Posts by Lorelei

The popularity of text effects is not  going downhills and even if you may think that all the possible and impossible effects have already been tried out, sliced around and milled over — be surprised, every week I get to see new Text Effect Tutorials for Photoshop and they always look great and always impress me over and over, so in the mood of winter we decided to put together another text effect tutorial, this one is extremely easy but has a very nice outcome, which I hope will prove useful.

Step 1.

Open Photoshop and create a new canvas (Ctrl + N) of any size that will suit your needs. We are working with a relatively small canvas because we don’t need a huge one for our purpose. Fill your layer with #252d2c color.

Step 2.

Go to Layer Styles options and add Gradient Overlay from white to black, with 15% opacity. Use the Reverse mode, so that the white spot will be in the middle and not the other way around.

This is what you got so far:

Step 3.

Select the typing tool and write your word. We used “ChunkFive” font, Regular 127pt with Sharp edges.

Step 4.

Go to layer styles while the typed word is selected and apply the following settling

So far, this is the result you should be seeing. Should you decide to work with any other font, please bear in mind that for our purpose we will need a very BOLD font, otherwise the frosty dots around letters and the image we will be applying afterward will hardly be seeing.

Step 5.

Now we are going to take this beautiful image offered by flickr.com/photos/zitona

…and we are going lay this image over the text. Once you have pasted it onto your canvas, Set the Blending Mode to “Overlay”

Step 6.

Duplicate the layer with the leaves and set the blending mode of the TOP image, to Normal. Select the Eraser Tool, and using a soft brush about 65 pixels size, remove the entire layer, except for the bit with the leaves. So for the demonstration we blacked out approximately the past that should stay.

And here is what you see, the rest of the later sits “behind” the text and nicely blurred in the background while the leaves are popping out on top of the text.

6 Photoshop Actions

Aperture and/or other technological photography fundamentals can cause yawns in most of the keen growing shutterbugs, however, once if these essentials or the basics are understood by them, the remaining photography can be easily focused on. All the terms, Aperture, ISO and shutter speed can be followed, if you have cameras of point and shoot or a professional one. This article will be a great help and will explain aperture and will definitely provide tips for using this type of camera for a better photography creation.

For a better understanding of aperture, you should fist think about the bigger and smaller growth of the irises of eyes when more/less light enters the pupil. Likewise, the lens of the camera diaphragm narrows and broadens for letting in light more or less. Therefore, it is aperture that determines the picture exposure and that results in clear or dark photographs. Apart from this aperture also has other vital function which will be explained further in the article.

“Aperture” means the size of opening and is usually F stops measured. If the F stop is smaller, the aperture will be wider. This may be quite confusing. Therefore, ratios are regarded as F stop numbers and that is why if the F stop number is big, the aperture size will be small.

Coloured aperture values. Photo by Steven Wong

Depth of the field is also controlled by the aperture along with the light control. This theory can be better understood by holding a fist in front of the eye and when u open your hand slowly, you can see the changing focus. And if the fist is opened larger, more you can see. Thus, you can notice that initially when the fist was small, things which you could see were equally focused. If you try again, you can notice that when the fist is opened, the closest object is focused sharply whereas, the far away objects are out of focus. Same thing is explained in the field depth of aperture and it determines the focused photographs.

Pictures taken in Auto Focus (AF), the camera attempts to focus the main subject, but actual it may not when you really want it. For this main reason, most of the cameras are set with Aperture Priority setting to eradicate this difficulty. By doing this setting, the speed of shutter gets adjusted to balance aperture that is larger/smaller aperture. For instance, if a landscape aperture is set, the shutter narrows and less brightness gets in. Therefore, the camera lengthens automatically and the shutter continues to be open so that the photo does not get underexposed. Though the priority of aperture is not perfect, normally it do work.

If you own a SLR and pictures are taken while in manual mode, shutter speed and the aperture can be adjusted separately. Many people have cameras which are in the present modes, like, sports, landscape, portrait etc. And if the mode is set in the landscape mode, automatically aperture narrows so that everything is focused. Simultaneously, the speed of shutter is automatically adjusted or slows down and leaves the shutter open for a longer time and is offset for small amount of light that is coming all through the diaphragm of lens.

Dramatic Effect with False HDR - Photoshop Action

And if you go in portrait mode and try to focus on a person or thing that is in your front with landscape background, the camera brings the subject in focus and makes the standing person come out more clearly against landscape. Therefore, shutter speeds up so as that the picture is not overexposed by more light that is allowed in the aperture that is large.

Ricoh 55 mm prime lens. Nice pentagonal aperture and colored reflections from the glass.

