Tutorials Archives - Page 2 of 3

Space and Planet Photoshop Tutorials To Create Amazing Space Scenes

There a lot of space tutorials out there some are better than others, I have managed to try and select a few of what I think can allow you to get great effects that look like they belong and don’t look completely Photoshopped.

I tried to be as varied as possible so there are tutorials for creating planets, stars, nebulas and atmospheric type gasses. The great thing is that they lay down the building blocks to experiment and create you own stunning universe.

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Gas bursts and Atmosphere

This tutorial shows you how to create some great gas explosions coming from the planets atmosphere with some pretty simple tools, yet looks stunning

Realistic Star fields

Create realistic star fields, the trick with this one is to be totally random and keep building up your layers the end result will speak for it self, with an image that looks like its evolving.

Simple Star fields

Create simple yet affective star fields in 8 easy steps.

Realistic Galaxy

I think if you have the time to do this tutorial it would be very worth while, the end result is very realistic and it seems is one of few great galaxy tutorials.

Realistic Space Nebula

This is a much simpler way to create a Nebula with different techniques but with a similar stunning result.

Space Nebula

How to create a space nebula that looks like its bursting at the seems and full of life, you will need to download a brush pack for this tutorial, but the link is broken on the tutorial site to download them, but don’t worry I have managed to find them for you here: Rust-n-Grunge brushes

Make a Planet

One of my favourites as it is relatively easy to accomplish yet the planet can look totally realistic with its surface glow and texture effect.

Planet Tutorial

This is a similar tutorial to the one above but will show you what other outcomes can be achieved with this method.

Create an Asteroid from scratch

A smart and simple way to create a realistic looking asteroids from nothing but photoshop. If you cant view the tutorial you can find it on this tutorial page instead

Creating Planet Rings

An extremly fast and simple way to add rings around your planet like Saturn has.

Vivid Space Nebula

With this Nebula tutorial it shows a different technique using Photoshops preset brushes and filters to create a vivid result.

End Of The World

I think the end result could be better but i like the way the glowing crater and asteroids were created i think with some more motivation the end result could look truly amazing.

Space Explosion

Quite a lengthy tutorial but a few smart ideas as well such as using a garden rock as an asteroid, with a pleasant explosion to great affect

Fiery Photoshop Space Explosion

A very dramatic explosion with terrific light effects.

Creating a Brushed Nebula

This one is different again and is created by using a brushing technique which gives it a unique look, i would say this is quite an advanced technique and would take much longer than most of the others listed. If you cant view the tutorial you can find it on this tutorial page instead

Light Effects In Space

A modern take on lighting effects to create a spectrum of colour within space.

That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind

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Technique for creating a hand drawn website style

We first got into the blogging world with our website blog “We Are not Freelancers“. The site is a combo of the “Ten Pixel Method” and hand drawn characters and letters.

A lot of people who we have met say they wish they could create something similar but will not because they can’t draw.

We say anyone can draw if you use a simple technique.

David gives you a quick lesson on how to create a hand drawn website using the ‘don’t lift the pencil‘ technique.

Hand drawn technique video tip

Brought to you by: From-The-Couch

Supporting Elements

There are also few more hand drawn elements within the footer and header design.

Photoshop batch processing of actions – Video Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to use batch processing with Photoshop actions and more specifically how to create an action to crop and resize images using batch processing in Photoshop.

Batch processing allows you to apply an action to a large group of images all at once so there is no need to open each image by hand and apply the action Photoshop can do it all for you.

Before you do this tutorial you may want to look at my actions tutorial

Video Tutorial

[Feed readers please visit post for video tutorial]

Text Tutorial

These Images and text support the video Tutorial

Step 1 – The Action

Go to Window > Actions or use keyboard shortcut ( Alt + F9 )

Make your action that you want to batch process I made a video tutorial about creating actions you can watch that to refresh your memory, and I briefly show you in the current video how to create an action.

Step 2 – Batch Processing

Once you have your action go to File > Automate > Batch this will take you to a screen where you can change certain options as in the next step.

Step 3 – Batch Processing Screen

Play: Set – Select the folder from the dropdown list where you created your action

Play: Action – Select action from the dropdown you want to perform.

Source: Folder > Choose the folder where all you images are. i would highly recommend you make a copy of this folder as a backup just in case you make a mistake and you cant get your images back.

Destination: Folder > Choose the folder where you want to save all your images once the action has been performed.

File Naming: [document name] will keep the current file name in lower case and + [extension] will add the file extension such as jpg, gif, bmp

Click Ok when you have the correct settings and this will start the processing.

Step 4 – The Output

When the processing is finished you can check your files by going to your destination folder this should have your processed files in. Your source folder should have you original files, they should be exactly the same and should not have had the action applied to them.

Conclusion

You can probably see how batch processing can save you a lot more time using actions that you have created, if you are applying an action to a whole group of images you may want to test it on a few of the images to make sure that you get the desired results for each of the images.

Batch processing can be used for a whole host of different things maybe you need to re-colour a group of images or add a certain border to them, the possibilities are endless.

Comments

Do you use batch processing? What do you use batch processing for? Let me know in the comments below.

