Dot Effect

Have you ever been to a site such as http://mimmomanes.com/ and wondered how to create the dot effect on the splash page. Well this tutorial will show you how to use a combination of filters and lighting changes to create the effect in Photoshop 7! This effect can be blended well with some grungy effects, so feel free to expand and experiment to make the effect more original to your liking

[ The Final Product of this Tutorial ]

Steps to Create Effect
The following steps will help you to create the image effect you see above:

1. Copy the original image from here (free membership required). You can also use any other image of your choice. Start Photoshop up and create a new RGB document 2048 by 1536 pixels and with the image resolution set at 72 dpi, and set the background color to white.
   
2. Go to Edit-Paste. (don't resize the image, just zoom out to see the entire thing). Once you have pasted the image, go over to your layers, Right Click the image part in Layer 1, and go to Select Layer | Transparency.
   
3. Now go up to Image-Adjustments-Hue/Saturation. (Ctrl + U) Move the Saturation slider to -80, and the Brightness slider to +5. Click Okay.
   
4. Now go to Image-Adjustments-Brightness/Contrast. Adjust your sliders to match the following:

[ make sure to check the preview box ]

3. Still with your selection go to your Layers, and Duplicate Layer 1. Now select "Layer 1 copy" [right click-select layer transparency].
   
4. Go to Filter-Pixelate-Color Halftone and adjust the settings to match the following:

For Channel 3, enter 90 and for Channel 4, enter 45.

4. Now lets add some noise! Go to Filter-Noise-Add Noise, and adjust the settings according to the following:

[ the hue/saturation settings used ]

5. Next, you need to copy the dot below, and create a pattern out of it:

[ copy the above image, and paste it in a new document ]

6. Once you have the layer that the dot is in selected, go to Edit-Define Pattern. Name it Circle. Now go back to your main document, and create a new layer in between Layer 1 copy and Layer one. Name this new layer "pattern".
   
7. Go to Edit-Fill, and your pattern should be in the box that appears. Click OK, which should apply the pattern to the whole canvas.
   
8. Look at your layers palate, and locate the drop-down menu in which Normal is the selected option. Change that to Overlay. Now look at the Opacity percent, and lower it to 88%.
   
9. Single click on Layer 1 copy, and change the layer setting (the drop down menu under the Layers tab) to Pin Light. Now it's time to reduce your image size. Go to Image-Image Size. and make your settings match the following:

7. Select Layer 1 copy, and go to Image-Adjustments and set the Contrast Level to +50 and the Brightness Level to +15. Lower the Opacity to 69%.

That's it! Your image should look identical or similar to the image at the top of this tutorial. If you need any help, please post

Fill Patterns

Adobe Photoshop is perhaps the most powerful photo-editing software on the market. However, from this power stems a very complex program. It’s quite difficult to figure out many aspects of Photoshop yourself, so that’s where tutorials come in. This tutorial will explain a very simple trick in Photoshop, which, until explained, seems somewhat difficult.

With this tutorial, we will go on an adventure with fill patterns!

Creating Scanlines:

1. Let’s begin. Open Adobe Photoshop. This tutorial should work for both Photoshop 6 and 7, I will be using 6 for this tutorial.
   
2. Often times it is fun to experiment with your new skills on a stock photo. Below is the photo I will be playing with. This is a bit of Zell, a character in Squaresoft’s Final Fantasy 8:

[ the photograph before any alteration ]

3. Since this tutorial is about fills, let’s make our fill pattern. The first, and easiest, pattern will be a simple set of scan lines. Scan lines are often used on websites, and here I’ll show you how to make them. Point your mouse to File | New. Set the measure to pixels, width 1, height 3. 72 pixels/inch, background transparent. OK.
   
4. Zoom in all the way, 1600%. Select the pencil tool, and make sure opacity is 100%. Set the foreground color to black, and make a single black pixel at the top of this picture.

[ zoomed in picture ]

5. Press Control + A, or point to Select | All. Now, with that selected, point to Edit | Define Pattern. Name it something zesty like “Scan line,” and press OK. Close the document you just created, don’t save. Open up your stock photo, and re-save it with a “1” (without quotes) after its name (example: zell1.jpg). This way you don’t screw up your original image.
   
6. In your stock photo, create a new layer. In the new layer point to Edit | Fills. In Contents, select Pattern. Select your new pattern in the Custom Pattern box. When it’s selected, click outside the list of patterns to make the window go away. Leave the mode at normal and the opacity at 100, we can change these later. Press OK.
   
7. Now your picture looks like it’s behind shutters. Interesting effect, but not the desired one. Press Control + I or point to Image | Adjust | Invert to invert the selection. Now the lines are white, and still not what we want. But closer. Change the layer opacity to.15%. There we go.
   

