First thing you need to remember that every photo or digital artwork must have 1 point that catches the viewer’s attention. It can be (and mostly is) face or the eyes, but it can also be any other spot, that is the leitmotif of the canvas. When having too many points that catch the visitor’s attention, your artwork loses it’s charm and simply may lack the zest it would otherwise have with less accents on the canvas. So first thing you need to remember that in art, mostly, less is more.

Second thing to bear in mind is the depth of field. When you concentrate your look on a certain point, the rest becomes a little blurred in your vision, especially if the rest of the objects lay far behind. This is what we call — depth of field. In other words, human face cannot be just as sharp on the picture, as the background house that appears to be a few miles behind the figure. Although this isn’t always true and we have different variations of art (and sometimes the unusual is the best looking surreal concept!) but I am giving this little info so you will understand WHY we blur certain points and why we play with light the way we do, in this Photoshop Tutorial.

Ingredients:

http://dracoart-stock.deviantart.com/art/Asbury-Park-NJ-5-118481560

http://liam-stock.deviantart.com/art/Faballa-4-111550452

http://flordelys-stock.deviantart.com/art/sky-017-62717553

http://dracoart-stock.deviantart.com/art/Balloon-Festival-30-102183167

Get started.

We were working on a rather big canvas, we started with 1024px × 764px new layer as these were the dimensions of our base image. However you may feel more comfortable working with smaller or bigger images.

Take the image with fence and sand and paste it unto your Canvas:

Using the Rectangular Marquee Tool, crop out and delete the sky and water upper half of the layer:

Don’t worry about the rough unnatural layer, we will work this out a bit later.

The next step is take the image with sky (from our ingredients list), and paste it on top of the  previous layer with sand. Using Eraser Tool with a small soft brush, remove the lower part so that you will have an image consisting from sky and sand, just as you see below:

The way our image looks now, it’s very far yet from been an organically blended scene, so let’s start blending the layers into one another.

To make the sand less cheery, the easiest way is to simply match colors with the clouds, so this is exactly what we are going to do. While the sand layer is selected, go to Image >> Adjustments >> Match Color and apply the following settings:

if you have already unselected, select the layer with sand again, and go to Curves. Using the RGB channel, darken the image by dragging the curve down somewhere in the middle. We used Output: 113 and Input:143.

This will give our image a nice tone. The next step is — select the sky layer and go to Curves again, create a small point at the bottom and drag the RGB channel’s curve down, to make the sky dramatically darker.

Yet we got a much better toned canvas but still it is very well visible that the image consists from 2 different pieces, even if these pieces match way better in color than before.

We will be using a very old trick to merge the horizon lines of both layers. Simply create a new layer and using a big, soft brush (we are working with Brush Tool, in case I didn’t make myself clear), chose a black color and paste over the horizon line including the sand area outside the fence.

After you have brushes over that area, set this layer to”Soft Light” and you will have a much darker illusion as the view gets farther…

Next, we want to create an extremely mild HDR effect for the wood, so what we will do is create a new layer above the rest of the files, but below the dark layer we brushed with black color. Please pay attention because the sequence is important. We will not be working with masked layers at all throughout this tutorial.

Once that layer is created, click on the little “black and white” icon at the end of your layers palettes, the one that allows you to create a new fill or layer adjustment. Select “Exposure” settings. You will have a new layer with exposure settings created:

Using the “white” droplet, drag the Gamma Correction up to 0.82. See how the wood looks now, as if it’s been exposed to moon light! isn’t it beautiful?

To accompany that bright path we have in the middle, create a new layer and using your Brush Tool, white color and very big soft brush (say, 300 pixels), create a spot in the middle.

This spot should be placed above all the other layers and with blending mode set to Overlay:

Next, take out your stock photo with flying balloons, and crop them out. Don’t worry if cropping isn’t perfect, because once you placed them on your canvas, we will resize them to much small size and any imperfections will be blurred naturally.

Once they are on the canvas, you will notice that they look terribly misplaced,  and they need something that will blen them in nicely. The easiest solution (and please bear in mind that our tutorial is targetted at beginners) is to add clouds, that will “cover” the balloons, easily blending them into the composition.

So, create a new layer and go to Filter >> Render >> Clouds. With your background color set to Black and your foreground set to White (this is important!) — create clouds..

Once the clouds layer is ready, press Ctrl + T  and drag the bottom line upwards, “compressing” the clouds into a smaller strap, about half of the canvas. Set the blending mode of the clouds layer to “Pin Light”. This way, you will only see the WHITE areas of the clouds and totally won’t see the black areas.

Move the clouds in a way that will allow the white areas in clouds to lay over the balloon, this way we can see that the balloons are actually floating somewhere in the area, partly obscured by the heavy sky… Use Eraser Tool with soft edge to remove any edges of the clouds layer once it’s moved and you can also duplicate that layer and make a few of them, so you will have more cloudy effect (which is what we have done).

Next, crop our beautiful Becca.

The cropping technique will not be explained here as being pretty much basic, but we want to emphasize that if you use our particular image, the cropping will be rather complicated, since at some points (such as arms) the contrast between skin and background is minimal, which makes the cropping rather difficult and we had to use a few steps to complete this task, first we used Polygonal Lasso Tool, them Magnetic Lasso Tool, them we “refine edges” as pictured below..

Place the girl unto the canvas, and desize her so she will fit in nicely..

To add our own contrast to the image, we want to make the clothes texture more visible, less dark areas yet without losing the overall contrast and juiciness of the image, so with the girl’s image selected, we went to Image >> Adjustments >> Curves, and created a custom curve that consists from 3 points, as pictured here:

Next we need a shadow underneath her legs. Draw a circle using the round shape tool and black color as your foreground Photoshop color. make sure it’s placed correctly underneath her feet and has an elliptical shape.

Resterize the layer and go to Filter >> Blur >> Gaussian Blur

Set the shadow’s opacity to Multiply 57%, and you will see that the shadow is mildly visible yet it is present and gives a more realistic illusion of the jump or fly in the air. Please also make sure that you place the shadow underneath the girl’s image!

Final Steps…

Although most of the colors we used here blended in well and eventually created an organically looking picture, we still need to equalize the layers together. What some people do, and I used to do it myself in previous tutorials, is to merge all the layers, or even flatten the image, and then work on the colorization and the levels. This is very easy and perhaps will do the trick with most beginners, but even if you are not yet that much of a pro with Photoshop,  you need to learn how to work with Layer Adjustments.

