BRIDGE

http://www.mediafire.com/?wq2m4nnodmm

Underwater Effect with Unusual Techniques

Underwater Effect with Unusual Techniques

In the beginning create a new document sized 500x500 pixels and fill it with black color.

Then apply Filter > Noise > Add Noise with similar settings to these:

Now we have an effect like this:

Ok, after that apply one more Filter > Sketch > Chrome:

The result should be next:

Now, apply Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation with following parameters to the current layer:

After that your image should look like this:

Ok, move to the next step. After that you need to find some appropriate picture to put it on the canvas. Go to Google Images and find the picture of fish or another sea dweller. Also feel free to use mine picture. Open up the picture and use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to divide the picture from the white background as was shown on my screenshot below.

Press Ctrl+C to copy selected part of image, then go back to the main canvas and press Ctrl+V to paste copied fragment here. After that reduce the fragment a little bit with Edit > Free Transform.

Now, set foreground color as #bbe8ff and set background color as black. Then create a new one layer and apply Filter > Render > Clouds:

Change layer mode to Hard Light.

Merge all layers in one and apply Filter > Distort >Glass and use these values:

And the result should be next:

Ok, we are done with this tutorial! I like the underwater effect that we already have. Looking pretty nice, isn't it?

Na'vi Avatar Photo Manipulation (Exclusive Tutorial)

This is a Photoshop tutorial showing you all the steps you need to take in order to photo-manipulate yourself into a Na'vi (based on the characters in James Cameron's movie "Avatar"). I used Photoshop CS2 in order to create this, but newer and older versions should do the same, as I used basic Photoshop tools only. I hope you will find this helpful.

Step 1

Import a photograph of your choice, but make sure its size is relatively large, as it gives more room to play with. Also, make sure that the person on the photograph is well lit - but not overlit - perhaps taken with a flash, so that enough sharp details are visible.

Step 2

Choose a "hard" brush from the"Tools" window (I tend to use a "Chalk" brush) and set its "Mode" to "Color", and its "Opacity" to 50%. Now pick a shade of blue from your Color Palette and brush over the entire skin area, leaving out the hair, eyes, and clothing. Now repeat this a couple of times using different shades of blue. In order to get the kind of blue I wanted, I did this four times in total using these colours: #5d7a99 - #32576a - #3c6986 - #54809b. However, every photograph is different, so you may prefer different shades of blue for your image.

And finally, pick a shade of purple, I used #472a50, with a small brush and its Opacity set to 10%, paint the lips with it, and then randomly brush all over the face with it, as this breaks everything up a bit, thus making it more "natural" looking.

Step 3

Now in my case, I was working on a picture of Tom Cruise with facial stubble. The Na'vi, however, don't seem to have facial hair, apart from the eyebrows - but only if they are a human hybrid (those hybrids also have smaller eyes, and five fingers on each hand instead of four). So I removed the stubble with the "Clone Stamp Tool". You have to zoom right in and press "alt" on your keyboard to select the source area, click once, then let go and paint as normal. Always make sure you pick a source area that looks most similar to the area you want to copy to, and if something doesn't look right, try a different source.

Step 4

Now remove the ears! In my case this was very easy, as I simply had to paint them black / match the background. The person on your picture may have long hair, in which case you could just hide the ears by using the "Clone Stamp Tool" and copy hair over. However if you have short hair this step could be tricky, for the Na'vi (and the hybrids) have their ears set higher up than human ears. In any case, I would probably use the Clone Stamp Tool again.

Now either you can paint the Na'vi ears yourself, do as I did - import a screenshot I found on the Internet. There are many movie screenshots you can find on the Internet. Save the image onto your computer and go to "File" then "Open..." and select the image.

You can also download the ears I've prepared to make your life easier.

