Day 242: Water Text

I applied a puppet warp (new to CS5) to five copies of the same water splash image. Puppet warp is a fantastic tool!!

Day 241: Watch Ad

I used only two images for this faux watch ad. The company logo a quick combination of two custom shapes, a font and a bevel and emboss set with low altitude light. The background is a larger version of the watch I used for the bottom.

Day 240: Funky Fractal Lines

Using a simple stroke path with an outer glow, I created multiple lines and used the warp transform. With repeated duplications and rotations an old style spirograph image emerged. Texturizer for the background and some lighting overlays to focus the attention on the center.

Meh.... very web 1.0 and not overly inspired.

Day 239: Filter Tyler

I'm experimenting with various filters and masking effects. Fun but not really practical. I'll have to keep trying.

Day 238: Maui Surf

A simple postcard sized add for surfing in Maui.

Day 237: Funky Letters

I used a stock font, create a work path for each letter and then randomly distorted them individually. The plastic effect was created using various layer styles stacked on various layers. The halftone pattern was generated by applying a linear gradient and then duplicating and transforming to reduce the size. Set to overlay, the patterns blended in with the background color.

Day 236: Light Dancer

I played around with various brush dynamics and applied them to several strokes. I added a simple outer glow and drop shadow and applied layer masks.

Day 235: Miami Blues

Subtle color scheme with a random, gradient and blur. I added in a silhouette of the Miami skyline into the text.

Day 234: Grunge PSA

I took this picture of a skeleton in one of the science classrooms. Lots of textures and lighting adjustments. Fun font.

Day 233: Tiltshift

Tiltshift image of Sea World.

Day 232: WWPug

Way too many things to explain. The Pugalution continues.

Day 231: Good and Evil

(Before and After)

Lots of texture, burning, hue adjustments, and brush tweaking to create this "good vs. evil" study of Angelina Jolie. Simple techniques with interesting results.

Tutorial link

Day 230: Buy Yearbook Poster

Here is a poster of the 34 covers of the Serra yearbook. I plan to use this poster, in addition to others, during registration.

Day 229: Yearbook Ad

Web banner for buying the yearbook.

Day 228: Work Stuff

So I sat down to add a simple facebook link to my yearbook site and three hours later I'm done... I got sidetracked and needed to create a simple banner ad to inform parents about the Senior Picture deadline, added 33 images to the facebook page and so on... I can't believe it but work is right around the corner which means I need to start double dipping with this blog. Be ready for some work related (and most likely not as interesting) posts.

Day 227: Trendy Ad Effect

(Before and After)





I played around with several different techniques. I started by adjusting the overall curves then individually for Red, Green and Blue (double helix style), applied a high pass filter and then ran an unsharp mask on the filter layer, dropped a layer stroke and reduced the opacity.

Day 226: Dead Possum

I found the skeletal remains of a possum under our backyard shed. I tweaked with the image to create a faux HDR image with a spot color effect and grunge edging. Creepy.

Day 225: Wedding Retouching

I retouched the photo using a series of blurs, diffuse glow, masking around eyes and lips, slight teeth whitening, grey 50% fill set to overlay with light dodge and burn around the eyes and a white fill layer set to overlay and 15%.

Slap a border around it using a stroke layer style set to 0% Fill and Inside.

Tutorial link

Day 224: Viewridge Invitation

The final piece needed to be done in black and white.

Day 223: Watercolor Hendricks

I love Mad Men (and not just because of Christina Hendrick... although that helps). Here's a fun watercolor technique combining a series of watercolor splatters set to multiply. I deviated from the tutorial a bit in order to get more of her hair to show through. I really like the paper texture for the background.

Tutorial link

Day 222: Tenant Party Poster Roughs

Here are several variations for a company party poster. The designs are merely rough variations on the same theme until I get feedback from the company.

Day 221: Thermal Photo

I tried this effect with several different pictures with limited success. I think you need to have a photo with strong contrast around the eyes, mouth and hair or else the blacks blend into unrecognizable blobs. The effect itself is created using a hue/sat adjustment then appling a gaussian blur:overlay, a motion blur:overlay, a white layer set to overaly, a blue set of renderclouds:overlay, a duplicate of the background set to Darken and a white layer set to difference.

Tutorial link

Day 220: Vintage Effects

I'm enjoying retro and vintage effects. In the day of using photoshop strictly for improving photos it is fun to purposely distress and add blemishes to photos.

Tutorial link

Day 219: Faux HDR

Before & After:

Here is a super simple HDR effect applied to a creepy picture of a phesant I took in Las Vegas. The effect was created by making a 50% Shadow/highlights adjustment, duplicate the layer, desaturate and set to Hard Light. Duplicate the original layer adn apply a 40% Gaussian blur, set to Soft light... Viola simulated HDR.

Tutorial link

Day 218: Stone Text

Seven layer styles, three backgrounds and two light layers... perhaps a bit too busy.

Publish Post

Tutorial link.

Day 217: Cut Text

Simple duplication of text with a slight shift. The white mannequin helps pull (or should I say "push") it together.

Tutorial link

Day 216: The Chairman

I'm continuing with the Commie Pug theme.

Day 215: River Wisdom

So the good doctor coined the phrase while we floated down the Owens River. I had too much fun finding images to use with the phrase but my wife was rather adamant about me not using the images... this was my compromise.

Day 214: I'm not a fan of clowns

Some clowns are creepy... actually MOST clowns are creepy... even more so when covered in blood, glowing and blurred...

Tutorial link

Day 213: Commie Pug

Barney is poised to take over the free world and expand his benevolent dictatorship to the unwashed masses. Join now... it's inevitable!

Day 212: Tron Effect

I stumbled onto a really cool tutorial! I had to deviate a bit from the tutorial but overall this is one of the better written tutorials I've run across in quite a while.

Tutorial link