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 :-)

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Invisible Man with Photoshop CS3 (Video Tutorial)

Navigation

Create this beautiful navigation module with Photoshop. This Photoshop layout tutorial will show how simple shapes and gradients can create elegant designs.

Preview of Final Results

Modernistic Navigation Module Photoshop Tutorial

Step 1

Firstly create a new document (File > New) 540 by 440 pixels. Fill the background with the colour #1b1b1b by going Edit > Fill.

Step 2

Secondly we are going to be creating the background of the navigation box. Create a new layer, you can do this by going Layer > New > Layer or using the short cut Ctrl + Shift + Alt + N. Select the rounded rectangle tool and set the radius to 5 pixels. Make a selection of 250 by 300 pixels.

We are now goingt to be filling this selection with a red gradient. Select the gradient tool and set it to radial. Fill the selection with a gradient from the top center (#bc0303) to the bottom center (#3f0000).

Step 3

Thirdly, we are going to be adding an outer glow to our navigation background by going Layer > Layer Styles > Outer Glow and enter the settings below.

Now it should be looking like this.

Step 4

Select the text tool and add in some text for the title of the navigation box. The font I have used is Verdana, Regular, 22pt, Strong, #ffffff.

Step 5

Create a new layer and using the rounded rectangle tool again make a selection of 230 by 250 pixels at the bottom of the navigation background (with 10 pixel spacing on the sides and bottom).

Fill this selection with a dark grey colour (#111111).

Step 6

We are now going to be adding a shine effect to the new layer. So on a new layer (keeping the selection that you had before) go Select > Modify > Contract by 10 pixels.

Fill the selection with a radial gradient from the top left (#ffffff) to the bottom right (transparent) using the gradient tool.

Lower the opacity of the layer to 5%.

Step 7

Now for the text links, using the text tool add in some text to act as links. The font that I have used for this is Verdana, Regular, 12pt, None, #5a5a5a (#ffffff for the hover effect). Set the line height to 30 pt.

Step 8

Next up is adding in dividers to go between each text link. Make selections of 210 by 1 pixel using the rectangular marquee tool between each line and fill with the colour #1e1e1e.

Step 9

The last step is to add in a background colour behind the active link (in my case I've made the Photoshop Tutorials link active) so create a new layer behind the text layer and make a selection of 210 by 30 pixels and fill with #171717.