Photoshop Actions – Creating Folder Structures for Web Designs – Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to create Photoshop actions and more specifically how to create an action to create a folder structure for your web design layouts

When creating a screen design of a web page organisation is key, keeping layers in folders enables you to quickly move or hide any layers that you need to. When you initially open Photoshop you should create folders to do this, hence a Photoshop action to do it all instantly, every time you want to design a new layout, here is how.

Video Tutorial

Text Tutorial

These Images and text support the video Tutorial

Step 1 – Actions Panel

Go to Window > Actions or use keyboard shortcut ( Alt + F9 )

Step 2 – A Folder for your Actions

Create a new (label 1 step 2) folder to keep any actions that you make, you can put them all in one folder so you know where they are or create new folders depending on the type of action you are creating.

Step 3 – Create folders and layers for organisation

Create a new action (label 2 step 2) and give it a descriptive name so you can easily tell what it does, you can give it a shortcut key as well using the F1-12 keys , some are already occupied by Photoshop default shortcuts but you can overwrite them.

Here are the defaults using F1-12 keys

F1 – Adobe Online Help
F5 – Brush style palette
Shift + F5 – Fill Layer Dialogue Box
F6 – Colour, Swatches, Styles palette
F7 – Layers, Channels, Paths palette
F8 – Navigator, Info palette
F9 – Actions, History, Presets palette

Step 4 – Create a new document

Create a new canvas that is suitable for your web design layouts ( Ctrl + N ) you can even give it a default name

Step 5 – Folder Structure

You have your blank canvas and now you need to create your folders that you will use to organise your web designs make as many folders as you need.

Step 6 – Stop Recording and Test

Hit the stop button (label 3 step 2) so that no more actions or mouse clicks are recorded your action should now be complete hit the shortcut key you assigned it in the video it was F2.

Conclusion

There are so many ways you can use actions to record your clicks and settings try and experiment and think about what you do the most in Photoshop and try to create an action for it…maybe cropping images!.

Comments

Was this tutorial clear and easy to understand? do you use any actions in Photoshop, if so please let us know in the comments below.

Highlight WordPress Category when on a Single Post: Tutorial

While making the redesign for this blog I wanted to highlight the category in the navigation when browsing the specified category as well as keeping it highlighted when on the a single post added to that category ( you’ll notice that the navigation is highlighted if your on this page ).

I searched high and low and eventually found a simple plug-in, by adding a small piece of code to the plug-in I could achieve this, follow the steps below and you should beable to get your categories highlighted too when on a single post.

What we want to Achieve:

Add a Home page link to the navigation and highlight current page.

Highlight the current category

Highlight the current category even when on single post

Step 1: Download The Plug-in

Download the plug-in: Here (zip) From: Screenshine

Step 2: Uploading and Editing the Plug-in

1. Upload the plug-in to your WordPress plug-ins folder.

2. Go to your WordPress admin panel “Plugins” and “Activate” the plug-in

3. Look at your “Currently Active plugins” and click “Edit” for the “Show Active Category plugin”

4. Scroll down past the copyright information until you find this line of code

[php]
if( is_single()) {
[/php]

change that line of code to look like this

[php]
if( is_single() || is_category() ) {
[/php]

Click “Update file” to save the changes

Step 3: CSS for Highlighting Current Category

Go to your theme CSS file normally called “style.css” and add this line of code below.

[css]
.active_category{background-color:#66FF00;}
[/css]

NOTE: you can style this how you want it will style the current category and the category when on a single post using the plug-in.

Step 4: CSS for Highlighting Current Page

To highlight your “pages” all you have to do is add this line of code to your CSS file, This css class is actually built in to WordPress

[css]
.current_page_item{background-color:#66FF00;}
[/css]

NOTE: you can style this how you want it will style the current page

Step 5: Add a Home Page Link

You can have a home page link in your navigation take a look at what i have, This hard codes a “Home” link in to your navigation and adds the class “current_page_item” when on your index page, this is styled with css as in Step 4

[php]
<div id="nav">
<ul>
<li <?php if (is_home()){echo ‘class="current_page_item"’;}?>><a href="<?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?>/">Home</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
[/php]

All Code For The Navigation

So this is a summary of what we’ve done, if you’ve uploaded the plug-in, activated it and edited the code, you can test the code below, copy and paste

Put this in your style.css

[css]
.active_category{background-color:#66FF00;}
.current_page_item{background-color:#66FF00;}
[/css]

Put this in your header.php

[php]
<div id="nav">
<ul>
<li <?php if (is_home()){echo ‘class="current_page_item"’;}?>><a href="<?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?>/">Home</a></li>
<p><?php wp_list_pages(‘title_li=’); ?><?php wp_list_cats(‘sort_column=name’); ?>
</ul>
</div>
[/php]

All this code adds the home page link, all your pages and then all your categories to your navigation, if you’ve added the CSS styles to you Style sheet these things should be highlighted when on the current page, category and single category post.

Questions

So hopefully you’ll find this useful, let me know if you get it working or get stuck in the comments below ill try my best to help you but obviously i cant help you with the plug-in as I did not make it.