awmp.net

Tutorial: Springflowers textures - Pt. 01 - Drawing the Flowers

awmp — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 11:24:21 GMT

I know it's already been a while since I've asked you which texture I should explain in detail... but I had my fourth anniversairy of my personal LJ yesterday and missed it, so I'm celebrating today with this first part. heeee.
anyway, apparently the more grungy one won. The first step though will be the same as for any of the others, and I'll try to cover some parts of the others as well.

We start with drawing our flowers. Don't worry it's easier than you think. You'll have to use the pen tool though, but I'm not good at handling it myself so you won't have to be nervous ;)

First thing is:

Go find a picture of a flower you like. It's much easier if we take nature as our model instead of our imagination.... Just saying.
I suggest you look at Wiki's Commons as there are lots of high res and free photos available overthere.
Try to find one, that pictures the blossom right from above as we don't want to worry about perspective later.

I'm going to explain the most complicated one, but the others work just the same.
I've chosen this picture:

Try to identify the most even petal and grab your Pen tool (P).

make sure you have Paths selected

and place some Anchor Points roughly the shape of your petal.
try to use as little Anchor Points as possible and only place them where there is a change of direction in the outline.
mine looked similar to this (I'm recreating it for this tut, so I won't have the very same result in the end)

close your path in the end (just place the last anchor on the first one)

Then change your Pen tool to the Convert Point tool

and click the Anchor Points on the side of you petal and drag the handles, so that it becomes more petal shaped.
Follow the direction of your path while you're dragging, i.e. if you placed the anchors clockwise drag clockwise otherwise you'll get mean knots ;)

Now here the slightly tricky part starts.
you'll need to change your Pen and Path selection tools to the the following two tools:
the Direct Selection and the Add Anchor point

With the Add Anchor point tool I've added two more Anchor points where it was impossible to trace the outline of the petal nicely enough.
With the Direct selection tool I've moved around the Anchor points and dragged the handles to form the curves according to the outline of the petal.
This is fiddle work. Don't give up, you'll get the hang of it! Try to trace the outline as closely as possible but please, don't stress yourself over it!
I've ended with this:

Now go to your Path palette and click on the active Path while you hold Control.
The Path will magically change into a selection *g*
Switch back to your Layer palette and make a new layer.
Pick the main color of the petal from the picture with your Eyedropper

and choose a large soft round brush.
Paint your petal in its main color.

Continue to pick up colors from the original pic and draw some details. It's easier if you do this for each color on a new layer. Liberally use the Blur filter to soften edges. If you're satisfied merge the layers of your petal.

Press Control+Alt+T to call the Free Transform tool while cloning your petal. (that's what the alt does *g*).
Drag the handle indicating the center (small corss hairs) to the center of your flower and start rotating around your new center.

I've written an extensive tut about the Free Transform tool in case you get problems here...
Stop the rotating when your second petal hits the right position of the original second petal.

Press Control+Alt+Shift+T to recall your last movement and clone another petal.
That way we'll go one way round the center...

You're probably almost finished right now, but I have to do this one more time for the yellow petals *g*

and lastly I've painted the inflorescence with the Default Rough Dry Brush (that brush tip is part of the set for wet effects)

and blurred it slightly.

Tadaaa.

I've done this with several pics and in the end I had three flowers to work with:

Now it's your turn. if you get stuck, just ask.
Next time, we'll be making the background. Then the composition. And then Effects and Finalization. (I guess *g*)

Have Fun! :D
Feedback is always appreciated!

about the springflowers pack...

awmp — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 08:20:31 GMT

Hi there lovelies,

remember my last vectorish springflower pack?
I was asked several times about a tutorial on them, which is kinda impossible as there are a gazillion steps involved.
BUT...
I could do several tutorials on some of the elements.
i.e. drawing the flowers, making the swirly thingies, designing the background, doing the coloring, brushwork and special FX. Even though I did use the pen tool of PS a lot for these, this clearly isn't vecor art. It's more imitating vector graphics, because I'm much more comfy with PS than with Illustrator *g*

I can't promise when I get around on doing them or even if I'm able to post all of this regularly-ish as life is crazy busy right now, but I'm willing to give it a shot.

sooo, which texture would you like to see me dissect?

View Poll: springflowers tutorial

any questions, suggestions, comments? :)

Textures: Spring Flowers

awmp — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:05:26 GMT

Looks like I'm already in severe danger of a spring fever. heee.
I'm drawing flowers already and look at the pastelly colors!

1800x1200

1800x1200

1800x1200

1800x1200

1800x1200

1800x1200

1800x1200

awmp_springflowers.rar, ca. 6 MB, 7 1800x1200 textures [right-click & save as]

please comment&credit in case of downloading/using :)

Icon Textures: Noisy Watercolors & Shiny Tentacles

awmp — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:55:43 GMT

Hi!
I'm still obsessed with tentacles, so when I got some time to play this is what happened, I also rediscovered some of my old watercolor brushes, that would explain the rest of it.
oh, btw, they're 200x200 sized as I'm always working on that size and resize in the end, plus I'm trusting that you're all capable to resize them on your own, and hey, that way you can even crop them the way you like! ;)
(as always no stock images were abused in the making)

D O W N L O A D:

awmp_shinytentacles.rar [right-click and save as]
(20 jpgs, 200x200, ca. 1 MB)

awmp_noisywatercolors.rar [right-click and save as]
(39 jpgs, 200x200, ca. 2 MB)

comment&credit in case of downloading/using are nice and appreciated :)

random facts about the brush tool

awmp — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 22:48:39 GMT

1. Hi! Happy New Year!
2. my resolution: I'm trying to post more here...
(emphasize obviously on trying, resolutions&me are not very mixy. heee)
3. I organized the tags of this comm. go me!
4. I'm going to post about random Photoshop things (shortcuts, hidden features etc.)
(I always love reading those lists because often I learn something I haven't even thought about and I already have so many things in mind to post about that it should last throughout the whole year...)

random facts about the brush tool

the short cut for the brush tool is B

with "." you can make the brush tip bigger with "," smaller
that's very helpful when you're painting on a layer mask as you can easily paint large areas and very fine small areas just with a few clicks on a key,
or to make things like this star thing ;)
(just select the star brush and paint one star very small, press . a few times and paint the next size)
in case "." and "," are not working for you, try [ and ] instead, apparently there are differences when using different keyboard settings. thanks to kremlindusk for making me aware of this! :)

if you right-click you can easily change the brush tip shape and size as you get directly to the drop down menu

you can change the transparency of the brush tip by pressing one of the numbers keys

if you press alt you get the eyedropper tool and can pick up a color without changing to another tool, so you can paint with colors directly taken from the picture

as always
Have Fun!

Tutorial: Stardust effect

awmp — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:40:20 GMT

As the Winter/Holiday season is the only time I get away with my love for tacky over the top stardust effects, I've made some very sparkly things lately.
And as people actually asked (*gasp*) how I made them, I couldn't resist the opportunity to spread the stardust love... heee, let it glow!

to

01 Preparing the Base

That's the starting point... as I'm only explaining the basic technique, I've chosen one of the simpler icons...

I've used an Auto-Contrast on this one.

And duplicated the layer (ctrl+j) and set it to Blending Mode Screen

02 Spiral of Glow

I took the simple Pen tool (P)

and made sure I had Paths selected

I drew a zigzag line around Buffy's weapon

then I changed the Pen tool to the Convert Point tool

I clicked on all the left Anchor Points and dragged the Curve handles a little bit upwards

then I clicked on all the right Anchor Points and dragged the handles a little bit downwards

The result is a spiral shaped Path.
Pick white as your foreground color
and select the Default Hard Round 3 pixel brush.

Make a new Layer.

