It’s been a while since the last time that I made a chrome-like text effect so i though let’s do something with metal elements again, since this is an effect that will never go out of fashion. Let’s make a quick but very useful tutorial, using gradients that will allow you to easily create any metallic effect later.

make a new Canvas and fill it with a dark color, we used dark gray with a little light spot in the middle to outline the effect. We are using 600 x 500 cnvas (and this is the size of the psd you can download, just scroll all the way down).

Using  a curvy font and very big letters, type your word. We used the Harrington font with 260 pixels size, however in this particular effect, the biggest is your font, the better viewable is the result. Worry not about the color you are using at the moment for typing since we will overlay it with metallic gradients, which we designed specifically for this tutorial.

Go to Layer >> Layer Styles >> Blending Options and begin applying the effects…

Our Inner Shadow is pretty important so pay attention to the size and Quality.

We decided that default “Linear” curve doesn’t really outline the effect good enough, so we used a “half Round” curve. If you don’t have it pre-installed in your Photoshop, please use our mapping:

For outer glow, we use gradient from black (#000000) to white (#ffffff). The outer glow in this case creates an additional stroke around the text, which looks slightly rounded and with a mild gradient. Without these settings, your effect will not look complete and moreover look rather poor.

And, a Rolling Slope Contour, please note that we are using the “descending” path, otherwise we will have a totally different result..

A mild touch of inner glow, just to smooth out the shadows at the edges of the text..

Now we are getting to the hardest and most essential part of this tutorial — the gradient overlay.

For beginners, it could be a little difficult to copy these gradients, but I strongly recommend that you won’t give up and try to copy them as close as possible since they will allow you to add a nice metallic touch to any text or object later. Just don’t forget to save them as a new gradient, for future use!

For Stroke effect we also used a gradient of metallic shades, however, not only it will be a different gradient (not like the one we just set up for the inner filling), but also we will set the style to “Reflected”. This allows us to have the gradient mirror-repeated, without having to set too many shades.

What’s good about these layer style settings is that it will look good on ANY font size, for example here we zoomed in using a font of nearly 700 pixel and you see all the curves, shades and gradients so neatly….

Here is our result! I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and if you decide to download the psd, please remember to click “return to merchant’s website” after you complete the transaction, so that the download will start instantly. Also, please join our Facebook page and subscribe free for future updates!

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

Time to play a bit with shapes. Use any twirly shape you wish, we used free ones (sorry they are so old that I have no idea anymore where did they come from). Once selected, and using the white color as foreground, apply them in all 4 sides of the photo…

…so that you will have a nice Victoria style frame all around.

Don’t worry if it doesn’t look too smooth — it’s not supposed to be! Just give it a funky-glamorous look, the way you see on most French adverts, commercials and packs.

Step 6

Now take the flower (link is at the beginning of the tutorial), and crop the flower so that you will be able to easily extract it from the background and apply without having any pixelated sides. Since cropping is a pretty much basic Photoshop technique we will not demonstrate here how to crop, hopping you will read about it in one of our basic tutorials.

Step 7

Once cropped properly, apply the layer with flowers unto the composition you are creating. The idea is that one of the petals is located IN the lady’s month; now before you go ahead and assume this is something rude — we will have a point for this one later on, just be patient and continue reading.

Step 8

Select the flowers layer, and using the Burn Tool in your Photoshop, go over the flowering adding a little accent and depth — on the sides, edges and inside the flower. The burn tool will darken the areas you are working with, just be sure to use a Soft Brush of at least 100px and do not overdo this effect. This is something hardly visible and unseen, yet it adds depth and makes our image less shallow.

Step 9

Now, in our attempt to make the flowers layer organically blended and less shallow, we are going to add a shadow. Select the flowers layer by pressing Ctrl and selecting the layer from layers panel. Create a new layer  and place it underneath the flowers layer. Fill the selection with black color.

Step 10

Press Ctrl + T to transform the selection of the shadow layer, and after right-click — use the “Skew” mode. Pull the edges of the bottom selection a little bit towards the sides but be careful not to overdo this effect — most Photoshop beginners tend to think that when following a tutorial — the more is the better, that is not quite always right.

Step 11

After you have transformed the shadow a little, apply a little Blur (Filter >> Blur >> Gausian Blur 3-4px) and set the opacity to Multiply and 15%.

Step 12

Now, select the flower layer, and while it’s selected, using the Eraser Tool with soft edge and 100px radius, erase half of the petal that it near lady’s mouth, so that it will create the illusion us fading smoke. Please see the illustration for better demonstration..

Step 13

Now, download and install the smoke brushes (at the beginning of the post) and use any one of them that you find particularly appealing. using the  white color as your foreground color in photoshop, we are going to create a new layer and apply the brush on the screen. In this Photoshop tutorial we will not explain how to install the brushes, hoping you already know how to do that..

Step 14

The brushes with smoke are already semi transperant, so you probably won’t need to set them to any opacity, other than Normal. If, however, in your partucular image settings you see that the smoke pretty much covers the girl’s face — try and reduce the opacity to about 80% or lower.

Once applied, using a big Eraser Tool’s soft brush of at least 150 px, remove smoke from girl’s cheeks — the way that it will create an illusion of smoke coming out from her mouth and not just chaotically spread covering her face. Therefore your smoke should also be erased from the chin, if there are any traces of it.

Step 15

Now we are going to work with the Brush tool. Set it to a small 3 pixels size, but using a Soft Edge. Please copy the settings for “Scattering” from the illustration below. The idea is to create a trail of dots, like pearls string, using your free hand and no pen tool.

Once these settings has been applied, just draw curvy lines from the lady’s mouth — outwards.make sure that these curves in lines complement the smoke .

Step 16

After having applied that, go to Layer Styles while the dots layer is still selected and apply a bit of outer glow using white color with 65% opacity and 6 pixel size.

Step 17

Once you have done with the glow, press Ctrl + T to transform the layer and using the “Perspective” mode (right click and select Perspective) and pull the upper corners a little bit outwards to create an illusion of a certain dimension.

Step 18

Next step is adding splashes of water. we have black background here, therefore we also picked water splashes with black background. Although, theoretically speaking, you can pick a water splash with any background and then crop and using various settings just apply it unto the composition — in our case it is tremendously easier to use back background and save the hassle of unneeded work. Apply the splashes at the bottom of our composition,  duplicate the layer a several time so that you will be able to cover the whole bottom area with water splashes and drops.

Set the opacity of the water splashes on ALL the layers you have duplicated to “Lighten“.

Step 20

Take any photo of a perfume bottle, crop it and paste into the dark and empty corner of the composition. Rotate it using the Ctrl + T functions so that the bottle will look like it’s popping out of the splashes.

Step 21

One of our last steps would be to choose a good looking horizon photo.  Here you can really take anything you like since it won’t be the leitmotif of our composition. Apply it anywhere between the fragrance bottle layer and lady’s face. Using an Eraser Tool with 65px soft edge brush, start erasing the sky layer from over the face and neck of our female  model. When you finished, set the opacity of the layer wit horizon to Lighten or Multiply, depending on the initial   darkness of your chosen  image.

As a final touch, i also added dots around the fragrance , yet without a glow.

Done! That’s it, here is the final result. i hope you enjoyed the tutorial and please don’t forget to subsribe to our RSS Feed or Email Notifications to ensure you never miss any of our new tutorials.

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:

This tutorial was originally published on loreleiweb.com and moved for technical reasons. After the huge success of the previous two fantasy art tutorials, i wanted to do something like that again, but different… hope you will like this one, feedback is as usually appreciated!

So, today we will make this:

Start off by making a new canvas, 500*500 pixels. The color is irrelevant as we will overlay it with a photo later.

Fish out a photo of clouds from somewhere. I used some free stock on DA, but since YOU will probably make a picture for private use, you can use almost any photo u find.

We are still gathering material. Next step is to find a nice girl we will turn to a fairy… As always I used liam-stock.deviantart.com but again, this is up to you, you may use your own photo just as well.

Select the clouds photo and paste it unto your 500*500 canvas. Then, crop the girl carefully, and paste it unto your canvas either, above the clouds, more or less in the center.

Make a new layer. Using a white color and a Brush Tool with a radius of about 250 px, make a “stamp” above the girl.

Now, just like we did in the Moon Eclipse Tutorial, using the eraser tool of almost the same size, cut most of the stamp you made, in order to leave a small, “young” moon.