In your layers’ panel, you have a small icon below, that looks like Yin-Yang symbol.

Create a new layer on top of all the other layers, and click this icon; you have a menu with various options, select “Photo Filter” first.

Use the default “Warming Filter (85), which I think is best for any picture, if you are looking to get a quick and warm effect, and set the Density to about 25%. Basically, the rule of thumb is, if we use warm colors such as brown, pink and earthly shades, we will give our composition a warm feeling (which is our aim here!), however if you want to make your final outcome look more cold, dreadful, dramatic and morbid, use shades of blue and green.

Once this is done, white you still have a layer selected that is on top of all the others, click teh Layer Adjustments icon again, select “photo filter” one more time and this time apply plain yellow color filter, with 48% density.

Most of you might want to stop here, but we want to really make this image look awesome, so we go ahead and click the Layer Adjustments icons again, this time we pick the “Curves”. This will apply the Curve settings to ALL the layer that lay underneath these settings, which is a huge advantage as you need not go layer by layer.

Make two points, which will brighten up the image quite dramatically. Note that we are working with RGB channel.

Now, the very final touch is to give our composition a light lightly cold touch, as we spoke before, a bit of green hue will do this trick. So yes, we will click on the Layer Adjustments again, and select the RED channel this time. Darken the image a bit, using two points…

That’s it! Hope you enjoyed the tutorials, and please feel free to download the PSD file for learning purposes (1024 x 764). You can also replace the model of our tutorial with your own image, and you will have all the effects already in place. Click on the image below to full view.

Once you purchase the PSD, and complete the checkout, click the “return to merchant’s website” button — the download will start automatically. if you have any problem, please comment below and I will email you the file within 24 hours.

I made this tutorial over a year ago, but for some reason never got to publish it and now with the major revamp of loreleiwebdesign.com I decided it’s high time to get back to this effect. I know this is maybe a bit old but since it has never been published before I do hope you will find this to be useful. We are going to design a dark, surrealistic and maybe also unrealistic “Forest Tale” scene in Photoshop. This tutorial was made in CS2 so anyone who uses an old version of Adobe — don’t worry, this tutorial will work for you, moreover we don’t have that many complex effects here that would require a higher version.

You will need a few stock photos for this tutorial:

http://darkrose42-stock.deviantart.com/art/Stormy-sea-55513661

http://liam-stock.deviantart.com/

Take the layer with the forest scene and the water scape (you can use practically any image you like. Since this tutorial was made over a year ago, I can’t recall anymore who’s images has been used so if you have an idea, please do let me know. The woman’s image however is taken from Liam Stock at Deviantart.com

So, we take the waterscape and apply it unto the forest image. Set the opacity of water to semi transparent,  so that you will be able to see the trees, and using the eraser tool remove water from the trees..

In a way that will allow you to see the trees standing in the water itself.

While the layer with the trees is selected, go to Image >> Adjustments >> Match Color and match the color of water scape with the forest, this way you will get an organically blended colors scheme to start with.

This is what you should see on your screen after following the previous 2 steps. The key to success here is to use a small eraser tool with soft edge, when removing bits and pieces of water from the layer. if you did it right, you should see a real flood on your forest canvas.

Nest, crop the girl’s image and place it unto the screen. We are considering the cropping technique to be rather basic and therefore won’t go step by step explaining how to do that. Roughly speaking, use Magnetic Lasso Tool or a Pen Tool with magnetic option, whoever works for you will be fine as long as the image is somewhat cropped.

Get back to the water image and using the Burn Tool, burn the edges of water layer just near the trees, to create an illusion of the trees really standing inside the water, and if they did, the area at the bottom would have been slightly darker.

Now we are going to match the color again, this time for our female figure, and we will match colors between her and the water scape, since its’ lighter and will not effect the overall color of her layer. Set “fade” to about 7 or so, if you overdo it, you will have an extremely bluish layer, so not only it will look monotone and not very organic, it also not going to be beautiful.

here is how it’s supposed to look with the layer of teh gild been matched to the color of the water:

Just like with the trees, we want to make her look as if she is standing (or even drawning) in the water. The best way to do that is take an Eraser tool and remove a part of her skirt, let us say about 1/3 and when you do that, make sure you don’t just cut a straight horizontal line, it has to be curved around her body to complement the illusion of her actually standing inside the water.

Get back to the Burn tool, and using a soft brush with parameters as below…

make sure the girl’s image is selected, and go over the edges of her skirt, making them darker. This will create the feeling of the fabric been wet, which makes sense as she is standing in the water, and also create an organic shade, allowing her to blend in nicely.

While using the same Burn Tool with the same settings, go to the water layer and make a few shadows around it as well.

Also, draw a shade falling “from” her body on the water, use your imagination or copy what we did:

Using the burn tool and a much smaller brush you can also go over te very edge of her skirt and make it darker in a way that will disallow people to see the exact edge of the skirt, this is a very old yet incredibly useful trick to hide poorly cropped layers’ edges.

here is what you got so far, it’s pretty impressive and looks nice.

Time to play around with the second image we have in stock, also crop it and place it on the canvas. Here is a tricky part, you have to place it in a way that will allow the girl in white to grab the stick our blond girl is holding… See?

Also using the Burn tool (yes, again!) draw a shadow from our new layer on the water scape.

This is what we achieved so far. Also needless to add that you have to delete the small portion of the stick that falls ON the white girls’ hand, IF you placed the layer on top of her and not underneath. Basically it doesn’t really matter as long as you achieve the right result. Since we don’t have that many layers here, the sequence of them is not crucial..

At this point — flatten the layers, all of them.

We are going to work with Levels, so instead of working with layers one by one, we will flatten all of them and work together, it saves a lot of time and hassle.

Go to Levels by pressing Ctrl + L  ( or Image >> Adjustments >> Levels) and select the “RED” channel. This is very important because our aim is to make the canvas more blueish-green and not just to increase the contrast. Once red channel is selected,  draw the dark and the white arrows a little bit closer to each other. We are not going to touch the gray arrow, it will remain on “0″ since we are not interested in adding red or on the other hand fully removing it.

