Tutorial Photoshop

Giving a subject a dispersion or splatter effect can create an incredibly dynamic image. The best part is, its very quick and easy to do with a few Photoshop brushes, but the end result can look very complex as if it took you hours to create. In this tutorial, Im going to walk you through 3 easy steps to create this dispersion effect.Heres a look at what well be creating.

WeGraphics members will want to grab this brush set for the tutorial:Splatters Volume 2For non-WeGraphics members a good free alternative can be found here:Splatters Brush SetStep 1After a little bit of searching I found this photo ofa guy jumping in the airbyCamera Eye Photography. This is a great photo for this effect because the subject is in motion. So our dispersion effect will help to enhance that motion.Copy and paste the photo into a new PS document. I sized mine down to 2500px wide. Using the Quick Selection Tool (W), I made a selection of the guy and copied and pasted him to a new layer. I then loaded the selection again, and with the background layer selected, I chose (Edit | Fill | Content Aware).

Content Aware did a pretty good job of removing the guy from the background. There is still a silhouette visible, but thats okay, well be covering most of it up. We just want some of the background color to show through. If youre extra picky, you can remove the silhouette with the Clone Stamp Tool (S).Step 2Lets go ahead and duplicate the guy layer one time. So you should have two layers that have our guy jumping. Select the bottom most guy layer and press (Cmd+T) to transform him. You want to stretch the guy horizontally.

I roughly selected his arm and leg and moved them back to the edge of the non-distorted guy in the layer above. The idea here is that were giving a color area for our splatters to pick up via a mask.Lets go ahead and create that mask for the distorted guy layer. Select the distorted guy layer and click the layer mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Fill the mask with solid black.

Now use the splatter brushes to reveal portions of the layer by clicking the mask using solid white as the foreground color.For the top non-distorted guy layer, we also want to create a layer mask. But this time we want to leave it solid white, and use a black splatter brush to remove portions of the guy to reveal some of the background.

Pretty easy, huh?Step 3For the final touches lets add a bit of vignette and highlight. But before we do that I took one large dark splatter and placed it on a layer behind the guy. I basically just wanted to see some light splatters that fell beyond the distorted guys layer mask.

For the vignette, lets switch over to Quick Mask Mode (Q), and choose a very large soft black brush and click once in the center of the image.

Switching out of QMM youll see that we have a selection that excludes the very center of the image. The selection is also nicely feathered due to our soft black brush.

Now create a new Levels Adjustment Layer above all other layers, and adjust as follows.

For the final touch, lets add a highlight. Create a new layer above the guy layer, and set its blending mode to Opacity. Now with a soft white brush make 1 or two clicks over the guys head and torso. You may need to reduce the opacity of this layer down to 50% or 60% depending on how hot the highlight appears.

I hope this quick tutorial has inspired some ideas on how to use PS brushes to create interesting dispersion effects in your artwork. Experiment and have fun!

Photoshop CS3 Tutorial: The Erase Background Tool. Removing complex backgrounds.ivanna20 Jan 08photoshop,tutorialsThe erase background tool is powerful, but good results are only possible if you understand how it works. In this tute, we will look at all the options in the tool and use them to extract backgrounds from our images.The tool works best if the background is all a similar colour, for example, someone against a solid colour or a bright sky.1I have deliberately chosen a difficult image, as the girl has flyaway hair that i want to keep.

2From the toolbox, select the background eraser tool3When the tool is selected, the controlpalettewill display the default settings. Select the 3rd button,Sampling:Foreground SwatchThis will only erase the foreground colour. Set thetoleranceto 25%Make sureProtect Foreground Colouris ticked.Selecting the optionSampling:Foreground Swatchallows you to sample the background colour most prominent in your image, so the eraser will ignore contrasting colour pixels.

Choosing toProtect Foreground Colourallows you to sample a foreground colour to protect from the eraser.4Now we need to sample the background colour to erase. Select the background swatch in your toolbox, and double click to bring up the colour panel.

5Select the background colour with the eyedropper, right click to select a 51X51 average. This will make sure that the area sampled will be larger than just one pixel, so many shades of light blue will be included instead of just a singular blue pixel.Next, select the foreground to protect (we will start with the girls hair) I will use a 11X11 average for this. Notice the colours on my background and foreground swatches.

6Choose a nice big size for the brush. Use CTRL (CMD) and the bracket keys({}) to change the brush size.

7Think of the brush as a sort of magic wand tool, that erases selections based on the colour it clicks on. The more a colour is prersent under the radius of the brush, the more photoshop will think it is the background colour, and erase it.

8You can now get nearer the edge, just remember that you want more of the colour to be erased, less of the protected colours, under the brush!

9Notice that to select the more fiddly edges, I am positioning the centre of the brush on top of the light blue,notthe hair.10These settings will remain true for similar areas, as soon as we get to areas with different colurs, for example the girls blouse, we need to select different colours to protect use the eyedropper to select the new foreground colour, right click to select a 51X51 pixel average.11You will need to change foreground and background colours often as you work through the image.

12Now open another image, perhaps an outdoor image like a beach or busy street.Paste the selection of the girl above it, resize to fit and get rid of any stray white areas with a soft brush eraser.13To tidy up any stray white edges around the hair, we will darken some parts of the imageSelect theBurn Tool

14From theRangedropdown options, selecthighlightsand an exposure of 25% or thereabouts.

15Now go over the edges of the hair to darken (burn) any stray highlights or white halos on the edges.

16The finishing touches:Image>adjustments>levels to increase tonal contrast on the background to match the girl image. This is a quick and dirty fix, As this tute is about the background eraser tool, not levelsPosition the girl so her eyes are aligned with the horizon, to make the perspective credible.Youre done!

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