3D Chocolate

3D Chocolate

3D Chocolate. 30 min project Today is a day of confession. I am an chocolate addict. I eat 2 bars a day on a regular basis. Probably can do more.Most definitely. Just never ‘ve been brave enough buy more… Once I was in Paris and stuck in amazement at a door of a little belgium choco store(somewhere in Saint-Germain, somewhere at a corner of Rue Cuvier & Rue Jussieu. It was just like a golden bonbon dream… But well my digital chocolate lesson not actually about chocolate itself, but rather I invented how to create metallic foil effect in Photoshop. At least, I have never saw this effect made by somebody else… So, here you are… eat my choco!

1. First of all, for the taste of chocolate, I created just one piece with help of same old Layer Styles. And when I was satisfied with it I just multiplied to get 4 by 7 bar.

2. And now main purpose of this project – realistic metal foil. For years I was so foolish to despise Gradient Modes other, than regular Linear and maybe Radial… How unforgivingly stupid I was!!! I got to repeat…. STUPID! Anyway, I made square selection and started to fill it with… Diamond gradient in a Difference mode. After 6-8 chaotic draggs I applied Filter -> Stylize – Emboss with following parameters: Angle=130°, Height=2px, Amount=250% to have some crumpled paper effect.

3. In following steps I saved "crumpled paper" sample as Custom Brush shape. Named it "Foil". I changed my Custom Brush setting the way to make it as crazy as possible: highest Size and Angle Jitters, large amount of Scattering parameters.

4. Then I started to draw with Paint Brush in… of course, Difference mode. You can play it as long, as you want – it is addiction, it is just like caleidoscope… Wow! For the great fun, change your "Foil" Brush Size and Opacity. On a top of my "Foil" Layer I made colored Layer, with applied Cloud Filter to it, where Fore/Background colors are blue/gold. I setting Blend Mode of this Layer to Overlay to see underlying "Foil" Layer.

5. In the final steps added paper wrapper to my choco bar. I transformed my objects to make them look dimensional, added some texts, drop shadows, glows, etc. Bon Appetitte!

Thx to : http://www.photoshop3d.com/

Create Simple Cartoon Characters in Photoshop

The use of colourful vector art is a great way to create an accessible and friendly webpage. When done well it is possible to create a rich and vibrant art style which will capture the imagination. We walk you through the basics to get you going on Photoshop CS and newer.
Here’s the end result of this tutorial.

Exposure blending tutorial

After posting Getting the Exposure Right, I received a quite a few questions about how I achieved the HDR (High Dynamic Range) version of the mailbox photo (last photo in that article). This tutorial will walk you through the basics of creating the same look by hand. All you need is camera and photo editing software that supports layer masking (you can follow these steps in Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, and The GIMP, among others).

A little background: HDR is a type of image manipulation. The goal is to blend multiple exposures of the same scene into a single image in order to get a result that has more dynamic range than your camera is capable of recording. Typically this applies when you have uneven lighting in your scene as in the example photo.

Final HDR result—this is what we’re going for.

The first step in creating an HDR image is to shoot your scene multiple times at different exposure settings. A tripod comes in handy here. The idea is to get at least one frame with the correct exposure for each region of your scene. In this case, there are four regions I want to capture full detail in: the sunset, the clouds surrounding the sunset, the middle ground trees, and the mailboxes in the foreground. I started shooting with the exposure set for the mailboxes and then gradually decreased the exposure in steps of about 2/3 of a stop, taking a shot at each step, until I got a good exposure for the sunset. I ended up with about 10 frames but decided just to use the following four in the final image:

Exposures chosen for HDR blending.

The next step is to load these images up in your image editor of choice. Create a new image and stack each of these exposures in separate layers. You can go from darkest to brightest or brightest to darkest—whichever way you choose, keep them in order. I chose to put the darkest layer on top and the brightest foreground layer at the bottom of the stack.
Then I add masks to my top three layers so that they are hidden (the contents of the masks are black). This effectively removes the top three exposures from the image and lets the fourth, bottommost image show through. Now grab a largish brush with a soft edge and paint white onto the black areas of the masks where you want the associated image to show through.
Imagine you are looking down on a set of transparencies stacked one on top of the other. Where the mask is black, the layer beneath shows through. Where the mask is white, the image in that layer is what you will see. Gray portions of the mask blend the layers smoothly.
This step can be quite time consuming and you’ll find yourself going back and forth painting different portions of the masks on different layers to bring out more or less detail in your final photo. Start with a large, soft brush to quickly get to a rough draft. Later, switch to smaller brushes to make refinements.
The masks for this project ended up being quite complex. Here are the individually masked layers:

Layer 2 mask (one from bottom)
Layer 3 mask

Layer 4 mask (top)

The following images demonstrate how these masks combine together to achieve the final result:

Layer 1 (bottom) by itself
Layer 2 is added on top of that. Notice this layer was used to bring in detail in the clouds and to darken the street for additional contrast.

Layer 3 added. More cloud and tree detail.

Layer 4 added. Sunset detail. Final result.

This technique is time-consuming and difficult to master. A good way to ease yourself into this kind of manipulation is to try blending just two layers together with a single mask. That is much simpler than trying to juggle multiple masks. Two exposure masks are actually very useful in a number of situations. In fact, you don’t even need two separate exposures. This same technique is often used to simply blend an adjustment made to one layer with the layers beneath such that the adjustment doesn’t affect the entire layer. This technique can be used to adjust the contrast only in a portrait subject’s eyes, for example, or to apply localized sharpening or blurring.

thx to : John Watson ( http://photodoto.com/ )

Light Effect On A Model

Light Effect On A Model

Light is a cool subject to talk about. After reading some articles about light effect, I decided to write a tutorial showing how to create a very spectacular light effect around a model. Before that, I will show you a quick technique to retouch portrait and bring new look on it, step by step

Step 1: Open a new document, I used 800x600 pixels and look for a model photo on the internet, this is the one I used:

After downloading, place it on your document. Now we will start to retouch it!
Step 2: As you can see, it is a bit dark so we should make it brighter first. Duplicate your photo by pressing Ctrl-J and change its blending mode to Screen. Simple, right?

 It is now better. Merge down this layer donw by pressing Ctrl-E. After that, duplicate it again and go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and use a value of 4.5 pixels

Step 3: Change the blending mode to Overlay and merge it down. The model now looks wonderful!

 Step 4: Next we will add some light on her. Use the Pen tool and make some point around the dark areas of the model, don't need to be so exact

 Step 5: Convert this path into a selected area, you can save this area for later use by going to Select>Save Selection

Step 6: Create a new layer and go to Filter>Render>Clouds and Filter>Artistic>Plastic Wrap, just use the default values

Now change its blending mode to Color Dodge. Your photo may look a bit different:

Step 7: In the next steps, we will add light effect on the model. Use the Pen tool to draw some curves on her

 

Step 8: Reset your colors by pressing D and invert them by pressing X. Choose the Brush tool and go to Window>Brushes to open the Brushes panel. Pick a small brush (about 5 pixels) with 0% hardness and tick on Shape Dynamics. Create a new layer, choose the Pen tool again, right click and choose Stroke Path. Make sure you tick on the Simulate Pressure before pressing OK

A small curve, thinner at two ends appear like this:

Step 9: Repeat step 8 again but this time we also tick on the Scattering checkbox (make sure you make it on a new layer)

After choosing Stroke Path, we get

Now we can delete the path by pressing Enter. Double click on your two new created layers to open Layer Style dialog box. Use Outer Glow as following:

Use the Eraser tool to delete some light areas, the glowing light seems to surround her. After this step, we get:

Step 10: Make our light effect stronger by duplicate the "glowing dots" layer. Press Ctrl-I to invert its colors

Change the blending mode to Overlay. And this is the result:

This technique can be used in various ways but the principle is still the same. Hope you enjoy this tutorial.

thx to : http://www.9tuts.com/