This step will nicely equalize the colors on your canvas, as you can see the girl’s hair are no longer red — they are in blue shades and this makes the overall image more organic

Here is the final result (click on the image to full view). If you want to be a part of our community, please join our Facebook page and subscribe to our updates via email, to make sure you never miss a tutorial or freebie!

I really like the rainbows and compositions combined from flowers and beautiful women, so today we will be making a composition titled “Welcome to Thailand”. We will make a combination based on 3 simple photos, work with Curves, Brushes, Layer Styles and Blending options. This tutorial is suitable for beginners as well as advanced users and if you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment and ask, I will be happy to help you out, if I can.

We will be making this (full view)

Ingredients:

Step 1:

As always the first step for creating a composition is cropping out the main characters, so using the magnetic marquee Tool or Pen Tool (whichever you find more useful), crop the lady out…

if you are using CS3 + version of Photoshop, it will be much easier for you to follow our today’s tutorial as a lot of features we are working with are simply unavailable in previous versions of Photoshop. One of them is the “Refine Edge” facility. Once the selection is loaded, go to refine Edges and add apply the following settings. Please note that setting vary depending on the selection you have made, let alone photo you are working with. if you used Magnetic Marquee Tool for cropping, use the same settings as we have here:

Step 2:

Next step is go to Levels by pressing Ctrl + L and apply these settings. Our purpose is to make the image a little more professional looking by adding light since the original image is extremely dark and pixelated. We will refine our photo by working with Curves and Levels, but lets start with levels, to get an overall lighter hue:

Step 3:

Next, go to Curves and using the RGB channel, lighten the image up, just the way you see on the illustration below:

Step 4:

Right now it looks far more professional, less dark and more vivid, almost like a real studio shot. it’s time to take the second image from our stock for this tutorial, the sky shot, and place it on your canvas, just below the cropped lady image.

Step 5:

Also, crop the orchids just the same way as you did with the lady and place the flower on your canvas.

Duplicate the cropped orchid’s layer and place a few of them around the lady. We placed one on the front and the other behind her, so create the illusion as if she is surrounded by these gigantic flowers.

Step 6:

We personally found her outfit a little bit to complex so we decided to remove some lines, and all we have done is just using a Brush Tool with soft edge and color that matches the clothes she is wearing. Using a medium size brush, simply go over her outfit, covering the shades and sew-marks. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look too organic yet, we will make it look blended in well later.

However, to avoid your painting over clothes look out of place, we are going to swap the blending mode of this layer from normal to Screen…

Step 7:

Fixing the girl’s skin is going to be our next step in this tutorial. Using the Blur Tool, go over her skin and blur it, especially in places that got pixelated because of the JPG compression, that is to say — near the transition to other colors.

This should be your result so far, with the skin nicely smoothed, whitened outfit, overall photo adjustment of the layer:

Step 7:

We also want to add a nice twirly shape which will add some twist to our composition, so select any twirly shape you have in your arsenal, something that won’t be too complex or too. If you wish to avail of the same brush we have use, feel free to download the PSD file at the end of this tutorial.

Place the Shape onto the canvas, using White color as your Foreground color:

Step 8:

Press Ctrl + T to start transforming, Right Mouse Click to see the menu and select the “Distort” option, distorting the shape in just as you see below:

Go to Layer Styles option for this shape and apply glow using white color as well.

Step 9:

As any modern artwork, it should consist from plenty of layers with many little details. so Select the brush tool, and using the maple leaves brush, go to brush presets, apply the following settings:

and scatter it, just like this:

Step 10:

Use baby blue as your foreground and white as background colors, chaotically work with your brush across the canvas, trying to follow the flower and shape lines.

Step 11:

Set the blending mode of these leaves to “Screen”, in order to give it a nice semi-transparent yet vividly visible effect.

Using a much smaller  brush, and a darker baby-blue hue, create a new layer and go with the brush over the canvas again, concentrating on the lady’s layer:

Se the blending mode of the newly applies leaves to “Hard Mix”.

Step 12:

At this point, flatten your image.

We, however, since we wanted to make the PSD available for a download, grouped all the layers and duplicated the group. the first group got flattened and this is the layer we are going to work with, while the second group with all the layer intact remained hidden. In case anything goes wrong, you can always go back to the fully layered version and work from there.

So, the flattened canvas now has no layers, and we are using one image. Go to Curves again, and reduce the Red Channel, in the same manner as you see on the screenshot below:

Step 13:

After that, switch to RGB channel and lighten the image up a little bit:

Step 14:

Create a New Layer. Select the Gradient Tool, and using one of the default gradients called “medium Spectrum” (which is mild rainbow gradient), we are going to fill the new canvas with this gradient.

Simply pull the line from left to right, adding rainbow across the entire canvas.

Step 15:

Set the blending mode of rainbow layer to Screen. Now it’s semi visible, and we can see the angelic our artworks becomes:

Step 16:

Flatten the image once more (or, if you created group with unmerged layers before, simply merge the rainbow layer with the image below).

using your merged layer, go to Curves once more, and darken the image by pulling the RGB’s channel line downwards:

Step 17:

Go to Filter >> Sharpen >> Smart Sharpen…

Apply the following sharpening settings. This won’t only give you a very nicely sharp image, but thanks to the smart sharpening settings, it gives depth to colors by giving the field more gradient towards the colored edges:

Step 18:

Duplicate the layer.

Using the upper layer, go to Filter >> Blur >> Gaussian Blur and apply 3.7 pixels blur.

Step 19:

Set the blending mode of the upper layer (the blurred one) to Multiply. This will add a nice glowy effect without disturbing the sharpness of the image.

Done!

And here is our final outcome — Welcome to Thailand!

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial and please feel free to download the PSD file below, however it’s only distributed for learning purpose, commercial use is strictly prohibited. Stock images are the copyright property of their respective owners.

Play around with this tutorial and don’t forget to join our Facebook group and Flickr pool

I get a lot of emails from beginners who want to learn the advanced tutorials that involve glow and sparkles effects, yet they are not very familiar with the pen tool and other tools that require a little bit of experience and knowledge, even if these tools seem basic to most of you. So, I decided to put up a tutorial that will allow beginners who are not yet familiar with Photoshop, to get started, make sparkles, glow and twirls without mastering the pen tools skills any deeper.

We will be making this tutorial, which will only be constructed from 3 images, 1 shape and a lot of basic Photoshop commands that will allow us to make a really cool composition… or shall I say — “hot”..? Please feel free to leave a comment or submit your result to our Flickr group.

