Day 180: Grunge Skater

The instructions on the tutorial were jacked up once you got to fixing the skater. I also didn't care for the background grunge technique they used so I made my own.

Tutorial link

Day 179: Getty Garden Watercolor

Here is a faux watercolor effect of a picture I took at the J Paul Getty Museum in Malibu. The effect consisted of four layers:

Background: Normal
Layer 1: Filter- CUTOUT Blending Mode: LUMINOSITY
Layer 2: Filter- DRYBRUSH Blending Mode: SCREEN
Layer 3: Filter- MEDIAN Blending Mode: SOFTBRUSH

The background is a simple grass texture set to EXCLUSION and a low opacity.

Tutorial link

Day 178: Watercolor Serra

A really simple effect. I created a simple canvas texture as a base. I found an old paper texture and set the blending mode to multiply I downloaded a set of watercolor brushes and went to town on a layer mask over the image of the school I took. Although simple the overall look is effective.

Tutorial link

Day 177: Roy's Grunge Sign

Cool Route 66 sign. I grunged it up.

Day 176: Poster Design

I spent almost two hours on this one. This was way more involved and intricate than I thought. Part of the time was spent find the right images and then getting the dang text to work. I really like the torn page effect. I will undoutably use that effect somewhere else.

Tutorial Link

Day 175; Brushed Metal 3D

I'm still really new to the 3D features in Photoshop. I'm intrigued by the possibilities but hampered by my lack of knowledge. Perhaps on the KelbyOnline training classes will help. The picture in the middle is a Chinese statue and the flourishes on the edges are merely brushes I had from other designs.

Tutorial link

Day 174: Wood Texture from Scratch

This texture was created using a a simple render:fiber then I liquified some of the lines to create variations and knot holes. The lighting was thrown in to create a more modeled look. Not shabby.

Tutorial link

Day 173: Crappy Tutorial turned spiffy

I went into this tutorial knowing it wasn't really strong. I had intended to just blow this off since I was so busy with the CCTE training class but then I found an old paper texture and added the swirl background. I had to change the tutorial quite a bit to get this effect.

Tutorial link

Day 172: Puzzle Charlie

I applied a puzzle pattern over the image and took forever cutting out the individual puzzle piece and border. I love the original picture so the time it was still fun.

Tutorial link

Day171: Glass Text

Interesting effect. I originally did it with the word GLASS which looked better than the DAY 171. I like the cut out elliptical shape at the bottom of the lettering.

Tutorial Link

Day 170: Quick Paper Texture

It is what is is... how profound was that?!

Tutorial link

Day 169: Pink Lady

This started out rather interesting and then became tedious. The shapes too way too long and I didn't even do the triangles, and hexagons. Meh.

Tutorial link

Day 168: The Doctor is in

This was a fun one to work on although it took waaaaaaaay longer to do than I planned. I extracted the background from the image and then did a million other things... way too long to explain but fun. I really like the 70's look of of the font!

Tutorial link

Day 167: Retro Metal Grunge

The metal effect with the individual rivets was time consuming and I should have layered the metal differently to create a more realistic effect. However, I love the texture in the background and the splattered painted effect.

For the finishing touches I added a small vignette to darken the edges, radial white to transparent gradient set to overlay in the center to dull the text, a gradient map set from magenta to yellow

Tutorial link.

Day 166: Grunge Border semi-HDR

Here is one of the freakiest things I've seen during the daytime. This photo was taken at creepy shack near a cow pen in the middle of Neveda. The "rape shack" was adorned in cow bones, shotgun shell garland and a bicycle with cow horns. I added a border, tweaked with the edges and applied a high pass filter screen over the original.

Interesting.

Day 165: Blue Plasma Webs

Weird.

Nuff said.

Tutorial link.

Day 164: Neon Text

Three text layers:
1. Gradient overlay, inner shadow with inverted cone contour, and outerglow
2. Gradient overlay, gaussian blur
3. Gradient overlay, huge gaussian blur

Top layer is a simple render cloud set to 30% opacity and soft light.

Cool.

Tutorial link

Day 163: 3D Space Text

Second attempt using the Repousse feature of CS5. This was a much simpler effect but I had a lot of fun blending two different space images together to create the background. The rivets on the text are a bit heavy but I enjoyed the 3D process more on this one than the last despite the simple grey extruded look. I can see more of the potential of this feature.

Tutorial link

Day 162: 3D Water Text

This was my first attempt at using the Repousse feature of CS5. It was way more challenging than I thought. The rendering of the final ray trace took way too long for my computer to do. This lesson taught me that I need more RAM for my computer. :)

Tutorial link

Day 161: Neon Flames

I created an interesting flame texture using a really cool fractal generator one of my students turned me onto (flame). I blending one of the images I created with this generator with a photo I took in Vegas. Interesting effect overall.

Day 160: Vintage Alien

Here's yet another picture from ymy NV road trip. Just outside Area 51 there is an alien research center with a huge sheet metal alien statue. This simple vintage effect was created using a simple exclusion blending mode. I'm not that happy with the overall effect but the edging isn't too bad.

Tutorial link

Day 159: Frosted Glass Effect

Here is a photograph I took of an abandoned trailer park in NV. I applied a light white fill with a stroke in a rectangle. I then duplicated the background and did a subtle blur. I painted light highlights on the middle portion of the bar. Dropped in some text, dropped the opacity and change the blending mode to overlay.

Viola.

Tutorial link

Day 158: Fake Bokeh

This was a simple brush dynamic effect that simulated a camera's bokeh effect. Neat.

Tutorial link

Day 157: Splatter Text

I like the background splatters and the color effect (mostly). Overall, meh.

Tutorial link

Day 156: Greek Door Sign

I'm using more pictures from my recent trip to the Getty in Malibu. These  images are a greek man with a beard. The bust is broken across his forward at an odd angle but Ireally like the quality of the sculpture. I created a halftone pattern of the faces and used a series of distressed brushes to spruce up (or destroy) the paper texture in the background. I finished off the piece with some platter brushes overlaid on top of everything.

Tutorial link

Day 155: Photo Gradient Map

Here is a before and after shot from a ghost town I visited. I tweaked with the colors using a gradient map and a hue and saturation mask. I also applied a simple vignette to make the image pop more than the original.

Day 154: Halftone Pattern

Here is my dad on my wedding day. This was a fun effect to work on. I used a two different halftone patterns (dots for the main image and circles for the title text) and then created a stucco texture. I applied a color overlay and patterned background to the text layer. I has been fun looking for pictures to use from my own personal stock instead of online sources.

Day 153: Trippy Collage

I took several pictures (some I've taken) and combined them together to create a weird, semi-creepy collage. I added a gradient map and several gradient masks to blend the images together. For the finishing touches, I create a simple vignette and overlaid a slate texture. Not spectacular but not horrible.

Day 152: Samurai

I'm in a bit of a kung fu movie mood. I looked through the stock photos of the photographer I found yesterday and ran across an image of a guy holding a sword. I extracted the image, found a Japanese castle, some calligraphy lettering and an old paper texture. After setting up gradient mask over the whole image I set up threshold adjustments on the man and the building. I place a mask on the lettering and create a small, horizontal line on the bottom for my text. I should have created more contrast on the bottom and place movie poster style text credits to finish the effect but I'm hungry and must make dinner. No tutorial, just tweaking around.