8. Well the scan lines are fun, but let’s try something else. Delete the scan line layer from your stock photo, and create a new image. Let’s say 8 pixels by 8 pixels. Draw something like this:

9. Make it into a fill (select all, Edit | Define Pattern.), and put that over your stock image (new layer, Edit | Fill). Interesting. However, not quite what I wanted. Lets try something else, and this time use more than one fill. Delete the fill layer on your stock photo. Duplicate the photo twice, so you have three layers, all with the same thing. Now delete the locked background. You should now have two layers of the same image.
   
10. Create three new blank layers, one on the bottom, one between the two image layers, and one on top:

11. Excellent. Set the foreground color to white, and paint bucket the bottom layer with white. The paint bucket is dangerous to have in hand, so change your tool back to the pointer. Ok, now select the layer in the middle. Point to Edit | Fill. and find that noisy looking patter called “Wrinkles.” Comes standard with Photoshop. Press OK. Select the top image layer, the second layer from the top. Right-click and select Enable Layer Mask.
    
    If it won’t let you, as my Photoshop often does to me, do like so: Point to Layer | Add Layer Mask | Reveal All. For some reason this always fixes my problem. Anyway, select the layer mask. Fill with the funny looking pattern we made above. Your picture might look a bit strange, but that’s ok, just wait a minute. Select the top layer, Edit | Fill. and fill with that funny quicksilver looking stuff called “Satin.” Comes standard with Photoshop.
    
12. Hah, now you can’t see anything! That’s ok. Change the top layer’s style to Overlay. Change the middle most layer’s style to Overlay also, and lower it’s opacity to about 50. Select the second to last layer, and drop the opacity to about 75.
    
13. There ya go, you’ve got a really funny looking picture thanks to some fills. Show that to your friends

Colouring black and white photo...

Do you have a black and white photo, that you want to see come to life with color? Adobe Photoshop makes it easy for that to happen. In this tutorial, we will go through the basic steps in making your black and white photo, POP! With color!

1. The first thing you must do is open up your black and white photo in photoshop. If your taking an already colored photo and want to make it black and white, go to Image | Adjustments | Desaturate. That makes your colored photo, black and white. If your photo is already black and white, skip this step.

[ This is what our photo looks like in B&W ]

2. Now, take a mental note of what colors you want to use. Brown's and Green's for the tree, blue for the pants .. etc;. Create a new layer, and pick your first color. I'm going to pick blue, for the people's pants. I picked this blue #0066FF Color in the pants with this color. Now you may be thinking, this is a mess! But no, the magic comes soon. Fill in each of the people's pants, until you are happy.

[ Blue in the jeans ]

3. Once you are done that, on the Layers Palette, under the drop down box, click 'Soft Light'. And there you go! Your subjects now have some pants made of color. If you think that color is too bright, you can always put down the opacity. (also on the layers palette menu) Play around with it, and you should be happy.

[ Change the layers option to Soft Light, to start the magic ]

4. And that is the basic jist of what you have to do. A suggestion would be to have each different color you use, on a separate layer. It just helps if you want to go back and edit it later.

The finished product should look like this:

[ Above: My product | : The original ]

Now see how easy that was? In a matter of 15 minutes, I took a black and white photo, and made it pop with some color. Although it doesn't look extremely realistic, it's still close to it. This is amazing if you have old b & w photos that you want to spruce up.

Thankzzzzz

Creating Grunge Brushes

Ever seen one of those really nifty, old and ripped up graphics that contain scratches, dirt and some more dirt? When it comes to Photoshop, we call that dirty style "Grunge". This tutorial will teach you how to make your very own grunge brushes.

Creating Grunge Brushes
To create your own grunge brushes, you can't simply just make them from scratch. You need a source. In our case, the source will be this image:

[ copy and paste this into your Photoshop ]

It's always good to get an image that's all rusty and dirty. Using this one, we will chop out possible grunge brushes.

Here Is How:

1. Open up a canvas 365 (width) by 280 (height) pixels respectively. Copy and paste the image above provided into the Photoshop canvas.
2. The image needs to have no color information. Convert it to black & white by desaturating it. You can go to image > adjustments > desaturate or you can use the shortcut (shift+ctrl+u).
3. We need the details to stand out more. Go to image > adjustments > brightness/contrast. Set the contrast to 25. Depending on your images later on, play around with lots of settings until you get the desired detail.
4. Now we need to select parts of it. Find a really good place, not too dark or too light. It should have lots of dirt. Use the rectangular marquee tool and select a part. I selected this:
   
   
   