Let’s get started. Photos used (All licensed under the Creative Commons for commercial use):

Step 1:

Crop the girl out of the image; it does not really matter hat method you use to chop the edges and background away, as long as you have the edges defined. We are not going to get into great details here as cropping is an ultra basic technique, all I’d say is that I used the Magnetic Lasso Tool to roughly extract the lady from the background. Don’t worry about the rough edges if you have any, we will be using a lot of filters so any mishaps will disappear later on.

Step 2:

Place the lady over the winter landscape and desize, according to your needs. We scaled the image down to about 60% and placed it in the middle of the canvas.

Step 3

Now we need to make the girl’s image look like it’s blending in organically,  and the easiest way to do so is to add a shadow that falls on the snow. Select the woman’s layer, and once you made the selection, create a New Layer underneath the girl’s image layer, and fill that selection with solid black color #000000.

Step 4

Now we are going to transform the selection, while the layer is still selected, press Ctrl + T and lay the shadow down, just the way you see in the illustration. Make sure that the shadow begins from lady’s legs, because when you start transforming, the shadow will move from under her legs and the only way to fix this is by dragging the bottom corners and adjusting them to “fit” to the main object.

Step 5

Applied the shadow? Pressed “Enter”? Great, now Go to Filter >> Blur >> Gaussian Blur and apply mild blur — remember that shadows can never really be sharp.

Reduce the opacity of the shadow and set the blending mode to “Multiply”.

Step 6

Next, we are going to add these little twirls. Now the most common problem most beginner Photoshop users encounter is that in order to draw these twirly lines you need to have a great deal of experience with Photoshop. We are going to use Twirly shapes which you can download here.

Select any of them which you like most and using any color (we are going to overwrite these settings later) draw the shape.

Press Ctrl + T to transform the shape so that it will have more depth, creating the illusion that it “lays” on the flow surrounding the leg.

Step 7

The easiest way we are going to do it Resterize the shape.

Then, select the eraser tool and using a brush with a sharp edge, remove the shape from ONE part of the leg. Be sure that you don’t remove from too many places otherwise the illusion of wrapping the leg will disappear..

Apply the same steps on the lady’s arm.  Don’t worry that the edges of the shapes don’t “meet” — we will complete these steps and add everything we need in next steps.

Step 8

Merge both twirl layers and go to Layer Styles, apply the following settings for Outer Glow and Color Overlay with pure white.

This will give your shape a very strong and visible glow.

Step 9

Get back to the background layer (winterscape) and go to Image >> Adjustments >> Exposure. Apply the following settings to reduce the lightness of the image, basically what reducing exposure does is simply making the image darker, while preserving the light spots, which is important in our case.

Step 10.

As you can see, now the background and the main character in our tutorial look way too different, so what we are going to do is — duplicate the lady’s layer and hide one of them for now. We will need it later so do NOT delete it. Using the layer that remained visible, go to Image >> Adjustments >> Match Color.

Match the lady’s color with the background, IN the body of your composition.

You see, not it looks so much more organic and blends in nicely into the low contrast background we currently have.

Step 11

Now we are going to add sparkles to the twirly lines. As I said in the beginners, this tutorial was designed for beginners, so we are going to use the easiest techniques here. Select the brusg tool and go to the brushes interface bu pressing F5.

Apply the following settings to the Brush Presets. Our aim is to create small, chaotically spread dots, that will eventually become sparkles. This is absolutely easy and will require only the very basic Photoshop skills, as long as you follow the right settings for “Scattering“:

Step 12

The next step is to add the sparkles. You can work directly on the layer with twirls, which will save you the work of apply the same Layer Style afterward, however if you are not sure that you will achieve the best result right away, create a new layer and simply draw twirls over the existing ones and around the lady, in places it’s not been done with the shape we used.  be sure to add sparkles to places where the cropping was poor, in our case it’s the feet area. Also, it’s a good idea to add sparkles around the hair as it makes the edges look smoother.

Once you have done that, we can move on to overall image effects and moving to the lucky step:

Step 13

Create a new layer. Using #7283a8 as your foreground color and #c3cfd7 as your background, go to Filter >> Render >> Clouds and create a full layer just filled with mild clouds. Once it’s ready, set its’ blending mode to “Overlay” and reduce the opacity to 80% (or less, if your image turns out too light).

Step 14

Merge the lady’s layer with the background and go to Image >> Adjustments >> Levels, making the whole layer darker and more dramatic, in our example we moved the middle (gray) arrow to 0.38

Step 15

Pick the last remaining image with grass, paste it unto the composition on top of all the other layers and using a big (150+ pixels soft edge brush, remove the remains of the grass leaving it only at the bottom of our collage. beginners always have a hard time cropping grass — it’s indeed a very hard task, but simply using a huge soft eraser tool does pretty much this trick as we don’t see the edges very clearly..

Step 16

Create a new layer and fill it fully with the color #1a346e. Set the blending mode of this layer to “Soft Light”. Make sure that this layer lies on top of ALL the other layers, including the grass as we want to make the composition organically blended, even if it’s not entirely realistic.

Step 17

Adding text to the girl’s leg. Using any font you find fit, but preferably an old looking one like Times New Roman, for example.

We used the font Arno Pro Semi bold.

This is going to be a detailed job. Using a big capital letter, type the first letter of your word and place it over the girl’s leg, making it look like the letter is actually standing on it. Using Ctrl + T transform command to rotate the letters in the  right tangle. Your next letter would not be in caps and it will be about 5 pixels less in sixe, just change the size of the font and place your next letter in the same fashion. You may even want to go farther and make the letters look like they lay and fall to the side, by simply overdoing the Ctrl + T command, and rotating the letter too much to the side.

Make sure that each next letter is smaller than the previous one, so that the last one will be significantly smaller than the first.

Apply the following Layer Styles to add the same glow as we did with the twirls and stars / sparkles.

This is what you will get once the Layer Styles have been applied…

Step 18

Last step is going to add a little life to our frosty blue and lifeless composition. Remember that Lady’s layer we duplicated and hid for the time being? Now it’s time to bring it back, siply enable the previous back and without changing its position on the canvas, drag it in the layers palette on top of all the others, this way you will have a much more colorful main character on a cold white background. For your convenience I am adding a list of all the layers and their sequence that you should have on your canvas.

