Photoshop Tips-- Special Effects

Special Effects

Jarrett's Blood Splatter Tutorial

Saufnase's Tutorial on Creating Fancy Streaks

Saufnase's Tutorial on How to Colorize an Image in 20 Minutes

darylick's Quick n' Easy Cigarette Smoke

First, a few observations about smoke from cigarettes, cigars etc. versus exhaled smoke

Smoke rising from a lit end of a cigarette will have a bluish cast where exhaled smoke will not.
Smoke rising from a cigarette will follow a stream near the source and branch off slightly forming other streams with the center of the stream being slightly denser with some diffusion as you go away from the center(s).
Exhaled smoke will be more uniformly dispersed.

Create the smoke:

Create a blank layer over your source pic.
Choose a bluish white color.
Using either the pencil or the brush draw some wavy, thin lines rising from the cigarette. Generally follow the same path, sometimes overlapping.
Do a slight gaussian blur. Not much is needed as you will be doing steps 3 & 4 again or maybe twice and the blurring is cumulative.
Repeat steps 3 & 4. You may want to slightly change the blur, the color and/or draw some swirls
Repeat as needed, adjust the opacity and season to taste.

modified_dangler's Blizzard

Make a rectangular selection on a new layer
Set foreground/background to black & white
Run filter > render > clouds
Run filter > pixellate > mezzotint > medium to coarse grain
Enlarge the area to fill where you want the snow to be
Select > color range & delete the black parts
Run filter > blur > motion blur > about 10-20 pixels depending on the effect you want
Lower the opacity to 35-50% and repeat 3-4 times at different blur angles until it looks good

Sepia Tones

2005-02-05 03:17:45 PM Stuv
Question for everyone: Is there any way to convert a color picture to sepia tone in PS?

Thanks in advance!

2005-02-05 03:21:54 PM oddballgeek
http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/photoshop/ht/apssepia.htm
short rundown, it'll start you off.

i suggest not simply desaturating but applying a channel mixer (found in the image/adjustment section). you can then mix the three colour channels into a nice black and white image, having more control over that.

then follow the tutorial to make it sepia. it's fairly simple.

Lightning

2005-12-15 02:05:12 AM sofashark [TotalFark]

Here's a quick and dirty way to do lightning.

Select default colors (ie black and white)
Apply the Clouds filter.
Apply the Difference Clouds filter.
Depending on what your foreground color was set to, you may need to invert the colors.
You should start to see lightning like streaks in the image. Bring them out by squeezing the levels to the lower end of the scale
Voila! Lightning. You can pick the bits that you like and erase the rest, then add all sorts of colors and glows.
Profit

2005-12-15 02:25:03 AM Brian O'Blivion [TotalFark]

Here's another alternative/addition to sofashark's technique.

Go to the brush tool. Set it for 1 pixel, pure white.
Create a new layer.
Go layer > layer style > outer glow and set these parameters:
blend mode: screen or hard light
opacity 75%
noise 20%
colour: pick a pale blue or purple
technique: softer
spread 15 %
size 9

Leave the other pameters alone and start drawing zig zag squiggles. Voila! More lightning! Now you can draw lightning where you want it, erase it, move it round, come back and draw more later, etc. Hope this is some help.

Text Effects

unknown
G'day, I was wondering how to put a border/outline around text and also I was wondering how to put patterns in text? (e.g The Fark Logo) Last but not least... How do I put a picture in text a la Peteykins?

2004-04-03 04:31:01 PM cranberryzero
Patterns and lines are both done the same way, with the layer styles setting in ps...go to layer styles, select stroke and then select your color and width. same thing for putting patterns or gradients over text etc. you can just go to layer styles select gradient overlay, select your gradient or create one, select opacity and angle etc.

2004-04-03 04:32:26 PM Peteykins
cave man: Are you using Photoshop? I created a text layer and then converted the text to a selection. Then I just pasted the picture into the selection in a new layer. It's pretty easy. As for outlines, your layer palette has a drop-down thingy for layer styles at the bottom left, one of which is "outline."

2004-04-03 04:36:48 PM cranberryzero
and to put a picture within text, you'll want to create a text layer mask...once you select the text tool, there's an option in the upper left hand corner that has 2 options: one it a solid looking T and an invisible looking T...the invisible looking one is the text layer mask. select the text layer mask, make sure you have in a separate layer or a separate picture the picture you want to use for the text pattern. Now that you have the text layer mask active, just type over the pattern picture you want to use. You should see the text just shows up as an outline. once you're done typing the text, switch to the layer with the picture keeping the text outline...copy and paste to wherever and you're done! Voila!

2004-04-03 04:40:45 PM Baxterslate
One of many ways way to do picture within text:

Type out the text:
Command click the type layer so the text shape is selected:
Throw away the text layer as you just needed the shape:
go to the picture layer that you want to appear in the text and arrange the selection to where you want it to appear:
Do "Select" "Inverse" and then press delete

Voila, a picture in the shape of text.

2004-04-03 04:47:43 PM mumbling2myself
My favourite way to do the picture/text is to make a text layer, put the image you want inside on top of it, and hit ctrl-g (or option-g for you macaroons). This creates a clipping mask, but allows you nudge the image on top of the text for optimum positionizing.

Another plus to my technique is that you can go back and change the font, size, etc of your text and still have the picture there. (My technique is awesome... everyone should do everything my way!)