This effect is a nice effect, because it enables you to give the subject a soft glow to the areas of their skin, and it leaves the details of the hair fairly in tact.

Pick a portrait photo that you have and open it inside of Photoshop. Hit Command and the J Key (Ctrl on the PC) to create a duplicate layer. Set the blending mode of the layer to screen.

Then, Click the layer mask icon to make a layer mask on your duplicate layer. Making sure the mask is selected, go to the top menu and select Image> Apply Image. Choose the default settings and click ok. Select your image on the duplicate layer. Then go to Filter>Blur> Gaussian Blur. Depending on the resolution of your image, you will want to bump the gaussian blur … Read More »

This tutorial uses Illustrator and Photoshop to create 3D electric type, quickly and fairly easily. First open a new Illustrator document and pick a nice bold typeface. I chose Helvetica Black and the text is set to 225pt and the color is set to a medium gray. The go to Effect> 3D> Extrude and Bevel. Set the setting as in the example, and set the perspective to 68°. You can try a different perspective, but anything too extreme and the text will be hard to read later. Set the bevel to none and the surface to wireframe, and click ok.

Copy the text and open Photoshop. Set the document to the size of your choice. Choose a nice dark blue for the background and have your foreground set to dark blue and your … Read More »

This is really simple to create, and you can apply it to anything that is white. First, create a new Photoshop document. I created one set to the size of 1024 x 768. You can go to any good brush source online, such as Brusheezy and search for lights and abstract lighting. Fractals work well with this too. When you download the brush, go to your brush options and click the flyout menu and go to load brushes, or throw the brush file that ends in .abr into your brushes presets folder, and it will be in your flyout menu next time you start Photoshop.

Set the background layer to black, or a dark color… basically anything that will contrast the glow that you create, … Read More »