Badge Buttons in photoshop

In this tutorial I’ll be showing you how to create your own shiny buttons that you can stick different pictures on.

Step 1

Create a new document (I’ve chosen 600 by 420 pixels) and fill with a dark radial gradient – I’ve used the colours #2e2e2e and #1b1b1b.

Step 2

Create a new layer and select the elliptical marquee tool and make a fixed size selection in the middle of the document 180 pixels wide and 180 pixels high.

Step 3

Select the gradient tool and set your foreground colour to #c21e18 and background to #831212. Fill the selection with a radial gradient.

Step 4

Now apply the following layer styles by right clicking the layer and clicking blending options.

Result:

Step 5

Next we are going to be adding a shine effect to our badge, so on a new layer select the area of the button by going Ctrl + Click the layer’s thumbnail.

Step 6

Select the gradient tool again and set it on radial. Apply a gradient to the top right of the selection from white to transparent so you have something like this.

Step 7

Set the blend mode to Overlay and the opacity to 80%.

Step 8

Now set the red layer’s fill to 0% – this means that you can not see the red, however because the opacity is at 100% the layer styles are still there.

Step 9

Find a picture (maybe of some one or some thing you know / like) and stick it in behind this button layer. I’ve just chosen to stick a previous tutorial’s outcome in. Make sure that you cover the entire of the button layer styles (you might have to enlarge your image if its quite small by going Edit > Transform > Scale).

Step 10

Because my image I put in was square the and the button is round we have some overlapping areas, to get rid of these we want to select the area of the button (like before – Ctrl + Click the layers thumbnail) and invert the selection (Select > Inverse) and hit delete (make sure you have the image layer selected).

Step 11

Here are some other buttons – play around with the opacity levels on the shine and layer style settings to get the right balance for the image.

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Photo Retouching – Skin Photoshop Tutorial

This will be our first tutorial on the subject of re-touching a photograph in photoshop. We will be working on a photo of a model and using a few techniques to smooth and even out the skin.

Photo re-touching is a fine art used mainly in the media for magazines etc, that doesn’t mean though, that we cant get good results fairly easily using a few photoshop techniques.
The starting photo we will be using :

The first technique we will be using is the clone stamp tool :

You use this tool by holding down ‘alt’ , selecting an area of the skin that is unblemished but near to the blemish so the skin tone is similar. Click on the clear skin, let go of ‘alt’ and click over the blemish – this will replace it with the area you ‘alt’ clicked with:

Have a play around with this, zoomed in to the image and go around removing the big blemish’s.
Once you have removed them, duplicate the layer you are working on and click Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.
Blur this layer by around 0.6 pixels :

Now staying on that layer and selecting the eraser brush, delete around the eyes and lips so these stay sharp :

Next, take the opacity of the layer down slightly, (right click on the layer, select blending options) :

Now we will create an adjustment layer, on your layer pallete window click this button :

And choose ’selective colour’
This step is a bit harder to explain as you will need to play with the settings by eye, these are the settings used in this example :

Once that’s done you should have something like :

As you can see from this comparison, a few simple touches can improve the skin texture quite a bit:

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lighting text effect in Photoshop

Start by opening Photoshop and creating a new image. For this example, I chose dimensions of 200x200 pixels. Make a selection. Anything will do, you can use text (like I did) or make a square or ellipse. After you have a selection, fill it with a solid color. (If you used text, it should already be filled).

Go to the Layers Palette. Rename the layer with your filled object Base by right-clicking it and selecting Layer Options. Hold down Ctrl (Mac: Command) and click on the Base layer to load it as a selection. Switch to the Channels Palette and create a new channel by clicking .

Hit Alt+Backspace (Option+Delete) to fill your selection with white. Next, go Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and choose a radius of 12 pixels (with a bigger/smaller image you will need a bigger/smaller radius). Then, Gaussian Blur it again at half the radius you used before (i.e. 6). Now, let's get rid of those jaggies that form on the outside of the selection. Hit Ctrl+Shift+I (Command+Shift+I) to invert your selection and hit delete.

Go back to the Layers Palette and click on Base to select the layer again. Now hold CtrlBase to load your original selection. Then, go to (Command) and click Filter>Render>Lighting Effects If an alert pops up asking you to about rendering or rasterizing the layer, click OK. The Lighting Effects window will pop up and give you many options that you can play around with. First change the Texture Channel to Alpha 1. Now it's up to you to pick options that suit the effect you want. If you want to add more lights, click the light bulb button. By clicking the image to the left, you can see what options I used.

You could stop now if you want, but we can always improve, right. Let's add a drop shadow to make it look a little more realistic. Go to the Layers Palette and right-click the Base layer and choose Blending Options. I used the default drop shadow and a blue outer glow with a blur of 10 pixels.

For a more plastic-like look hold Ctrl (Command) and click on Base in the Layers Palette to load the selection. Go to Filter>Artistic>Plastic Wrap I used the following settings: Highlight 4, Detail 15, Smoothness 10.

This last step will allow you to play with the range of colors used in your image. Hit Ctrl+M (Command+M) to bring up the Curves window. Try clicking and dragging the line around to produce a nice effect. You can click the image to the left to see what I did. I also added a gray radial gradient to color in the background on a layer beneath the Base.

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Create a Realistic Nebula Scene From Scratch

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create a realistic nebula scene from scratch in Photoshop. We will be using technques such as the Pen Tool, various filters for texture rendering, layer blending and some dynamic brushes.
I would also like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very happy new year and all the best for 2009! Thanks very much for visiting my blog and hope to see you again next year!
Here is a preview of the final result:

OK let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1200×800, fill the background layer with black colour. Make a new layer on top of the background layer and name it “Nebula Outline”.
Hit the “P” key to select the Pen Tool and make sure the “Paths” option is selected. I won’t go into explaining how to use the Pen Tool in this tutorial, but if you haven’t used it before, I have a post here with some links of the basics of Pen Tool.
Draw a random, irregular shape as shonw below on the “Nebula Outline” layer:

Step 2

Still on the “Nebula Outline” layer and the Pen Tool selected, right click on the path and choose “Make Selection”:

Apply the following settings: (I used 25 pixel feather radius because I would like the selection to be as smooth as possible)

Your path will now become a selection with 25 pixel feather radius:

Step 3

Go to Filter > Render > Cloud and render some cloud, with White foreground colour and Black background colour.
Hit Ctrl + L to bring up the level tool, apply the following settings:

Using the level tool we can adjust the input level of different colour channels. Your image will now look like this:

Step 4

Now we can some depth the Nebula. To do this, create a new layer called “nebula overlay”, use the Clone Stamp Tool with the following settings:

Hold down the Alt key + Left Click to define a Clone Source, cloud some cloud from the previous layer.
Because we used a reletively lower opacity and flow, you will see the difference between each cloud:

Merge the two layer together and name the merged layer “Nebula”.

Step 5

Nebula doesn’t only consist of cloud, there are also some small particles and dusts inside. Now we’re going add them in.
Duplicate the “nebula overlay” layer once and name this layer “particles”. Go to Filter > Sketch > Photocopy and apply the following settings:

Then go to Filter > Sketch > Chrome and apply the following settings:

Change the layer blending mode to “Color Dodge” and set the opacity to 80%.
The result so far will look like this:

Optional: you can duplicate this particles layer a couple of time if you feel like add more paricles onto the cloud.

Step 6

Now we can add a bit motion into the image. Duplicate the “Nebula” layer once and put the duplicated layer above the “Nebula” layer. Go to Filter > Blur > Radial Blur and apply the following settings:

Then go to Filter > Distort > Ocean Ripple and apply the following settings:

Change the layer blending mode of this layer to “Overlay” with an opacity of 30%. You image will now look like this:

Step 7

Create a new layer called “Star”, grab a 9px round circle brush, and apply the following brush dynamics:
Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Noise

Paint over the “Star” layer as the image shown below:

Optional: To add some light glow and softness, you can duplicate the “star” layer once, and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur and apply the following settings:

Step 8

Create a layer called “Colour Overlay” and set the blending mode to “Color”, then simply grab a big round brush (300px) and choose some nice, space-feeling colour and paint!
You can also adjust the opacity and the flow of the brush for some colour depth. Hint: after painting colour, try duplicate this layer a couple of times and see what result that brings you.
Here is my result so far:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! The rest is left upon your own creativity.
Here is my final image for this tutorial: (I simply erase some portions of the nebula cloud and add a shining planet to it!)

Hope you enjoy this tutorial and if you have any questions, just drop me a comment.
Thanks very much and have a wonderful and colourful new year!

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