flashflores

This tutorial will teach you how to create creative and stylish fire lines in 10 easy steps!

01

For this tutorial your going to need a good stock photo lined up. Something with action…and preferably dark (this effect works much better in a dark setting)

02

Open the stock photo, then go to the paths tab and click create new path.
Press “P” on the keyboard to select the pen tool, Get a basic idea of where the fire is going. Keep in mind dimension and action. Swirls do wonders!

03

A. Click to start your path
B. Click your next point, hold and drag to create a bezier spline path, which is necessary to create flowing lines
C. Continue doing this, following the idea of where you want the fire to go.
Dont worry about getting it right the first time as you can change the spline at any time…another little tip - if you press and hold ctrl while using the pen tool you can temporarily access the direct selection tool which will allow you to edit the spline (a big time saver)

04

And eventually…you get something like what i have below. Remember that your only going to use the parts of your path that are in front of the object your path follows…in this case the models arm, and leg. So don’t waste time trying to make the hidden parts look pretty.

05

A. Now you want to select a soft round brush (i used a 5 pixel brush here) and pick an orange color.
B. Make a new layer and name it Fire.
C. Go back to the paths tab and select stroke path with brush.

06

You should immediately see the stroked path.
On mine you’ll see splatters and flairs that weren’t part of the original path. Those give the fire line the illusion that it is moving, and were accomplished by simply grabbing the clone stamp tool - using a spatter brush and cloning/stamping areas of the path at random.

07

Mask/erase the parts of the path that are behind the legs/arms or whatever it is your paths follows.

08

Right click on the Fire layer and select blending options, and use these options/values.

Feel free to play with the settings (that’s how i discovered this technique)

You might end up with something better!

09

Duplicate the Fire layer, and set the layer mode to OVERLAY
Click the eye next to inner shadow and inner glow on the duplicate layer to deactivate them.

10

Now double click on outer glow on the duplicate and change the values to this.

Conclusion

Spend a little time, and you can make something like what i have below…

For a different effect, duplicate the FIRE layer again, and filter>distort>wave.

Play with the opacity levels, and play with the blending modes - particularly OVERLAY.

Good luck!

Alien Invasion! A Photoshop Tutorial..

Hello folks!
Time again to talk about aliens! No, not the illegal kind. The green kind! What better way to kickoff the summer spirit than with explosions, death rays, and a little stormy weather - thanks to our friend, Photoshop.

Speaking of stormy weather - recently, in my hometown of Manchester, NH (Southside REPRESENT) , we experienced some major floodwaters. It was nuts - Hectic farm animals everywhere...I must have seen at least 45 cows engaged in what appeared to be a strange game of Twister in a nearby Swamp field. Anyway, being the moron that I am, I defied all weathermen state-wide (damn yooz!) and took a journey down to a nearby troubled river and snapped some crAzy pics.

Oh. Here's one now:




So, I was looking at this photo of horrendous flooding and I though, Hey - let's make it even more horrendous!! SWEET!

OK, here we go! Now is a great time to grab a few beers and set your Victoria's Secret catalog aside. Don't forget the page you were on as it may or may not come into play later. Most likely not. OK...download that low-quality image above and lets get to work!!

To start off, I selected the top half of the sky and copy/pasted it onto a new layer. After that, I adjusted the Shadows/Highlights to darken up the mood a bit. After that, I used my buddy "google" (Seriously - TRY these guys. They're gonna be huge.) and did an image search for stormy clouds. I actually have a bunch of my own in a personal arsenal, but for the means of this tutorial, we'll use all fully accessible items. I then pasted the stormy clouds over the top of my scene, adjusted the values to a more purple tone and blended in the bottom half.

End result went something like this:




Next up, add more clouds! I went a little darker on the lower set of clouds. When all was set in place, I made a new layer (COLOR layer mode) and painted red everywhere I wanted it.

A-Whabbap!




And here comes the fun part! Using everyday items, we're going to create our spaceship in the clouds! Mine was actually made from the front of a corvette (top) and the bottom part was made from a canon camera lens! We'll call that the beam-emitter. Because damn, all aliens have huge beams.

After the ship placement, I added some moody borders to the photo using multiply/overlay layers and brushed in a bit more red.

-(Meep.)




Spaceship is in, now lets add a little light underneath the edge of it. Next, add a little dark shadowing around it with your linear burn layer mode. Use red. Also, I adjusted the shadow/highlights on the ship to give it a darker tone, and burned some of the ships edges for depth.

Something like:




Next up - A little mood lighting! I used a photo of the Capitol Building and completely darkened out any of the negative shading values (see below). I then overlayed the lights onto the ships base (using linear dodge), and added a little extra to the top where the top meets the clouds.

