Archives - Tutorials

Airbrushing is always subject to a lot of discussion. Mostly the discussion ends up dividing people into two groups. Those who hate it, and those who simply love it!

In my opinion the last group of people is the worst :) Mostly because many in this group tend to 'over airbrush' their models.

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Info:
The original resolution of this work was 1500x2000, the resolution of the illustrations have been shortened I would recommend that you use a large canvas for this tutorial (1024x768 or more). Because step 3 (SinCity Rain) works better on larger scale you can scale down the image later if you like.

Using just one texture in Photoshop, I'm going to teach you how to make a planet that looks somewhat realistic although, in the end, whether it looks realistic or not is entirely up to you and the way you play with settings.

Mimic scan lines with Gradient Noise. A little less used feature hidden inside the Gradient Editor.

Starter Image
Copy and paste the following cityscape image into a new RGB document.

Today, I'm going to show you this technique using a photo of a mother and daughter with less than optimal lighting. Yes we could fix it in Photoshop, but let's say we're going for a more nostalgic look and feel. Something a little different; something special.

Make it grayscale
The first step is to zap all color from the image. Though this can be done in several ways (see Goin' Grayscale), I'll use my own personal favorite method.

I'm feeling pretty feisty today: I'm going to try to convince you to use *several* steps to perform a technique that technically requires only one. Impossible you say? Could be, but I'm gonna give it a shot.

This is a quick and relatively easy way to cover your image with colored squares of varying degrees of shading and equal in size; something you may have seen in magazines. These grid patterns are great for creating both a stylish image/graphic and for use as templates to lay out the text

We've all probably been there. Watching a Photoshop presentation of some sort and the presenter states something like, "I'm now going to select the girl's shirt and change the color from red to green". They then click in the Channels palette or the Path's palette and magically a selection appears around the shirt. Hopefully you get the picture. I know I've seen it many times. Unfortunately it's a necessary step because no one wants to sit and watch the presenter select the shirt in Photoshop for 10 minutes but it can be frustrating. So how do they do this? Many times there are nifty selection techniques that involve channels, filters, adjustments and so on. But more often than not, they simple use the Pen Tool and a path. When it comes to selecting areas in photographs for retouching, very few tools are as accurate as the Pen Tool. That said, this tutorial will show you some of the ins and outs of the Pen Tool and how you can use it to select areas of a Photograph for retouching as well.

We are going to create the effect of an object swinging through the air. This raises a couple of challenges, The object will be rotated from one end rather than the center and we want to create the illusion of the object slowing down. No problem Lets do it! Begin with an object that is separated from its background. There are plenty of tutorials that show you how to do that. Place the object on its own layer.

Create your concrete
Start a new file. Click Edit, Fill, Contents, 50% Gray to fill it with 50% gray.
Create a concrete slab in the layer by applying the Texturizer filter.

This week let's take another look at background replacement. Generally, I extract my subjects from their backgrounds using the Extract filter, but this time I will just use a mask to separate my subject from the surrounding pixels. In the process, we will also cover a little touch up to effect the overall tone of the piece. If you are ready, let's get started.

This one is for the Glamor Shots people. We are going to take a picture of a model and soften up the image in a fuzzy kind of way, but still keep sharp detail.

Welcome back. Today I'm going to dive into the brush engine. The effects and time saving capabilities of this tool are truly amazing. In this tutorial we're going to take an ordinary somewhat clean-shaven man and give him a little facial hair. Ooops - did I say "a little". "Little" may be somewhat of an untruth here - we'll just have to wait and see what we come up with.

All of us who work with Photoshop on a regular basis have a favorite medium. For example, personally I enjoy special effects, especially when applied to text. It isn't that I can't work in other areas or that I'm allergic to photo correction, but simply that I enjoy typography effects so I tend to spend more time in that area.