That’s it, here is your result and I hope you enjoyed the tutorial! Please subscribe to our RSS feed by email, to get the full next tuts directly to your inbox.

After having made the Moon Eclipse for DeviantArt, I was asked to write this tutorial for a several times and I decided to give in and disclose the secret – how do I make the “sinking moon” effect. I tried to re-create that picture, yet naturally it did not turn to be identical… Hope you will not discover that it was disappointingly simple. Nonetheless, I must say that this tut is for more advanced users… anyway, today we will be making this masterpiece:

So lets get started.
You will need two waterscapes. I used this one for the the shore edge:

and this one for the primarily background image:

The image above is watermarked, if you wish to download the full resolution image, please go HERE

Next, select and copy the first picture, and paste it unto the canvas of the second one. Erase most of it, leaving only the shore’s edges, and set the opacity of this second layer to 89%.

Making the moon:
Make a new layer. Select the brush tool, #FFFFFF color, 135 px size, and apply one stamp in te middle of your canvas.

Select the eraser tool with sharp edge, and “cut” with eraser’s tool side, most of the circle, as shown on the picture below.

Now that your moon has just started to develop a shape, using the rectangular marquee tool, select the bottom of the moon and cut it, just like we did here:

…and here comes the hardest part, manual labour. Select the smudge tool

We used soft edged brush 9 px, but you may use a bigger one, depending on the size of your moon.
Press the Shift button, once your cursor is exactly on the right line, and “brush” the moon’s edges out a few times, so that u will make these small lines, coming out of the moon’s cut edge. This should imitate the reflection of glow against the water.

If you managed to reach a result close to what we did here, duplicate the layer of your moon (Layer >> Duplicate Layer…). Transform your layer vertically (Edit >> Transform >> Flip Vertical). Drag it down a bit, so that it will fully “reflect” the first layer.

Set the opacity of the flipped layer to about 30%. Could be less or more, depending on the colour of your water.

Now, select the Smudge tool again, but this time with a bigger radius, lets say 19 px. Make a few chaotic straight horizontal lines across the reflection of the moon, distorting it. Try to get the effect like we achieved on the picture below, as if the waves break the shine from the moon…

Select the Eraser Tool, approximately 100px (or more) with soft edge, and remove about half of the reflection, to give it a more natural effect, as nothing gets reflected fully, when you look from the side…

just a small cheerful note: If you managed to get this far, it won’t go wrong from here!

Next, Choose the first layer of the moon, and go to Layer >> Layer Styles >> Outer Glow, apply these glow settings to give your moon a natural feeling of shine. Remember that you need not apply the shine to the reflection layer!

So, you got the moon done!

Now only the easy stuff are left.
Take a nice picture of a girl. As usual, I used a photo from Liam Stock, but this is very optional, you can use your own pic, though for our “eclipse”, it’s better to have a figure with a semi-transparent veil in hands.

Crop the girl (we assume this tut if for more advanced users so we won’t stop to explain how to crop a picture, if you are unsure, please post your question below.
After having cropped her carefully, paste her unto our canvas.

Since we want to live up to our metaphorical title – “moon eclipse”, be sure that the girl’s veil covers the moon a tiny bit.

Set the opacity of the layer with the girl to 45% (more or less, depending on your background image).

Take another girl, and repeat the previous steps: crop her, paste her unto the canvas, only in order to make her look a bit different, we did not just reduce the opacity of the layer, but we only set the blending option to “Luminosity”.

That’s it, add a title, and the image is ready:

Ok, this is the image we will be eventually making:

It’s a very easy fantasy art doodle, or rather just manipulation using some basic techniques yet achieving interesting effect.

1. Make a new canvas, 500*500.
2. Get a nice picture of ocean with foam at the shore. We used this one:

3. The most interesting effect is achieved when a picture was taken at angle, but we will create this effect artificially, by pasting the ocean photo unto our canvas and pressing Ctrl + T to rotate it a little, as shown on the photo below:

4. Next, take a photo of a girl, we use Becca from deviantArt, but you might want to use your own photo. Copy the canvas.

5. Paste the girl unto the ocean layer and then press Ctrl + T to rotate the layer with the photo and place it along line with the ocean shore, more or less, same degree.

6. Using wither magnetic tool, or eraser tool, delete the background from the layer with the girl. If the edges are not perfect, don’t worry about it, as eventually it will look as the girl was just swept away to the shore, it won’t matter and we will cover it with other layers.

7. Duplicate the layer with the ocean, and put the second, copied layer, on top of the layer with the girl.
8. Take the eraser tool with soft brush (we used 80 px) and remove the top layer with the ocean from the girl, however, (and this is important!) leave the edges covered with the upper layer, which will create the illusion of the girl actually been partly covered with teh water.

You should get something like this… I’d recommend to cover the legs with the water and not her face, or whichever part of the body looks as if it lays ON the sand.

9. While the upper layer of the ocean is still selected, Go to Levels Panel (Ctrl + L) and reduce redness as shown below…

…and adjust the Green channel as well, to give the water a deeper hue.

The water should get a little darker and bluer, however, reserving their natural look.

10. Duplicate the upper layer of the ocean, and using the copy that is not on top, go to Filter >> Blur >> Radial Blur and apply maximum Zoom blur, however, placing the blur starting point at the place where the girl is located in your canvas. The idea is to make an illusion of rays shining from under the girl.

Click OK. This is what you got:

11. While this layer is still selected go to Image >> Adjustments >> Brightness / Contrast and make the image darker / add contrast by apply the settings as shown below.

12. Reduce the opacity of the upper (blurred) layer to 80% or a little less.

13. Take the eraser tool and remove the blurred later from girls face and body, once again, better leave the edges of her body covered with the upper layer, rather than overdo the eraser too.

This is what we got…

14. Now, go to Filter >> Render Lightening effects, and add omni-spot light with the settings shown below, to both blurred and not blurred ocean layer.

15. Take some good resolution photo of broken glass.

copy and paste the glass on top of your composition and play with the layer’s overlay settings. It would really depend on your initial photo and how dark the broken glass layer is. Pin Light or Hard Light would normally be good, but try whichever settings look best to achieve the following result:

Be sure that the broken glass cracks do not “lay” on the face, or other parts of your composition that you want to be visible.

16. Now for the final touch.
Flatten the image, and press Ctrl + L to go to levels menu. Reduce redness..

…and play with the blue level channel to give it more depth.