Then go back to your Pen tool. Your Path should still be selected at this point.
Right-Click near the Path in the picture and choose Stroke Path...
make sure Brush is selected and Simulate Pressure is tagged
(that makes the ends of the Spiral look thinner)

the result of this step should look like that.
(if the Path is bothering you, switch to your Path Palette and deselect it)

Then I added an Outer Glow under Blending Options

and it looked like that

I made a layer mask on the Spiral layer and painted in black over all parts that should be behind the weapon.

03 Another Spiral of ~~Death~~ Glow

I repeated all steps of no. 02, but this time around Buffy...
the Outer Glow was slightly larger this time as the spiral was bigger

04 Yay Stardust!

Grab your Soft Round 13 Pixel brush and make some adjustments.
(In the Brushes Palette)
Set the Spacing to 200 % under Brush Tip Shape
Set the Size Jitter to 100 % under Shape Dynamics
Set the Scatter to 1000 % on both Axes under Scattering
Paint your Stardust on a new layer.

05 More Light

Grab your Soft Round 200 Pixel brush and strategically place some white dots.

06 Fine Tuning

Make a new Layer and merge-copy the whole thing in it (ctrl+alt+shift+e)

Please note that the following settings strongly depend on the pic you're using (i.e. contrasts, brightness, colors etc)
I sharpened it (Filter - Sharpen - Sharpen), and immediately faded (ctrl+shift+f) the effect to 60 % on Multiply

the result so far...

I sharpened again (ctrl+f) and faded (ctrl+shift+f) the effect to 30 % on Soft Light

I sharpened again (ctrl+f) and faded (ctrl+shift+f) the effect to 30 % on Screen

I sharpened one last time (ctrl+f) without fading.

07 cropping

Crop it, if needed sharpen again.
As you can see it looks slightly different than the icon I tried to recreate.
That's because it's "hand-drawn" (I know, I know what a concept in the area of ready-made textures *g*)

credit: caps from Screencap Paradise
comments are always appreciated :)

Have fun and spread the tacky stardust love! ;D

Icon Textures: animated snow

awmp — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 11:42:36 GMT

it's winter again. it's snowing on icons, but look! it's a natural phenomenon. conformity! wherever I look, it's like I know the falling flakes personally. huh!
apparently my attempt last year to get a bit more variety into that was a fight against windmills.

but I'm not a quitter, and so I'm trying something different this time. new snow animations. there's no need for credit, seriously, I'm happy enough when I get to see some different snow for a change ;P you may even repost them, if you like.

I'm pretty sure there are tuts outthere how to use them, because it seems lots of people were able to use the apparently only snow texture evah on this planet.

ETA:
apparently you can't open animated gifs in CS3 anymore (I wouldn't know as I'm still using 7.0 *g*), but according to some tech articles, the psd-files work.
so here they are:
awmp_snow_psd.rar

love,
Donna Quixote

ps: comments are welcome though and don't forget to have fun! :D

textures: tentacles for banners

awmp — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 20:52:59 GMT

see, this time I had a perfect excuse for not posting in forever since my computer was broke.
but now I have a shiny new one and it's awesome and I love it. and even though there's Vista involved my PS 7 is still running. I'm very happy. heeee.

anyway, here are a few texture banners. I'm in an expermental stage (as if I'm ever not...) and there are many tentacles involved.

Download: awmp_bannertextures.rar [right-click and save as]
(7 jpgs, 1280x500, ca. 3.5 MB)

please comment&credit in case of downloading/using :)

textures: fruitpunch

awmp — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 21:13:09 GMT

A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile.

It's been some time, huh? actually it's been so long that I feel intimidated to post something here... These are really random (ha, as if that was anything new...) and huge (1800x1200 in average) and don't ask me how I came up with the awesome names for them. my doctor's guess yesterday was an intestinal infection. yeah, I was wondering, too... anyway... here they are...

awmp_fruitpunch.zip, ca. 13 MB, 6 textures [right-click & save as]

please comment&credit in case of downloading/using :)

Tutorial: Brightening of dark caps (very easy)

awmp — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 17:21:38 GMT

is there something like a too much of techniques how to brighten up screencaps?
and if so, are you tired of my obscure methods yet? bwaha!

here's another not very common one. Even though I like the result in a lot of cases...
it's kinda crisp and clean and keeps the shading and original colors even though it emphasizes them. it's also customizable. and easy. and quick.
(I'm doing everything the quick&dirty way, heee!)

should work in any graphics program that has the Blending modes Hardlight and Screen.

before

and after

Step 01: Choose a BG color

depending on the pic choose a background color.
if you want a rather warm end result choose a peachy/tan color.
if you have a quite reddish/yellowish pic, choose a light cyan/blue.
If the coloring is perfect, choose white ;)

here I went for a warmer look...

Step 02: the Screencap

add your screencap on top of your background

change the Blending mode of the Screencap to Hardlight.
If the color of the cap is lighter than 50% gray, the image is lightened, as if it were screened. This is useful for adding highlights to the image. If the blend color is darker than 50% gray, the image is darkened, as if it were multiplied. This is useful for adding shadows to the image.
Note how you get Highlights and a slightly warmer look, because of the multiplying with the tan layer :)

copy the layer, change the Blending mode to Screen and use an Auto-Levels on it.
(of course you can adjust your Levels by hand, if you're not satisfied with the automatic result)
Try to get some contrast into it...

the layer witout any Blending mode

and on Blending mode Screen

Step 03: Color

add an Adjustment Layer: Hue/Saturation. Up the Saturation to the point where it just begins to hurt... and then change the Blending mode of the Layer to Color, that way you'll have less artefacts.

add your original screencap on top of all and change the Blending mode to Hue so that you get some of the Original coloring back into the mix. Quite often you can save skin tones that way ;)
Lower the opacity until it looks the way you want it.

Step 04: Crop & Fine tuning

Crop it

now you see if you have to do any customization. Here I found the result too bright.
So I lowered the opacity of the Screen layer to 80%
and duplicated the Hardlight layer and set the opacity to 30% to get more contrast.

If it is too dark, try to work on the Screen layer. Use Levels and pull the middle slider more to the left to brighten it up. Watch your icon while you're doing this, so you can decide when it's enough...

Step 05: Sharpen it

use your sharpening rituals

Screencap Credit:
Screencap Paradise

Done!
Have Fun!

Feedback is always very appreciated :)

Tutorial: Brightening of very dark caps (quick & dirty)

awmp — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 17:00:24 GMT

As Anita's wish is my command the next rambling of mine will be about animated gif optimization. But for now, a very quick way to brighten up dark caps and reveal hidden details.
That's actually one of the shortest tuts I've ever written :) you'll end up with only four layers *gasp*
It's the quick&dirty way, and if the caps aren't of the very best quality you will get problems with the graininess, but other than that it works just fine *g*

examples: before and after

no color layers, no screen layers, no selective coloring, no curves, no variations.
wait, what's left then? heee! well, a softlight layer and levels. that's it.

step 01: Choose your pic

This little trick works best with really dark caps, such as this... (credit to _jems_)

step 02: The main Trick

Duplicate your background layer and invert it (press ctrl+i).

Set this layer on blending mode Softlight.
This way we will brighten up dark parts, but if the pic has still some light areas they won't become too bright. Basically we even out the contrast... while revealing hidden details.

step 03: Levels

and as we now lost too much contrast, we're adding an Adjustment Layer - Levels.
Look at your histogram. The main area, where the "curve" is visible is the area we want to emphasize. So you have to drag the right slider to the left to the beginning of the rising.
You do the same for the left slider, right where the bump begins.

Make sure your preview is tagged and look at your pic. The left slider will bring back the black, which is important as here there are the most artefacts visible (and really annoying). Drag until you're satisfied with the result... and don't freak about the graininess too much!

step 04: Finetuning

make a new layer and merge-copy paste the whole pic on top. (Ctrl-shift+alt+e)
use auto-contrast on the new layer. (Ctrl-shift+alt+l)
Sharpen it (as this technique is quite harsh qualitywise, it may be a good idea to only sharpen the edges).

Crop it, this way we will get rid of the artefacts, noise and grain ;)
always brighten up your cap not your cropped icon! this way you will have much less trouble with the graininess...
(ok, I cheated and cleaned it up a little bit *g*)

you're ready to work on the colors if you want to, or just on the saturation or whatever...

That's it, have fun! :)

Feedback is very appreciated.

Tutorial: animated snow

awmp — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 23:54:08 GMT

hmmm, is anyone else mesmerized by the same freaking animation of snow on every other winter icon you're seeing on your flist? frankly it drives me insane...
you would think there are enough animation tutorials out there but for my own sanity I'll add another one ;) just to make sure we'll have some variety in the falling snow action...

it's easy, I promise.

step 01

prepare the base you wanna add your "artificial snow" to...

step 02: big flakes

make a new layer and paint some snowflakes in white on this layer.
you can make your life much easier if you change your brush settings to randomly place the flakes:

choose the Soft Round 5 px brush
in your Brushes Palette change the Spacing to around 500 % (under Brush Tip Shape)
under Shape Dynamics set the Size Jitter to 100 %
and finally set the Scatter to 1000 % (under Scattering)

you're ready to paint your first snow layer. Make sure no big flake touches the edge of your icon (it won't look smooth later if they get cut on the edges), but paint as close to them as possible.
if your flakes get cut just erase them.

step 03: small flakes

make a new layer and change the Diameter to 3 px (under Brush Tip Shape)
leave everything else at the settings we've just used to create the first snow layer.

now paint some tiny flakes.

step 04: Preparing your Canvas

Change your Canvas size to three times of its original height (i. e. when you're working on a 100x100 icon, change it to 300 px)
make sure it's not the Image size you're changing (there would be ugly stretching) but the Canvas Size
Set the Anchor to the lower middle.

you should have something like this now...

step 05: Preparing your snow

Select your first snow layer with the big flakes and duplicate it.
move the new layer 100 px in the upwards direction.
you can do this rather easily by selecting the move tool, and then pressing the up arrow while holding the shift key ten times (shift while moving means 10 px steps, so 10 multiplied with 10... you'll get it... *g*)
merge these two layers together (select the upper one and press ctrl+e)
select your small snowflakes layer and duplicate it twice.
move the first copy 100 px upwards, and the second one 200 px. (i.e. while holding the shift key click the up arrow ten/twenty times)
merge these three layers together.

you should have something like that now (I colored the background, just so you can see it better...

step 06: Back to your Canvas size

We're changing the Canvas size back to normal.
make sure your Anchor is again in the lower middle...

and we're back to normal...

step 07: get ImageReady

Switch to ImageReady.
Duplicate your current first frame.

With your second frame still selected go to your Layer Palette and select the Big Flakes Layer.
Move it 100 px down (press ten times the down arrow while holding shift)

then select your Small Flakes Layer and move it down 200 px (20 times while holding shift)

step 08: Tweening

In your Animation timeline press the tweening button. (you still have the second frame selected at this point)
Make sure you have All Layers selected, as well as Position tagged.
Choose the number of inserted pics.
The more pics, the smoother the animation. But: the more pics the bigger the file size...
Try to find a compromise, this may need a little experimentation...
Something around 15 should look OK...

Delete the last frame in your animation timeline.
The first and the last frame are exactly the same at the moment, so if you don't delete it, it will look like the animation stops for a tiny moment here.

You can make it look a little slower, by adjusting the delay time.
Select all pics in the strip, and then change the delay time to 0.1 sec

step 09: Optimization

Get it under the 40k limit of LJ.
You know, do the usual things, make it a tiny bit lossy, reduce the colors...
or for example cheat and set a big white border around it to make the file size smaller...

step 10: variations

use bigger flakes (brush size of 12 for the big ones and 6 for the small ones)...
actually the optimization is easier with bigger flakes... or make it slower/faster...

that's not that hard, is it?
for my sanity, please make some new snow animations? pretty please? *puppy eyes*

and Have Fun! :)

wallpaper: Mommy's little Angel (aka pure Kitsch)

awmp — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 19:51:06 GMT

for the all the Mommies here around *g* this is a perfect wallpaper for the season...
plus grandmas love these things, too ;)

works with pretty much every cute photo... and it's very easy.

Step 01: Background

Fill your canvas (I was working with a 1024x768 one) with a color of your choice.
you can change this color later if it doesn't compliment the pic in the end...

Step 02: Photo

Find a nice pic of your spawn ;)
It looks especially nice when they're sitting propped on their arms and smiling...

add it on top of your background. if the quality is not that good, try auto-level/auto-contrast to make it decent looking, it doesn't have to be perfect though.
hey, look, who's that? (bonus points for the obsessed ones who immediately recognize her *g*)

Step 03: Cutout

Grab your magnetic lasso tool. it's under the selection tools in the tool bar.
Click somewhere on the edge of the kid you wanna cut out, then just follow the edgeline around. You'll see that the selection tool will magnetically snap to the edges.
it's much easier than doing everything on your own, you just need to follow the edges roughly.
Sometimes it happens that the tool can't decide what you wanna select, in these cases just make a click and you can force an anchor point.

if you have completed the whole round, make sure your selection is still active and then click the layer mask icon on your layer palette.

and taddaaa, we have the cut out photo on the background. you can paint with black/white on the layer mask if you need a better selection at some points.
I had to add the holes for her pigtails for example...

blur your layer mask slightly. Filter - Blur - Gaussian Blur.
something around 2-5 should work, depending on your selection and picture.
see how it is not perfect at the moment? it doesn't matter *g*

Duplicate your cutout photo twice, we need that for later effects, but hide the upper two for the moment :)

Step 04: and then there was light

we're adding a little glow to our pic. open the layer style and tag the outer and inner glow.
set both colors to white, blending mode normal. make the outer glow rather large (around 120-150) but the inner glow smaller (around 15). leave everything else just like it is by default, except of the spread, that should be 0 or 1...

pretty, ain't it? and we cannot see our bad cut out work anymore ;)
time to reveal our first copy on top of this...
we're adding a little light to it... Go to Filter - Render - Lighting Effects.
choose the Spotlight as light type, make sure the color is white...
if your pic already has a visible light source (i.e. you can see where the light is coming from from the shadows/highlights in the face) aim for the same direction.
in this case there was a leading light on the upper left, so I worked with that...
the Intensity needs a very high value, while the Focus should be zero.
Go for shiny and metallic, everything else you can put to zero again.
now you only have to drag the handles on the spotlight to your liking.
you wanna have a nice highlight on the face...

click OK, and set this layer to blending mode Lighten

now unhide the second copy, desaturate it (ctrl+shift+U), and call your levels (ctrl+L).
Drag the out sliders more to the middle until you have a large dark area and some small white highlights...

Blur this b/w layer and call the levels again. You have to change the black part to gray, because we wanna put this layer to blending mode Softlight and gray is the neutral color for this blending mode (so that it doesn't affect the picture).
Just type 128 (~ half of 255 aka 50% gray) in the left box of the output levels.

set it to the afore mentioned Softlight blending mode...

