#photoshop-tutorials

By Personia

My article about The Benefits of Egg has inspired me to produce a tutorial that shows you how to change the colour of eggs. Now this may seem silly, but you will learn very valuable skills that will increase your photoshop skills.

1 Preparing the canvas

Today, we will be using a simple image of an egg. I chose something with a clean background. This will further simplify the learning curve of gaining the new skills I’m teaching you. I will save the complex backgrounds for another tutorial.

Double-click the layer to unlock and rename the layer to Egg.

2 Removal of background

We are going to make things more clean by removing our background. It’ll make things much easier and give us a much smoother workflow.

Press W for the Magic Wand. If it comes with the Quick Selection tool, press SHIFT then W again. For more information about why and how this works, view my other article that goes into further detail about it. Once selected, press DELETE on your keyboard then Deselect by pressing CTRL+W (without the + sign), or either clicking Select (Menu Item) then the Deselect option.

3 The Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer

We are going to use a non-destructive method in manipulating our egg.  Select the button that says, “Create new fill or adjustment layer” – It’s the icon that looks like Ying-Yang/half black+white. From there, choose the button that says, “Hue/Saturation…”.

Our egg is going to have a blue hue to it. Please ensure that colorize is selected. It doesn’t matter what the values are now.

Put the values indicated in the image below or copy what’s next:

HUE 185 SATURATION 34 LIGHTNESS -32

Finally, right-click the Hue/Saturation layer and select “Create Clipping Mask”. I’ll save the explanation of this tool for another tutorial, as it’s beyond the scope of this tutorial.

4 The Background

Ok, we’re just about done. But we only have the background. I don’t want to get too side-tracked from the aim of what I’m trying to teach you in this tutorial, thus, we’re keeping it pretty basic.

We will be creating a subtle gradient background that is purple. Press G or SHIFT G (depending on your circumstance, aforementioned). In the foreground colour box (near the bottom of the left panel) and place the colour value #600051. In the background colour box, place the colour value #440351.

Select radial gradient from the top panel (it changes depending on the tool you choose).

Create a new layer and rename it to ‘Radial Gradient Background’. Press the combination CTRL+’ to enable the grid (or View > Show > Grid – menu wise). Find the middle point of the egg; I wasn’t to exact as my cursor is probably off – But for this tutorial, you don’t need to be too exact, just very close. Other tutorials that I’ll produce will require extreme precision. Press SHIFT and click-and-drag the cursor to the bottom-right to the very end of the canvas. Remove the grid and move this layer to the bottom.

The Round Up

Congratulations! I hope you’ve learnt a few skills that will help you with more complex projects you may have and my up-coming tutorials. I wasn’t too focused on the colours but teaching you the skills. Do well.

By Personia

Reflections are simple, yet versatile, effect you can apply to any image. They add that touch of glossiness and sleek feel to your creation. Reflections are also a simple way to add that 3D feel to your work.

1 Preparing the Canvas

Save the image that’s below, then bring it to photoshop.

2 Duplicate and remove background from our image

Ok, this is crucial in creating our effect. We need to duplicateand remove background from our image. To keep things well, we will name the duplicated layer ‘reflection’ and teh original, ‘base’.

To accomplish our mission, we will first duplicate our image by dragging it to the new layer button; afterwards, we rename it to reflection. Next, we rename the original layer to ‘base’.

Removing the background is really simple – you could say it is too simple *tounge-in-cheek*. Select the Majic Wand tool in either two manners: press teh key W; or by pressing the actual button.

Select our background with the Majic Wand tool. Press delete.Pleaseensure that you have selected the ‘reflection’ layer – it is a very common mistake among photoshop users in anything they do. Follow this procedure in deleting the colour in the spaces of the letters.

Don’t fret! You will not really notice too visible (unless you’re looking at the layers palette).

3 Flipping and shifting

  The key to creating our reflection is the flipping. Go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical. I’ve hidden the ‘base’ layer to give a much more clear representation – Don’t do this unless you want to a cleaner view for this procedure ... immediately revert it once you’re done.

We are going to move this flipped layer to position. Things may look a little messy, but this is ok ... things shall be fixed.

4 Cleaning up

  To actually make this effect look great, we are going to clean it up. Different projects that require reflection have different; our requirement for perfection is cleaning up the p. It is pretty simple; all it requires is the eraser tool.

We are going to erase the p in the reflection layer. This process is very important, you are going to learn something that we photoshop users when we want detail (though it also does have other users). Press Ctrl >Plus/Minus key (+/-) twice – This will take us into 300% zoom (we were originally at 100 %). Things may seem a little pixelated, that is ok.

Select the eraser tool, or press e. Set it too 15 px. Ensure the hardness is set to 0%.

Next go to go the spot where the p is; layer is to be ‘reflection’. Use the eraser tool to erase as much as is in the image below.

Get back to the setting for the eraser tool and set it to 5 px. This is for the more detailed and intricate part. Follow the same point as stated in the previous step/procedure.

5 The fade

Ok, now you will start to see the end-result. We are still going to use the eraser tool to fade off the excess. Oh, don’t forget, zoom out back to 100% - using the hyphen/underscore key (it would be next to the number 0 and plus/minus key on the international standard keyboard).

Set the eraser brush to 100px. Press the shift key and swipe across from right-to-left.

6 Cleaning the other P

Yay! We’re done. Wait … we see something awful! The other p is interfering. Oh, another issue, that’s ok; follow the same procedure as Procedure 4 – Though check that it is on the ‘base’ layer not vice versa – DON’T DO IT YET.

But before that, we need to properly set things up. Duplicate the ‘base’ layer and remove the background – Procedure 2; name it to ‘removing p’. Next press i to select the eye dropper tool – use it on the background (press on it). Then select the paint bucket tool (g) – if it is on gradient, press Shift + g (ignore the plus sign). Make a new layer, called ‘background’, and fill it. You can hide the ‘base’ layer.

Everything should look as below.

Now you may follow Procedure 4 and erase a little of the bottom p.

Well that’s it! We’re done. Together, we have successfully created a reflection in photoshop. This effect can be applied to numerous applications. Below are some others that I have done.

By Personia

Glass is quite a beautiful effect. It isn’t hard and there’s not much to it. Glass effect looks great on any picture. Well without further due – Let us get underway.

FINAL PREVIEW

1. Preparing the canvas

For this tutorial, we will be using the Chrysanthemum flower image available in Windows 7. Open the image and double-click on the layer in the layers palette (bottom right), that has the padlock on to unlock it; when the dialog box comes, click ok.

2. Creating the rectangle

Enable Grid by pressing ctrl+’ (ignoring the +) or going View > Show > Grid. We next want to use the rectangle marquee tool (look below); if the rectangle marquee tool isn’t there, click-and-hold whatever is there currently and select.

Note:

To keep things organised and have a productive workflow, rename the Chrysanthemum flow layer to ‘Chrysanthemum Flower’.

Now still having the grid, and now the rectangle marquee tool selected, we can make the rectangle.

Create a new layer and fill the selected rectangle with White (#ffffff) using the Paint Bucket tool (if not already selected, follow the same procedure used for the marquee tool, by click-and-hold). Ensure that the rectangle is still selected. After, adjust the opacity of the layer to 40%.

Rename this layer to ‘Glass Main’. Put Glass Main inside a new folder called ‘Glass’ and within that, create another called ‘Glass Main’. To put them under eachother, drag each newly created group on top of the other; do the same with the layer and drag that to Glass Main.

Deselect the layer afterwards by pressing Ctrl+d (ignoring the +) – Or by going Select > Deselect.

3. Creating the look

We’ve set up the necessities and we can now get underway with the real deal. Double-click on the Glass Main layer to open up the Blending Options section.

- Bevel and Emboss

In Blending Options, click on ‘Bevel and Emboss’ and copy the settings below. For the ‘Gloss Contour’, select the one that is named ‘Cone – Inverted’ (to find it, 3rd from the top row); ensure ‘Anti-Aliased’ is selected.

For the ‘Shadow Mode’, ensure it is set to 100% opacity and not the default 75%. The colour should be #a42929.

- Contour

Select ‘Ring’ in the Contour box (which is 2nd from the bottom left). Also ensure that Anti-Aliased is selected. Currently, the changes seem minor, this is ok.

- Satin

For Satin, we will change the colour to White and change the opacity to 75% from the default 50%.

4. Creating the look

Now a glass effect isn’t a glass effect without the blur. Our glass has a curve in it which means the image behind would be blurred. Now we know that not all glass behaves in this way, but for the sake of the effect, we may need to dramatize.

Click-and-hold the thumbnail icon, of the layer, Glass Main. This will reselect the rectangle we had before(also, close the group ‘Glass’). Once selected, click on the Chrysanthemum Flower layer and press Ctrl+c then Ctrl+v (or Edit > Copy/Paste).

Note:

Change the name of the layer to ‘Blur’ and move it under the Glass group but create a new group called Blur. Ensure that it is under

the Glass Main folder).

Currently, nothing may seem to have happened yet that is about to change. With the layer now repositioned and selected, we can use the Gaussian Blur filter; go Filter > Blur> Gaussian Blur. Set it to 4.9.

5. Creating the curve

To add the ‘touch’, we will add a ‘curve’. Select the marquee tool again and now change it too elliptical. With the Grid enabled, we will draw the ellipse. Afterwards, we will move the ellipse two grid spaces up.

Note:

Create a folder, called ‘Gradient’, above Glass Main.

Select the gradient tool (where the paint bucket is but click-and-hold). Ensure you have selected ‘Foreground to Transparent’.

Click-drag the line from the top of the ellipse to the bottom whilst holding the shift key. Once done, we are to position it correctly on the layer (view the image below) by pressing Ctrl+t (or Edit > Free Transform) and try to move it about (by using the dots not the whole layer/image) to get what I got; afterwards, press enter to complete.

Use the same method that we used before to select the rectangle we had before. Now press Ctrl+Shift+Inverse(Select > Inverse) and delete. Rename the layer to ‘Gradient’ and set the opacity to 55%.

There are still some sharp edges on the side of this; so use the eraser tool. Set the brush diameter to 50px  and hardness to 0%.

Erase those sharp edges