Bringing Backgrounds To Life Part 1

OK my first tutorial for quite a while now, after successfully securing a place in university I am ready to start posting again whilst looking for a decent host for my new website design (any help appreciated) to get me back into the swing of things I am going to do a relatively easy tutorial to start with, but one I think is very useful when making any type of image that looks a bit plain and boring, the best way to make these sorts of images look better is to simply apply a texture over the top of your background or specific part of the document (e.g. Text) and it is much easier than you may think

Applying a Texture to a Background.

1.First of all below we have the plain and boring background which I made with neutral colours and a simple lighting effect (Filter > Render > Lighting Effects) in the middle of the canvas.



2.Next we simply open up the texture we want to use and drag and drop it on the background we are using (make sure the texture layer shows “Layer 0” or something similar and not “Background” if this is the case double click the layer and then click OK)



3.Next position the texture on the canvas so you get the desired effect and then press CTRL + SHIFT + U this combination will desaturate the selected layer / texture



4.Now set the layer style to “Overlay” as shown below and adjust the opacity accordingly to get the effect (depth of detail) that you want.



5.And now the plain and boring background is brought to life by simply adding a texture which adds depth to the image.



This tutorial is the first part of a series that will explain how else you can bring your images/backgrounds to life, sign up to the RSS feed to receive updates when these tutorials are released,

The texture used in this tutorial is available HERE along with 3 other paper style textures,

If you have had any problems with this tutorial and would like some help then don’t hesitate to contact me either by leaving a comment below or e-mailing me at: stevie489@googlemail.com

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New Website Design

As some of you may know the reason for the lack of tutorials lately is due to me completing my exams and working on a new design, well I am happy to say I have finished my exams now and I have the first screenshot of the new website design for you to comment on, click "Read More..." to see the screenshots

Screenshot 1 - Home:



Screenshot 2 - Your Tutorials:



These are the main pages of the website, so feel free to comment on them and offer any feedback and/or criticism you may have so that I can improve them,

Thanks,
Steve

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I Need Your Ideas?

I am currently completing all of my coursework for my A-Levels and then will be starting revision for my exams, this is where you come in!

Doing coursework etc... doesn't leave me much time to keep on top of the website so...
If you have any ideas for a cool tutorial which I could do, or you have one that you have written yourself then either leave me a comment below or send me an email at stevie489@googlemail.com and then I will either create one or upload the one that you have written and leave all credit to you, if this goes well I will do this in the future as I think it will be the best way to get more and more tutorials on this website to help all of the Photoshop users that need it!

Hope to hear from you soon,
Steve

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Simple Web 2.0 Logo

This tutorial is very simple to complete but still gives a nice finish to a cool Web 2.0 style logo for a website etc…only takes around 5 minutes to complete and shows some good techniques which can be used in the future when designing other Web 2.0 Style objects.

Step 1: First of all open up a new document size around 500 x 500 and the background filled with black.

Step 2: Now choose the Type/Text Tool and write out the name of your website or the word you are going to use (I am using the word Photoshop as I normally do and the font “Century Gothic”), when it is written resize to the desired size and put it in the centre of the canvas as shown below:



Step 3: Now simply double click on the text layer and the blending options menu will appear use the settings as shown below to achieve the right outcome:

Outer Glow:



Gradient: (Other colours can be used, play around with different colours until you
get the ones your looking for)



Stroke:



When all the blending options are added click “OK” and you should end up with something similar to below:



Step 4: To finish just add some finishing touches like some light glistens for example and a reflection as shown how to do HERE and you will have an end product as shown below:

Finished Image:



If you have had any problems with this tutorial then don't hesitate to contact me and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

The PSD file is also available if anyone wants to know how to do something or what something looks like then email me at: stevie489@googlemail.com and I will happily mail it back.

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Using The Pen Tool - The Basics

This tutorial is more for the beginners of Photoshop on how to use the pen tool and what you can do with it, although some more advanced with Photoshop may also find this useful, it is just a quick tutorial today as I am currently working on a new WordPress layout for this website so I am quite occupied with that, but I will still be doing tutorials every other day whilst I am doing this.

Step 1: First of all find the image that you want to use in this tutorial; I have used a picture of a Buggati Veyron and open it up in Photoshop, now choose the pen tool on the left toolbar (as shown below) but before we use it I am going to explain what it does and the benefits of using it:

Original Image:


Pen Tool



The pen tool allows you to make “paths” which can be used to cut out certain parts of images or so that you can make a range of different shapes.

Advantages of Using the Pen Tool

The pen tool offers more flexibility over other tools (e.g. Polygonal Lasso Tool) because the pen tool not only creates anchor points but when you have clicked where you want the anchor point to be, if you hold down the button and drag you can create a curved shape which can be used to draw around curved objects.

Step 1 (Continued…): Now back to step 1, with the pen tool selected at the top of the window you will see the below toolbar which shows the settings of the pen which can be used, if you hover over each setting it will explain what they do, for now use the settings below and you can experiment whenever you want to:



Step 2: Now zoom into your image and click on the canvas around the edge of your chosen object, this is the starting point of your selection now when you click at the next point in your object notice that it makes another small square (You might notice you can’t click on the adjustment bar ends. That is, until you hold the CTRL key. When you hold the CTRL key, your cursor will change to a solid white arrow, the Direct Selection Tool. Now you can click on the adjustment bar ends and adjust the curve of your selection. Now try holding the ALT key. You should get a two-sided arrow when you mouse over your adjustment ends, the Convert Point Tool. Click and drag to adjust only one aspect of your curve. This is how you make sharp edges with your Pen Path.) Now keep clicking around the edge of your chosen object and remember if you want a curved line, click and hold and then drag in the direction of the curve.



Step 3: When you get the hang of it, it is really easy to use, once you have gone around the whole outer edge of your object join the starting point and ending point together, you will now have a “Path”

Step 4: Now right click in the path and choose “Make Selection” as shown below,



Step 5: This will bring up a menu showing some different settings, but leave this as default as they don’t need to be changed.



Step 6: With your path now selected you will see the crawling ants around the edge of your image, now when you choose the move tool you can see that your selection can be moved around etc…Now open up a new background in a new document and simply drag and drop your selection into it as shown below:

Crawling Ants:


Drag And Drop:


Step 7: You can now play around with different shadows and options to get just the right look and once I had done this I had something that looked similar to below:
(This final image does look rubbish but that was not the point of this tutorial, the point was to show you that there are other ways to extract an image rather than using the eraser or magic wand tool, if I had more time i would have made this final image look better, but it will do to illustrate my point)

Finished:



This tutorial was just the basics of using the Pen Tool but there are lots of other different things which it can be used for, so go and play around with it and see what you can create.

If you have any problems with this tutorial then don’t hesitate to leave me a comment or email me at: stevie489@googlemail.com and I will help you as much as I can.

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