Step 04: Colors

Make a new layer and fill it with a light peachy/orange/yellowish color. set it on blending mode Softlight.
Click on one of the layer masks you already have attached to the photo-layers while pressing control.
The selection will automatically load. Make sure you have your peachy layer selected, and add a layer mask.
this way the we will have no effect on the background only on the pic...
that's how your layer palette should look like now

and that's the result

Step 05: Wings

that's the hardest part actually. not adding them, but finding some nice ones. I never seem to be able to find nice stock images of angel wings...
therefore I just used Raphael's cherubs... if you have some better ones, do use these, please, it will make your life so much simpler.
I colored them in a light orange and brightened them a lot.

then I cut them out the same way I cut the photo out (magnetic lasso tool + layer mask + blurring).
I also added the same layer style as we already used for the first photo layer (outer and inner glow)

the result looks ok, but seriously, if you found better wings, just use them instead *g*

for the second wing, I've just duplicated the first one, flipped it horizontically and positioned it.

Step 06: Cloud

find a nice stock image of a cloud. a singular one not attached to others will work best here.
Cut it out with our well-known technique and add an inner and outer glow (this time don't make the outer glow quite as large though)
You can paint on the layer mask after you added the glow to trim your cloud to your liking...

Step 07: Fine Tuning

time to get a little more depth and details in.
on top of everything add a merge-copied version of the whole composition.
desaturate it and use an auto-contrast (ctrl+alt+shift+L) on it.

Set it on layer mode Softlight and lower the opacity to around 30 %

just above your background layer add a new layer and paint with a large soft round brush a vignette in black.

set it to Softlight and add another layer right on top of this one.
Paint with a large soft round brush a white spot behind your little angel, lower the opacity to around 60 %

looks so much better, doesn't it? ;)

Step 08: Text (in gold, OMG!!11!)

well, I decided now that the season of kitsch is coming along, I can add as much kitsch as possible, and it will be excused with seasonal lunacy...
and I went straight for the golden text. YAY!

Add your text. (something creative, like hmmm, let me think, oh yeah... Merry Christmas!) It should be of an orange color to make it work...

add a Layer Style with the follwoing settings (just Bevel&Emboss really)

and look, shiny, shiny golden text!

Step 09: Finishing

on top of everything, make a new layer and fill it with a merge-copied version of the whole image.
Sharpen this layer and then duplicate it.
Set one of the copies to Screen and the other one to Softlight
Lower the opacities of these two layers to your liking...

Step 10: Creative Decoration

add some winter/christmasy design elements, for example snow... *g*
(or you know... stars, bells, hollies, prezzies and so on...)

wow, to write this up took longer then expected. heee.
I mean the whole wall was done in ten minutes, but the walkthrough? hours...
Have fun! And kitsch up your life! ;)

comments are as always appreciated :)

the art of fake vectoring

awmp — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 22:56:59 GMT

for some weird reason people are wondering about the fake vectorish effect I used on some icons I made... therefore a quick recap of the effect...
the result is kinda like this from a real photo.

well as it is with filter effects you'll need to do some fiddling and adjusting to suit your pic. plus it works best on clean studioshots that have a decent contrast but don't go over the top with the shadows. just saying...

this effect tries to imitate vector art. but it is by no means actual vector graphics we're doing. I'm not as patient/skilled/trained/talented/etc to try my hands on creating the real thing. plus kinda lazy here. *g*

also, we're not using the Cutout filter because frankly, the results with that one suck majorly.

the original pic

as mentioned before, try to use a clean studioshot. nice contrast but not too much dark shadows.
also, yes, I still like SMG. heee. plus I heart the quote on this pic. *g*
also the pic should be of a rather large resolution. this one here was 750x1023px...
snagged from smg_daily

the used filters

I'll show you only a part of the pic in its original resolution, so you can see what exactly I was aiming for when using the filters...

first I wanted to get rid of all the little details. so I had to blur, but with keeping the different color areas intact, so I had to use Filter - Blur - Smart Blur. for this the low quality works best. I went on full force ;) meaning I used Radius/Treshold both on 100%

now we have the ugly edge problem that using the Smart Blur filter tends to create. But luckily we can do something about this. it's actually one of my favorite filters. YAY! with Filter - Stylize - Diffuse on Anisotropic.
See how the artefacts are practically gone now?

still too many details here though. the pic needs to look more plain. depending on the original, the first step may already be enough though. but here I had to do the Filter - Blur - Smart Blur again. Radius/Treshold on 100/29 this time, we don't want to go over the top ;)

and again I got rid of the Smart Blur artefacts with the anisotropic diffuse filter...

almost done... time to use the ever popular Filter - Artistic - Poster Edges on a very low setting. Everything on 0 or 1, depending on the pic...

and guess what, we'll get rid of the little spots with the anisotropic diffuse filter...

the result and its sharpened little sister :)

composition

throw together a nice background. go for something that looks vectorish.
I came up with this because it had to be quick...

then I pasted the picture on top, resized it, positioned it and cut it out.

a little color work (actually just a colorful gradient on top on Screen mode, and the merged image on top on Soft Light mode to get a little more contrast) and we're done.

after resizing and sharpening...

and because it's kinda vectorish it's best saved as gif. small file size, yay!

that's it. if there are any questions feel free to ask.
and as always have fun! :)

textures: random (including sparkly&vintage)

awmp — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 17:30:24 GMT

Look, who's posting again (!!) but don't fear this won't become a bad habit, soon enough you'll be safe from me again...
I just wanted to share some textures/backgrounds because I hate it when things get wasted.
These are really random (ha, as if that was anything new...) and huge (1200x800 in average).
if you wanna see them in use, I made this wall for example with one of them.

awmp_diverse.zip, ca. 6 MB, 7 textures [right-click & save as]

awmp_vintage.zip, ca. 6.5 MB, 3 textures [right-click & save as]

awmp_sparkly.zip, ca. 1 MB, 2 textures [right-click & save as]

please comment&credit in case of downloading/using :)

A Vintage Icon Walkthrough

awmp — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 09:27:38 GMT

Because I keep getting asked about this vintage effect on the Doctor Who Hello? icon, I decided to write a very quick walkthrough, because I'm too lazy to answer it again and again *g*
it's actually fairly easy, and it doesn't require a lot of work, just some basics and a little imagination ;)
This is not a tutorial, but a walkthrough. You quite definitely need to adjust steps and settings to make them work for your own choice of screencap.

A vintage icon walkthrough

*~*~*~*+++*~*~*~*+++*~*~*~*+++*~*~*~*+++*~*~*~*

Background

I filled the Background of the canvas with a light beige (#EBE2D7)
I added some Filter - Noise - Add noise (very, very subtly though, and monochromatic) to give it a little structure.

with an orangey, darker beige (#DBB980), I painted the inner part of the background.
I used one of Photoshop's default Wet Media brushes for this (Brush with Thick Flow, 28 pt, lowered the opacity to around 60%, and with Wet Edges on) and painted in several strokes over the canvas but spared the edges.
It's important to do it in several strokes to get the painted look and not an even blob of color.

Screencap

I used one of my own Doctor Who screencaps, because I was in love with that phone on first sight :)

as I wanted that painted vintagey feel, I used the Filter - Sketch - Photocopy filter, with a low detail setting, but medium darkness.
You don't wanna lose too many details in this step (therefore we're still working on the big cap, if you do this after resizing, you're losing too much of them)
Try to find a balance between details and sketchy looking...

Mine looked like this after this step

of course that's not our final result, so we wanna fade the effect (ctrl+shift+f).
I wanted to keep at least a bit of color and shading, so I faded it to Color Dodge and lowered the opacity.
You need to tag the preview box, and watch your screencaps to find the suitable settings...

I was happy when mine looked similar to that (I recreated the effect for this walkthrough, who the hell knows with which settings I was working the first time *g*)

Composition

I added the altered pic and a version of the original screencap on my vintage background, resized (if you group them in advance they'll be of the same size) and sharpened them.

I put the original on top and set it on Color Burn with an opacity of 20% just to make it a little darker and more intense.
(I'm sometimes a little over the top. heeee.)

then I added a Layer mask to cut out the doctor on both Layers, the altered and the original one.

and the result was this

which was too white for my taste so I added a new layer on top, filled it with a dark beige (#C4AA89), put it on Multiply and lowered the opacity to 60%.
tadaah.

Text/Font

Time to add some text.
Behind the Doctor I added a new Text layer.
The font is MetropolitainesD, 12pt, in a dark red (#AA271C).
I added a Drop Shadow and warped the text.

the smaller text is still MetropolitainesD, but in 4 pt and black.
and we're finished.

as always have fun! :)

textures: random lights. freakishly huge. and also just freakish.

awmp — Thu, 25 May 2006 21:45:18 GMT

these are huge (1800px wide). I needed them for a RL project, therefore they are so freakishly HUGE. but the advantage is you can crop them any way you want ;)

and they do look much better in their large incarnation. the crops out of them are quite pretty actually *g*

The Download
freakstreaks, zip-file, ca. 6 MB, 11 big textures

The Download
lightswirls, zip-file, ca. 4 MB, 7 big textures

space, 1800x1200

please comment when downloading & credit if you're using them :)

if you are interested in making your own light textures, I've written a few tutorials with tricks&tips for making them. they pretty much cover everything I've done for the lightswirls. the freakstreaks are a technique I haven't explained yet though. but it's not very interesting anyway ;)

basic tools: free transformation

awmp — Wed, 03 May 2006 14:31:00 GMT

things like that in less than a minute with the default tools...
warning: it's addictive *g*

Fun with your Free Transform Tool

I have to admit I love this tool. it's so much fun to play with it, I easily get addicted *g*
some people haven't discovered the fun functions yet, though. therefore a step by step guide what you can do ;)

Step 01: getting started

- make a new document and draw a custom shape (use one of the default one's for a start), just because I love them...

Step 02: call my name

- you probably already know that you can call the Free Transform Tool with ctrl+t
- you'll get a box around your shape with points to drag and a center and you can start to transform
- you can make it bigger and smaller, squish and stretch, or rotate it just by dragging the handles

- but did you know that when you call the tool with ctrl+alt+t it will automatically duplicate your original?
- you will still have the original shape present in the background, try it, it's fancy *g*

Step 03: push the button, don't push the button

now on to all the shiny options you have with the Free Transform Tool

- drag the handles and at the same time...
- ...press shift to resize proportional (meaning no squishing or squeezing)

- ...press alt to transform relatively to the center (meaning the center stays the same)

- ...press shift+alt to resize proportionally and relatively to the center

- ...press control to get access to the Distort Functions (meaning now you can move all the handles any way you want)

- ...press control+shift to get access to the Scew Function (meaning with the middle handles on each side you can scew)

Step 04: you spin me right round, baby, right round

- if you leave the transform rectangle with you cursor it will change to the rotate pointer (a curved, two-sided arrow)
- now you can drag to rotate

- if you press shift while dragging you rotate in 15° steps

- you can change the center to rotate around another reference point
- just drag the handle indicating the center (small corss hairs) to another point and start rotating around your new center

Step 05: like a record, baby

now we're getting into the fun area ;)

- after you committed your transformation with Enter you can do it again
- just press ctrl+shift+t to do the exactly same transformation again
- and if you press ctrl+shift+alt+t it will duplicate the original and leave that one intact

- here the original alt-transformation (to duplicate the original) was a rotation (40° around a new center)

- while here I just resized it (alt+t-pressed to duplicate the original)

- and here I combined resizing and rotating :)

Step 06: shape/path specific things

in case you wondered why I used custom shapes, because up to now you could have done the same thing with a brush or whatever...

the advantage is simply if you transform the Path of your custom shape it will duplicate the shape but on the same layer
just make sure the path is selected before you use ctrl+alt+t (e.g. with the path selection tool or just make sure you're working ont he vector mask)

the other great thing for funky effects is that you can Exclude overlapping shape areas

which means that if you select this option everything that is covered by the new shape will be invisible

and examples with just that one single custom shape :)

now imagine what you can do if you start using more than one shape! *gasp*
or, or, colors!
backgrounds!
combinations!
weeee!

and to give you even more ideas here an interlude:

How to make custom shapes out of pretty fonts

step 01

- choose a pretty font, type a letter
- here we have an "i" in Fleurons
- make it rather large (80 pt in this case)

Step 02

- on your Layers Palette click on your text layer while holding the control-key
- now that you have the selection of the layer loaded switch to your Paths Palette
- click on the Make work path from selection icon

- when you press alt while making the new path you can define the tolerance (i.e. how accurate the converting will be)

- make sure you're new path is highlighted, then go Edit - Define Custom Shape
- give it a name and click OK

Step 03

- now that you've created your shiny new custom shape, select your Custom Shape Tool

- and choose your new shape

- you're ready to use it :)

the easy feedback system

View Poll: helpful?

Have fun playing! :)

Colorings: Color Layers, Levels, Curves (e.g. that Blue Exclusion look)

awmp — Mon, 01 May 2006 12:58:08 GMT

most of us are aware that you can do things in PS in around 1000 different ways with practically the same output if you only know what you are doing... it's what I love most about me beloved Erich :)
therefore I'm rambling about coloring techniques and tools today. three fairly popular colorings and how to do it with quite a few different techniques *g*

I'm explaining how to achieve it with Solid Color Layers, Levels, and Curves. Just to get you familiar with your tools. This is basic PS knowledge, so for most of you this should be uninteresting :)
nothing complicated here... just explaining some adjustment layers... it's not about the coloring look or the exact values I've used, it's more about what the tools do and general guidelines :)

basic screencap improvement

I'm lame, my favorite subject to icon is still Spike *g*
or maybe I'm just very loyal and a true blue soul ;P

here's the screencap I started with. it's from Screencap-Paradise.

the easy steps for lazy people... auto-contrast [ctrl+alt+shift+l], auto-levels [ctrl+shift+l], and auto-color [ctrl+shift+b].
I'm using these depending on the cap. any combination of these three that works best.
here I used all of them though.

the typical first steps...
one layer on Screen, 60% opacity
one high-passed layer on Softlight, 30% opacity
one desaturated layer on Luminosity, 30% opacity

and the very basic result

that exclusion look

...with Solid Color Layers
First we have the ever popular dark blue layer on blending mode Exclusion
I used this color: #001643 / RGB (0/22/67)

and then the light peachy/tan layer on Multiply, I lowered the opacity to 50%
the color of my choice: #F0E3D3 / RGB (240/227/211)

and the typical result

...with Levels

I'm adding an Adjustment layer. Uhm, one with Levels would be a good idea for this...

let's see, we need to work on the blues and the reds mostly for this look.
we're starting with the blues...
the Blue Exclusion layer reduces the Blues in the light areas and but adds some Blue in the dark areas, so to simulate this effect we need to do the same. we're reducing the Output levels of Blue for the light area, but increase it in the dark area.

and the result will look like this

so now we have a lack of the warm reddish tones and it's overall too bright...
we'll work on the brightness first, because that one's easier.
on the RGB levels, we reduce the Output levels in the light area, and because we don't wanna lose too much contrast we increase the Input levels in the dark area slightly.
Just drag the right lower slider a little more to the middle first, and then adjust the upper left slider more to the middle to balance it out.

and the result will look like this

now we're working on the lack of Red. we need to adjust the Reds as well as the Greens for this.
we start with adding some Red. To increase a certain color it's a good way to drag the slider for the Input levels more to the middle, I only did this for the light area (the right slider) because the other end would have the exact opposite result, to increase the Red in the dark area we need to work on the Output levels. I dragged the left slider more to the middle...
(always the same, always the same...)

and the result will look like this

now we have a look that's a bit too violet, so we need to add some Green.
we add it in the dark area that's enough. now you already know that to add a color int he dark area we need to increase the Output levels on the left side :)

and the result will look like this

so we have only one Levels Adjustment Layer and this result, which is fairly OK, I guess...

...with Curves

Adding an Adjustment layer. Curves it will be.

we already know that we have to simulate the decrease of Blue in the light areas and the increasing in the dark, so we're starting with that.
we don't need to change the linearity of the curve but the start and ending point making it more flat. When we start with a higher starting point we'll get more blue in the dark areas, then we only need to lower the ending point to reduce the blue in the light areas.

and the result will look like this

again it's too bright and lacks of Red (see a pattern?)
again we work on the brightness first, because that one's easy. we lower the ending point for the RGB curve, that's the same effect as decreasing the output levels for the light area (see Levels) and we need to increase the Input for the dark area like we did before, so we put the starting point more to the left.

and the result will look like this

aaaaand again we need to add some Red... we put the starting point higher, that will increase our Red output in the dark area, and we'll put the ending point more to the left, which will decrease our Input in the light area.

and the result will look like this

and lastly we add some Green because of the violet look again :)
a higher starting point to increase the output in the dark and a lower ending point to decrease the output in the light area.

and the result will look like this

so we have only one Curves Adjustment Layer and this result, which is not that bad either...

the easy feedback system

View Poll: helpful?

next time I'll be rambling about that Color Burn look and that Vibrant look... if I don't lose interest first *g* ... attention span of minus three minutes and all that jazz...

as always Have Fun! :)

tutorial: tricks and tips for making light textures V

awmp — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 11:10:59 GMT

as my dear PSP users always complain when I'm using the Lens Flare filter when making light texture tuts, I wrote a quick one without this filter (yay for caffeine that makes me hyper). Hope you're happy now ;P
I have no clue about PSP though, so don't blame me when I'm using other things that are PS only *g* (but I think this one is safe...)

also on a completely random note: yay! I think I've just repaired my washing machine and it spin-dries again, but booo! now I have no excuse for not wearing that ridiculous Hippie outfit to that FlowerPowerParty tonight....

tricks&tips for making light textures V
- Light textures with the gradient tool -

step 01: starting...

- a new document, size doesn't matter, I usually go for something big (1200x900 in this case)

step 02: grab your gradient tool

- I'm using the gradient tool in the ever popular way...
- choose the b/w standard Reflected Gradient, Mode: Difference, reverse it to w/b

- the Difference mode for the gradient tool allows some funky effects
- start dragging not so large little distances from one corner to the opposite one
- repeat that a couple of times (I speak of 10-15 and above *g*)
- try to keep them relatively closely together and in the middle of your canvas
- you can try some larger gradients but use them sparingly, and in the same direction

a closer look

and the result of this step

step 03: repetition

- on a new layer repeat step 02 on a new layer
- but in a different direction and with larger distances of the start and end point of your gradient tool
- try to get something similar to this... it's all about playing *g*

- set this layer on Blending Mode Screen or Lighten, depending how light your gradients are

step 04: color

- add a color fill layer in a color you like
- I've chosen a purple tone here (#95527D)
- simply set this layer on Color Burn mode, that way we also get more contrast and nifty colorization

- another color fill layer, this time in orange (#FF9B61)
- set it on Blending Mode Multiply and lower the opacity to around 20%
- we need this step to add some yellowish glow on the inside of our lights later :)

- still on the color thing...
- on a new layer paint a random mess with some dark colors, really anything goes...
- I've chosen dark green, dark blue/purple and dark brown for this (I've mentioned the colors should be *surprise* dark, right?)
- you can use a large soft round brush for this

- and it will look pretty when you put it on Layer Mode Color Dodge

- and lastly I added a b/w Radient Gradient on a new layer
- set it on Blending Mode Overlay to emphasize a spot and darken some parts

step 05: motion

- merge-copy-paste the whole thing into a new layer (crtl+shift+alt+e)
- use the Filter - Distort - Wave on this layer

- put it on Blending Mode Screen or Lighten depending on how light you want it to look

- Duplicate the last layer and put it on Blending Mode Linear Burn

tadaaaa! finished. (this one was made with the same technique)

step 06: additional cropping

- of course you can crop icon textures from it now :)

the easy feedback system ;)

View Poll: helpful?

as always: Have Fun! :)

uhm and also, what's with the sudden increasement of watchers of my little comm? I start feeling paranoid... which could also be the caffeine, but still... *looks around suspiciously*

basic techniques: saturation and contrast

awmp — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 13:25:19 GMT

I haven't been online much during the past weeks because of health reasons, so I haven't had time to post this even though I had it ready a few weeks back... well, now here it is...

adventures in color correction: saturation

sometimes I wonder why people make things so complicated, I'm lazy, very lazy, so everything that's easy and time saving is very welcome in my world.
therefore I'm using easy reproductable techniques for basic screencap improvement (because then I can save them in actions and don't need to do the same few steps over and over again).
I've mentioned that I'm a lazy person, right? also a busy person, so I don't see the need to spend a lot of time for the basic stuff.

here's one of my techniques to get more saturation and contrast into screencaps.
it works on all high quality caps that lack of color and contrast (but are not miscolored) because I don't use picture specific techniques like curves etc for which you need to make the adjustments dependent on what the cap looks like.

the outcome is nice nontheless. and a good start to work on the actual coloring when you're finished with the basic improvement.

step 01: basics

open your screencap

I use auto-levels and auto-contrast (ctrl+alt+L and ctrl+shift+alt+L) because of my laziness
and it also gives some first easy improvements (yes, on this caps it's verrrry subtle *g*)

step 02: saturation, brightness, contrast

the ever popular: duplicate background layer and set it to Screen...
but with a slight twist, I increase the Saturation of the duplicated layer to around +45 (ctrl+U)

as much as I appreciate the brightness the Screen layer can give us we're losing a lot of details with this step.
and they won't come back with a simple Softlight layer, just saying...
so what I'm doing instead is, I duplicate the saturated Screen layer, use Filter - Other - Highpass at full force and set it on Multiply
I've mentioned the Highpass Filter before, it's normally used to increase contrast and for subtle sharpening (and we will use it later that way, too).

if you're screencap is too dark now (and it will be in probably 70% of all cases) duplicate the Screen layer again and move it on top of everything.
you can skip this step if your screencaps is very bright in the beginning anyway.

and the promised increasing of Contrast and Sharpness (it's what the pros are doing, seriously, it's a common technique, I've seen our AD doing it *g*)
duplicate the High Pass filtered layer and move it on top, set it to Softlight

at this point your layer palette looks like this
from bottom to top:
00: auto-contrasted and auto-levelled BG
01: saturated Screen layer
02: High Passed Multiply layer
(03: saturated Screen layer) only for dark caps
04: High Passed Soft Light layer

step 03: a little coloring

most screencaps lack a little of the warm tones (I could bore you now with my theories about encoder algorithms and how they never match skintones or NTSC which stands for Never The Same Color, at least for everyone who uses PAL ;P)
erm, but I won't I just use it as good enough explanation why I add a light peachy Multiply layer (#FBE8D8) *g*

and because I'm paranoid about losing too many details, I add the original Background layer on top again.
I desaturate it, lower the opacity to 50% and set it on Luminosity.
with this trick we'll get back a lot of details in the now too light areas.

and to make it lighter again (but with details now *g*) I add a light orange Softlight layer on 50% opacity
(#FBEBD8) the light orange makes it a bit warmer, too, which I like these days...

step 04: natural...

on top of everything I add the merge-copied cap (new layer, then ctrl+shift+alt+e)
I switch to the Channels palette and on each RGB Channel , i.e. Red, Green and Blue I'm using an Auto-Contrast (ctrl+shift+alt+L)
with this trick we're getting rid of the tannish look on the light parts, we're going for a natural as possible look for the basic improvement after all.

t i m e s a v e r

I've saved all these steps in two different actions
one for light caps and one for dark caps (with and without the extra screen layer)
that way you don't have to do it over and over again, as these steps pretty much work in the same way for all low saturated caps that lack of contrast.

and as I know how lazy I am...
you can also DL them from me instead of doing them yourself...
place them at C:\Programm Files\Adobe\Photoshop 7.0\Presets\Photoshop Actions\
saturation actions (right click and save as)
out of curiosity who is as lazy as myself, please comment if you're DLing them :)

step 05: sharpening

I'm doing my sharpening almost always this way
depending on the cap I skip a step sometimes or play around with the opacity, but normally it goes something like this
make a new layer on top of everything and merge-copy-paste it (ctrl+shift+alt+E)

Use Filter - Sharpen - Sharpen
fade it to 20% on Multiply mode
Use Filter - Sharpen - Sharpen
fade it to 20% on Screen mode
Use Filter - Sharpen - Sharpen
fade it to 10% on Softlight mode
Use Filter - Sharpen - Sharpen
fade it to 50% on Normal mode

you can recall the last used Filter with ctrl+f and fade it with ctrl+shift+f

if you're doing this after resizing/cropping it's in most cases enough... if you do it before you will probably have to sharpen again, and then fade the effect to your liking.
I like using this on a new Layer on top because I can always lower the opacity of the sharpened layer, too, if it gets too much for my taste.

the easy feedback system

View Poll: helpful?

as always: Have Fun!

credits:
screencaps from The X-Files DVD Screen Grab Archive

tutorial: tricks and tips for making light textures IV

awmp — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 18:20:23 GMT

I'm spammy, I know :) but tomorrow I'll be back at work (even though I'm still sounding like the Lady of the Camelias *coughcoughcough*) and you'll be safe from me again *g*

Streaks of Color

a random light texture tutorial... the advantage of this technique is that you can emphasize highlights in your pics with little bursts of color...
very, very easy, so for most of you this won't be new :)

Step 01: take a random cap

- ok, the reasosn I've chosen this one? *g*
- watched Dirty Girls with friends last week
- giggled like crazy because of this scene
- YAY, Posterboy! heeee.
- aww, come on, it's Spike, and he's smoking, I don't need any other reasons ;P

Source: Screencap Paradise

Step 02: Levels

- I use levels (ctrl+L) until there's only black with a hint of color left
- that means you have to drag the right slider (for the whites) more to the left
- and the middle slider more to right to make the black parts bigger without losing too much shadows

there shouldn't be much left of the original pic. of course it depends on the cap you've used and your personal taste

Step 03: Blurring

- I use a Radial Blur because it gives some motion
- Spin with a good quality works nicely, but only if you don't go overboard with it
- and you should drag the center of the blur into one of the four corners

the result is actually already quite nice, but too dark

Step 04: Brightening

- as it's too dark I simply use an Auto-Contrast (ctrl+shift+alt+L)

- and as it's not smooth enough anymore, I use the Radial Blur again

Step 05: Finish

- you can either crop it now to use it as a light texture that gives you random color streaks

- or you can use it on the original cap you've used to emphasize random parts

made with this technique:
you can get nice effects when you repeat the steps twice from the beginning but put the center of the radial blur in another corner
in the end you combine the two results by adding one over the other on Screen mode :)

icons made with this technique:

The easy feedback system ;)

View Poll: helpful?

That was easy ;)
Have Fun!

The Grunge Guide - Part III - Grungey Textures with Brushes

awmp — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 15:18:19 GMT

at home again, the doctor settled for a bronchitis, funny how that fits with the laryngitis, I'm amost over with... but at least the long awaited (heee!) next part of the grunge tutorials series...

The Grunge Guide - Part III - Grungey Textures with Brushes - sort of a walkthrough

I'm explaining general brushing techniques and techniques I'm using for creating textures here :)

General Notes:
used program: Photoshop 7.0
includes: the downloadable Brush Set (please comment&credit when downloading)
slightly picture intense
you can click the previews to get the large pics
your skills should be intermediate at least, I haven't explained each and every detail...
it's also helpful when you've already completed Part II of the Grunge Guide, especially if you want to work with your own brushes :)

Step 01: basic texturing/brushwork

used brush:

- normally I start with a rather large canvas with a white bg (1200x900px in this case)
- then I do some brushwork in black, until I've decided which color I want :)
- here I took one of my own splatter brushes and adjusted the settings to draw a random mess
Diameter: 167px, Spacing: 2%
Shape Dynamics:
Size Jitter: 100%, Minimum Diameter: 1%, Angle Jitter: 18%
Scattering:
Scatter: 109% (both axes), Count: 1
Wet Edges: on
Opacity: 30%, Flow: 50%
- this makes sure the strokes will look painted and overlay each other, they will also look quite messy
- i painted some long strokes with black and some short ones, all on the same layer

used brush:

- I took one of my drops brushes and adjusted the settings
Diameter: 38px, Spacing: 1%
Wet Edges: on
Opacity: 30%, Flow: 50%
this will make sure you can paint with a continueing stroke
- I painted some random scribbling with black on a new layer and put it on Blending Mode Overlay

used brush:

- I chose one of my subtle grunge brushes and ajusted the settings
Diameter: 387px, Spacing: 70%
Shape Dynamics:
Size Jitter: 100%, Minimum Diameter: 1%, Angle Jitter: 100%
Scattering:
Scatter: 417% (both axes), Count: 4, Count Jitter: 64%
Wet Edges: on
Opacity: 30%, Flow: 50%
- with these setting the brush strokes will be very randomly placed
- I painted some subtle texturing with black on a new layer

Step 02: color and more texturing

- I added an Adjustment Layer: Hue/Saturation: colorize on, 34/72/63, to give it a light bright orangey shade
- I took the Line Tool, made sure Fill pixels was on, and with a Weight of 5px, I draw some lines in a dark brown (towards an imaginary center, with some cross lines) on a new layer
- I used the Filter - Brush Strokes - Spatter with standard settings on this layer to make it look more ragged
- then I used the Filter - Distort - Wave with standard settings (except of Wavelength: 200 min/300 max) on it, this gives it some motion
- finally I set it on Layer Mode Overlay with an opacity of 40%

- it lacked of color, so I added some color blurbs, with a fairly large soft round brush in red and brown
- then I used a Gaussian Blur of 50 on it to make it softer and set it on Blending Mode Pinlight

used brush:

- I took one of my rougher grunge brushes and adjusted the settings
Diameter: 398px, Spacing: 1%
Shape Dynamics:
Size Jitter: 100%, Minimum Diameter: 1%, Angle Jitter: 72%
Scattering:
Scatter: 417% (both axes), Count: 1, Count Jitter: 100%
color Dynamics:
FG/BG Jitter: 100%, Hue Jitter: 100%, Saturation Jitter: 100%, Brightness jitter: 33%, Purity: -8%
Opacity: 30%, Flow: 50%
- this is a very easy way to get some random colorization effects as we jitter the colors
- I left the same colors as from the step before (orange/brown), the settings will give us a random color shading, just apply them on a new layer, and then I set it on Color Burn

used brush:

- on a new layer I added some ruby colored random splatters, I love splatters, everything looks so painted and organic with them
- I adjusted the setting of one of my splatter brushes
Diameter: 154px, Spacing: 110%
Shape Dynamics:
Size Jitter: 100%, Minimum Diameter: 1%, Angle Jitter: 100%
Scattering:
Scatter: 692% (both axes), Count: 1, Count Jitter: 30%
Other Dynamics:
Opactiy Jitter: 63%, Flow Jitter: 23%
Opacity: 30%, Flow: 50%
- this way we don't have to do so much random brushing as the setting will drop them randomly for as, in all sizes, opacities, and rotations...
- I set it on Blending Mode Color Burn with 50% opacity

