At 10/3/08 05:16 AM, Jaye19 wrote:
I dont get the purpose of this club are we gonn apost some pics then um... let somebody edit them???
Read the other 10 pages of the thread so far, starting with the first. Sheesh...
I did this just right now it looks horrible
Looks fine. Reminds me of Officer's style, with a little less polish but a good amount of creativity.
At 10/4/08 09:04 PM, The-One-And-The-Only wrote:
Extreme Photoshopping!!!!!!!!
I don't know why but I lol'd so hard at that! HAHA!
It's been a while since a new tutorial's been posted, and it just so happens I have a good one laying around. So by request from The-One-And-The-Only, here's a technique that's fun and simple, and can give you some practice with that annoying and often overlooked Pen Tool.
This tutorial requires a good stock photo to work with, something of hi res that has a subject that will be accented well with some flare. Darker pics work great for this, and especially black and whites, but any pic will do as long as it's clear and sharp.
Photoshop Tutorial: Neon Energy Lines
Open the base pic, then go to the Paths tab in the workspace and click the "create new path" button.
Select the pen tool.
1.) Click at the starting point of where you want the line (or swirl) to start and lay down a path marker.
Click your next point, hold and drag to create a "Bezier spline" path, which is necessary to create flowing lines. You can curve the line any which way. Continue laying down more points, making the path for where you want the energy to flow. Play around and see how many groovy curves you can make.
Don't worry about getting it perfect the first time, you can change the path at any time. If you press and hold CTRL while using the pen tool you can edit the path and re-shape it any which way.
If you are wrapping the energy line around a subject, remember that you are only going to use the parts of your path that aren't "behind" the subject, so don't worry about making it totally perfect since there will be some erasing involved.
2.) Once you are done making your path, select a standard round brush, set the pixel width to something small, like 3, 4, or 5, and the Hardness to between 30-50%, then select what ever main color you want the energy to be. Make a new layer on top of the subject/background layer. Go back to the paths tab, right click the path and select "stroke path." Don't worry about the "simulate pen pressure" button, but keep in mind that if you are using some special add-on brushes you can get very detailed stroke paths and create some nice effects (I will cover this some other time.)
Now you have a color filled stroked path.
3.) Click the Layers tab and go to the blending options for the layer. Use the Inner Shadow, Inner Glow and Outer Glow options to give the line it's neon-like flare. Select the colors you want to accent the main color, for example if you use orange as the main color you can use yellow for the inner glow and red for the outer glow to make it fire-like.
Use the following settings for each blending option:
Inner Shadow:
Blend Mode: Multiply
Opacity- 30%
Angle- 75
Distance- 1
Choke- 0
Size- 0
Inner Glow: (you can set the option to "Center" put the inner glow color running through the middle of the energy line rather than the outer edges, see which one you prefer more, but for starters stick with "Edge.")
Blend mode- Color Dodge
Opacity- between 60-80%
Noise- 0
Choke- 30
Size- 155
Outer Glow:
Blend Mode- Lighten
Opacity- between 60-80%
Noise- 0
Spread- 0%
Size- 10
*you can also use Bevel and Emboss to give it a slightly more 3-D effect around the edges. It's up to you, but keep in mind this can interfere with the colors sometimes.
4.) Duplicate the layer with the energy line, and set this new layer's blend mode to Overlay. Open back up the Blending Options and turn off all the options except Outer Glow. Use these settings for this layer's outer glow:
Blend Mode- Lighten
Opacity- between 60-80%
Noise- 0
Spread - 3%
Size- 30
**Optional 5.) If you are wrapping the energy line around a subject, now is the time to erase the parts of the line that you want to appear as if they are "behind" the subject. Be careful and don't forget that you have two layers that need to be erased, not just one.
6.) Take this last opportunity to adjust the line path by holding CTRL with the Pen tool. Click the Paths tab one last time and delete the path and BAM. You should at this point have a rather snazzy looking energy line that you can create again and again with different colors for super effects. You can even duplicate the process and wrap an energy line around an energy line!
If you have any special brushes like "grunge," "fire flares," "speckles," "splatters" or anything that can make random particles you can add little flares and sparks to your energy and really make it stand out. Make lasers, neon signs, glowing ribbons, plasma flares, what ever you can think of.
Have fun.
