Yesterday, I covered some basics regarding glow effects and how to use them to your advantage. Today, I will cover some more advanced techniques that will help you to achieve some really cool effects.

I created a new document with the dimensions 1024 x 768 and filled the background with black. I selected a font, which you can use anything of your choosing, but I chose Null Free, found here. I typed in the word design. Then, just like the lines from yesterday, I created an outer and inner glow and set them to the blending mode of Hard Light, just as in this tutorial, but in this case, I set the colors to pure white.

Then, create a new blank layer above the type … Read More »

Glow effects can really add drama to your designs and really make them stand out. Contrast is key here, so it is always a good idea to use a really dark, or even black background. You can add these types of effects to anything such as text, lines, shapes, etc.

To do this, open up a new document inside of Photoshop. For our purposes, I created a document that is 1024 x 768. I filled the background layer with black, and then I held down Shift + Command (Ctrl on the PC) and hit the letter N to create a new layer.

For glowing lines, take your pen tool, and create a path in the shape or contour that you want. I hid the black layer so that you could see the path easier. Go to the … Read More »

Sometimes when we are editing and color correcting a photograph, we realize that a photo could use a little something, or that a color is off, but we can’t figure out where we need to make the adjustment to get the look that we want. Photoshop has a tool built in that will add a different color to many different versions of your photo at once, allowing you to see what to add to balance out your color. Professionally, I would say that you should be able to do this by your own sight, but also professionally I can say that after looking at and color correcting 200 images in a row, you are ready for a little help from somewhere.

This is where the Variations menu comes in. The sample image above is from Stock.xchng® and … Read More »

In Photoshop CS5, the new Repousse Panel is fantastic, in that you can create 3D from almost anything. You can create a 3D object from a selection, a path, text, a mask, etc. What is really cool is that you can create your own textures, or you can use images as textures to make your objects look more realistic. You aren’t just stuck with the presets given to you. In This tutorial, I am going to show you how to create custom 3D text shaded with textures from images.

First, create a new document. Mine is 1024 x 768 at 72ppi. Then, select your text tool and chose a nice typeface. I tend to choose thicker ones for 3D effects, but the choice is yours. I chose MetaPlus Black.

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