Posts Tagged ‘Photoshop tutorial’

Posted on January 20, 2009 - by Khaled

Easily Create “Obama style” graphics with Photoshop

Easily show your support! This tutorial will show you how to use Photoshop to quickly turn your photograph into a graphic that has the “Obama style”. WIth Obama the internet was used at its fullest so this tutorial seems to be something in tune with his campaign! especially that today is his inauguration day. Start with your photograph, set the mode to CMYK.

Hit ctrl+M to pop up the curves window. Set channel to black, output to 70 and input to 35.

Then go to filter > Blur > Smart Blur. Set Radius to 2, threshold to 50 and quality to high.

Revert back to RGB Mode. Go to Image > adjustments > Gradient Map. Set the first color at location 0% (blue color: #03334c ), the second color at location 25% ( red color: #d91a21), the third point of the gradient at location 60% (color: #70969e) and the last one at location 100% (color #fce3a6). and hit OK. You will obtain this:

Add some ornaments and text to customize it more.

Tweak it a bit more with Mask layers, dodge and burn tools and you’re quickly done.

This was a tutorial written on the fly for the occasion of Obama’s inauguration day! Let’s say we’re full of hope right now for the future.

Posted on January 20, 2009 - by Khaled

Create a cool frog in just 3 steps with Photoshop

Another quick photoshop tutorial…So do you remember this fella?

If you were a regular reader of this blog when it used to be called “No relation” then you will recognize this frog as it was on the header. You can download the full resolution stock photo from sxc.hu for free. I will quickly show you in 3 steps how to turn this plain ordinary frog into a cool one! Ok first of all let’s change the eyes color to something more attractive and exotic! what about pink?

Step 1 : Eyes color

Start with the selection of the eyes with the elliptical marquee tool.

Now we’re going to add a new adjustment layer to tweak the Hue/saturation of the eyes.

Set the hue/saturation to the following values:

Of course by setting the hue value differently you can have a different eyes color. Just choose what you like!

Step 2 : Body color

Ok don’t deselect just inverse the selection (ctrl+shift+I). Add a new adjustment layer of Brightness and contrast: set brightness to +30 and contrast to +25.

Now as you see the colors are a lot more lively and nicer to see!

Step 3 : Final touches

Ok use the Burn tool (brush 35px, Range: Midtones; Exposure: 30%) and darken the shadow and the lower parts of the frog. You may want to use the dodge tool to add some brightness to the eyes. The final result will look like this:

I hope you enjoyed this quick tutorial. If you need more details about the steps just let me know.

Posted on January 16, 2009 - by Khaled

Easily achieve the trendy LetterPress effect with Photoshop

In late 2008 and early 2009 LetterPress effect is becoming increasingly popular and used in many web sites. So here 2 quick examples on how you can create a realistic letterpress effect with Adobe Photoshop (Version 7 or newer). This will take you just a couple of minutes and you can achieve it even if you are a beginner.

Example 1:

Open Photoshop, create a new document (600 x 400 for instance). I started with a white background and typed the word Letterpress (Font: Century Gothic, 60pt, All caps and set the color for instance to: #00bae8).

Now we are going to add layer effects (double click the text layer) and simply check the inner Shadow box and set it to these values (shadow color: black #000000):

You will obtain this kind of effect:

As you see we’re almost there! You can customize a bit more with overlaying a gradient overlay or you can rasterize the type layer and work on it with burn/dodge tool. You can check out this tutorial to see how to use Dodge/Burn tools. You should be able to end up with a final aspect that looks like this:

I just applied a gradient overlay effect and some burning at the base of the letters.

Example 2:

Ok, let’s see another variation that might work better if you are after a metallic Letterpress effect. Create a new document, fill in the background with a light grey color (#d0d0d0 for instance). Type in LETTERPRESS (Font: Century Gothic, 60pt, All caps, Set tracking to 50 and set the color for instance to: #919191). Now we’re going to add an inner glow effect this time. Set the Inner glow values as following (color: #000000):

The noise percentage can be tweaked and set to what is best for your purpose!

Now apply an outer glow with these settings:

You should obtain something like this:

All you need now is to play with your background to make it look like brushed metal using noise filters and motion blur along with dodge/burn tools. May  be also add a gradient overlay to the text layer and you will have something that looks like this:

If you think I should put more details about the creation of this metallic background or on the last steps of this tutorials let me know!

Posted on April 15, 2008 - by Khaled

Photoshop Wrap background Tutorial

Another old Photoshop tutorial picked up from the kyscorp archives again. This is just to show you how to create some special background effect with Photoshop. Of course once you see how the background was done you can change it and make some tweaks all along the tutorial modifying any step to obtain what you exactly need. It is an old tutorial that was created for Adobe Photoshop 7 but you can of course use Photoshop CS, CS2 or CS3. More old tutorials will be posted soon…

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Posted on April 7, 2008 - by Khaled

Rusted Engine Photoshop Tutorial

Yet another old Photoshop tutorial already posted on Kyscorp. This one is called: Rusted engine. During this tutorial you will learn some basic photo manipulation techniques in Adobe Photoshop. You can use those techniques in so many different ways to create different effects especially related to texturing with Photoshop.
It is an old tutorial that was created for Adobe Photoshop 7 but you can of course use Photoshop CS, CS2 or CS3. More old tutorials will be posted soon…

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