Go to Layer >> Layer Styles >> Outer Glow, and add White Glow to your moon. See illustration HERE.

This is what you got so far…

Select the Clouds layer and go to Filter >> Renders >> Lightening Effect. Apply this lightening effect exactly on the place where you have your moon.
Lightening Effect

This will result in having darker sky around the fairy, and the only lit area would be around the glowing moon.

Now, we will try to create an illusion of stars, that were laying in the fairy’s hands and now that she has blown on then, they scattered all across the sky. So, we need star brushes. Basically any brushes you personally like on DA would be good, see the URL below for more info:
DeviantArt Free Star Brushes

After having downloaded and installed your brushed, make a new layer and apply a several stamps of brushes, close to fairy’s hand, as shown on the picture below.

Apply same glow settings as you did with the moon before.

Now some more complicated work, with Levels. As we want our sparkling stars to be really shining, and the overall atmosphere of the picture to be bluish and mysterious, we will Flatten the Image (don’t skip it!!) and then press Ctrl + L (to get to the Levels panel) and set the following settings, for…

Red channel:

We got a much blueish hue to our photo.

Take a photo of the clouds u used before, and paste it unto your canvas once again. Make sure the new layer lays above the background.

Erase 2/3 of it, so that the remaining clouds, will only cover the girls legs, partly. Use the eraser tool with soft edge, preferably big radius, to avoid sharp and awkward edges for the cloud. it’s a cloud after all!

While the new clouds layer is selected, go to Levels panel again, and adjust the red level as shown below.

The settings must be different from the background layer , to give the image more depth.

Flatten the image once more. Now it became one canvas again, without layers, so go to Filter >> Renders >> Lightening Effect and apply this light effect when the center of your light is the sparkles…

The last manipulation resulted in the following modification…

Go to Levels again, and move the settings of the red channel and shown below, to give the picture a “cold” feeling. (red hues are always more “warm”)

Also, move the blue channel settings a tiny bit towards the center… Adding blue channel intensity:

That’s it, here is your Xmas fairy, blowing sparkles right on you!
Hope you enjoyed the tutorial!

You might have similar effects on the web as such effects becoming very trendy recently. Doubtlessly you didn’t know how these designs are done, do they use patterns? Textures? How many layers do they work with? No need to guess and wonder, because now you are going to:

Make a new canvas, we used here #373d40 for backgrounds. Using white color as your primarily color, and Baskerville Old font, type the word you want to render…

Once you are done, duplicate the layer and make it temporarily invisible (click on the eye in layers panel). Get back to the second layer copy, which you have on visible mode and go to Layer >> Layer Style >> Blending Options

Apply the following settings for Inner Shadow, Outer Glow, Satin and Stroke…

Pay attention to the contour you choose, it has to be Rounded Steps otherwise you will get a different result. This Countour comes pre-installed in All Recent Adobe Photoshop versions.

Finally apply a light outside stroke on the text, to give it a nice outlining.  We did 2px but if your text is very big you may want to add a thicker line, or, on the contrary, if you are making a small logo, use 1 pixel outlining.

This is what you should get by now..

Remember the copy of the text layer you made invisible a few minutes ago? Time to get it back to the surface. Make it visible, Rasterize the layer (right click on the layer’s panel >> Rasterize layer), and press CTRL + T to transform the layer, then enlarge it.

Place it under the pinkish text layer, and go to Filter >> Pixelate >> Mosaic..

Apply the following pixelated blur effect using 12 square.

Now, to the most important part. Set BOTH layers’ opacity settings to Overlay. This means the pixelated background and the pinkish text will both have Overlay as their Blending Options. This could be done directly in the Layers Panel on the side select the layer you want and set it to “Overlay”. That’s all, your text is ready and you can see the final result below. I would say that this text effect is both candy-sweet and techno-cyber-cold, while the combination turns to be original. It can be great for web design websites and portfolios.

Usage Restrictions:

Feel free to use this tutorial for any commercial or non commercial project, as long as you don’t directly resell this tutorial, or the exact  images used we used here for demonstration.

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…

This tutorial moved to loreleiwebdesign.com due to technical reasons.

This tutorial will show you how, in a few easy steps, to turn a simple photo into a “pure glamor”, just as in most of the commercial shots. Of course, here we used a good photo already, but using this technique you can take the most ordinary picture and turn it into a professional shot.

This is what we will do:

Start of by taking a good quality photo of a face. Don’t use blurred pictures, or ones that were taken from a big distance, else your result wont be sharp enough.

Multiple the amount of existing layers, just in case you do something wrong, u will have a few spare.

Using the Magic Wand tool, select the hair, using the “Add to selection mode”

Go to Image >> Adjustments >> Hue / Saturation and apply these settings, making the photo truly dark and brownish

Press Shft + Ctrl + I to invert the selection, and using the Eraser tool with soft edge, remove everything (only the deselected hair will remain)

Select the Burn Tool, 5 px size, with a soft edge, and enlarge your image on the screen (only zoom it for the view, leave the image size intact).

Make sure you work with the layer that is underneath the “hair” layer. Go over the edges of the eye… this will be easier to women, as they know exactly where to draw a line under and above the eye, but guys can also give this a try.. just try not to over do it and not to turn the picture of a woman into a vampire (unless this is your purpose, of course).

After finishing our work around the eyes, this is what we have accomplished…

Now, using the same technique, go with the Burn Tool over the lips line, as if you are applying a lipstick, “burning” the lips to a darker hue.

Create a new layer. Select a Brush tool with a sharp edge. Make sure you are using same round size as the eyes of the figure you are working on.

Apply two “stamps” over the eyes, as shown on the picture below. We used #0348f9 bright blue colour, rather unnatural hue for eyes. Remove the remains of the round brush from the eye lids.

Set the Blending mode of the eyes stamps to “Color”

Take any picture of flower, preferably on transparent background (clipart) or any easily removable background, and add to the picture, that

way, so that it will cover all the flaws of your recent manipulations. It can be bad edges of hair (as we have here) or anything else.

Add it in front and also as a background, in order to create the illusion of blooming garden all around the face, so that the flower won’t look as if it doesn’t belong.

Since now, all the layers of the picture are of a different hue, lightening and quality – Flatten the image.

Go to Filter >> Renders >> Lightening effect and apply this omni spot only over tthe face. Use light bieje colour for the light spot.

That it is, this is your glamorous result. Ain’t the photo looks superb?

It’s been a long time since I came up with a truly original tutorial and this evening I finally had muse to make something that will stand out. I can already see how this tutorial is going to become a classic masterpiece once it gains popularity, so just sit back and read, don’t forget to bookmark this website and subscribe to our feed, to make sure you never miss any of our future tutorials and freebies.

Inspiration: Although today’s horror movies are all quite cheesy, very predictable and always disappointing,  I drew my inspiration from one of the infamous and unpopular movies – “Long Distance“, starring the beautiful Monica Keena. Don’t be surprised if it does not ring a bell, I’d be surprised if it did. I myself however love the cover / poster of this movie, the original plot and I decided to make my own little scenery with my own little plot, which is more or less reflected in the film’s poster.

So, let’s get started. The canvas size is really your choice, you may want to make it slightly longer or even bigger, because we initially work wit ha small image here.

Paint your canvas in dark color, we used #211f1f.

Take one of the grungy backgrounds you like to use, make sure it’s pale enough and not too dark. We used a great image from here.

You don’t need to use a stained old paper, like I used here. You can also use bricks surface, old wood or any other old-looking texture because this is not going to be your leitmotif, we just need something to be on the background.

Now, once you have downloaded the texture you want to use, let’s move to the next step.

Paste the background you downloaded unto the dark canvas you are working with. You will need to either resize or de-size it. I didn’t bother downloading the full version of this background, so I just took the small image and stretched it across the canvas, because in this case, we don’t mind to lose a bit of quality.

Once pasted and resized, set the lending options of the background to “Overlay“. You should have it looking like this..

Once this background has been blended, let’s add some more horror – grunge effects. If the hue of your canvas turns to be different — don’t worry, eventually we will overwrite it all with black and white so the colors are irrelevant at the moment.

Next, we took this nice finger prints image, called “Tint black 2″. Again, paste it onto your canvas, resize, position slightly above the middle…

Set the blending options to “Darker Color” and Opacity to 80%.

This is more or less how it should look.

Next thing we need is a model for our main character in the movie. Here I really can’t advice you, feel free to use any photo you really like, if you want — use your own and then print it up as a poster, this could be a great idea for your bedroom! So… Choose a picture of a girl. We wanted to go with a dramatic look so we chose a fantastic photo taken by Zsolt Dreher of a woman under the rain. You can download it here.

Open the file in your Adobe Photoshop. This file was too dark, so we needed to correct shadows, otherwise in our final (dark)  result we won’t be able to see her face.

Go to Image >>   Adjustments >> Shadow / Highlight. Apply the following (automatic) settings…

Press OK.

Now, go to Image >> Adjustments >> Gradient Map. Chose gradient between white and black, this should be default. If you are getting a “negative” image (with revered colors), just click the “reverse” box. You will get a classic black and white photo with good contrast, thanks to the Shadow/highlight correction we did in the previous step.

We want it all to blend in nicely, so we place the girl’s photo over all the layer we have so far and set the blending option to “Overlay“.

Don’t worry if you get a messy mix of images because we will fix that too later. Most important is that main character image (woman, in our case) would be visible and not too dark.

To avoid the previous layer with fingerprints obscuring our character, use Eraser tool with soft brush to remove any finger prints from her face and body.

We want to still add more to our poster design, because it’s a movie poster, it has to have a CONCEPT. And, it has to reflect and represent that spooky and mysterious concept. So I looked up a nice and heavy photo of a road, taken by Romanian photographer Pniti Marta, and decided to blend to fold it into our composition.

Take the road’s picture, and place it over grungy canvas, yet below the woman’s face and fingerprints layers. Set the blending options to “Luminosity” just like you see on the picture below..

So far, this should be your result. Bear in mind that if you are working with different images and not the ones we used for this Photoshop tutorial,  your result may be different, darker or lighter, with better or worst contrast. Try to keep following the tutorial and see if it gets better when we will be adding more layers.

Next, we need a dramatic, classic horror element and I couldn’t think of a better stock photo to use than Silhouette by Cathy Kaplan. I took her image and since once again I didn’t want to wait for the big image to download, I used the small one and stretched it to match the size of the canvas, which also gave me slightly pixelated blurred effect I wanted to achieve.

Paste the small image (or large) on top of your digital canvas, press Ctrl + T, and while holding the SHIFT key pressed, to avoid losing proportion.

Set Silhouette’s opacity to 80%.

Drag the silhouette layer under the girl and finger prints layer, yet keep it above the road photo layer. The picture below should reflect your result so far. If you lost track with layer sequences and as a result your poster is turning out to be rather different, here is our layers order so far, from bottom to top:

Dark (#211f1f) color layer >> Grunge paper >> Road >> Shadow Silhouette >> Finger Prints >> Girl in the Rain

Next, when we have a great black and white background (it turned black and white when we placed a colorless silhouette’s layer over it), time to add the spicy little details and title. Let’s start with a cliche that any horror movie will have in it, and most of them are going to have it on the poster as well — knife covered with blood! (yep, we finally got to the chop-chop part!) Chose any weapon you like, we went with a classic kitchen knife I fished out of SXC.hu as well. Crop the white  background (in my case I just erased the bg with one click using the Magic Eraser Tool, then Selected the remaining part (knife itself, select it by holding the CTRL key and pressing on the layer, in your layer palette), then I went to Select >>  Modify >> Contract and set it to 1 px. Afterwords I pressed Shift + CTRL + I to inverse the selection and pressed delete. Voila, the knife is neatly cropped.

Place the knife somewhere at the bottom of the canvas to make sure it does not obscure any of our carefully selected characters.

Time to add a spine-chilling title. Since our poster is rather busy, I made a new layer, and using a black color with soft brush, I added a small black cloud at the bottom, where I plan to place my title.

To decorate it a little bit more, I also took one of the shapes I have in my computer and added it on top of the black cloud to give our poster a more of a Gothic look.

I also took one more shape, of a slightly lighter hue and placed it above the black cloud layer. Now this gives the poster a more of a devilish mood.

Finally, the most important part – the title. We made use of Birch Std font to write “Laura’s”, in white, 109pt letters; and placed the name over the black stain we previously made at the lower part of the canvas.

Apply these Gradient settings, by going to Layer >> Layer Style >> Gradient Overlay.. You may also add a shadow like we did but only if you have a dark overall feel on the canvas, otherwise the shadow will spoil the mysterious look.

The second word in our title is written in handwriting, which is more typical to horror movies and suggest a psychopath actually wrote it himself, with blood. We decided to go with an optimistically named font — “Chiller” (costs 29,00 USD to download). Also, just chose a red / scarlet hue of your choice and apply a light gradient, to give the font more depth.

That’s all, really. Hope you enjoyed the tutorial and it will help you to create something beautiful for yourself, your family or friends.

The PSD file you download is EXACTLY same size as the preview image you see, i.e. 546*655 pixels and presents all the layers you see in the tutorial. We do NOT sell or affiliate with photographers, whose images has been used. This PSD file is for learning purposes ONLY, if you don’t manage to follow the tutorial, you can download the source file and learn better from it.

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.

Please subscribe to our feed to make sure you will never miss a fantasy art tutorial or one of our exclusive freebies. Email subscription is also available, just remember to verify your email by clicking the link that will be send to you automatically.

If you decide to purchase the PSD, please remember to click “return to merchant’s website” button after the checkout, as this will redirect you to the download page (download starts automatically). If you forgot to do it, please contact us and we will send you the files within 24 hours.

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

This tutorial’s purpose is to make an imitation of real painting, made using semi dry brushes.

The final result will be this:

so, lets get started… Make a new canvas, 450*450.

White your colours are set to black and white, go to Filter >> Render >> Clouds and apply the clouds effect (once)

Using the marquee tool, select half of the canvas (or a bit more than half, as this will be out “sky”) and add a lot of Contrast (Image >> Adjustments >> Brightness / Contrast) as shown on the picture below.

While the upper part of the canvas is still selected, go to Image >> Adjustments >> Hue / Saturation and set the following settings to colorize the “sky” and make it bluish. Don’t forget to check the “colorize” box when applying the settings.

After finishing the color process, press Shft + Ctrl + I to inverse the selection.

Now that the lower half of the canvas is selected, go to Filter >> Blur >> Motion Blur and apply the following horizontal blur…

Create a new layer. While half the canvas is still selected, fill it with white (means you will only have white inside the selection).

Go to Filters >> Noise >> Add noise, and apply these “noisy” settings:

Go to Filter >> Blur >> Motion blur and again apply the horizontal blur, only this time upon the noise effect. We are trying to paint the calm water, we need lots of tiny waves and this would be the easiest way to make them)

Set the opacity of the blurred noise layer to about 50%.

This is what you got so far…

Flatten the image.

Select (manually), using the marquee tool, the lower part of the canvas (“water”)

Go to Filter >> Artistic >> Cutout and apply these settings for the cutout effect.

Remember, we are making a painting, it should look as it it was made using a brush!

Now (while your “water” is still selected) go again to Image >> Adjustments >> Hue / Saturation, check the “colorize” box and make the water a bit greenish…

Create a new layer. Using the round brush (with sharp edge), go over the horizon line that separates water from the sky, as shown below:

Select the eraser tool and remove everything that was below the water line, see pic below:

Make a new layer again, select a sharp round brush of a huge size (about 200px) and make a stamp on a place where you intend to make your full moon.

Go to Layer>> Layer Styles >> Outer Glow and apply glow using the white color…

In your layers panel, select the background canvas (where we have the sky and water) and apply this lightening effect from the center of the “moon”, but not on the moon’s layer!

Choose a picture of a girl, or your own which you want to use. For this purpose we used a photo taken from Liam’s Stock free resource.

Crop the picture from the background, so that only the main figure will remain.

Press CRTL + A to select the figure, CRTL + C to copy it and then, when u move back to our painting canvas, press CTRL + V to paste it onto our painting.

While the layer with the girl is selected, go to Filter >> Artistic >> Cutout and apply these settings, that will imitate brush painting.

So far you got a blurred version of it…

Flatten the image yet again (don’t skip this part).

Now that the entire canvas has turned to one layer, go to Filter >> Texturize >> and apply this light canvas texture.

Now for the final touch… Select the “Burn” tool and go with a small soft-edge brush over the horizon line, and darken the “water” on the edge, so that it will look as if it fades into the black “mountains” we made before.

That’s it, you are done! If you have any questions, please post below, as well as the examples of ur work.. cheers!