Design a Mystical Golden Sphere in Photoshop

Step 1

Create a new document sized 800 * 800px, fill the background with black colour. Create a new layer called “bottom light” and use a 250px soft round brush with white colour, do a single click in the centre of the canvas, then resize it  (Ctrl + T) to a very thin shape as shown below:

Grab the eclipse tool (U key) from the toolbox, create a new layer called “sphere” and draw a circle on top of the light, as shown below:

Apply the following layer blending options to this sphere layer:
Drop Shadow

Inner Shadow

Gradient Overlay

and you will have the following effect:

Step 2

Create a new layer on top of the “sphere” layer and use the eclipse tool to draw another oval shape to the top of the sphere. Name this layer as “highlight top” and change the blending mode to “overlay”, drop the opacity to around 40%.
You will have the following effect:

Duplicate this highlight layer once and apply the following Gaussian Blur settings to the duplicated layer:

change the blending mode of this duplicated layer to “soft light”, you will have the following effect:

Step 3

Now let’s add some irregular lighting effect to the sphere. Create a new layer just above the sphere layer, use a soft white round brush to so a few single click around the sphere, set the blending mode to “soft light”.
Hint: make sure to paint some light on the bottom of the sphere, this will help adding more depth into the image.
The following effect is what I have so far: (the light strip on the right was done using the free tranform tool + a soft white round brush on a new layer with “normal” blending mode:)

Create a new “Shadow” layer on top of the “bottom light” (first layer) and use the same method as described in step 1 except using black colour instead of white, do a single click and resize it into the thin shape.
Change the blending mode of the shadow layer to “overlay”, you will have the following effect:

Step 4

Now we can add some effect around the sphere to make it look mysterious. Use the abstract brushset 1 we downloaded, choose any one of them and reduce its brush size to a smaller size, paint around the sphere as shown below:

Create another new layer and use the Abstract brushset 2 to paint some patterns on top of the sphere, as shown below:
(Hint: use the Free Tranform tool to distort, warp the new layer to create variations)
Here is what I have so far:

Add a new texture layer just above the background layer, and use the same brushset as we used just now, but this time with its orginal size, paint some patterns on the lower half of the canvas, as shown below:
Make sure you mix different brushset and set the opacity and flow to both around 50%.

Step 5

Now let’s add the golden colour on the sphere. The trick here to add a Color Balance adjustment layer just above the original “Sphere” layer, with the following settings:



and you will have the following effect:

add the following Curves adjustment layer on top of all layers:

and you will have the following effect:

Step 6

Now we can do some final touches to the image. Firstly let’s flatten the image, duplicate the background layer once and apply the following Radial Blur settings to the duplicated layer:

Change the blending mode to “Screen” and you will have the following effect:

Now we don’t really want to the whole image to be blurred, so we can add a layer mask as shown below to hide some parts:

Also apply the following Smart Sharpen settings to the background layer:

and you will have the following final effect: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Of course you can further enhance the effect and try out more colour schemes and filter effects, but that’s totally up to you.
Hope you enjoy it and find it useful! Until next time, have a great day!

Photo Mosaic

I'll never forget the first time I saw a real photo mosaic. It was a photo of Marilyn Monroe on the cover of a magazine consisting of hundreds of images. It was one of the coolest things I’d seen at the time and wondered what kind of amazing technology was used to create such an amazing piece of work.

I can tell you there is really only one place to get a true mosaic like the one I saw. This is at Picture Mosaics, but you will also pay a couple hundred bucks for it. There is a poor man’s method for producing a photo mosaic. It's nowhere near the wow factor that a true mosaic is, but it's still pretty darn cool and easy to do. Some companies out there will charge you for this, I'll show you how to do it for free.

Step 1

Start by copying photos into a new folder called Mosaic. I just copied and pasted images at random and ended up with 550 of them. Be sure the images in this new folder are copies and not originals.

Step 2

Next, you want to start an action. To do this, open up the first image in your new Mosaic folder and open the Actions palette. (Windows>Actions) Now click the arrow in the upper right hand area of the palette and select new action. Go ahead and name the action, I named mine re-size.

Step 3

Now go to Image>Image Size and check Resample Image, make the image size 1cm X 1cm at 200ppi and click OK, save the image and close it. Now go back to the Actions Palette and click stop. You've just recorded the image size adjustment.

Step 4

The next step will be to turn your action in to a droplet. Go to File>Automate>Create Droplet. Click the Choose button and decide where you want to save your droplet, select the re-size action you've just created and click OK.

Step 5

Now go back to the new folder of copied images you created, select them all and drag them over the Droplet icon. Make sure you are dragging the copies! This will convert each image to a 1cm X 1cm square.

