Grunge Crab

This is a grunge version of a picture of a crab I found. To make this, the tutorial required lots of Adjustment Layers including Curves, Black and White, Levels, and the lovely High Pass. It also required two Layer Masks (one Hide All, and one Reveal All). Once again, only one High Pass was required thanks to the wonderful quality of the original picture.

Here's the original picture:

Aaannnddd . . . here's the link to the tutorial:

http://www.tricky-photoshop.com/grunge-portrait/

Contrast Poster

The following are different versions of the same contrast poster that I made for fun:

The Duck

The Grunge Duck

And...

The Dark Grunge Duck

Here is the original picture that I used:

The link to the text tutorial is as follows:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/04/50-stunning-photoshop-text-effect-tutorials/

The picture is of a female Mallard duck, a species that I'm sure many of you are familiar with. However, I wonder how many of you ever noticed the beautiful stripes of feathers on the female aspect of the species which many consider plain. That was actually my whole reason for choosing this picture (it really exhibits the feather stripes well, even if it is not a very good quality photograph).

The state I used for The Duck was high pass, while the other two (The Grunge Duck, and The Dark Grunge Duck) were both varying stages of the grunge effect.

I chose this particular text tutorial because I thought it was a nice simple effect that would add a little contrast to the soft edges of the duck. Some troubles I encountered were when I was trying to sharpen the duck image. For some reason it didn't really want to cooperate, and I kept making the wrong colors stand out too much. In the end I figured out it was because I was using Overlay, when Soft Light would have worked better. Also, I had some difficulty with color blending, as many of the colors I chose were off by just a little bit. Finally, I just added a bit more white or black and the problem resolved itself.

High Pass

Here's an image I made using a tutorial that is meant to look like an over-processed picture.

Here's the original picture:

The techniques I used include the lovely High Pass filter, Desaturation, and the Noise filter. Happily I only had to use the high pass filter once because my original picture (from Google) had a pretty high definition.

The tutorial link is as follows:

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/overprocessed-photo/

Event Poster

An event poster...

Graffiti Text

This is a Graffiti style text I made using a tutorial.

Here's the link for the tutorial:

http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/video-tutorials/yt/88wMjgfEFLM/

Wood Burn Text

This is an example of a Wood Burn style text made using a tutorial (on Photoshop).

Here's the link for the tutorial:

http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/video-tutorials/yt/fUJxsdmR-Ik/

Western Text

Some Western Style text from a tutorial.

Here's the link for the tutorial:

http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/video-tutorials/yt/GxHNYq33XQI/

Neon Light Effect

This is a neon light effect created by a tutorial.

Here's the link to the tutorial:

http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/Photoshop-blog/neon-text-effect-photoshop/#

Fake Movie Poster

Here's the link to make the magic ball ("Powerball"):

http://10steps.sg/tutorials/photoshop/create-powerball-effect-for-movie-poster/

Here's the original pictures I used (including the fireball I used:

Composition with Brushes

This is a composition with brushes that I made. It took FOREVER, but now it's done, so it's all good. Unless you want to read a big long list of things that I don't know the actual name for, skip the next paragraph, it's not really important.

The techniques I used are tracing with a pen tool, refine edge, quick selection, Dodge and Burn (for carving), creating an interesting background out of a colored background and a picture, cutting out an Aurora Borealis by erasing the edges, adding a layer mask to a layer, creating a group, using the Polygonal Lasso tool, brushing the outside of the selection, adding blurs to objects to add depth, adding flares with a white brush, adding flares with multiple other brush colors, adding some stardust by getting rid of the background using Screen and Levels adjustment, and finally adding more gradients to make it more interesting.

The hardest part was probably the one where I had to figure out what a Pass Through blending mode was, it turns out you can only find that blending mode if you create a group of layers. Otherwise it is not available (the person didn't say anything about that in the tutorial I used).

If you're interested, here's the tutorial:

http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/tutorials/photoshop/create-beautiful-lighting-effects/

Annnd here's the original pictures that I used: