Photoshop tutorials
Robots in Love - Making of (video)
5 hours of Photoshop compressed into 5 minute video.
Background music by Booroondook Quartet. Result: vladstudio.com/wallpaper/?robots_in_love. There is also realtime video (it's looong!) - robots_in_love_realtime.m4v (270 Mb).
Halloween on a Little Planet - making of (video)
Once again I did not forget to turn on screen recording while I created my latest wallpaper, Halloween on a Little Planet! I recommend that you:
- open video in full screen mode;
- turn off the lights;
- make music louder;
- enjoooy :-)
Lion - making of
This is my first video tutorial ever!
Do check out this video first, it shows all 3 hours of drawing in less than 3 minutes, and it's quite funny too :-)
If you would like to watch it in real time, download vladstudio_lion_makingof.m4v (256 Mb, 3 hours 12 minutes). Right now, I did not put my voice with commentaries, no time for that (as always! argh). I'll see if I can do it later - however, the video itself should be quite self-explanatory. You will probably want to fast-forward it often, but I decided not to cut the video myself, and publish full version, because everybody will want to skip different parts.
I hope you will find it useful - let me know your opinion in the comments! Thanks.
Spotted Eagle Ray - making of
I was inspired by a photo of beautiful eagle ray, and I wanted to create an artwork that includes the eagle ray underwater, and the sky above him, with stars shining.
So, the artwork will include the following parts:
- underwater;
- sky with stars;
- eagle ray.
Let's start with the water.
Set foreground color to saturated blue. Select Pen tool (P), and create a shape that fills bottom half of image, with wave on top, similar to shown here.
Design a colorful Northern Lights landscape
Let's start with mountains (though the particular order of steps is not important now). Switch to Pen tool (P), set foreground color to black, and start drawing mountains with short strokes" or pen (click - drag a little - release). "
Quick and easy way to add snowflakes to your design
Start with black document, 3-4 times bigger than desired final size. Fill with background color you need (blue for example).
The (hidden) power of Photoshop brush tool
In this micro tutorial, I will describe my favorite features of Adobe Photoshop Brush tool. To learn all features, you can simply open Brush palette (Window menu - Brushes), change each setting and try the result when you draw a stroke.
The first setting is Tip Shape. You can choose from pre-loaded shapes or you can create your own... more on that later!
Dolphins - making of
Let's start with underwater background. The easiest way to draw it is radial gradient. Set foreground color to lighter blue and background color to darker blue. Select Gradient tool, then select Radial on toolbar, then draw gradient from top-center of image to right-bottom (or left-bottom).
Socotra - making of interweaved lines
This is a micro-tutorial about drawing interweaving tree branches. I do not claim this is the best way :-) but it works well for me.
Sketchbook wallpapers - making of
In this simple tutorial, I will write how I made Sketchbook series of wallpapers. I wanted to draw small sheet of notebook paper on wooden table. To start, I found an appropriate stock image of wood texture from www.sxc.hu.
Water drops on a spider web - making of
Start with new document, fill background layer with solid color of your liking.
Wave texture background
I was asked how to create wave texture background that I made for one of my wallpapers. I wrote this tutorial from my answer because it might be useful for someone else. So, to start, we need horizontal stripes background. For that, we need a stripe pattern. Create new document with 4 pixels height (you can also try different size).
Fire Dragon - making of
Well the process of designing Fire Dragon wallpaper is not full of interesting tips and tricks. It was actually 24 hours of drawing with brushes of different sizes and colors. As always, to start, we need background. Set foreground to dark red, background to black. Select Gradient tool, choose Radial type, fill the document dragging the mouse from bottom to top of image.
Diving - making of
First step is to create blurred grass in the background. Set foreground color to dark green, background color to black. Then switch to gradient tool (G), make sure that current gradient is green-to-black, select Radial gradient (on top bar), then draw a big gradient from center to the edge of image.
Rainbows - making of
Hello! In this tutorial, I will show how I created the Rainbows wallpaper. First, create dark sky in the background. For that, set forecolor to dark blue and back color to black, switch to Gradient tool (G), change gradient type to Radial, and create gradient from bottom to top of document.
Vintage effect - PSD template file included!
I stumbled upon this short tutorial from Veerle, and it inspired me to create and publish template Photoshop file producing similar effect.
All you need to do is open this file in Photoshop, resize to meet your photo size, and then paste photo into target layer as shown here.
Siberian Winter - making of
This is a short tutorial about how to bring some night and mystery into your bright sunny photo. Here is the photo I took in the forest near my home. IMPORTANT NOTE - all steps below are true only for this very photo! This tutorial is only to describe general approach. Trust your eyes when applying effects.
Fast hair
In this short tutorial, I'll share the technique I discovered while trying to quickly draw a creature with hairy body. Ideally, you need Wacom and a lot of time - then the hair you draw will be very good indeed. However, I found that this technique is not bad too, and it's much faster.
So, to start with, create a shape of... something :-)
Patek Philippe Watch - making of
I think many people will agree that old hand watch mechanism are beautiful. And as you will find from this tutorial, it is not difficult to design them using only Photoshop tools!
Start with plan background, filled with color of your choice...
Missing Piece - making of
This tutorial is about Missing Piece wallpaper. The most important thing you need for good wallpaper is the idea ;-) So I came up with pencil sketch, which I then scanned and opened in Photoshop.
Eos - making of
As always, create new document :-) Fill it with solid color of your preference (dark blue for example).
Stitching - making of
This artwork was especially fun to do. I had clear idea of what I want to achieve, and used couple of Photoshop tricks to do that. To start, take your old jeans (new will not do :-) and scan them. Here is what I got in scanned image.
Old Venice - making of
This tutorial will show you one idea about how you can make your photo look old. As always, start with new image, fill background with solid color.
Underwater 2 - making of
Start with blank document. Fill background layer with gradient going from light blue to dark blue.
Autumn leaves - making of
This wallpaper has been made with custom-created brush. To start, we need a leaf. Here is a leaf I found in Interned. You can also bring a leaf from the street and scan it :-)
How to optimize Photoshop CS2/CS3 settings for icon design
Here are my thoughts about designing icons in Adobe Photoshop:
- many respected icon designers consider Illustrator better tool to design icons - http://blog.turbomilk.com/ . I do not own or know Illustrator, but I'm pretty good at Photoshop, and I found that it can be tweaked to create icons fast and easy too.
- the best way to design icons (even in small sizes) is vectors. In Photoshop, they are made with Shape and Pen tools. My personall approach is to create vectors in solid colors (one vector in each layer) and then apply various layer effects, such as gradients and strokes.
So, what can be done to make Photoshop the best icon - designing tool?
First of all, have a plug-in to save icon files from photoshop files, such as IconBuilder from http://iconfactory.com/software/iconbuilder/
It is a good idea to have template file to start with. IconBuilder comes with Essential folder, including some of such templates (first picture shows one of them).
Aquawave - making of
This wallpaper is pretty easy to do but there is one trick to achieve good results. The secret is to use combination of shapes, layer effects, and masks. So, as always, start with solid color.
Christmas Night - making of
Before you start reading this tutorial, I recommend making a big cup of coffee - it will be quite long :-)
So, to start, create new document (I made it 3200x2000 pixels) and fill background with solid black color.
Mont Saint Michel (Dark) Making Of
As always, start with new document and fill it with solid color.
Full Moon in The Midnight Forest - making of
Here we go! Create new document, fill background layer with dark blue.
OrangeIcons.com promo wallpaper - making of
For my new website, orangeicons.com, I decided to design a promo wallpaper, in brand orange color. Here is how.
Create new document, fill the first layer with solid orange color, and apply Gradient in layer effects (blend mode = overlay). Or, simply use Gradient tool to fill the layer.
Frosted - Making of
The very first step is to create the background gradient. Click the Create new" icon in Layers tab
Medusa - making of
This tutorial is quite simple but has some tricks. I made a photo of medusa and wanted to make it blueish, glowing and more unreal. (medusas are unreal creatures by themselves!)
Improve your digital photo in 1 second
I take a lot of digital photos, but I'm not professional photographer, and my photos often need improving. The most common problem for me is that a photo is too light. There are probably advanced techniques of configuring photo camera and adjusting the photo in Photoshop, but I dont really have time to study them. So I found an easy trick to make such photos better very fast. Lets take a photo shown on the right. It need to be a bit darker. You can adjust its levels (Ctrl-L) or simply apply Auto levels (Ctrl-Shift-L), but it doesnt always produces good results.
Duality - Making of
The DUALITY wallpaper was inspired by an amazing fractal freeware called ContextFree - http://www.ozonehouse.com/ContextFree/ . After some tweaking I produced the fractal shown here (image size reduced).
Condensed - Making Of
My warmest greetings! On this page, I will show you how easy it is to create photo-realistic image of waterdrops with only Adobe Photoshop and a mouse. Let's start with new document (I usually set size to 3200x2400 pixels) and fill it with dark-blue.
Cant Sleep: Making of
Start with new image, and fill it with very dark blue color. Then, with very large (800-1000 px) Soft Round Brush, add a bit of black here and there. Then, apply blur (filters > blur > gaussian > 30-40 px) to smooth the background.
![[!] Please Wait animation](https://files.vladstudio.com/photoshoptutorials/thumb8.jpg)
[!] Please Wait animation
For a serious interface project, I needed to create a nice Please Wait animation. Here is the result - I think it turned out quite nice. Below you'll find that it is very easy to do.
Default layer effects are evil
This very short tutorial is to express my belief in the fact that default layer effects settings in photoshop are really bad. Each setting (bland mode, size, angle, etc) should be always carefully tuned to fit into general style of your design. Shown left is 2 text layers with 2 effects, drop shadow and bevel. Here I simply turned them on...
Words look wiser on old paper
I do love old things. My house is decorated with 15 century maps and photos of Eugene Atget. Below you will find how to easily put text on old paper. Start with the text and background.
![[!] Zoomed Pixels](https://files.vladstudio.com/photoshoptutorials/thumb1.jpg)