Photoshop Tutorials

Ripples

In this tutorial I will explain how to get this ripple effect, great for in wallpapers, banners, etc:

1. Create a new document: 400x400.

2. Pick a dark blue color as a forground color, and white as background color. Then, fill your document with a reflected gradient so it looks like this:

3. Then, goto FILTER > NOISE > ADD NOISE, and use these settings: 10 ; Uniform; Monocromatic.

4. Goto FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR, and use the setting of 3 pixels. Doing that will give you this:

5. Goto FILTER > DISTORT > OCEAN RIPPLE, and use the settings of: SIZE: 9; MAGNITUDE: 9.

Now lets get some real ripple effect in it.

6. Goto FILTER > DISTORT > ZIGZAG, and use: 100%; RIDGES: 20; and OUT FROM CENTER.

So far you should have something similar to the pic below.

7. Now lets give it the finishing 3D effect touch. Goto FILTER > DISTORT > SPHERIZE and use: AMOUNT: 100%; MODE: HORIZONTAL ONLY. Do this twice.

Looking good, huh? Now just simple crop the center from it to achieve this effect:

Action Camera - DigitalDoodler.com

This tutorial will guide you step by step through the progress of turning a standard, static picture, into a "Action Camera" picture, like the effect seen in movies, or in banners, posters, etc. It is an intermediate tutorial, but should be followable for beginners as well. I hope that you will learn something from it, if any steps remain unclear, or something doesn't work out as it should, feel free to e-mail us anytime.

Step 1.

Okay, let's get started working on the picture, I have chosen the photograph below. It's a very nice picture, but it does not display the real speed of which the cars are traveling at. They might as well just be standing still.

First, choose the Elliptical Marquee Tool ( ). Now, drag a circle around the front car, with some space between the dotted selection line and the car, as shown below.

What we need to do now is to "Feather" the selection. Go to the menu "Select" and point to "Feather". You can also press "ALT + CTRL + D" if you are using a Windows computer.

Doing this will pop up a box. use the setting of "Feather Radius: 10 Pixels" Click OK.

What we have done now is that we "blurred" the selection. Normally, the selection is a hard line, so that if you would add an effect, it would perfectly end at the selecting line. Using the "Feather" option, an effect will nicely smooth out in the selection, with the given number of pixels.

Now we will add the feeling of speed, this step is rather simple. First, go to the menu "Select" and then to "Inverse". After this, go to the menu "Filter" then to "Blur" and finally to "Radial Blur".

Now, here comes a little tricky part. Drag the center of the "Blur center" to where to car would approximately be. Then, set the setting as in the picture below.

There! Looks pretty cool doesn't it? But we're not done yet. Here is what the picture should look like now.

Now the last but one step. Go to the menu "Select" and then to "Deselect". After this, go to the menu "Image", then "Rotate", and then "Arbitrary".

Set the settings as shown below

We have just turned the picture 10 degrees to the right, so it shows the feeling of speed even more. Your picture should look similar to the one below.

Now there is alot of white around the picture. to get rid of this, we will "Crop" the main part of the image out of it, so only the main image is left. To do this select the "Cropping tool"
( ), and make a selection just so you don't select anything that is white. Similar to the picture below.

Now all you have to do is press the check button.

Well, that was all, the end result is shown below. If it didn't work out as it is supposed to, please feel free to e-mail us. This technique is a great way of creating images for business cards, banner, and more. I hope you learned something form this tutorial.

Lightning Bolts

Here is a nice little tutorial to show you how to electrify your images with lightning in Photoshop.   By Colin Smith www.photoshopcafe.com

On a new layer, create a black to white gradient, diagonally from the top left, to the bottom right.

Filters>Render>Differance Clouds

Now invert the image. Cmd/Ctrl+I You can start to see the lightning

Adjust levels to bring out the lightning, Cmd/Ctrl+L. In the levels box: slide the black arrow to the right and the middle one to the right too, until it looks nice and clean

Now to add a bit of color: Go to Hue/Saturation Cmd/Ctrl+U Click the colorize box and slide the Hue till you like the color.

Now to add it to your image: Just place the lightning on a layer above your image and change the layer blending mode to "screen". Here I duplicated the lightning layer 2x and rotated it a little.