   After you select the part of it, copy it onto your clipboard (ctrl + c) and open up a new document with a white background. On a new layer, paste what you copied.
5. Now, we need this grunge brush to not be so squared. So select the erase tool and open up the brushes palette. Make sure it's on the primary brushes that Photoshop comes with. Reset it if you are on some other brush set.
6. Select the Rough Round Bristle brush. Here is an image of what brush that is:
   
   
   
   This brush will be used to make the edges of the squared grunge we have all dirty and uneven. You can use other brushes, but for now, let's use this.
7. Set the brush size from 50 - 80 and erase around the edges of current grunge. I made my work window bigger so that I don't have to press the brush on the image exactly. Here is what i got:
   
   
   
8. Clean up the edges by changing your brush type to Airbrush Dual Brush. I used mine at size 45.
   
   
   
9. Now go to Edit > Define Brush Preset > OK. Now you have the brush ready. This brush will be in whatever set you were currently using, so it will be in the main Photoshop primary one.

That was a lot of steps. But if you look at it, all you did was desaturate, contrast, erase and that was it. Now you know how to make you own grunge brushes! You can use these now and apply them to your images and graphics.

We're finished. I hope this tutorial gave you an understanding on how to make grunge brushes. This is not the only method, but it is an effective one. Any questions? Comments? Post them .....

Here is an example I made for you:








Thankssssssss

Morphing Faces

Today we are going to learn how to morph faces. We are going to make this image below.

[ the final product ]

Now, don't get worried, it looks much harder then it really is. I made this image from these two pictures:

	Note
In this tutorial you will see letters in parentheses next to the names of tools. This is the keyboard shortcut for the tool. All you do is press that letter and it will bring up that tool. Keyboard shortcuts are a great way to save time and make the design process go more smoothly.

The following steps will explain how to create the above effect in Photoshop:

1. We are going to use the yoda picture as the base, and add the kid's face into it. First open both pictures with Photoshop. Then using your Rectangular Marquee Tool (M), select the area of the kid's face that we want, and then switch to the Move Tool (V) and drag the selection onto the yoda picture:

2. The next thing we have to do is match the sizes of the faces, so that they will be proportionally matched as best as possible. You will typically shrink down the larger image instead of enlarging the small one so that we retain the quality of the smaller one. We are going to shrink down yoda.
   
   Select the yoda layer and then go to your top menu bar and select Edit > Transform > Scale. Then hold down the shift button while you are resizing so that the image resizes to scale and use the handlebars on the corner of the layer to resize the yoda image until his face is the same size as the kid's face. The transformation will not apply until you press enter, so you can feel free to let go of the handlebars and click on the yoda image body and reposition it so that you can match it accurately. It is helpful to pick a certain feature of the faces to align each other with.
   
   This feature may vary depending on the faces and positions, but typically it will be somewhere in the 'T' zone (the eyes and nose of the face) because this is the most distinguishing part of the face. In this one we will match the subjects' outside eye. Once you are happy with the size, press enter and the transformation will be applied:

[ scaling the yoda image down in size ]

Tips

{ Tip 1 } It is good practice to name your layers. This makes it easy to recognize what is on them and keeps things better organized. To name them either right click and select properties or just double click on the name of the layer. I like to color code them as well. To color code a layer, just right click on the eye next to the layer that shows if it is visible and select a color from the dropdown menu: { Tip 2 } It might help you to zoom in on the picture in this case, because the images are small and it will help you size it better. Select the Zoom tool (Z) and then go to the top toolbar and select 'Fit on Screen'. { Tip 3 } To match the faces accurately, set the top layer's opacity to 60% (the kid's face in this instance). You set the opacity in the layers panel.

Save your file if you have not done so already. Press Control + S, name it, and then select where you want to save it on your computer. In the future, save frequently. From now on, you just need to press Control + S to save.

3. Now it is time to match the angles of the faces. In this case, yoda's face is angled slightly to the right, so we are going to rotate the kid's face to match it. Select the kid layer. Go to your top menu and select Edit > Transform > Rotate. Then rotate the face by grabbing the handlebars. Press enter when you are done.
   
4. Now we want to erase the parts of the face we don't need. This image is excellent since the outmost eyes line up very nicely. Set the opacity of the kid layer to 80% so that you can see it better.

   Then use the Erase Tool (E) with a #45 feathered brush to erase the bulk of the parts of the face. Don't get too close to the main parts of the face. We will come in closer with a sharper brush to clean it up, but right now we don't want to lose any opacity on the main kid's face.

   Set the kid's opacity to 100%. Now use a #13 feathered brush to erase the forehead, and eyebrows, and any other bits of face that we don't need.