Step 6

Now that all the images have been reduced to their smaller size, it's time to make the mosaic. To do this click File>Automate>Contact Sheet II.

Step 7

Select the images you want to you use by clicking Choose and then enter the measurements you want to use. I used 55cm X 40cm and 200ppi. Now decide how many rows and columns you'll need. I chose 50 columns and 30 rows and made sure to uncheck Auto Spacing so I could make sure there is no spacing between the images. Since the images are square they will fit together nicely. Check the Flatten All Layers box and click OK.

Here are the small images put together in the contact sheet. If you didn't have enough images, simply copy and paste them to fill the canvas, just be sure to Flatten the image after you do by clicking Layer>Flatten Image.

Step 8

Now decide what you'd like to use as the main image, but be sure it's at least the size of your canvas. Now click File>Place and find this image. This will place the image in a new layer above the smaller ones. Set this image layer's options to Hard Light.

That's it! You can play around with the Curves on the bottom layer if you want to adjust the contrast a little. That's up to you.

There are so many ways to do things in Photoshop. This method is one of the many I may use for a given project. You may have a better way. Always do what works best for you.

Halloween Photoshop Tutorial 1

Halloween Photoshop Tutorial 1– Begin with a background

To create a Halloween desktop wallpaper, open a new Photoshop file with the dimensions: 1024x768. Because of the Halloween theme to this wallpaper, find a dark, empty room image for the background. For this tutorial, we used the photo titled “Empty Room” from Stock Exchange. Copy and Paste the image into your blank wallpaper window within Photoshop (the room layer should appear above a white layer), then resize and position the photo as necessary by clicking on the photo layer and then Ctrl+T (or clicking Edit, Free Transform). Drag the corner of the transform box while holding Shift to resize the image. Then click and drag the image into the position you desire. Click Enter to apply the changes.

2- Feather the Edges

With the room image as the active layer, click Ctrl+A (Select All) to select the entire screen. To create a white fade around the edge of the image, click Ctrl+Alt+D to bring up the Feather menu option. Feather your selection in by 20 pixels. Click OK, and then inverse your selection (Select, Inverse). Press the delete key 2-3 times to lighten the edges as desired.

Halloween Tutorial 3- Darken the Windows

Select the windows using the Polygonal Lasso Tool in Photoshop. With the windows selected, cut and paste the windows into their own layer. Then, click on Image, Adjustments, and Brightness/Contrast. Lower the Brightness and raise the Contrast until you have a satisfyingly dark scene outside.

In the case of this Halloween Photoshop Tutorial, there’s still white around the edge of the window. This time, select just the white edges. Use Brightness/Contrast again to darken the edge. Then, to bring back the wooden look of the window (with the “white” area still selected), add a Texturize “Canvas” filter as in the tutorial image below.

Deselect the window edge (Ctrl+D) and apply a “Film Grain” artistic filter to the entire windows layer.

4- Halloween Ghost

Now, you are at the stage of this tutorial when you add a Halloween ghost to your wallpaper. Find an image of someone in black or dark clothing that you wish to use. Copy and paste the image into Photoshop. Use Ctrl+t to resize the image until the entire character fits within the screen. Select out the individual. With only the character selected, invert your selection and delete the rest of the image.

Duplicate the ghost layer. With the bottom ghost layer active, apply a Gausian Blur (Filter, Blur, Gausian Blur) of around 20 pixels. Set the layer mode to Luminosity.

Duplicate the non-blurred ghost layer again. With the middle layer active, apply another Gausian Blur, this time around 5 pixels. Set this layer mode to Exclusion and apply a white Outer Glow.

Set the top ghost layer (the only one left un-blurred) to Exclusion, then link all three layers. Resize and position as desired.

Tutorial step 5- Ghostly Candles

Find an image of a nicely shadowed candle (for this Halloween Photoshop Tutorial, we used "Candelabra" from Stock Exchange). Copy and paste the image into Photoshop. Select a single candle, including the slight glow around the flame. Invert the selection and delete the excess areas of the image. Set the candle layer’s mode to Luminosity. Duplicate the layer, position and resize until you are satisfied with the number and placement of the candles. Merge candles into one layer.

6- Photoshop Flair

Create a final layer and fill it with black. Add a small Lens Flair (Filter, Render, Lens Flair) to this layer. Set the layer mode to Screen. Duplicate, resize, and position multiple layers until each candle has its own flair. Merge all flairs into one layer.

7- Add Text

Finally, add the text to the wallpaper. For a spooky appearance, choose font type Chiller. Set the text layer mode to Darker Color with a 36% opacity and add a white Outer Glow.

At this point of your Halloween Photoshop Tutorial, your wallpaper is pretty much complete. Touch up any dissatisfying areas and save the project.