selection in Photoshop

Let’s open an image and see what to do.

What we want to od is to isolate this lady and put it on a different background, maybe for a magazine, poster or whatever purpose. When we cannot use the traditional selection tools, we need to take a look at the Channels. What we look for is the channel that have the most contrast. In 99% of the cases that channel will be the Blue, but you may never know so make sure you scroll through each of them and pick the right one. Now that we found our channel, we duplicate it.

Press Ctrl + L to bring up the Levels and punch up the blacks.

Pick a brush and fill the rest of our subject with black. For this you can use any tool you like, only the end result matters.

Pick the Magic Wand tool and click on the whites (have a tolerance around 55) then turn off our duplicate channel by clicking on the RGB and go to our Layers panel.

Add a small feather to our selection (Select - Modify - Feather)

At this point you can press Delete to get rid of the original background, but what I like to do is to mask it with a Layer Mask just in case I change my mind later.

Add a new background below our original layer and that’s it. Notice how you can see the new background between the hair.

How to Make Stencil Art in Photoshop

You don't need a template or a spray-paint to create your own stencil art. I'm gonna teach you how to achieve this stencil art effect on your regular image just by playing with the filters and adjustment layers in Photoshop.

A couple of stencil effect examples before we get started:






1. Open your image. Choose a picture that has a good balance between light and dark. Duplicate your picture twice. We'll leave the original image untouched.



This is your layer palette now.



2. Click the eye icon to the left of Background copy 2 layer to make that layer invisible.



3. Select Background copy layer.




4. Then, go to Filter > Artistic > Cutout. Adjust the settings on the right until you get something like this:



Here's my settings. Yours can be different depending on your image.



5. Select Background copy 2 layer.



6. Now, we want to add a few adjustment layers. We'll start with the Hue/Saturation. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation. Set the Master Saturation to -100.



7. Next, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels. Slide the 3 sliders shown below until you get a good balance of black, gray and white area on your image.



This is my image after I applied the Levels adjustment.



8. Then, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness and Contrast. Adjust the brightness and contrast settings to further enhance the stencil effect on your image. Here's the settings I chose and my outcome:





9. In case you're confused, here's what your layer palette should look like now.



10. Click the box beside the Background copy 2 layer to make it visible. Then, click on the layer to select it.



11. Now, we're gonna experiment with the layer property and the opacity setting to get the result we want.



Here's some settings you can try and the result I got with my image:

a) Set Background copy 2 layer to Lighten with 68% opacity



b) Set Background copy 2 layer to Multiply with 50% opacity



You're always free to try other settings.

This tutorial is written to guide you on how to achieve this stencil effect on your image. Just play around with the settings to get the result you want. It's not necessary to follow all the settings and steps in this tutorial, just be innovative until you got something nice for your eyes.

Create a Face Shattering Effect

Preparations:

We will need close-up image of a nice face, prefably facing front. I’m using one of Jessica Alba wallpapers in this tutorial. You will also need the Reborn Brush created by Rubina119.

Click here to download the Reborn Brushes.

Step 1- Setting Up Background:

Create a document of size 750×550 pixels.

Fill the Background layer with #000000.

Place the face at the center of the document and use Soft Eraser tool to remove the other unwanted background.

Step 2 - Drawing Face Grids:

Create a new document of size 20×20 pixels and create a new layer. Use Pencil tool with size 1px and color #FFFFFF, draw left and bottom border to form a “L”. Hide the Background layer and click Ctrl+A. Go to Edit > Define Pattern. Name this pattern as Grid.

Back to Jessica Alba’s document, create a new layer above the Face. Use the Paint Bucket tool and select to fill with Grid pattern

Step 3 - Drawing Face Grids:

Remove those grids that cross outside of the face area.

Go to Edit > Transform > Warp.

Distort the grids the way shown in the diagram.

Step 4 - Drawing Face Grids:

Set the opacity of the grid layer to 20%.

Right-click on the grid layer and choose Blending Options.

Activate Outer Glow and set its Blend Mode to Color Dodge, Opacity to 100%, Color to #FFFFFF, Spread to 0 and Size to 5px. Leave the rest of the settings as default.

Step 5 - Shattered Blocks:

Create a new layer and name it as Holes.

With Pen tool, path out several square holes according to the face grids.