And, here it is, your final result:

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial, feel free to ask any questions and post your results.

Fantasy Art for beginners – mysterious moonlit night written by Lorelei and moved over from www.loreleiweb.com for technical reasons.

Believe it or not, but from a few ordinary photos and some primitive brushes, we will make this image (see below). OK, despite the rather impressive outcome, this is a very simple tutorial, you wont need more than a few brushes and a few pictures. Most of it is a mater of technique.

Start by creating a new canvas, 500*500 pixels, and fill it with dark blue colour, we used #060062.

Next, you need a beautiful, and preferably mysterious photo of a woman, this is what we started off with:

Copy the girl to your clipboard (Ctrl + C) and paste it (Ctrl + V) unto the blue canvas

Select the “Single Column Marquee tool” place the selection line on the edges of the picture, Press Ctrl + T to draw a line, and repeat the action from the other side as well. This is what this action will give you…

Duplicate the woman’s picture, and set BOTH layers to “Luminosity” blending option. This will turn both layers blue, as we have a blue background.
While the upper (duplicated) layer is selected, apply the Gaussian blur on it.

Select the eraser tool with a soft edge, and go over the girl’s silhouette, erasing the blurred layer from over the woman’s body. This is how it will look, but work your way with the eraser over her skirt as well.

After having finished to erase the blur over her body, this is what it will look like:

Select the blurred layer, and go to Filter >> Render >> Lightening Effects.
Apply this “omni” light spot over the blurred layer.

Now you got a nice, wrapped in fog moon, that creates a very mysterious halo around the girl’s body. That’s because we used (before) the eraser tool with the soft edge, while removing the blurred layer we were not very accurate and deleted a bit of the area around the body as well. Even if it’s just a few pixels, it is still great.

Now we need to add some landscape… Easier of all would be to use some nice clouds photo and not to create clouds from a scrap. So take this picture, pulled from MorgueFile.com

Copy it (Ctrl + C) and paste unto your fantasy canvas.
Apply the “Luminosity” blending style.
Using the eraser tool, remove remains of the clouds from the woman (if any) and the moon.

Create a new Layer.
Make sure your primal colour is white and your secondary colour (in colours palette) is same blue as the background.
Select the “Dune Grass” blush (comes default in Photoshop CS2) and apply a lot of stamps (or just hold the mouse pressed and go over the bottom of the canvas)
Ideally, it will look like this…

Now you would need starry brushes. We used some free star brushes downloaded from Deviantart.com
You can choose between..
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/15213768
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/31601676 or any other…

Once you have installed the star brushes and loaded then into your Photoshop, make a new layer and apply a generous amount of stars over the upper part of your canvas.
Remember to use pure white colour for the brushes. If you see that the result is dull – go to Layer >> Layer Styles >> Blending options and add default yellowish glow.

Go to the layers menu and select the layer with the clouds (remember it has to be on luminosity mode)
Select the Dune Grass brush again, and add a bit grass from both sides of the woman, but make sure you dont apply them over her. The idea is to create the illusion of her sitting IN the grass and not behind it. Since here the blending mode is different (luminosity), the grass will look more moonlit in front of her.

Go again to layers menu and select the first layer of the woman, which stayed intact so far…

Go to Filter >> Renders >> Lightening effects and apply a light spot, similar to what we did with the blurred layer, only bigger

And this is how it looks now, now the girl is slightly lit from one side more than from another:

If you are happy with all the layers and see that no correction is needed – good! Now you can flatten the layer by going to Layer >> Flatten Image.
Now that the canvas is fully merged into one picture, go to Image >> Adjustments >> Hue Saturation.
Check the “colorize” box, and set these settings, for a flat blue colour. IF you wish to give your canvas a different hue, its up to you, just play with the settings here.

That’s it! We have a beautiful bewitching girl, sitting my the sea, while the fool moon is wrapped in fog and slightly lightening the grass, the sea’s horizon line and the lady’s side…

I can’t tell you how many requests I get, from people asking to make more Fantasy Art tutorials. Following the enormous success of “Plasma in a Lake“, “Fairy and Sunset Landscape“, “Mysterious moonlit landscape“, and “Sinking Moon Eclipse” (and some others)… I hadn’t much time recently and therefore made very little tutorials over the past months, but now I decided to give in to the massive-peer-pressure and make some more, truly amazing fantasy art tutorials for our read LoreleiWebDesign.com readers. Today you will be designing a beautiful moment seized in time, of a girl captured in a jump under the rain. This composition is called “Silentio” (and as you might have guessed, it means “silence” in Latin). I used to make more of a “dark fantasy art” previously, but now I am more fascinated with the light, colorful and angelic composition, that Photoshop allows you to create. Before I forget, if you want to share your result, feel free to add it to our flickr group.

So, Let’s get started…

You will need a few stock photos to get started:

• Shore background [download]
• Girl’s photo [download]

Open the landscape photo. First we want to adjust it a little bit because the original picture is a bit, so go to Image >> Adjustments >> Levels and set the following settings for RGB channel.

Now that our background has a better contrast, open the girl’s image and crop it carefully.  We used Magnetic Lasslo Tool to do the cropping but of course you can also crop using the infamous mask technique, the choice is your. Once the image is cropped…

…place the girl on the landscape canvas, where you want her to appear. Remember, that we want to capture a jump, so she should not be too close to a ground or any object, if you have any on your background image.

After we adjusted the background using the Levels, we now want to adjust the contrast of the girl’s photo as well, to make it match the juicy shot of the sea. Open the Image >> Adjustments >> Levels panel and drag both arrows, white and black, a little bit towards the center to highlight darker and lighter aspects of the image.

Now, the trickiest part so please pay attention. If you mess something up here you might end up wit ha see-through lady or even without her at all. As you noticed, the veil is is holding, is nearly transparent, it’s a sort of organza material, but once we pasted the girl onto the seashore photo, the fabric is no longer see-through. But we want it to be.

This is quite easy to do but you might mess it up here so you will need to re-do a several times. Alternatively, scroll down to the bottom of the page and download our PSD file of this tutorial FREE.

• Duplicated the cropped lady’s layer.

• Make the first layer invisible for now.
• Set this layer’s opacity to “Multiply”.

Make the layer you just set to “Multiply” invisible and bring the other layer back on the canvas. Leave it’s blending options on Normal, and crop the organza veil out, so that you will only have this on your canvas..