- I made a new pattern. for this I made a new canvas, size 20x20 px, and made 4 dots with a small round brush (black on transparent), each of the dots directly on the edge of the canvas

- I defined it as a pattern (Edit - Define Pattern...) and filled a new layer on our big canvas with it (Edit - Fill - Use: Pattern - Choose the new Pattern for Custom Pattern)
- I set it on Softlight and added a Layer Mask
- on the Layer Mask I used the Filter - Render - Clouds and gaussian blurred the result (4 pixels) to make it invisible in some places

Step 03: Decoration

time for more details :)

used brush:

- I filled a new layer with white and added a layer mask to hide the whole layer.
- I started working on the layer mask only (I'm a sucker for the masks *g*)
- I draw a large crack with a medium sized chalk brush tip (Photoshop's default) right across the pic
- I added some smaller junk towards the edges
- then I used the Filter - Brush Strokes - Spatter with standard settings to make the edges look more ragged
- at last I grabbed some random grunge brushes and stamped on the layer mask in black and white to reveal some things and hide others
- I put the whole layer on Blending Mode Softlight

- on a new layer I added some black dots with a hard round brush, various sizes
- set it on Softlight and lowered the opacity to around 20%
- on a new layer I added some white dots with a hard round brush, various sizes
- set it on Softlight

- time for some vectors. actually vector art and grunge go very well together.
- I've drawn a wavy thing with the pentool, then I duplicated the layer twice and adjusted the curves of the new layers to fit the shape of the first one, so that they all looked more organic, like they belong together, if that makes sense.
- I used brown and greens for these layers

used brush:

- I wanted it to look more integrated with the background, so I started playing with the blending modes
- I used Pinlight and Multiply here as these were still dark enough and blended nicely colorwise
- vectors and gradients are good friends, so I added a Gradient Overlay in the Layer Styles for two of them
- the middle wave got a gradient from green to red (left to right), and I liked this more colorwise, so I stuck to it
- the bottom one got a peach/beige/oliv gradient from bottom to top which was too much so I set it on blending mode Multiply in the Layer Style
- finally as it looked to clean for my taste I added layer masks on all three vector layers and used a soft grunge brush on it to give it some texture

used brushes:

- time to grunge it up some more
- that's when I normally use just some grunge brushes in black and white on several new layers and either choose Softlight or Overlay as blending mode depending how strong I want the effect
- I mainly work towards the edges of the canvas
- except of a very few straight across everything brushstrokes to accentuate some parts of the whole thing

Step 04: more color and brushwork

used brush:

- the colors look a little dull and boring at this point, so the sure way to add some tension is complement colors...
- I added a dark red/brownish layer and set it on exclusion, the result is horrible *g*
- I added a layer mask and worked with random grunge brushes on this layer, so that it won't show everywhere
- finally it was only visible towards the bottom
- I added a gradient on Softlight to this layer (red to green, bottom to top) because this way you're always getting interesting effects

- another color layer (same dark red/brown), but this time on blending mode Saturation
- I added a layer mask, used Filter - Render - Clouds on it and adjusted the levels of the clouds (more black!), so that more of the original pic shined through
- this gives the whole picture a subtle shading

used brush:

- don't be afraid to lose details. I think that's the main problem when making textures...
- sometimes it's more efficient to hide some parts again
- therefore I used more grunge brushes on the piece. simply in white

- another great way to add some texturing is color halftone. this works great for grungey styles.
- the fastest way is to copy the whole pic (ctrl+a for selecting all, ctrl+shift+c for merge-copying)
- switch to your Channels Palette, add a new Alpha channel, paste your pic onto the new channel
- use Filter - Pixelate - Color Halftone (the bigger you chose the max size, the bigger the dots will be)
- I usually stick to something between 5 and 15
- control-click on the Alpha Channel to get a selection, invert the selection (ctl+shift+i)
- switch back to your Layers Palette and fill the selection with black on a new layer
- set it on Softlight mode and add a layer mask on which you can apply the clouds filter
- and then brush a little bit to hide more of the effect, so that only some spots remain

used brush:

- I decided I need more definition and shading
- therefore I brushed on a new layer carefully with the same brush I've already used for the shaded coloring (only a little stroke basically)
- I chose two rather dark tones that I picked from the pic for this
- I blurred the new layer very much and set it on Blending Mode Overlay

- that's the point when I decided the lower left corner looks ugly *g*
- therefore I brushed with a large white soft round brush on two new layers carefully over this part
- I set the layers on blending mode Softlight
- this is helpful to lighten up that part, then I wanted to change the color a bit and so I brushed also in a light olive tone over this area
- again I put the layer on Softlight

- patterns are always a good idea to make it messy ;)
- so I used two of them, each on a new layer, one in black, one in white, each on Softlight mode
- I added layer masks to hide large part of the patterns (less is more *g*)
- one was a star pattern, the other one just horizontal lines that I rotated a bit

Step 05: highlighting, finishing, etc.

- I've already said that it's important to not be afraid of losing details...
- here's another prove for this theory ;)
- I wanted a bit more highlighting.
- on a new layer I pasted the whole picture (ctrl+shift+alt+e will paste the merge-copied thing)
- I used the Filter - Distort - Diffuse Glow (make sure your background color is white!)
- as I didn't want it to become grainy I set the Grain to 0
- I set the glow amount relatively low and the clear amount realtively high so that I got some highlights without losing to much...
- I set the new layer on blending mode Softlight
- this will also increase the color intensity :)
- I can see the stars (*channels Dru*) and they are too much, so I hid the star layer again and only a very subtle rest remained from the highlight layer

- the green is too green for my taste now, so I brushed with a large soft round brush some brown over the green towards the bottom on a new layer
- I put this layer on Blending Mode Color

used brush:

- finally I added some liquid twirls in black on Overlay mode
- there might or might not be a tutorial on how to create these brushes some day ;) (I'm totally bribable *g*)

tadaaa! that was long and rambly *sigh*
but I'm still sick and at home, so therefore´... she rambles...

The Brushpack

I've put all brushes I've used in a Brushset :)
feel free to snag it, but please comment&credit when downloading as these are my personal ones
Photoshop 7.0 abr-file, 620 KB (right-click and save as)

and for non PS 7.0 users the Image Pack (though you'll lose all the special adjustments I made...)
Zip-file, Image pack, 870 KB (right-click and save as)

The Easy Feedback System ;P

View Poll: helpful?

Feedback&comments are very appreciated :)
this took kinda forever to write *hints shamelessly*

and as always
Have Fun!

textures: spring cleaning

awmp — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 21:22:47 GMT

you wouldn't believe how much stuff wastes space on my hard drives ;) therefore texture dumping (as long as I'm still at home and coughing...) in my own chaotic way *g*

The Download

zip-file, 32 icon textures (200x200px), 1.6 MB [download]

The Download

zip-file, 6 large textures (around 1200x900 px), 2.2 MB [download]

The Download

zip-file, 6 large textures (around 1200x900 px), 6 MB [download]

please comment&credit in case of snagging :)
and as always ...
Have Fun!

7 watercolor textures (1200x900 px)

awmp — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 20:28:03 GMT

useful as backgrounds for walls/banners, for colorization effects, as decoration, etc.
you are very welcome to crop them to icon size of course ;)

The Download

zip-file, 5.7 MB, please right click and save as [download]
comment&credit when downloading are highly appreciated :)

three quick examples in use...
ps: I swear I only noticed afterwards that #03 looks a little uhem, phallic... *g*