 400%, distribution Gaussian and monochromatic

Step 4

Next we want to blur the noise by 5 pixels – Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur 5 pixels

Step 5

Now we have some lovely blurred stuff on the screen – attractive – no?? Next we go to Image > Adjustments > Threshold and move the slider till the blobs are biggish.

Step 6

Now use the Magic Wand with the continuous unticked and select some of the white then press delete to clear it.

Step 7

Go to Select > Deselect to get rid of the marching ant’s selection. Next using the move tool, move the dots around till they block out parts of the V.

Step 8

Duplicate the blobs layer and reselect the blobs by holding Control and clicking on the layer thumbnail. Next set the foreground to red (#9e0b0f) and fill it with Edit > Fill > fore colour. Move the layer around a bit to get some good blobs.

Step 9

Add a Layer Mask (Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal all ) and paint with black on the mask to remove some of the blobs

Step 10

Press D on the keyboard to reset to default colours, make a new Layer as before and call it clouds. Next add clouds by going to Filter > Render > Clouds. Set the Blending mode to Overlay.

Step 11

We want to adjust the levels of the clouds layer to make it look a little more grungy – Image > Adjustments > Levels and set the input levels to 0, 0.60, 255.

Step 12

Next put a selection using the rectangle marquee tool around the graphic and copy merged (Edit > Copy Merged) and paste it to a new layer

Step 13

Flip the new copy vertically and position it under the old V, set the blending mode to screen temporarily to remove the black if you having trouble positioning it.

Step 14

Right click on the new inverted V, press Control & T to transform it, and then right click on the selection and choose perspective. Pull out the bottom anchors as in the picture.

Step 15

Finally add a layer mask to this layer and using a linear gradient on the Mask draw a line upwards from the bottom of the screen to mask out some of the distorted V

Follow me on twitter @revjesse

Visit my website – http://www.simonrudd.info

Or my blog - http://afictitiouslife.blogspot.com/