Switch back to see the layer you have on “Multiply” and crop the lady out, leaving only the veil on the screen..

Time to do the magic — make both layers visible and there you go — you have a lady jumping with a see-through veil in her hands, through which you can see the remaining parts of the landscape photo.

Since this does not look any natural without shadow, we are going to add a shadow, to create the full illusion of the girl being in the air.

If you had a third copy of cropped layer (which will save you merging and unmergining now) — just select the entire area by clicking on the layer in Layer’s panel, make a New Layer, and fill this selection with a dark gray color of your choice.

Take that selection and using the “Distort” option (available upon Right Mouse Click when you press Ctrl+ T) — place the shadow in a position that will suit your perspective point.

I also went ahead and pressed the shadow down a little bit to make it smaller, so that the light point will look natural.

Since I wanted to give my composition is a nice angelic and touching touch, I also added a few doves, chaotically flying around the main character.  I used this image of a dove, and just pasted it on top of the canvas without cropping. Simply set the blending options to “Multiply” as well and the background will blend in by itself, leaving you with a perfectly placed image on the composition.

Time to give your composition a juicy angelic touch.
Make a new layer, and place it above the landscape background yet under all the other layers. Select the “Gradient Tool” and use one of the default “rainbow” gradients that come pre-installed with your Photoshop…

Draw a line for your gradient, using approximately the same angle as you see below..

Set this gradient’s blending options to “Screen“, and Opacity to about 50%. I am putting the entire layer’s panel on the preview, so that you will see which layer should lay where in case you messed up anything by now..

This time we will add our trademark shape which you already seen in our other very popular tutorials — Surfing Girl fashion tag and design your Perfume Billboard.

You can download the shape here.

Make a big twirly shape on your canvas.

Press Ctrl + T, and upon Right mouse click, chose “Distort“. Position the shape in a way that will “wrap” around the girl under  a natural angel.

Press Enter. Now, resterize this shape and using eraser tool with sharp edge remove the pieces of the shape that lay OVER the girl’s body. This is what it should look like by now.

make sure you do it really neatly because if you erase too much, or too little, the effect will no longer be so natural, so it may help you to set the shape’s opacity in Photoshop to 50%, so that you will be able to see it semi-transparently, and that way you have far less chances to mess things up. It’s also highly recommended to work at zoom, even if your quality on the screen won’t be good, you have better chances to erase acuratly, compared to working in 100%.

Next step. Let’s make the veil colorful as well, to give our composition a more cheery touch. Select the veil’s canvas, go to Layer Styles >> Gradient Overlay and apply one of the default, classic rainbows that come pre-installed with your Adobe Photoshop. Set the Opacity to 35% and Blend mode to “Overlay“.

Still, we want more effect to enhance our composition. Create a new layer and fill it with this gradient, it also comes by default with all the CS Photoshop versions. Set gradient type to “noise” to achieve this kind of effect.

Make sure this green noise gradient layer in on top of all the others, and set it’s blending mode to “Linear Dodge” and opacity to 75%.

Next we want to add glowing little combs, flying around the girl. Using soft-edge brush and #ffffff (white) color, apply a few chaotic dots across the canvas, but try to keep them close to the girl and the shape, as if they fly about them.

That’s all, this was our “Silentio” Fantasy Art Photoshop Tutorial for today. If you wish, you can also add rain using our previously posted tutorial about Rain Photo Effect. Hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

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Dark Fantasy Art tutorial called  “Sleeping Sun” by Lorelei (me!) was originally posted on www.loreleiweb.com The tutorial remains a copyright property of Lorelei © 2009, however,  now it has moved to PSwish.com due to technical / server reasons. We invite all our LoreleiWeb community to subsribe to our feed and make sure you don’t miss any tutorial written by your favorite authors.

Despite been classed as fantasy art, this is a mere photo manipulation – make a fairy and your own mystic scenery; creating a landscape from scrap is now possible! I was inspired by the huge success of my previous fantasy art tut, which I posted in this forum last week… I got quite a few emails thanking me for it and many PS blogs featured it, so I decided to give in to repeated requests from millions of loving fans and do one more fantasy / scenery tut…

This is basically a mix of whats we call “fantasy art” and “dark/ gothic art”

I want to mention in advance that this tutorial is mostly for more experienced users, here we will need to use a lot of “hand work” and common sense; you will be working with your own images, and would need to adjust to the “needs” of your landscape.

So, lets get started… make a new canvas – 600* 400.

Fill your background layer with any dark colour, we chose to do it with blue, but you can use black as well.

Take a picture of a girl… we used this one, from Liam Stock, free photo resource.. ( http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/39058232/ <– Full resolution image)

This would depend on the image you use, but try to crop the figure accurately and remove the background.

Select the cropped girl from your canvas, and paste it unto the blue fantasy canvas we will create.

Place her in the middle, not to close to the edge, as she will be our leitmotif.

Next step, you will need different photos in order to combine a landscape.

First off, a photo of a shore. We took a pic offered free by ~gladly.

Press ctrl + a to select the entire water scape, Ctrl + c to copy it, and then , when you go to the fantasy canvas – press Ctrl + V to paste it.

Be sure to place the water scape layer UNDER the layer with the girl. This is important, we placed the girl first in order to be able to see what proportion are we creating with the landscape, however, remember, that she shall always be the top later.

Using the Eraser tool, with soft edge, 40 or 50 px size, draw a line (horizon), which will he around the level of the main figure’s eyes. This is ideally, but if you use a taller person, or not a sitting figure, of course you can draw the horizon wherever you wish.

In order to make sure that your line is straight, press the Shift button while pressing the mouth, this way, even if your hand will hove, the line will remain straight.

Now we need sky. Don’t look for any spy picture, because we mostly need a horizon line (with mountains, or just a stroke of land) rather than mere clouds.

The hue of the picture is not important, all you need is a cloudy interface with a bit of land to symbolize the horizon.

Paste your clouds photo unto the fantasy canvas, UNDER the water scape layer.

The horizon line of the water has to be a little darker, so u can go back to the background later (blue canvas) and brush it with black or a darker blue hue.

Create a new layer.

Select a Round Brush with a sharp edge (do not use a soft edge here!) and Make a stamp near the figure, as shown on the picture below.