You should always remember that if the aperture is small, the F stop number is great (as a single ratio is represented and not the number in whole) and the field dept is also great. Usually photo shooting modes are supported by digital cameras that are automatic and you have manually just point and shoot where the cameras do not do anything. Aperture Priority is one of those modes. It is useful in various situations and is worthy of an explanation of its use and type.

When you set the camera in an Aperture priority mode by using the menus that are on the camera LCD, you have to look through and choose from the menus which Aperture priority you want by just rotating dial modes and choose the aperture priority according to its symbol, which in most of the cases are “A” (capital A).

In this mode you have set the aperture value manually and for the rest of the thing, camera takes care. For instance, the optimal speed of the shutter is set according to your choice of aperture. Though certain physical limitations are there and all the chosen aperture value cannot be matched with other settings that can result in a better photo. The camera itself will tell you by flashing a LED that is green in color or in other cases; you can just check them manually.

After the huge success of my previous Photoshop Tutorial for perfume commercial poster, I received so many requests asking to make more tutorials in this nature, so it took a while but finally I had a muse and I came up with a nice idea for a modern, not realistic, perfume advert, you see something like this in girl’s glamorous magazines, but this is my original and hopefully successful work. Here is your final result, and in order to achieve it, you will need the following materials:

• Face by Tammy Manet
• Flowers by Nolene
• Splash by R’eyes
• Smoke Brushes
• Perfume by Rodrigo Senna

Step 1

Let’s get started, open a new canvas, of any desired size. We didn’t want to create a huge canvas so we used 700×600 pixels. It also depends if you are going to use this image as a print later or just for playing around and using on the web. If you do intend to print it, make sure CMYC is set to the right properties. So, please the face of the girl in the middle of your canvas…

Step 2

Duplicate the layer. Select the layer that is above and go to Gradient Map, by pressing Image >> Adjustments >> Gradient Map. Use gradient from black (#000000) to white (#ffffff), from left to right with NO reverse, just the way you see on the image below.

Step 3

While the upper layer is still selected, set the blending option to Multiply. This will give your image a nice darkish touch, while preserving all the hues, gradients of colors and tones — you will get a very artistic and interesting result that will instantly look like a professional photography.

Step 4

Create a new layer by pressing Shft + Ctrl + N.

Select a brush with soft edge and set the foreground color to black and carefully cover all the area beside face and neck with the black background color. We are using the soft brush here because we don’t want to have any sharp edges, we want the dark background to blend in nicely with the shadows that we see on girl’s face.

Step 5

This is a very tutorial for making colorful text, ideal for any kids decoration or web sites. we will be making this..

So, start off my creating a new canvas, 500*400, and fill it with the white color.

Using the “Fertigo” font, type any word you like, and choose the “bold” text.

Go to Layer Styles panel, and load the following settings..
Gradient from dark #5f001f to light bordo – #8e082c

and this is what we got so far..

Now to the more complicated part.

Make a new layer.
Select a brush, hard round, approximately 35px wide, but this fully depends on how thin is your font and how close are your letters.

Select any colour (preferably bright) and simple doodle over the letter.

Using the same layer, chose other bright colors and go over each and every letter like this.

This tutorial is mostly for advanced users, as it will require a lot of “manual labor”, brightening small areas in the face, adding hair from another picture, etc. If all these steps won’t be done neat, you are risking to make a funny monster, rather than a mermaid… anyway, this is what we will do:

Unfortunately a PSD file of this tutorial is not available at this time but as soon as we release the PSD membership club, I hope to include a file with this effect as well. Star of by taking a photo of a brunette girl. We used a downsized wallpaper of this woman:
http://vetton.ru/models/6406.html

Duplicate the photo so that you will have 2, or even 3 layers. If anything goes wrong, you can always pull out an intact layer and you can start allover again.

Select the upper layer and go to Filter >> Distort >> Diffuse Glow.
This will give your photo a nice dreamy effect for a start.

Next step is to colorize your photo. As you know, mermaids tent to have blueish face (they have drown, don’t forget! ) and greenish blond hair.
So, press Ctrl + U to colorize your photo (entirely) and apply these settings:

This is what you got. Mildly glowing and blue colored face. if you don’t wish to go ahead with your Photoshop skills and create a mermaid, you can stop here, this result may look good if you want to add mystery to your ordinary shot.

Next, select the Dodge Tool in Photoshop, about 3px with a soft edge, and go over the inside of the eye, lightening the eye balls and the eyes themselves, but try not to touch the contour of the eye, in order not to make the entire area too pale.