Go to the Paths tab, Ctrl+left click on the work path layer created. Back to Layers tab, select the Holes layer and fill the selection with #000000.

Step 6 - Shattered Blocks:

Ctrl+left click on the Holes layer to load selection.

Select the Face layer and hit Ctrl+X to cut out the pixels. Then press Ctrl+V to paste and then name this new layer as Blocks.

Drag the blocks to the right with Move tool. Go to Edit > Free Transform to reduce the size slightly.

Step 7 - Shattered Blocks:

Duplicate the Blocks layer. Shift the lower Blocks layer 1 pixel to the left. Repeat this for 10 times and you will get some sort of extruding effect. Merge these 10 layers of duplicated Blocks and name this new merged layer as Sides. Right-click on the Sides layer and choose Blending Options. Activate Gradient Overlay and set Blend Mode to Normal, Opacity to 80%, Gradient from #000000 to #D58761 and Angle to 180. Leave the rest as default.

Step 8 - Shattered Blocks:

Activate Pattern Overlay and set Blend Mode to Multiply, Opacity to 100% Pattern to Metal Landscape. Leave the rest as default.

Right-click on Blocks layer and choose Blending Options. Activate Outer Glow and set Blend Mode to Color Dodge, Opacity to 75%, Color to #FFFFFF and Size to 10px. Leave the rest as default.

Step 9 - Shattered Blocks:

Repeat Step 5 to 8 for 2-3 more times to form more blocks floating towards the right.

Step 10 - Adding Depth to Holes:

Merge all the Holes layers. Right-click on the merged layer and choose Blending Options.

Activate Bevel and Emboss, set the Style to Inner Bevel, Depth to 72%, Size to 5px, Soften to 0px, Angle to 0, Altitude to 50, Highlight Mode to Screen, Highlight Color to #DCA57E, Highlight Opacity to 100%, Shadow Mode to Multiply, Shadow Color to #000000 and Shadow Opacity to 75%. Leave the rest of settings as default.

Step 11 - Adding Smoke:

Create a new layer below the Blocks and name it as Smoke. Set the foreground color to #FFFFFF. Load the Reborn brushes downloaded earlier and paint a few smoke of different sizes on this layer.

Right-click on the Smoke layer and choose Blending Options. Activate Outer Glow and set its Blend Mode to Linear Dodge (Add), Opacity to 75%, Color to #FFFFFF, Spread to 0px and Size to 5px. Leave the rest of settings as default.

Step 12 - Adding Dark Blocks:

Create a new layer and name it as Dark Blocks.

Using Pen tool, path out few more blocks along the face grid. Fill the shapes with #000000.

Set the Blend Mode of Dark Blocks layer to Soft Light.

Step 13 - Adding Light Blocks:

Create a new layer and name is as Light Blocks.

Similar to Step 6 but this time fill the shapes with #FFFFFF.

Set the Blend Mode of Light Blocks layer to Soft Light.

Step 14 - Adjusting Colors:

Now we need to smooth the face a little. Select the Face layer and go to Filter > Blur > Surface Blur. Set the Radius to 5px and Threshold to 15 levels.

Create a new Levels Adjustment Layer and key in 10, 1.25, 244.

Create a new layer and using a large Soft Brush tool with color #000000 and opacity 40%, paint some dark areas on the right to fade the blocks slightly.

Optional:

I merely added a barcode on her right arm to complete the design.

This is another long tutorial and I hope you will like this effect. Photoshop tutorials

Web 2.0 text effect

Web 2.0 text effect

1.Create a new document with white background. Enter some text with any font and size. Double click the layer in layers window or go to Layer->Layer style->Blending options to open the blending options window.

2.Apply the Gradient overlay effect. Make sure the lightest color is the lower part of the text to have an enhanced effect.



Apply the stroke effect.



Next give an outer glow to the text



So the text will look similar to:



3.In the layer window, while holding down the ctrl key click the text layer. We can see a selection made to the outline of text.


4.Create a new layer(Ctrl+Shift+N). Change the fore ground color to White. Select gradient tool. Choose the second gradient effect-Foreground to Transparent.



5.Holding down down the shift key drag your mouse from top of the selection to half way thru text.



6.Reduce the opacity of Gradient layer. Now select the bottom half of the text using rectangular marquee tool.


Then press delete.

Here is the final result