Set the opacity of the layer to “soft”, to make it semi transparent. Using the eraser tool with a sharp edge, remove all the remains, so that it will look as if this sun (or moon, if u wish) will create the illusion or setting behind the hills / land line of the horizon.

See the illustration for understand it better, and once you have finished erasing, don’t forget to set the blending options back to normal

Go to Layer >>Layer Styles >> Blending options, and apply these settings for the outer glow effect. Don’t skip this step, this is necessary to make an effect of shine and glow.

Select the water scape layer.

Go to Filter >> Renders >> Lightening Effect.

Make a light spot, exactly on the place where the sun is… this will lit the water in front of the setting sun.

This is what we got so far, beautiful water with a local lightening.

Select the layer with the cropped girl (main figure) and apply same spot lightening effect.

Its important to use same location for the spot, as we only have one sun here!

Set the blending options of the layer with the girl to “Luminosity”, in order to give her same hue as the layers underneath her.

After the recent few steps, you canvas should look like this… If anything looks different – don’t worry, in the end you might get even a better result than the example in this tut.

Now, we are going to need wings to add to our girl and turn her into a fallen fairy.

I’d recommend to use Photoshop brushes in a shape of wings, and not to crop wings from other photos, as we need high quality transparent wings.

For this very tutorial, i used wings brushes downloaded free from Deviant art – http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/11925788/

Once you have installed the brushes, make a new layer (don’t for get) which will be placed BELOW the girl, and ABOVE water scape layer and the sky.

Use a size that will suit the size of your figure and canvas.We used wing brushes 185px, but this is individual.

Make one stamp for a right wing, and one for the left.

Since our figure is not sitting straight, we made separate layers for each wing and after applying the second one, we pressed Ctrl + T to transform the layer freely, and rotated it a bit, as shown on the pic below

This is our result so far…

Now, Flatten the Image. (Don’t skip it!)

Go to Image >> Adjustments >> Levels

and set these parameters for the BLUE channel

And these parameters for RED channels. We are looking to create a mysterious atmosphere with dark yet not dull colours, therefore colorizing the entire canvas will not look good.

Now your canvas has a nice, blue-green hue…

Apply omni spot light once again, same position as before (center spot in the center of the sun), using light blue colour.

that is it, your canvas is ready…

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This tutorial was originally posted on loreleiweb.com but due to technical reasons moved to pswish.com. The tutorial remains a copyright property of Lorelei (me!)

The requests for Fantasy Art tutorials are enormous, I still get emails and Pms from people asking to do more Fantasy Art tuts, so here is one more, called “Plasma” (Star, not the TV!) which I hope you’d enjoy.

1. Make a new canvas, we used 600*480 px here, but the size is of course optional.

2. Select the Gradient Tool, using two shades of blue (see below), fill your canvas, so that the darker colour will be on top.

3. Take a photo of a girl. Traditionally I am using Becca‘s photo from her Deviant Art account, but you can replace her with any semi-sitting figure of your choice. Crop the figure and paste her unto your canvas. In needed, resize her so that she will fit in.

4. To get rid of the visible crappy cropping, and to give the girl more emphasis, add blueish glow to her by going to Layer >> Layer Styles >> Outer Glow and applying the following settings:

This is what you would get:

5. Make a new Layer. Make sure your primarily and secondary colours are black and white. Go to Filter >> Render >> Clouds

And, if needed apply the clouds effect a several times to achieve the desired randomly “clouded” effect.

6. Reduce the opacity of the layer to semi-visible.

7. Press Ctrl+T for free transform, and then right mouse click and “Scew”. Drag the left corner of the clouds layer, as shown on the illustration below:

Press “Enter” when you are done, then Ctrl + D to deselect the layer.

8. Duplicate the clouds layer. Select the upper layer and go to Edit >> Transform >> Flip Horizontal.

9. Select the girl’s layer from layers panel and drag it to the top, so that it would be your utmost upper layer.

Remember to remove the parts where layers turn to be on top of one another.

10. Take a photo of a lake with water circles. We used this one from Digital Free Photo, but again – this is optional.

Paste the layer unto your composition, so that the circles in the water will be “around” the girls or your main figure.

11. Using the Eraser Tool, remove the lower part of the girl’s layer, so create the illusion as if she is really sitting inside the water and the water circles are “from” her.

12. Set lake’s layer blending options to Luminosity.

13. Drag the Layers of the clouds on top of the water later and using eraser tool with soft edge (100px) remove the sharp parts, so that only the “steaming” clouds will remain, no edges.

14. Now to the hard bit – creating the plasma cycles.
Make a new layer (this is important) and place it on top of all the others.

15 Using the Elliptical Marquee tool, draw and ellipse. While the ellipse on the new layer is selected, Right-mouse-click and choose “stroke”. Apply the settlings below for the stroke effect:

16. Press Ctrl + T to free transform, and then right-mouse-click >> Prospective. Try to distort the round layer you have to it would look like the line is surrounding or flowing around the girl.

17. Using the Eraser tool with big soft edge, remove the “farther” part of the round, behind her head, like this:

18. While this layer is selected, go to Layer >> Layer styles >> Outter glow and apply the following glow settlings:

19. Duplicate the layer a several times and each time transform the round using the prospective settlings, so that the circles chaotically surround the main figure’s body.

20. Remember to leave the “front” part of the circle visible and erase the “back” part of it. This is more or less what you should have by now:

21. Flatten the Layer.
22. Go to Image >> Adjustments >> Levels and apply the following settlings to give the image an overall bluish hue:

23. Duplicate the layer.
24. While the upper layer is selected (and your background colour in the palette is set to white), go to Filter >> Distort >> Diffuse Glow and apply these glow settings.

25. Reduce the opacity of the “glowing layer” to 20% (or less, depends on your image).
26. Flatten the layer again to merge both layers into one.

27. Using some star brushes (download free on deviant Art resources page), apply the stars chaotically around and allover the glowing cycles.

28. Select the background layer (the artwork, not the stars) and to to Renters >> Lightening effect, apply the following spot light effect twice.

29. Get back to Stars layer, and go to Layer >> Layer Styles >> Outer Glow, and add the following glow using white #ffffff colour.

30. Duplicate the stars layer.
31. Go to Filter >> Blur >> Radial Blur and apply these settings.

You may choose to reduce the opacity of this layer if you feel the rounded blurred effect is too strong. That’s it, your artwork is ready:

Download my poorly cropped Render: