Photoshop_Tutorials : Hand Drawn Stitches in Photoshop

So you want to be a stitcher? Well get your needle, thread and embroidery hoop ready... or just fire up your photoshop, google image search and pour yourself a fresh drink.
Page 1 : Intro
I'm going to show you how i went from this:

to this

in a way that is easy to understand. Please remain seated and buckle up, the ride is about to begin.
Page 2: Step1... Setting up your patch
First things first.... Find yourself a good surface like this patch

and put it on the layer above your background) and a cool subject, Like this adorable yoda

place yoda in the layer above your patch (and name the layer if you wish to). Turn Yoda's opacity down to 50% or so and position his head over the middle of the patch.
Now you are ready for your base stitching.
Create a new layer and call it stitches. turn your yoda layer up to 100 percent to sample his forehead color, turn his opacity back down to 50% and begin drawing stitches using your line tool set to 1 pixel, don't worry about getting your lines too closely together, that will be fixed in future steps.
Try to angle your stitches to match the yoda pic and switch colors to match his different skin tones (remember to turn yoda's opacity up before sampling a new color). Try to keep your colors to a minimum though because a real patch isn't going to have 50 seperate colors. I ended up using 6 colors. (inner ears, light skin, dark skin, medium skin, eyewhites, and eyecolor)

whew... all this lining!! Dorie must be crazy!!!! don't worry, you are now officially done with the line tool! Lets move on....
Page 3: Step2 Filling In the Empty Spaces.
Make your Yoda layer invisible (but don't trash it, we'll be needing him later) You'll see that your lines don't show up very well, we'll be working on that in this step.
Select your stitches layer and add the layer effect "Bevel and Emboss". Set the style to inner bevel, the depth to 1 up and the blur to one. Click ok.

Now you'll make 3 copies of the stitches layer. rename them and order them like this (top to bottom) St. Screen, St. Filler, stitches (original), and St. Mult.
Move the St. Screen layer one pixel to the right and one pixel up, then set the layer option to screen.
Move the St. Filler one pixel up and to the right
now Move the ST. Mult layer on pixel down and one pixel to the left and set the layer option to multiply.

That looks better, but there are still some holes... read on and we'll address that.
Page 4: Step 3 ACK! Not more Filling!
We can still see some of the red patch through your stitching. This step will fix all that and more!
Create a layer right above your patch layer and call it underpainting, now grab your paintbrush and use Yoda's forehead color to paint behind the stitches, don't worry about going all the way to the edges, because you'll want a bit of red to show through there

Now set your underpainting layer to multiply.

Lets add some depth to the stitching real quick. Create a new layer on top and call it Depth1 Set Depth to multiply and grab your airbrush, set it's opacity to 50% or so and lightly brush at the edges of your yoda stitches with a medium brown color. You should encircle each area of stitching so that it's darker where the stitching ends (or where real stitching would enter the patch) Don't worry about getting it perfect now... we'll be touching it up in a
bit.

Now let's turn our Yoda layer back on. Add a layer mask and mask out everything but his pretty little head. Now set his layer mode to color.

Wow! no more Red showing through! We're almost done, just one more step to go....
Page 5: Step 4. Finishing Touches
Well... in case you haven't noticed... yoda's ears are hanging out a bit (he's a big eared little guy). Make a copy of your patch layer and move it to the top, add a layer mask and mask yoda's head back in hiding the parts that are outside the red part of the patch
Make a copy of the yoda layer and put it right below the depth layer, change his layer mode to overlay and turn the opacity down to 25% or so (I did this to help add some depth to the stitches, but it's really not that big of a change and is optional)

 

Now touch up your depth1 layer to taste.
Whew we're done! Congrats!!! You've stitched Yoda! Feel free to mess around a bit and try your own techniques. This tutorial is the watered down version of what I did in the original Worth Merit Badge Contest, I couldn't include everything, because a lot of what i did was trial and error and tweaking (my original PSD had 30+ layers!). So don't stop here. mess around with lighting and stitching. Good Luck.

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Photoshop_Tutorials : Out-of-Bounds ทำภาพอยู่นอกกรอบ

Here is a simple tutorial to explain the process behind a typical OOB entry.
Page 1 : Disclaimer
An Out of Bounds entry, referred to as OOB throughout this tutorial, refers to an entry which makes use of the image borders to add to the 3D feel of the image.
This is how "I" do it, mostly. Though I only use Photoshop, I'm sure all the same ideas can be applied to whatever program you are using.
The single most important element in any OOB entry is the source picture. I'm a purist, so I tend to only use ONE source pic, so I will be showing you how to go from this...

to this (which is not exactly like my original entry, but I chose to do this over for the tutorial)

Here we go...
Page 2: The set-up
The very first thing I do is set up my layers palette like this...

I have a back up for the original source pic, and two background layers, one black, one white. I use these while I'm masking as you'll see soon.
Next, above my original layer, I create a "Frame" layer. I add layer masks to both the Original and the Frame layer. Now, the setup is complete.
Page 3:

Page 3: Framing
Next, I take a few moments to look closely at the original and decide where the best perspective is for my frame, the part that will set it "out of bounds". Since this shot has such a great natural perspective, I'll be working with that, making the front part of the frog the focus "in-frame" and his back legs "out of frame" as if he was walking into the picture.
In the Frame layer I'll draw a white rectangle of the approximate size I'd like my finished frame to be.

I'll then make a selection inside the box to allow for the thickness of the border. And cut away the excess. (CTRL-X)

Finally, with the Frame layer selected, I choose Edit-Transform-Perspective (CTRL+T then right click - Perspective) and adjust the top and right sides of the frame slightly. (There are no secret numbers here, this is very much subjective to the picture and 'eyeing' the adjustments is the only way.)

I then use the Distort Transform (CTRL+T then right click - Distort) to adjust the frame to allow all the frog bits I want in and out of frame.

When I'm satisfied with the frame placement, then it's off to masking.
Page 4: Masking 1
There are numerous ways to make selections for masking, the pen tool (which would be a tutorial in itself) the lasso tool, quick masking. I'm going just select my layer mask on the original and paint with black all the areas that I don't want to show. I click on the white layer mask box in the Original layer. The small circle in box icon appears next to the layer picture and I know I'm painting ONLY in the mask. As you can see, as I paint with black, the image disappears (or is masked out). Painting with white reveals (or unmasks) the Original layer. I've turned off the Black and White layers (Layer 1 and Layer 2) for now, we'll use them when we closer to the edges of the frog.

I've completely masked out all parts of the background that would fall 'out of frame'. As you can see it's pretty rough at this point. Next well go in close and do some fine tuning on the mask

Page 5: Masking 2
Now, let's zoom in on our frog's hindquarters and get some serious masking done. I'm using a soft 10pt brush with the air brush turned on to mask closer to the contours of the back and legs. Remember, if you mask over part of the frog, you can always select white as your paint color and reveal it again.

Now that I've fine tuned the mask closer to the frog, I turn on either the black (Layer 1) or white (Layer 2) background layers. This is nothing more than a way to help reveal areas that still need to be masked out, in this case the rust colored background shows up very well against the white, so I'll keep that one turned on.

Using a combination of smaller brushes, and the smudge tool on the layer mask (which will smudge the black painted areas into the white of the layer mask, giving a little more control over the detail work) I completely eliminate all notions of the background. Remember, working with layer masks is virtually foolproof. You can reveal what you mistakenly masked, or discard the entire mask and start again. After some tweaking and even finer tuning, I have this...

Now, onto the frame...
Page 6: Masking 3 - The Frame
I select the layer mask on the Frame layer. Now we'll remove the parts of the frame where we'd like the frog to overlap. In this case, it's helpful to me to have the black (layer 1) background layer turned on, since my frame is white.

Using the same masking principles as before, I begin removing the frame up to the edges of the frog, giving the illusion that the frame runs behind him. When I've revealed all I want to reveal, it's time to start adding some shadows.
Page 7: Shadows
There are differing views on shadows in OOB and where to add them. I like them when they're dramatic enough to give extra depth, yet subtle enough to not scream LOOK AT MY SHADOWS. Most importantly, we want to match the light from the source pic, which appears to be coming from the top left.
I'll add two layers for the shadows. The first for the frame which I'll call Frame Shadow. This will be placed above the Frame layer and grouped to it (CTRL+G) so all the painting I do on the Frame Shadow layer will ONLY be visible within the confines of the Frame. The shadow for underneath the 'out of frame' portions of the Frog will be painted on the Frog Shadow layer, underneath the Original.

On the Frame Shadow layer, using a very soft brush with its opacity set to approx 75%, I'll paint where I think the shadows would fall. I do the same to the Frog Shadow layer, making sure my shadows line up with each other. I add the same Gaussian Blur to both shadow layers (in this case a blur of 4.0) and set both layers to Multiply in the blending mode.

Next, I like to add a subtle shadow for the frame as well, to give a little extra dimension. I'll create a new layer under the Frog Shadow layer called Main Shadow and use the same technique there as described above. I've also lowered the opacity on all the shadow layers to make them more subtle.

And that's it. There is probably much more fine tuning on the shadows and the mask that can be done, but this is a basic idea of an Out of Bounds entry. I hope this was helpful in some small way. Feel free to email me with any additional questions, or if you think something needs more clarification.
Thanks and good luck!

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Photoshop_Tutorials : The Slime Factory ทำกรอบเว็บไซต์ด้วยโฟโต้ช็อป

Follow along with the steps the author took to create a navigation bar for the "Slime Factory" website. This shows how to mix metallic textures with gelatinous substances.
Page 1 : Getting Started!
Follow along with the steps I took to create the website for the "Slime Factory". This website mixes metallic textures with gelatinous substances.
The owners of the Slime Factory wanted a website theme that would match their company name, so they enlisted me to design it for them. The purpose of this tutorial is to show you some of the effects I used to make their navigation bar.
This tutorial goes through the steps I took in Photoshop to make that website. It requires Photoshop 6.0, 7.0 or above to be able to replicate every aspect exactly as shown.
In Photoshop, create a new image (779 pixels wide), and draw a small line with the Freeform Pen Tool. (Make sure you have the "Paths" option at the top left of the screen selected.) Ctrl+Click the line to select it. The line should have a small block at each end. Hold Ctrl and drag the blocks (points) apart, to extend the line. Add new points by clicking on the line (don't press Ctrl.) If you select a point (Ctrl+Click on it), you'll notice it has two "arms". By dragging the arms around (while holding Ctrl), you can change the curve of the line.

Try to make something similar to what I've made in the diagram above (feel free to vary it as you see fit). It's okay to go off the canvas at the left and at the top (press the "Maximise" button at the top right of the window so you can see outside the canvas.) However, it is very important that the two ends of the line are very close together, as they'll connect up in the next step to form an enclosed area.
Remember - always hold Ctrl when moving a point or an arm.

Page 2: Adding Clouds and other Effects
With the Freeform Pen Tool still selected, right-click the line, and choose "Make Selection".
Choose a light green as your foreground colour, and a dark green as your background colour. Click Filter > Render > Clouds, and your area will fill with splotchy green.
In the Layers list, double-click on this layer, and the Blending Options screen will appear. Set the following options: (Leave all settings as default unless specified.)
l Drop Shadow
l Bevel and Emboss (Style: Inner Bevel. Technique: Chisel Hard. Size: 2. Angle 131°, 39°. Global Light: Off. Gloss Contour: Ring – Double, Anti-aliased: Off.)
l Gradient Overlay (Blend Mode: Color Burn. Opacity 29%. Gradient Black - White - Black - White. [Click on the little gradient bar and put in extra tabs to do this.])
l Stroke (Size: 3. Colour: #D8D8D8 [light grey].)

Page 3: Spotlights
On the Toolbox, hold down on the Selection Tool icon, until a few other Selection Tools appear. Choose the Elliptical Selection Tool. (Shift+M will also work, if you're using Photoshop 7.0). With this tool, draw an upright elliptical selection.
Change your foreground colour to white, and select the Gradient Tool. Click on the visual representation of the gradient at the top left of your screen. (If you're not using Photoshop 6.0 or Photoshop 7.0, you'll need to click on the Options Palette, and click Edit.) Choose "Foreground to Transparent".
Apply the gradient inside your selected area, from top to bottom. Press Ctrl+D to deselect. Click Filter > Gaussian Blur, and set it to about 5.0.
Change the layer's Mode from Normal to "Overlay".
With the Move Tool, move the layer over the top of your green area. It should now look something like the spotlight at the centre-top of Diagram 3, above. With the Move Tool still selected, hold Alt, and move the spotlight somewhere else. This should copy it. After you've made a few copies, press Ctrl+T for each one, to rotate it a bit.

Page 4: Creating something vaguely resembling an egg yolk
With the Freeform Pen, select an area as shown. After the pain of Step 1, creating a shape like this should be no problem. :) Right-click the line, and click "Make Selection".
Create a new layer.
Choose an orangey-yellow colour, and fill the area, using the Paint Bucket Tool.

Page 5: Adding some Effects to the yellow area
In the layers list, double-click your yellow layer. Set the following settings: (Leave all settings as default unless specified.)
l Outer Glow (Colour: Black.)
l Inner Glow (Colour: Black. Opacity: 54%. Size: 13px.)
l Bevel and Emboss (Style: Outer Bevel. Size: 5. Soften: 1. Gloss Contour: Ring – Double, Anti-aliased: On.)
l Contour
l Satin (Mode: Multiply. Opacity: 14%. Angle: 19°. Distance: 21px. Size: 32px. Contour: click on the little box, and change it so it looks like this.)
l Stroke (Size: 3. Colour: #D8D8D8 [light grey]. Position: Inside.)

Page 6: A glossy coat
In the layers list, Ctrl+Click on the layer of your yellow area. This selects it.
Create a new layer.
Fill the area with a white, top-to-bottom "Foreground to Transparent" Gradient, like you did before.
Change this layer's Mode from Normal to Overlay.
Press Ctrl+T to Transform the area. drag the sides and bottom in a bit, as shown on the diagram.
In the Layers list, right-click this layer, and Duplicate it.
Change the Mode of the new layer from Normal to "Lighten".
Press Ctrl+T to Transform it, and bring in the sides and bottom again.

Page 7: Menu text and a header
In whatever font you choose (I've used Flying Dutchman here), type in your header text in a very dark grey. In the Layers list, move it below your Lighten and Overlay layers. This makes it look like it's in with the yellowy substance.
In the layers list, double-click the text layer, and give it a Bevel (Style: Inner Bevel. Technique: Chisel Hard. Size: 29. Gloss Contour: Ring. Anti-aliased: On.)
Right-click on the layer and click "Copy Layer Style".
In an orangey-yellow colour, type in your menu text.
Right-click on the layer and click "Paste Layer Style".

Page 8: Getting your design into a web page editor
If you're using Photoshop 6.0 or Photoshop 7.0, use the Slice Tool to draw boxes on your image. These boxes will each be saved as a separate image when you Save for Web. I'd recommend drawing one big box for your header, and one big box for your menu. There will be a big box of white space, but that doesn't matter.
Also, make sure you save two thin slices (I call them "slivers") at the right and bottom. These should be one pixel thick (I've exaggerated them here for clarity.)
Slivers are simply images that repeat indefinitely to fill up the whole width/height of the screen, regardless of the size of the screen.
Click File > Save For Web. Choose Jpeg, Quality 60.
In your web editor, Create two tables, one above the other. Set the top table to 100% width, sets its background to be the appropriate "sliver" image, and put your header image in that table.
Divide the lower table into two columns. The left column should be as wide as your menu image. Put your menu image in it, and set its background to be your sliver image. Depending on your web editor, you can use Hotspots or an Image Map to make parts of the menu into links.
The right cell should be around 500 pixels in width. If your cells aren't behaving, make sure the table's width is equal to the width of both cells added together.
That's it!
Oh, and there's no *real* Slime Factory. Well... there might be, but I don't really want to know. :)

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Photoshop_Tutorials : Colorizing Line Art

Using layer blending modes to simplify the process and get dynamic results.
Page 1 : Getting Started
Here are the basic steps describing how I colorized this image.

It is done in a three step process:
1. Block in the area to be colored
2. Add shadows and highlights
3. Add effects
For this tutorial, I'm just going to redo one of the gloves. Once you get the fundamentals down, then it is just a matter of repeating the steps for all the other areas in the image.
The first thing you need to do is put the original lineart image at the top of the layer stack. When you open the picture to be colorized, it will probably be called the "Background" layer. Photoshop forces the background layer to be at the bottom of the layer stack, but we want it at the top of the stack.
What you need to do is copy that background layer to make "Background Copy", then delete the original "Background". Now you have your original lineart on a layer that you can freely move up and down the layer stack.
Page 2: Painting the Lineart
In the following screenshots, the lineart layer is called "Layer 1". Use the dropdown box on the layer palette to set the blending mode of the line art layer to MULTIPLY. You are done with this layer for good. You don't want to do any editing on it at all. The only thing you need to do is make sure it stays at the top of the layer stack.
Create a new layer and name it "Fill". It will appear at the top of the layer stack, so you need to drag it down below the line art layer (Layer 1 in my example). With the fill layer active, pick a medium shade of the color you want and start painting in the area using a hard edged brush at 100% fill/opacity. Since the lineart layer is set to multiply mode, you don't need to worry about being real accurate with your initial painting. You can paint right over the black lineart and it won't affect it. Just make sure you completely fill in the area to be colored and don't go outside the lines. I ended up with something like this:

Page 3: Shading
Check the box to preserve transparancy for the fill layer. That is extremely important. If you're not sure what I mean, it is the box highlighted in yellow in the following screenshot. By preserving transparancy for the layer, there is no way you can screw up and color outside the lines. It is a huge timesave when you can start slopping paint down where ever you want instead of meticulously trying to stay within the borders.
Now is the fun part. Pick a lighter shade of your base color and select the airbrush tool with flow set to about 5%. You are going to want the softest brush possible, so use the shortcut SHIFT+[ three times to soften up your brush edges. Now, just start painting in the highlights. You'll need to figure out for yourself where they go.
Once you are satisfied with the highlights, choose a darker shade of your base color and paint in the shaded areas. I ended up with something like this:

Page 4: Lighting
To really make it jump out, duplicate your fill layer and set the layer mode of the copy to HARD LIGHT from the drop down box (highlighted in yellow in the following screenshot).

As a last step, I like to add a bit of noise to the fill layer.

That's just about all there is to it. The only other things I did was to use the smudge tool a bit on the highlights and shadows and a bit of experimentation with changing the hue/saturation of the hard light layer to tweak the colors after the hard light step.
Good luck!

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Photoshop_Tutorials : Masks in illustration

One way of going from sketch to finished picture, without the chaos that usually brings.
Page 1 : Introduction
This tutorial shows an example of how masks can be useful when creating original illustrations in Photoshop.
I've gone a bit into explaining masks in general, but not the absolute basics, so it helps if you atleast know where all the buttons and commands are in PS.
I'll also explain what I think is a good allround way of sketching from the ground up. A fairly detailed sketch is required for this method of masking to work out right.
As the example in this tutorial I've used my illustration:

I chose it because it's a picture where masks really worked out great. With a little brainwork of your own I'm sure you can gel this information with your own methods.
Here we go....
Page 2: Sketch
Sketching in Photoshop has many advantages over natural media. For one thing, you can easily erase or adjust while sketching, and you end up with a composition that is, if not done, then almost.
I sketch with a fairly big semi-soft brush (penpressure controlled size and opacity), and a big, rigid eraser (pen contr. size only). Brush foreground color is set to a warm mid-level brown, brush background color is set to the paper color (in this case white).

If I'm unsure of any proportions I might flip the image horizontally to check if anything looks odd, edit the odd part, and flip it back.
After all this I flatten the image, and the "pencil-sketch" is done.

Page 3: Sketch coloring
Sketch coloring is good, because it gives me a better view of what the finished image will look like.
On a new layer set to multiply (or gel in Painter), I paint the various colors I want, not worrying about edges that much for now.

On another layer on top of this one (set to normal) I paint with a 50% opacity brush in black and white, highlighting and shading based on the direction of my light source (in this case the sun, "off camera").
I colored this sketch both in Painter and PS, can't really recall the exact brushes used because I was just experimenting

Page 4: Layer separation with masks
This is the part where I tried a new (to me) approach to layer masks. Earlier I've either painted a completely new image in layers on top of the sketch, or created a mess of layers merging with the sketch to make the final pic.
This time I copied the flattened sketch to several (4) new layers, and made layer masks for each copy. If you're fairly new to masks, in this case they mimic the matte painting technique used in movies and animation. It's a great way to separate objects in the foreground from the background.
To help me see what I'm masking out, I use a 50% opaque layer with a bright blue fill between the layer I'm masking and the background.

I mask all the layers from foreground to background. These layers will now act as a base clipping-layer (new PS CS term) or group (older term). In essence, anything painted on a layer which is on top of the masked layer, and grouped with it (Ctrl+G) will only show what is within the base masks borders.

Masking can be done with either lasso or a hard brush. Using a soft brush is usually not a very good idea, if your mask has a very complex outer edge (for example the grass in this image), it's probably better to make a rough mask as a base, and add grass to an ungrouped layer on top. Alt-clicking the layer mask in the layer palette helps you see if you've missed any spots.

Some of the internal details get their own masks to make sharper outlines.

Page 5: Detail work
This is where everything becomes one big blur :)
Basically, add as much details and polish as you like. I usually "sweep" the image several times, each time going into smaller details. It's a good idea to take a break from the image once in a while, doing it all in one sitting can make you miss something. Another tip is to print out your work in progress, and circle parts you'll need to work on with a pen

Page 6: Final master
When I'm staisfied I can't possibly cram any more details into the image and still like myself, I make a merged copy of the whole image to a new layer (Shift+Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V). On this merged copy I try out some level adjustments to give it more oomph. In some cases some color adjustment (with for example selective color) on the merged copy might help the pic as well.
Before:

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