Shooting for:




Hey now! Let's add some BEAMS. take your brush tool and hold SHIFT to make a straight vertical line. Use a very light pink. Now, set the layer mode to linear dodge. You can see the outcome below. Lastly, copy the darkened clouds from the horizon line and add them around the entry point of the spaceship and the sky. This will give some MOOD.

Yeah, mood:




Same technique, but this time use a darker red and overlay it on the other, thinner beam.

Larger beam, please:




OK, it's time to get this thing rolling. We need a darker, more stormy atmosphere. This spaceship needs to be mean, so lets darken the sky, add some contrast to the clouds and darken the water by adding purple softlight and red overlay to the water base.

Ahhhh, getting there:




Darker! apply a multiply layer of the clouds over itself to give that sky some strength over the ship. burn underneath the ship as well so the cloud consistency carries through the horizon. Also, start applying more light rays from underneath the ship using the overlay layer mode. I used yellow to keep it fairly subtle.

Ahhhh:




OK you may have noticed in the last photo I started adding an "electric" look to the BEAM OF DEATH™. This can be done through tiny lines treaks (done in orange or yellow) overlaying the thicker light coming from the base of the ship. I added some more lightning to the sides of the ship as well....

-(Pobles.)




A little more lightning, and some rings outside the ship. this was done using the brush tool and applying the layer mode as "linear dodge" over the other clouds.

Womp!




Add a little more light/shadow toning in the clouds. Next, again using linear dodge and a darker orange, overlay a large brush to the bottom of the beam to add some glow to the tree region. I added another thinner and stronger layer at the tree/beam meeting point to create an explosion effect.

FYAH!!!




Now let's bring in another cloud photo. Adjust the Variations on the clouds to bring in the red tone we want. Next, adjust the levels to emphasize the shadows (bring in the left triangle towards the center). Set the layer mode to Hard light.

Like this:




Almost done! Add a bit more ligtning to the sky and add more shadow burning to the water a edges of the photo. Shoot for this:

Like this:




All done! Nice work, Chief. Post your spaceship photos below or email them to me!

Like this:




Ok that's it! Until next time....

Create a Cool Movie Poster in Photoshop

Step 1

Create a new document at 1600 x 1200 pixels with a resolution of 72dpi. Start off by opening all of your images separately and lets extract our guy from the background, use the pen tool. You can find these images here: http://fl8us.deviantart.com/art/Deserted-City-4100373 and http://b-e-c-k-y-stock.deviantart.com/art/Scared-People-2-46126819. Thanks to fl8us and beckystock for these great photos.

Step 2

Place the street image on our blank canvas and set the guy image on top of it. Lets give the right perspective to our guy go to Edit/Transform/Perspective. See the image below.

Step 3

Lets create an adjustment layer of Hue/Saturation and check the colorize option, above all the layers. Keep playing with the colors until you get something you like.

Step 4

Ok go to our buildings layer and add some warp to it go to Edit/Transform/Warp. Play around until you get something like this. Its really important that you leave the street the most straight as possible.

Step 5

Turn off the guy layer and create a new layer on top of it. Use the Lasso Tool (L) to select all the part back there and fill it with white. See the image below

Step 6

Now lets add some blur to our light. Go to Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur and set it to 28%. Change the Blend Mode to Soft Light and duplicate the layer and give the same blur.

Step 7

Now turn on the guy layer and create a new layer below call it "Shadow". Grab a small soft brush and low its opacity to 60% and start covering under his feets. See the image below.

Step 8

Then create a new layer below of the "Shadow" layer and hit Cmd+left click over the guy layer to load the selection and fill it with black, using the Paint Bucket Tool. and go to Edit/Free Transform and rotate the image.

Step 9

And go to Edit/Free Transform and rotate the image. Like the image below.

Step 10

Then add a blur to our shadow Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur and set it to 5%. Low the opacity to 70% and duplicate the layer, then by using a large soft brush with 50% opacity erase some areas until you get something like this. This step its really important if you wanna get a more realistic look.

Step 11

Now lets add some light to our guy that matches with our background. Grab the Dodge tool, select Highlights and set the exposure to 5% and highlight some areas.

Step 12

Now create a new layer on top of the guy layer and call it "Light guy" and hit Cmd+Left Click on the Guy layer to load the selection. Then just go back to the Light guy layer and using a large soft white brush start covering all the back area, until you get something like this.

Step 13

Ok, now lets duplicate the guy layer and put it above all the layers and change the blending mode to Color with 60% opacity. And with a large soft eraser erase all of it and leave the skin tone. Just like this.

Step 14

Now lets add the final touches and merge all the layers. Then lets add some sharpen go to Filter/Sharpen/Unsharp Mask with this values.

Conclusion

Thats it! Then you can add some nice noise to your work and get nice film look. Hope you learn something from it :-)

PhotoShop brushes

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