Photoshop Tutorial - Creating A 3D Effect

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I found the image I wanted, cropped it down the an appropriate size and then changed it to grey scale as I personally think grey scale images work a lot better when turned into 3D because if you use a colour photo, sometimes there can be a bit too much colour on the scree and it gets confusing.

The next thing I did was duplicate the layer. After this, I double clicked on the new layer and opened up Layer Style. I went to 'Advanced Blending' and un-ticked the box for R in the R G B options.

After this, I simply selected the Move Tool and slightly moved the top layer to the left slightly, creating this awesome 3D effect. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be but I found the results very satisfying!

Creating A Logo Design From A Photo

before

after

Sadly, when I was creating this logo, I didn't think to take screen shots for what I did. However, I know what I did step by step in order to achieve this out come.

My friend's band wanted me to design them a logo. They gave me a breif summary of what they wanted: the band's name, a growling wolf and blood. After thinking for a while, I took these ideas and this is what the out come was.

1) I went online and searched for stock images of growling wolves. Eventually, I found the right

one and saved it to my computer.

2) I then opened it up in Photoshop. I removed the background by using the Magnetic Lassoo Tool and drawing around the wolf and simply deleting the background. The wolf was now left on

a white background.

3) I went online and used an online vectorizing website to change the image into a 'posterized' vector. (www.vectormagic.com) After it had been vectorized, I saved it back onto my computer and brought it up again on Photoshop.

4) I decided to change the colour of the wolf. To start off with, the wolf was brown. I went to Hue and Saturation and turned the saturation down to about -65. I then went to Colour Balance and turned the blue up a little bit, as I felt that the blue would go nicely with the grey.

5) After this, I changed the background colour to a very very dark grey, almost black colour. However, because of the background and my wolf being the same colour, the wolf didn't stand out very much anymore. To resolve this, I double clicked on the layer of the wolf and applied a Layer Style of 'Stroke'. I gave it a white outline of about 8px thick, now making the wolf stand out against the background again.

6) As I had been told they wanted 'blood', I went online and searched for blood brushes. After finding a pack that I liked, I installed it and then selected the Brush Tool in Photoshop. I selected one of the brushes from the pack and changed it to a crimson colour to match blood. On a new layer, I applied the brush to the wolf's mouth to make it appear as if it had blood on it. I changed the layer setting to 'overlay' so that it looked more realistic.

7) I then added the text. As the band's name was Empathy, that's what I used. I chose the font Varsity as this was the font that they had previously used for their band logos and I thought I should stick to that. I chose the colour black and then put a white stroke on it like the wolf as it didn't stand out very much against the background.

8) After looking at it for a while, I thought the background was very plain. I made a new layer and then went to my downloaded brushes - a galaxy brush to be precise. I got quite a large brush, and changed it to a very light grey, almost white. I simply applied this to the layer and immediately it had the desired effect. As it was a galaxy brush and was meant to resemble twinkeling stars, I decided to apply a Layer Style to it and I gave it a little Outer Glow of white.

All in all, I think that I did a pretty good job with creating this logo. It's a shame that I didn't take screen shots for this tutorial but hopefully I have described it in enough detail.

Aperture Settings

In lesson, we learnt about how to use the Aperture Setting on the cameras and how the function of the f-stop works. Essentially, the opening behind the camera lens that lets the light through is called an aperture. The way you can control the size of this opening is by setting the f-stop to an appropriate number. By changing the size of the opening, you are changing the amount of light that is allowed in through the lens, therefore controlling the depth of the field. The larger the f-stop, the smaller the lens opening which allows more light in. Esssentially, the larger the field of depth, the more the background is out of focus. However, the smaller the field of depth, the background is more in focus. I took 3 photos to illustrate this.

The f-stop on this photo was 4. As you can see, the background is completely in focus and the object at the front is out of focus.

In this photo, the f-stop is at 14. It is a middle range number meaning that generally, everything in the photo is as equally focused. It appears just like a normal photo without any point of focus.

And this photos f-stop was at 30. As you can see, the object at the front is in focus whilst the background is blurry and out of focus.

All in all, the f-stop can come in useful for a lot of different reasons. For example, one situation that you could use aperture settings in is when you are taking portrait photos of a model and you want the focus to be completely on them. In the case, you would set the f-stop number to 30 and snap away in the comfort of knowing your model is in focus!

Downloaded Font

In class, we were all appointed the task to download a font and then make a magazine masthead out of it. I went onto www.dafont.com and browsed through the fonts, looking for ones that caught my eye in particular. I eventually came across 'Varisty', the font in which I have used for this magazine masthead. I downloaded it, extracted it and then installed it onto the computer. (save > extract all > my computer > local disk c: > windows > fonts > paste)

After installing the font, I opened up Photoshop and began to play around with the text. As we were supposed to be making a masthead for a music magazine, I thought the name 'RIOT' would be appropriate for a punk/rock music style magazine and I also felt that my downloaded font went well with the general look I was going for.

All in all, downloading a font and installing it onto the computers was very easy, quick and definitely worth it in the end. I personally prefer downloaded fonts as you can get a lot more option with them as opposed to the standard ones already installed on the computers.

Photoshop Tutorial - Avatar Transformation

Mock Up Magazine Front Cover