So, begin with making  a new canvas of any desired size, and for now please use plain white (#ffffff) background. Later on we will add a custom texture or picture to the background, but for now, it will be much easier for your to work and see all the effects against the white canvas.

Select the typing tool and using Arial Rounded MT Bold font, set to “sharp”, use very big letters, say over 100. For the purpose of the tutorial we used 115, however if you choose to download out PSD, you will see that our original canvas consists from letters with font size 195.

Type your word.

The main part of this Photoshop tutorial consists from precise application of the layer styles as we are going to work with custom designed curved, textures (default) and a lot of other features. Let’s begin and please try to follow us throughout the tutorial if you wish to achieve the same result.

Go to Layer >> Layer Styles, and start off with “Drop Shadow” options. Apply the settings as you see below. For the shadow here we used a very dark blue, almost black color: #003059. However, feel free to chose a different hue if you are going to work with a light background canvas afterward.

Switch the tab to Inner Shadow. For Inner shadow we used a gray-blue color #0a7eaf, which will nicely complement the overall wintry feel of this text. Please pay attention to the fact that we are using “Noise” here at 3%, to add to the grainy / snowy effect.

Switch to Outer Glow and apply a very dark outer glow effect, we used #0a1732 with 35% which gave us light yet dark outlined shade.

Working our way down (in Photoshop..), to Inner Glow settings. This one gives our text effect the feeling of light and reflection, yet this is not going to be a direct spotlight, rather a cold reflection as you are used to seeing when looking on ice. Also here please note that we have applied a 17%, very visible noise.

Add Bevel and Emboss settings for extremely curved effect.

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.

The amount of detail that can be found in nature, no human creation can ever match. The beauty, the freshness, the colors of nature, it is all just so amazing; no wonder so many people take up nature photography as a hobby or maybe even a profession.

But with the kind of flora and fauna out there, you are left with a wide variety of subjects to choose from: beautiful landscapes and seascapes, to little flowers and insects, to big cats, to creatures of the air – birds. Bird watching has always been a popular hobby with nature lovers, and with the advent of digital photography, bird photography has turned into a sort of extension of birding. But the fact remains that like other wildlife, birds are a very difficult subject to photograph because: they are hard to spot, harder to get close to, and you have virtually no control over them. In this tutorial I will provide some basic tips for people getting into bird photography and hopefully try and make their birding experience more enjoyable.

Know your subject; Observe; Plan

I personally prefer to emphasize the bird aspect before the photography one because my experience tells me that the better you know your subject, the better your pictures, even if your equipment isn’t as fancy. Whatever birds you wish to shoot, spend some time reading about them, and studying them in the field if possible. This gives you a fairly good idea of where you can find them, how they react to human presence, and the like. Also, if you have a nature park or a zoo, go there for a walk. That will refresh your mind as well as give you an opportunity to know the birds around you. This done, you should plan your shoot according to the time of the day (and the year) when you’ll get a chance to capture the majestic creatures in all their glory.

The Equipment

Lets face it, getting within arm’s reach of ANY bird is close to impossible unless the bird belongs to a very friendly species or is a pet. So to get good pictures of birds, you need a lens that offers you a good zoom range. A 300mm or better would be ideal, but try and get at least a 200mm lens. Also, if you wish to capture birds in flight/taking off/landing, a fast lens with a wide aperture (f/4 or lower) would really help. A tripod is very essential here because you’ll be zooming in towards your subject which highly amplifies camera shake. If you have a camera/lens with Image Stabilization, that’s even better.

Approach Your Subject

Once you have the equipment in hand, and the subject in sight, you need to get close. As a rule of thumb, for any kind of photography, try and get as close to your subject as possible. Problem: You move towards a bird, it flies away. Solution: Be very slow, very cautious, and very patient. If you see the slightest hint of the bird moving away because of your presence, stop right there and let it get used to you. Make absolutely no sudden movements when near a bird. There have been times when after a lot of effort, I got pretty close to a bird and the bird flew off, not because of my being so close but because of the sudden movement of my camera strap falling down from my arm! So make sure that nothing is hanging loose. If the bird still seems uncomfortable, leave. Come back later. Always remember: the bird is more important than the photograph. The same goes for its habitat as well. Disturbing the creature or its environment to take a picture defeats the whole purpose of bird photography. The challenge lies in capturing the bird in its natural environment, and its own character.

We used a picture of Amy Lee, so for a start you need to get some photo to work with, though don’t forget that you need someone with light eyes, it wont work good enough on brown / black eyes.. discrimination, I know.

You can take the picture of Amy Lee that we used as her eyes are really bright.

Duplicate the layer.

Select the upper layer, and go to Hues / Saturation and reduce the colors of the upper layer fully.

Select the eraser tool, very small with sharp edge, we used 5px but u may want to work with even smaller size.

erase the upper (black n’ white) layer from the inside of the eye. Don’t touch the white area of the eye.

so u will get something like this…

Once you opened a new canvas with the desired dimensions of your billboard, create a new layer and fill it with any dark blue or dark purple hue, we used #210a3a. Make sure that your ‘background’ colour is set to white, and go to Filter >> Render >> Clouds. This will will your upper layer with nice foggy fibber texture. Set the overlay settings of this clouds layer to “Linear Light” (see illustration).

Our aim is to create a nicely high contrasted photo with a pit of fog and glow effect as well as make the background look like a night sky. SO, what we are going to do it, duplicate the photo of the girl, drag it (in the layer’s panel) on top of other 2 layers, and set this layer’s settings to “Overlay”

Next step is filling the bottom of the billboard with grass. This is the easiest part although I noticed that many get stuck here. We will be using the brush tool, with a default Photoshop CS2 brush called “brush dune”. You should have it. Set your foreground color to green (any hue, up to you, as long as it gives a natural look) and fill the bottom of the screen more or less like you see on the picture. The default settings for this brush are set to “scattering” so you don’t need to do much work except for just not overdoing the grass over the photo.

Next step is adding twirly shape.

If you don’t have any nice and twirly shape, you can download mine in PSD format HERE.

So you will either select a custom shape tool and draw any twirly shape of your choice, or take mine from the PSD file, drag and drop it to your canvas. Place the shame Between the girl’s layer and the grass (see below). Next, duplicate the shape later, transform it horizontally (or vertically, depending on your shape) and place it more or less as you can see on the illustration below.

Start off by selecting a photo of a girl or boy you are willing to freeze. You can use your own or a stock photo, our image comes from sxc.hu so if you like, use this one as well.

We are going to work a lot with duplicated layers so please pay attention when I say you should duplicate your existing layer. So… Please duplicate the layer. Select the upper one and go to Image >> Adjustments >> Gradient Map. Use one of the default gradients (dark blue to white), and if it makes your image look like a negative, check the “Reverse” box. Otherwise just click OK.

While your blueish layer is selected, go to layers panel and set its setting to “Color”, then reduce the Opacity of the layer to about 73%. If you see that your image is too dark or too blue, you can reduce the opacity even more, BUT… at your own risk, okay?

Now, what characterizes a cold face in snow? Pale lips, eyebrows covered in snow… we are doing to achieve this effect extremely easy. In your layers panel select the first layer (the colorful one) and using the “Dodge Tool” with soft 40px brush, go over the lips area and then carefully over the eyebrows to make them

It’s important to emphasize that this effect will only look good when we combine light text against dark background, otherwise, you will not be age to achieve a good result.

So.. make a new canvas of any size you want. We used the #181729 color for our background, but this is of course depends on your design. Arial narrow is our font here, however this is again up to your preference. Remember not to choose fonts with excessive curves because this may prevent us from achieving a nice result.

Select the typing tool and using the white color, type any word. Go to Layer >> Layer Styles >> Options and apply the following settings (by the way, the images are stored on my hosting, only different domain since I first thought pf publishing it on another blog. )

1. Bevel and emboss
2. Gradient #b2b3b7 … >> … #fcfafb
3. Stroke Settings

You got a nice and smooth gradient effect, and now duplicate the layer, make sure your duplicated text layer has the same Style settings, this will save you work now. Go to layer styles of your second text layer, and choose the Gradient tab. Change the gradient settings to black … white … black. I suggest to drag the white paint bucket a bit closer to the right side (so that the lightest spot won’t be in the middle, but somewhere at 3/4 towards the top. This is just my personal preference and of course you may choose to keep the white bucket right in the middle. I won’t object, really.

So far, you should achieve this result, and remember, underneath this you have a layer with lighest gradient settings.

Now comes a more complicated part, if it won’t work right from the first try, don’t worry, just try a several times until you will be satisfied with the result. Rasterize the upper text layer Using the Lasso Tool, load a chaotic selection that will segment out the upper part of the text. Make sure you don’t cut out too much. Once you like the way your selection looks, press “Del” on your keyboard to delete everything inside the selection. Do the same with the lower part of the text, and be sure, when you press “delete” that the rasterized