[ Starting to look neat, huh? Save your file again. ]

5. Now we are going to change the color of the kid's face to green. Go to the top menu bar and select Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation (Control + U). Make sure the preview box is checked so that you can see the effects on your image. Then check the colorize option. This adds color evenly to the image. Now mess around with the hue, saturation, and lightness until it matches the skin tone.
   
   This time we used Hue: 69, saturation: 22, lightness: 0. Press OK or enter when you are done:

[ image after making the above adjustments ]

6. Now if we look at our image so far, the main part of the kid's face (the t-zone) is not defined enough, in other words, too much yoda is showing through. Right click on the kid's layer and select duplicate layer. Ahh, isn’t that better?

   Now we are going to merge everything together, but first we want to make backup layers, in case we make a big boo-boo and can't change it for some reason. Right click and select duplicate layer for the yoda layer and one of the kid layers. Then rename them and color code them if you'd like. Now you should have 5 layers.

   

   Take the backup layers, and put them underneath the other layers and select the eye icon next to them in the layers palette to make them invisible. Now select one of the top three visible layers, and click the little box directly to the right of the visibility box in the other two visible layers. This is the link box. It will make a little chain link when something is linked.
   
   Then select the arrow in the layers palette and select Merge Linked. You could also have selected Merge Visible, since we are only working with visible layers at this point. Now we have one visible layer.

	Tip
If you make a mistake and want to undo it quickly, press Control + Z. This will become your best friend.

7. We are now going to use a fun tool called the Healing Brush tool (J) to smooth over some of the edges, so there is a smooth transition to the face, and we can add some texture as well.

   Healing Brush note: This is similar to the Clone Stamp tool (S) , but it is significantly better in some cases, and easier to use. The way it works is you select an area to copy with the tool and then you paint with the pixels that you copied with the tool. This is the same concept as the clone tool, but the clone tool makes hard edges and just pastes the pixels exactly. The healing brush however, mixes the pixels that it is pasting in with the image below it, so that you get a much smoother transition. The color will blend better, and the texture will match better. It is excellent for photorealistic work like we are doing.
   
   Use a #10 Healing Brush and place it close to an edge you want to smooth on the yoda face. Hold down the alt key and left click to copy the pixels. Release the mouse. Then move the mouse so it is over both edges and click again. See how it smoothes out the transition? Do this for the chin, jaw, and cheeks of the face. Don't worry about the nose or eyes yet. I created the line across the face using the healing brush. Practice with this tool can give you excellent results.

8. Now we have one big problem. The bridge of the noses doesn't line up. This part can get a little tricky, so you may want to get up and stretch and get a root beer and a cookie. Reward yourself for doing so well so far!

   OK, now that you feel refreshed, come over here and select the Lasso Tool. (L) We are going to cut out the yoda nose, and rotate it so the angle matches the angle of the kid's nose.

   

   Once it is selected, go to the top menu and select Edit > Transform > Rotate, and then rotate the bridge until it lines up. Now we need to use the clone stamp to make a smooth transition of the bridge and add some texture to the kid's nose. Select the Clone Stamp (S) and use a #9 feathered brush. Make the brush’s opacity set to about 60% and use the same method as described earlier with the Healing Brush to pick up pixels off the Yoda nose and paste them onto the Kid's face. Mess around with the opacity of the Clone Stamp to get the desired effect.

   Now we are going to fix the gaps in the nose bridge. Use the Smudge tool (R) with a #9 brush to smudge the gaps over from the bridge to the rest of the nose area. You might need to use the clone stamp as well. Now our nose should look significantly better. The face is almost done now !

   

9. Now comes the hardest part, so buckle up your safety belts and keep your hands in the vehicle. We have to add highlights and shadow to the face with the Brush Tool (B) to make it look like it has the same lighting as the yoda face did. If we don't do this, it will look flat and unrealistic. Make a new layer on top of the image for your manual painting.

   Use the Eyedropper Tool (I) to select colors that are already in the yoda so that our painting looks natural. Use an array of feathered brushes with the brush tool to get the effect you want. You can also try playing around with the opacity of the paint you are putting up in the top menu bar.

   Below is the Image without the painting (1), the image with the painting (2), and the painting on a grey background (3), this way you can see what I did clearly:

Congratulations!!! We are almost done. Your yodaman should be looking pretty neat right now so we just have one more thing to clean up, and that is the portion of yoda's face that is still coming out of the right hand side. That is quite simple, all we do is use the eyedropper tool to select the color of the surrounding area, and paint over the little bits of face.

And that's it! You have now successfully made a morphed face! Take a deep breath, pat yourself on the back, and get another cookie. You can be proud for now you can turn your friends and family into funny creatures and other such fun things.

[ wohoo! you are done ]

If you have any questions, feel free to post them.........

thankz