Now select the "Polygonal Lasso Tool" in the Tools window, and create a mask around the ear you wish to import. Once you have done this, either drag the image over into your project, or you can go to "Edit" and "Copy" the ear and "Paste" it onto your image. It will now be on a new layer - which you can see in your "Layers" window. Now place the imported ear wherever you want it to be - you may need to resize it, so click on the "Move Tool", then click on one of the corners of your selection and click on "Maintain aspect ratio" which is the little "chain" icon in the menu (you don't have to do this if you don't wish). Now drag on one of the corners of your selection until the ear has the right size you want.

Step 5

If it's a frontal face shot you're working on, you simply need right-click with your mouse on the layer with the ear, and select "Duplicate Layer". Then right-click on one of the corners around the selection and choose "Flip Horizontally", and move the second ear to where you want it to be. As you can see, the image of the ear that I had originally imported had the tip of the ear missing. I fixed this by painting the rest in, using the Clone Stamp Tool, and the Brush Tool set to "Normal" (use the "Eyedropper Tool" to select colours from the actual ear itself).

Step 6

Now we're going to enlarge the eyes. Normally you can try and do this by eye, but because Mr Cruise is looking directly at the camera in my picture, both eyes had to be enlarged identically. First of all, duplicate the overall main image you have so far, so that you have two identical copies lying on top of each other as layers. Then use the "Polygonal Lasso Tool", with "Add to selection" selected from the menu (that way you can select several areas at the same time). Create two masks, one around each eye, including eyelids and eyebrows. Click on "Move Tool" from the Tool bar, then enlarge the selection until the eyes have the size you want. Now click on "Move Tool" again and select "Apply" on the pop-up window. Now "Copy" and Paste" from the Edit Menu. The eyes should now be on a new layer. Duplicate that layer. Then use the Eraser Tool to erase the left eye on one "eye layer", and the right eye on the other eye layer. Basically this means that you now have one layer for each eye, though both enlarged, their proportions to each other are still correct. Press "ctrl" on your keyboard and select both "eye layers" and use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the eyes up and down, then select each individual eye to move it left and right, once again by using the arrow keys.

Step 7

You can now use the "Eraser Tool" and brush around the eyes with it to remove what is overlapping and the border lines. Doing this will reveal the layer underneath, so don't erase too much.

Step 8

This is the most difficult part - the nose! This could potentially take quite some time, so don't get frustrated, just try your best.

Use the "Rectangular Marquee Tool" and generously select the nose along with its surrounding area. Select "Filter" from the main menu and go to "Liquify...". A new window opens and you may want to zoom in a little. Select the "Forward Warp Tool" - with the "Brush Density" and "Brush Pressure" set to 100. And now "shape" the nose into that of a Na'vi's. If you make a mistake you can use the "Reconstruct Tool". It will probably look a little strange, but that's ok, just click "OK" when it looks remotely like the one in my picture. If yours looks better, excellent!

Step 9

This is still fairly difficult. You will now be using the "Burn" and "Dodge" tools from the Tools window a lot. Use both tools, with their "Range" set to "Midtones", and the "Exposure" set to 5% and continue to "shape" the nose by carefully adding definition. "Burn" darkens, while "Dodge" highlights, so make sure you figure out where the light on your picture is coming from. Because this step is so tricky, it is okay to carry on with the next steps and return to the nose from time to time.

I also used the "Dodge" tool, set to "Midtones" and "Highlights" in order to brighten the irises of the eyes. And finally I dyed the tip of my nose pink, with the Brush tool set to "Color", and the colour itself taken from the ears by using the "Eyedropper Tool".

Step 10

I continued to use the "Burn" tool - a combination of both "Midtones" and "Shadows", to further add definition all around the face. Check out the differences between images 9 and 10. You may choose not to do this on your photograph. However, you might have noticed that I went back to "Liquify" the nose a little more....

Step 11

My overall image had turned a little too dark in my opinion, so I went to my Layers window, and at the bottom I clicked on the "black and white" symbol that has the name "Create new fill or adjustment layer", and selected "Levels..." from the menu. Now a new window opens up and and all I did was click on "Auto" and "OK". However that option doesn't always turn out a good image, so you may want to play around with the sliders. Alternatively, if your image is too light or pale, you can change this here too, using the sliders.

Step 12

For the pattern and sparkles on the face, use the "Burn" tool - Midtones and Shadows, as well as the "Brush tool" - this time a circle shape - with its Hardness 50%, Opacity around 10%, so there's room to build up colour depth, the "Mode" set to "Normal". You'll need to play around with this, as it can take a while to get it right.

Step 13

Now it's time to enlarge the irises of the eyes! Basically we're repeating Step 6 here. So follow every single step, just apply them to the irises alone. Once you're happy with their position, use the "Eraser Tool" to bring back the eyelids from the layer underneath.

And finally I did some additional lighting effects, by using the "Burn Tool" set to "Shadows" and the "Dodge Tool" set to "Highlights". Check out the differences between Image 12 and 13. However this may not be relevant to your image. All done, I hope you are pleased with your results.

Step 14

Now let's compare the final result with the original image:

Good luck!

Beauty Retouching

Beauty Retouching

Beauty Retouching

Photoshop 911 calls are numerous wanting to know how to remove blemishes from photos, give skin the fashion magazine look, or just how to get that certain glamorous fashion look. Well, when so many people wanted the same advice we asked The Glitter Guru! to help us out. Of course she did. Last month we discovered Marija Matijasec, an incredibly talented photo retoucher from Vinica, Croatia. Her work blew us away, so we asked her for a few pointers as well...

Beauty Retouching

with Marija Matijasec

Beauty retouching is one of the most demanding parts of photo manipulation. There are a couple of different methods and only few tricks. The main trick for your results to be astonishing is patience. With time you'll get faster, but this is not five-minute job even for professionals.
 

Step 1:

Improve the colors on your image as much as you can. Even if your final mode is CMYK, do most of the editing in RGB -- it is much more flexible and editable than CMYK. And don't ever hesitate to use selections with various feathers while editing.
In this case I've started with curves and hue/saturation corrections -- image was too red. After that I've used variations to lighter image -- I lighter image in midtones and added red and yellow (see image 01). I find this method excellent whenever I have too dark image.
(Note: some of the enlargement images are quite large and may take a moment to open. Some will be set to 800 x 600 pixels, so some scrolling will be necessary.)

Step 2:

After you've finished with color editing, make a new layer -- that is how you can control your work and if you don't like what you've done, you can go from the start or return to an earlier part of the image. You also can use it only to impress your clients and friends.
Now is time to start retouching. I've used heeling brush and cloning stamp to remove all blemishes and bigger imperfections on face (see image 02). Heeling brush is also excellent for removing ugly lines under the eyes.

Step 3:

Too big nose or chin, too small lips and other similar problems can be easily solved with liquify filter (see image 03). This filter, under the "Filters" menu, allows you to move, smudge, squish, and otherwise distort your image. The default setting has the grid turned off, but you might want to try some work with the grid showing. This gives you some clear visual feedback on how the tool is reacting. The Warp will be the most useful, however "Pucker" and "Bloat" are best for shrinking or expanding the area. Be careful and experiment. The brush size has a lot to do with the results. Go slowly, moving a tiny bit at a time.
On this image I've use it for reducing the nose (with the "Pucker" tool) and chin (with the "Warp" tool,) and removing bumps on the neck.

Step 4:

Now is time for final skin smoothing. I've selected bigger cloning stamp with small hardness -- about 15%. It can be used hardness from 5 -- 30%.
With that brush I've careful smoothed the skin (see image 04).
Doing that I always use multiple clicks, not strokes. This is the part of work when you must be most patient while doing it -- be very careful not to repeat pattern. Every now and then take new snapshot in history palette (see image 5). This way, if you don't like your final product, you can easily return to exact step in history.

Step 5:

If I go too far with smoothing on some parts, I use history brush with hardness about 15% and select snapshot I like the most, then partially restore specific area. If this is not possible on some areas that came out too smooth, I use selection and add noise filter to simulate skin texture (see image 06).
Do some final color adjustments if necessary and you are finished.
Finished: Open this final image with the Before and After (It's a "rollover" so move the cursor over the image to see the changes, then out again to toggle the before and after.) Notice the results of the Liquify Filter in the nose and chin. Also notice that areas of the shot didn't need modification, such as the areas around the hair.

Dramatic Changes

Other dramatic changes can be seen in these Before & After samples of Marija's work. (May take a moment to load on slower connections.)
Girl gets Hair and Eyes fixed - watch this one as you rollover to reveal the finished piece -- note the eyes and much of the hair had to be rebuilt
Normal Girl goes Gold... Here's a magazine shot where Marija had to literally turn the model into gold!
Model loses ten years... Trim, Soften, Fix Hair, was the story on this shot that started out pretty hard, but ended pretty soft!
Chiselled features in this facial - note here that the face behind the net is virtually unchanged! But the lower face and neck had to practically be rebuilt -- including a blemish on the leather glove. (Don't forget to scroll around!)
Replace the head... Everything in this shot was perfect... except the head. So a second shot was combined for a perfect solution.
Two plus Two equals Three... where several shots had the right components, but they had to be reassembled for the final results. (May need side-scrolling)

 

Making Skin Beautiful

Let me start this tutorial by stating the obvious, not everyone has beautiful skin. To compound this problem we have skin eruptions, uneven tan, freckles, unwanted highlights, large pores, etc. In addition, today’s cameras and lenses magnify every imperfection and freeze it for all to see. This tutorial will help the photographer put their models in the best light so to speak. I will start at the point where you have completed your basic processing and have an image with the correct exposure value and white balance.

Contents [hide] 1 Overview 2 Removing or softening flaws 3 Touching up undesirable highlights and reflections 4 Apply a Gaussian blur to the skin to soften and blend it 5 Spot Sharpening

Overview

This subject will be covered in steps as follows:

1. Removing or softening major flaws in the skin
2. Touching up undesired reflections and highlights
3. Apply a Gaussian blur to the skin to soften and blend it.
4. Spot sharpening

Note for MAC users: Substitute the Option key for the Alt key when specified in the tutorial.

Removing or softening flaws

There are many ways to remove flaws from the skin; however, I like to use the clone tool. I do not use the clone tool to remove and replace the skin but rather in a special way that will allow me to work slowly to hide the flaw or blemish on the skin. The beautiful young lady pictured here is typical of teenagers in that hormones may cause zits or other eruptions on their skin that are unsightly. As a photographer it is our job to lessen that and make the model look their best. You will note on the neck of this young lady a rather large skin eruption. This is not a normal mark and one that I am sure she wishes were not there.

On the tool bar on the left hand side of the workspace is the clone tool. Click on this tool. Now go to the mode setting at the top and select a soft brush that is near to or smaller than the blemish. Move to the right and click on mode, setting it to lighten. Move to the right and set the opacity to around 12% and the flow rate to 100% or less. You are now ready to begin hiding the blemish. Find a good patch of skin near the blemish, position your brush on it, hold down the ALT key and click your mouse once. Now begin to soften the blemish by doing a click and hold while going over and over the blemish. You will note that it begins to lighten. Continue until the blemish is gone. In the center of the blemish it is lighter than the surrounding skin. Set mode to darken, ALT click on the good skin and repeat the process above to darken this lighter area. The blemish is now gone as shown in the image. You might also note that I have lightened some of her permanent moles and fixed other light or dark areas using the same technique described above. I generally do not totally remove permanent moles on a models face.

Touching up undesirable highlights and reflections

The end of nose is a particularly onerous place for reflections and burned out highlights as you will note on the model above. Removing them is just as simple as removing a blemish. The difference is that you set the clone tool mode to darken. Select a patch of skin with the appropriate color and do an ALT click. Now go over the highlight until it looks good to you. Be careful not to go too far a field from the highlight itself as you can make the nose look flat in that area instead of rounded as it normally is. If you make a mistake, it is simple to go back a step in the history palette and redo that step. Don’t hesitate to switch between darken and lighten if need be. At this stage do not worry if everything is not perfect as the Gaussian blur will take care of minor imperfections in your work.

Apply a Gaussian blur to the skin to soften and blend it

Much of the information in this part of the tutorial was gleaned from Scott Kelby’s great book entitled The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers, which I recommend highly to everyone new to Photoshop.
I will attempt to keep the "how to" part of this tutorial as detailed as possible so that those new to Photoshop will be able to follow along. This is an advanced technique so stay with me. First thing to do is to open the picture that you want to apply the Gaussian blur to. Create 2 additional layers of this image in the Layer’s pallet. An easy way to do this is to hold down the Ctrl key and click on the J key twice. You should now see three layers of the image. Hide layer 1 copy by clicking on the Eye icon next to it in the layers pallet. Highlight the middle layer by clicking on it and your layers pallet should now look like this:

In the drop down box on the Layer’s pallet change the blend mode from Normal to Darken. Next go to the menu at the top of the screen and click filter/blur/Gaussian blur and then apply a 35 pixel blur to the image. Don’t worry that your image looks bad at this stage.

On the Layers pallet, click on the little Eye icon beside the middle layer to hide this layer and then click on the top layer to make it active. Now change the blend mode from Darken to Lighten by clicking on Lighten in the drop down box. Next run a 50 pixel blur on this top layer (Filter/blur/Gaussian Blur).

After you have applied the blur, click on the middle layer to make it the active layer and then lower the opacity to 30%. Hide the background layer from view by clicking on the Eye icon beside it and then create a new layer by clicking on the New Layer Icon at the bottom of the Layers pallet. This icon is on the bottom right just next to the little garbage can. When the new layer is created click and drag this layer to the top of the stack as shown.

Next, hold down the Alt Key and with your mouse go to the top and click (hold) on Layers and while holding the mouse button down go to the bottom and release the mouse button over Merge Visible as shown here.

This creates a flattened version of your document in the new layer. In the layers pallet, make the background layer visible with the Eye icon and hide the two middle layers by removing the Eye icon from them. Make sure the top layer is the active layer and then lower the opacity to 37%. This is a subjective adjustment and you should set it at the point that your image has the right amount of blur to suit your taste. All that is left now is the removal of the Gaussian blur from the hair, eyes, eyebrows, lips, jewelry, clothing and anything else that you don’t want blurred.
Click on the layer mask icon at the bottom of the layer pallet (third from the left). Insure that your foreground color is set to black. You can change the background/foreground easily by clicking on the small x while watching it change on the leftmost tool pallet. Select a soft edged brush from the tool pallet and paint over everything that you do not want blur on (eyes, mouth, hair, etc.). Generally this is everything except the skin. Change the size of the brush so that it is easy for you to do that without getting over into the skin. Your layers pallet will now look like this.

At this point you may flatten the layers and discard the unused layers (Layers/Flatten Image). If you feel a little touch up for the brightness of the image is needed, do that with levels or Brightness/Contrast.

Spot Sharpening

Select the spot sharpener from the tool pallet on the left hand side of your screen and quickly go over the eyes, mouth, and anything else that you want sharpened.
Applying a final sharpening is up to you but in any event do not over sharpen. Watch the eyelashes and hair especially so as not to create artifacts or halo's. Here is the final product:

Don't be intimidated by this tutorial, once you run through it a few times it is quite easy. One last caution, it is better to error on the side of too little blur than too much. It is easy to make the skin look plastic and unnatural. The goal is to accomplish the softening but yet not have it noticed. If you remove all traces of texture to the skin you will have failed for most types of portraits.

 

Design a Grungy Floating Island

Final Image

This is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Step 1

Open up a new document (600X600px) and create a rectangular selection in the center of your document. Fill it with black.

Step 2

Now paste in a photo of a tree. Cut it out from it’s background using the lasso tool, and then apply a black color overlay. Then resize the tree to fit nicely in the top right of your black square.

Step 3

Paste in a photo of some fir trees and mountains. Go to select>color range then select shadows, and use the settings shown below. This will create a selection around the fir trees, which won’t be perfect, but can be used for this kind of grungy, rough design. With the area around the trees selected hit delete, and then resize your image and give the layer a black color overlay effect.

Step 4

The images below show this technique of color range > shadows > delete > color overlay repeated, and me building up the edge of my black rectangle using various photos of greenery.

Step 5

This grungy outline is looking pretty cool, but it’s a little too square and boxy right now. To fix this I grab my eraser brush set on a grunge brush and erase away parts of the corners of my ‘black rectangle’ layer. I also add a few more parts to the edge to round off the corners and erase these too.

Step 6

Now I paste in a wood texture underneath of my current layers to provide a cool background.

Step 7

To achieve a more neutral background color I add a color overlay to my wood texture layer. I set an overlay of EFDBAA and 86%.

Step 8

I paste a photo of some symmetrical clouds over my background texture layer. I want the clouds to be at the top and bottom of my image however, so I simply select the relevant parts of my image and move them to the top/bottom of my document. Then to fill the gap between I select a thin strip of the blue sky that divides the clouds and stretch it so that it joins them. Finally I set my layer’s blend mode to overlay and reduce it’s opacity to 60%.

Step 9

We’ll get back to the background shortly, but for now I want to add some text to my cool black grungy area. A really nice tip for achieving a grungy artistic effect is to type out your text, and then select each individual layer and choose the font below the last one you used for the previous layer. The variety of fonts and white on black contrast is a very simple way to achieve great results.

Step 10

To add to the grungy theme I add in some Photoshop custom shapes and erase parts of them using a grunge brush set at a low opacity. I reduce these shape layer’s opacities to between 20-40%.

Step 11

Now a select a large grunge brush and set it’s hardness to 0. Then I apply 4 brightly colored marks roughly at each quarter of my canvas. I set my layer’s blend mode to ‘vivid light’ and then go to filter>blur>radial blur and apply a radial blur of 74 strength, blur method: spin, quality: good. The images below show the effect with our floating island hidden and then made visible.

Step 12

Now I paste in an image of some mountains above my radial blur layer. Then I set my layer blend mode to ‘overlay’. This creates a really nice effect not only giving the mountains some bright colors, but making it appear as if they are coming out of the clouds at the base of our image.

Step 13

Now paste in some more mountains into the top of your image. Remember to set the blend mode to overlay and then use a large, soft eraser brush to blend them in properly and get rid of any harsh edges.

Step 14

Paste in a paper texture on a new layer below your floating island and above your background layers. Position it so that it takes up all of your image apart from the bottom where your main mountain image is, but be careful to have it overlap the tops of the mountains. Then set your layer’s blending mode to multiply, and with the mountain layer showing through, use the lasso tool to cut away the bottom of your paper texture where it overlaps the mountain tops. Then reduce your paper texture layer’s opacity to 50%.

Step 15

Now paste in an image of a sunburst shape (see our latest PSDFAN freebie for the image download). Again, cut away the part of the image that overlaps the mountains. This time rather than bother with the lasso tool simply selection your paper texture layer and click where the mountains are positioned using the magic wand tool. Then revert back to your new sunburst layer and hit delete. Then go to the layer’s blending mode and change it to ‘color burn’. Reduce the layer’s opacity to 16%.

Step 16

Now select the ‘grungy’ text from ‘man this is grungy’ and copy it. Create a new text layer above your mountain layer and paste in the copied text, changing it’s color to 0A375A. Then increase it’s size to 155pt – this should take up most of the width of your image. Rasterize the layer and position it so that the tops of some of the letters are above the top edge of the mountain.

And we’re done!

To finish select the mountain using the magic wand technique shown previously, invert your selection and hit delete to cut off the tops of the letters. Reduce the text layer’s opacity to 10% and set it’s blending mode to ‘color burn’.