Photoshop tips, tricks, and tutorials

Real Life Dale Gribble

2009-03-29T12:43:00.000-07:00

A de-cartoonified Dale Gribble

Jack Nicholson speed painting

2008-11-21T15:19:00.000-08:00

I am in the process of making several tutorials, and will post them shortly. Until then, heres one more speed painting.

A how to paint Tim Burton speedpainting

2008-11-11T12:51:00.000-08:00

Im in the process of making new tutorials. Until then, heres a speed painting I did in Photoshop of Tim Burton. Check back soon for more tutorials.

A speedpainting done in photoshop

2008-11-10T17:05:00.000-08:00

2008-11-10T15:48:00.000-08:00

In this tutorial, I will show you one of the ways I make smoke in Photoshop.

Step 1. Create a document with a black background. On a new layer, draw something similar to what you see here using a soft edged brush. Make sure at all times throughout this tutorial, that the smoke layers are not merged with the black background layer.

Step 2. Duplicate the layer and Gaussian blur it. I used a setting of 23. Then merge the two layers.

Step 3. Duplicate the newly merged layer. alt/click the layer to select it, then go to select/ modify/ contract. I choose 10 pixels. Then invert the selection, and delete. It should now leave a thinner version of what you had on the other layer. Then lower the opacity of the layer behind it.

Step 4. Merge layers. Then duplicate the layer again, and resize it, and move it to somewhere else in the smoke. I moved mine to the top and center, and then flipped it.

Step 5. I then used the liquify filter on both layers, slightly tweaking both layers to give it more of a smoke effect. Now merge the layer.

Step 6. Now duplicate the freshly merged layers once again. I then went to filters/distort/wave. Use the default settings. Then lower the opacity of the filtered layer. Merge both layers.

Step 7. Now duplicate the layer and go to control T, and make the smoke thinner and taller. Merge the layers.

Step 8. I ran it through filter/liquify again. I tweaked it a little more to give it more of a smoky feel.

Step 9. Create a new layer and set it to overly. With whatever color you would like, start to give the smoke some color. I used a reddish color.

Step 10. I repeated step 9, and added some blue to the smoke.

And there you have it. Smoke in Photoshop.

Painting a teapot in Photoshop

2008-10-29T15:13:00.000-07:00

Note:When painting still lifes in a more traditional medium like oil, you would most likely have the items your painting arranged in a setup in front of you. This is hard to do digitally, so what I did was found an image of a teapot. Since I have a dual monitor setup, I put the picture on one monitor, and painted on another. The ref I used is here.
Using the following technique, you can successfully paint anything you would like.
On to the tutorial-
Step 1. Outline.
When starting a painting, you should draw out an outline of the object your painting. You can see in this image, I quickly drew out an outline with a hard edge, low opacity brush.

Step 2. Dark areas.
I always paint the dark areas first. Keep it simple. I used a hard edged, medium opacity brush and quickly painted in the dark areas.

Step 3. Midtones.
Here I quickly paint in any midtone areas. Again, I keep it simple, and use a hard edged, medium opacity brush

Step 4. Highlighted areas
I paint in the highlighted areas. I used the same brush and techinque as in steps 2 and 3.

Step 5. Define edges
Here I define the areas between light and dark more clearly. I use a smaller, higher opacity brush. I also paint in the background a little to give the picture a sense of depth.

Step 6. Adding detail
I start to add detail. Remember to paint with the contours of the object you are painting, and to keep the surface texture in mind. I am painting a highly reflective teapot, so I want to try to create that texture. Painting withthe contours of the pot will help to create that.

Step 7. More detail
here I begin to add a little detail to the ground. Again, remember to paint with the direction and contours of the ground. I also flippe dthe painting. This gives you a new view of what your painting, and helps you see any mistakes you may of missed. Many digital painters flip images like this for that very reason.

Step 8. Adding more detail and depth
here I add more detail to the teapot, ground, and background. I am trying to add depth using shadows and light. Also remember that shadows are very rarely black, and shadows contain light. Remembering and using that tip will add a sense of realism to your paintings.

Step 9. Detail and refine
I flip the image again and continue to detail and refine.

Here is what I have after putting a few hours into the painting. It is no where near finished, but I believe it shows enough to successfully explain the techniques involved. happy painting!

Make a mad penguin!

2008-10-23T20:08:00.001-07:00

Step 1. Open the images you are going to use in Photoshop.
Step 2. Select an area of one picture, and drag and drop it into the other picture.
Step 3. Lower the opacity and move it around until you find out where you want to put it.
Step 4. Create a layer mask by clicking the layer mask button on the layers pallette. It is the third button on the bottom of the layers palette (the square with the circle in it) Grab a soft edged brush and select the color black. Begin to "erase" from around the mouth
Zoom in close and use small brushes to erase around small details.

Step 5. Go to edit/transform/perspective, and fix the perspective so it fits better on the background.

Step 6. Using the clone tool, erase the birds eye and beak from the background.

Step 7. Go back to the top layer and continue to erase areas and blend until it blends into the background picture.

Now you have this!