by David Peters
1. First, create a new image 2x2px and using the Pencil Tool (set to 1px), draw image as you can see it below. Try to Zoom In ( View -> Zoom In ) to do it easier. Define your pattern ( Edit -> Define Pattern ) and close the image 2. Open two images. One you want to hide and the other you want to hide first in. In my example, I took to hide recycle logo in Leonardo da Vinci portrait. 3. Create a new image the same size as your other two images and paste both your images onto it. The two images should be on two separate layers. Move the cover image layer above the hidden image layer. Create a new layer and move it above the hidden image layer but below the cover image. Fill ( Edit -> Fill ) this layer with the pattern you made in Step 1. Change the Blending Mode of this layer to “Exclusion”. 4. Change the Blending Mode of this layer to “Exclusion”. 5. Click on the image you want to hide on the Layer palette, and invert the colors, by going “Image -> Adjustments -> Invert (or press Ctrl-I)” 6. Change to opacity of the cover image to change how well you can see the hidden image (Recycle logo), I used 70% opacity.First, create a new image, 200×200 pixels and fill the background with white. Create a new layer [Shft+Ctrl+N]. Then; use the Rectangular/Elliptical Marquee Tools [M] to create any shape you want. Now we need to select our shape. Do it by holding Ctrl and clicking on this layer with the left button of your mouse. The next step is to add layer mask to our shape. Click on button, this will add layer mask. Then, deselect the layer [Ctrl+D]. On the top toolbar, go to Filter| Blur | Gaussian Blur… The window with options will open; select the value of the Radius that will make your shape smooth. I used 4.0. To make our job easier, we need to make our layer mask visible. Do it by holding Alt and clicking on the layer mask with the left button of your mouse. Now, we need to adjust levels of our image. To do it go to Image | Adjust | Levels… The window with options will open and you will see 3 triangles. Use your mouse to drag all of them to the center and you will notice that your shape will start to look smooth. Play around with different triangle positions to get the result you want.
Photoshop CS2 is able to create an Automated Task. When you have a whole bunch of repeated tedious task to do on a whole sets of photos. Eg: resize a whole stack of photos to a specific resolution. It is easy enough to do: First, open up the desired photos with Photoshop or simply just drag and drop the photos onto the Photoshop main stage. This is the photo which I will be using. It is actually a 20001333 resolution photo and now the view is actually 25% of the actual size. Now is to open up the Action Window. Go to Window > Action or simply press the shortcut key Alt + F9. The Action window will looks like what it is in the above image. We have everything ready and now is to do the trick. Click on the “Create New Action” button as where is shown on the above image A New Action window will come out, the Name of course is the name of your this Automated Task, here as I am doing photo resizing so I will give it the name “Resize”. Everything just remain as it is and click on Record Just for your information, the Function Key is actually for you to set the shortcut key to this Automated Task. Anyway, I will not set anything here. Now the Record button has turned active (red color), and from now on whatever action you do will be recorded. I will start doing the resizing now. Go to the Image > Image Size or with the shortcut key Ctrl+Atl+I. Here I will resize to the above figures. Click Ok. The image has now been resized. What I need to do has actually finish. In actual tedious task of course it won’t be that short but here it will be enough as an example. Click on the Stop Recording button as where is shown on the image. Now you have your Automated Task set! .To show on how it works. Simply open another photo or drag other photo onto the Photoshop main stage. In the above image I am now using another image. Now on the Action window, select on the “Resize”(or the name you gave for this Automated Task), then click on the “Play Selection” button as where is shown on the image.
What we want to do is create a fractal. I use Apophysis but you can use any fractal program. Once you have a fractal you like open it up in Photoshop. To start off what we want to do is duplicate our fractal layer. So take your fractal layer and drag onto the new layer button. Then go to Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur and insert any settings between 4 – 9. Each fractal is different so it will take some experimentation find the right one for your fractal. Then set your blurred layer on Linear Light. This will make the colors more vibrant and will make it brighter and seem to glow. Your fractal should look something like this now. Now duplicate your blurred layer. And take the layer settings and put it on Soft Light. This should add to more of the glow feeling. Yours should look something like this: Now I wanted to make my fractal look even brighter because its an angel and angels are known to be very bright. So make a new layer. Fill it black. Now go to Filter> Render> Lens flare. Then blur your Lens Flare. Finally set your Lens Flare layer on Color Dodge and move it so the Lens Flare is in the middle of your fractal. Your fractal should look something like this: If you have ugly green heads take a white soft brush and brush over it. And you are done!
In Digital art you can easily create a “mac” style background. You can use these in all sorts of situations, including the obvious – your desktop as well as part of your designs or for corporate work (power point presentations, flash work etc) in photoshop. BACKGROUND LAYER We begin with a blank canvas and then draw a subtle gradient across it. (I’m using a 1280×1024 canvas here) Don’t be fooled by the black border incidentally, that’s just photoshop. So anyhow I’ve chosen two orange colors that are very similar to each other to make a very subtle gradient indeed. Add a NEW LAYER Now take your Polygonal Lassoo Tool (shortcut key L) and draw in a rough triangular selection as shown. Then take a really fat soft brush (size 300 or so) and draw some faded in white with the edge of it, again as shown. Be careful not to make it too strong however. Set your white from step 2 to ‘OVERLAY’. NEW LAYER Now again take your Polygonal Lassoo Tool and do a similar triangle but back and against it (like shown). This time add some black. I actually used a gradient fill here using Black and nothing. You can get this type of gradient by selecting your gradient tool then dropping down and choosing the second one along: Set your black layer to Overlay & 34%. NEW LAYER Now use the Pen Tool and draw a nice looking curve. The secret to nice curves with the pen tool is dragging the handle a long way. Join the path back up so its one continuous blob, then right click and select “Make Selection” You should now have a selection of a nice curve (as shown). Once again use the gradient tool this time with White fading to nothing and add some white. Set this layer to Overlay and you should have something similar to whats shown. NEW LAYER And again grab the Pen Tool and this time make a new even more interesting shape. You can see the shape I created on the left Close the shape back in on itself so its one continuous path and again right click and choose “Make Selection” Now with your selection, grab that fat soft brush again (size 300) and add some Black just at the top on one side (as shown). Don’t let go of your selection as we’ll need it for the next few steps NEW LAYER Now choose a selection tool (doesn’t matter which one) and hit the Down arrow key 10 times. You need to have a selection tool on or else you can move your selection around and instead Photoshop will try to move some of your artwork (since you are on a new layer it will give you an error) so make sure you’ve chosen a Polygonal Lassoo tool or one of the others. Now press CTRL-SHIFT-I to inverse your selection. Then with your soft brush (size 300) paint some black down the bottom as shown. When you’re done set the layer to ‘Overlay’ and fade it back to 60% NEW LAYER Now press CTRL-SHIFT-I to inverse your selection again (back to the original) and this time paint some nice white as shown. Note that because we’ve moved our selection down back in Step 8, this won’t quite align with the black. NEW LAYER Now grab your gradient tool, choose white to nothing and set it to ‘Radial Gradient’. Then add a white light up the top left as shown. Set this layer to ‘OVERLAY’ Now at the moment the colors aren’t looking quite right, if I was really energetic I’d go back to the beginning and start again with a different set of oranges, but instead we’re going to do a quick adjustment NEW LAYER On the new layer add a fill of a good orange similar to as shown. Set the blending mode to “Colour” and opacity to 55%. This should adjust nicely. NEW LAYER Now once again use the usual method of using the pen tool to draw a nice curved selection (as shown) and then right click and choose “Make Selection Use the White – Nothing gradient and add a smooth white transition from left to right as shown. And set the layer to ‘Overlay’. NEW LAYER As you can see we’re getting close. Now create one final curved selection down in the bottom left add a white gradient fading to nothing (our favorite tool as you can see) and switch to ‘Overlay’. For the final touches I added a tinge of black overlaid bottom right and a bit more white overlaid on the top left. But these are inconsequential changes. You might want to go through and polish yours up a little too at this point because other than that you’re done!
when you are creating photo effects you can change the color of a photo without actually selecting the color. At the bottom of the layer palette click at the icon – create a new fill or adjustment layer(a ball half white/half black) and choose Hue/Saturation. At the Hue/Saturation window, choose any color at the edit, as an example yellow; Point at the image, with the eyedropper, the color that do you want to change. Move the Hue slider and choose a color. Now , with the shift key, fix the color(eyerdropper +) where the changed was not good ………. click OK. With the mask active, paint with the brush(with the set foreground black) where is no good(at that example the face and arms).
Adding texturing and smoothing texture out is helpful to photos. To add a seamless texture you would start with a simple ground texture here – 320×320 big. As you can see when we try to make a horizontal pattern an ugly seam is visible. We’ll try to fix that. Go to the filter menu and choose filter/other/offset.. Our texture is 320 wide so +130 value for horizontal -that will move our image 130 pixels to the right. After that we can notice seam -place where ends of image meet. What we have to do know is make seam invisible by over painting cloning parts of image and so forth. I covered seam mostly with 1px brush picking colors with eyedropper tool When done, we have to move image to its base position by moving it 130px to the left -choose filters/other/offset.. and write “-130” value. Now we can see how it works. Repeating texture gives us nice pattern without seams. We can of course do the same thing vertically when needed. Ok, hope it’s good enough for doing some textures…
Learn how to create a mac clock. Now we will have to create the shiny look. Please add noise both to your glare and your base as it will look more official compared to the Dashboard Clock. Now we have to create the clock it self so take out your Eliptical Tool and draw in a circle on top of your glare layer and fill it in with black. Now add the border around the black circle with the hex indicated below. Now we have to create the glare so if you want to get more detailed view, you can just follow my way. Place the original clock design near yours and draw a white circle inside the black circle about 1 or 2 pixels apart. After that grab your eraser tool and set the opacity to 75% and slowlu brush from the top until you get something like mine. I also added a small tiny border around the glare just to make it look a little nicer. Now we have to add all the digits inside. I personally liked how Arial Narrow looked on it so i added that font although i think Mac’s designer used some other font that i am not familiar with or maybe just missed. Create a white circle in the center of the digits. Following that draw another red circle inside the white’s circle center. Now by the alignment of the arrows on the clock, use your white circle as the base and grab your pen tool to draw out one of the arrows. Just by connecting to one side of the base of the circle and extending towards the numbered digit and then following back to the opposite base of the circle, you can easily acheive those fancy arrows. Repeat the steps again to create the short arrow as well. Now place the long arrow layer underneath the white and red circle layer. Following by going to the Settings of the circle and adding a drapshadow of about 75% opacity with the color filling of black. After you have done that, grab your line tool and set th weight to 2px and draw a line from the red circle to the selected digit on the seconds. Now your basically done, just grab your text tool and add the State and the AM/PM indicator on top. If your curious about the colors, you can just take the hex of the original design. Your final result should look like this:
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