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Shared via: (http://thenextweb.com/dd/2011/05/26/new-algorithm-turns-8-bit-pixel-art-into-silky-smooth-vectors)

Fascinating research from Microsoft’s Johannes Kopf and Dani Lischinski of The Hebrew University has produced an algorithm that is remarkably good at turning 8-bit pixel art into shaded, smooth vector art, Popular Science reports.

The “depixelizing” algorithm, as detailed in this research paper, has shown a great deal of promise. It’s capable of determining the curve lines from single diagonally connected pixels, and the shading is quite natural and effective.

Here’s one image from the report with the algorithm’s output on top and the original pixel art at the bottom:

There are problems that prevent this algorithm being used wholesale to update older Nintendo games and their contemporaries. It always smooths images out in a curvaceous manner, giving even the dastardly Space Invaders a Hello Kitty appeal. Perhaps with a similar algorithm that outputs sharper vectors, nostalgists can make conversions on a sprite-by-sprite basis.

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Cum Shape Mix

Custom Shape Pack

Vector Shape Mix

Useful Shape

30 Shapes Collection

People Silhouettes

Free 45 Custom Shapes

Shapeset 05 Miscellanious

Sea Creatures

iLoveWeapons

Photoshop Custom Shapes Bugs

Live Trees

Custom Shapes Pack v. 1.1

Photoshop Paisley Custom Shape

Urban Designs Custom Shapes

Photoshop Shapes: World Map

Photoshop Shapes – Hot babes

Assorted Logos

Code Geass Symbol Set

Surfing Themed Shapes

Kiddy Stuffs

Backflip540 sunburst shapes

Shapeset 07

Photoshop Custom Shapes No-1

50s Custom Shapes Pack

Splat Shapes

Free 45 Custom Shapes

PS-CSH Stars V2.0

Business Girls

Splats N Drips_Custom Shapes

Horse Photoshop Shapes

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Disclaimer:

None of the given Photoshop Tutorials are written by me. They are all taken from various sources on the Internet and I compiled some of them for you. Hope you understand. More are in the line.

Step 1

Open an image, I will use this image because it suit to my tricks.

Step 2

CTRL + J, duplicate the image. Now you will have a layer which labeled as “layer 1���. SHIFT + CTRL + U, desaturate the image and you will get something like this:

Step 3

CTRL + J again to duplicate layer 1 and you will get a new layer which labeled as “layer 1 copy���. CTRL + I to invert the layer and set the layer blend mode to Color Dodge. Go to filter > other > minimum > 1. Double click on layer 1 copy to bring out the blending option. ALT + left click on the triangle and set the underlying layer as below:

Step 4

CTRL + E to merge up both layers. CTRL + J, duplicate layer 1. Select layer 1 copy and go to filter > blur > Gaussian Blur > radius 6. Set the layer blend mode to linear burn. CTRL + J on layer background and put the layer background copy at the top of all layer and set the layer blend mode to color.

Step 5

Hope you are still with me. Select layer background copy and add a layer mask, fill it with black color.

Step 6

Still with the layer background copy, go to image > adjustment > curve and set as below.

Step 7

Create a new layer and put it top of all layer. Fill it with #ffecd1. Set layer blend option to linear burn.

Step 8

We are nearly there, now select layer 1 and set the opacity to 60% or whatever you think suitable. Select the background copy layer’s mask, with a 45px soft brush, opacity 65%, brush the face area. Here is it!

The difference:

Examples:

Hope you guys enjoy this! Thanks!

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Disclaimer:

None of the given Photoshop Tutorials are written by me. They are all taken from various sources on the Internet and I compiled some of them for you. Hope you understand. More are in the line.

The requests for Fantasy Art tutorials are enormous, I still get emails and Pms from people asking to do more Fantasy Art tuts, so here is one more, called “Plasma” (Star, not the TV!) which I hope you’d enjoy.

1. Make a new canvas, we used 600*480 px here, but the size is of course optional.

2. Select the Gradient Tool, using two shades of blue (see below), fill your canvas, so that the darker colour will be on top.

3. Take a photo of a girl. Traditionally I am using Becca’s photo from her Deviant Art account, but you can replace her with any semi-sitting figure of your choice. Crop the figure and paste her unto your canvas. In needed, resize her so that she will fit in.

4. To get rid of the visible crappy cropping, and to give the girl more emphasis, add blueish glow to her by going to Layer >> Layer Styles >> Outer Glow and applying the following settings:

This is what you would get:

5. Make a new Layer. Make sure your primarily and secondary colours are black and white. Go to Filter >> Render >> Clouds

And, if needed apply the clouds effect a several times to achieve the desired randomly “clouded” effect.

6. Reduce the opacity of the layer to semi-visible.

7. Press Ctrl+T for free transform, and then right mouse click and “Scew”. Drag the left corner of the clouds layer, as shown on the illustration below:

Press “Enter” when you are done, then Ctrl + D to deselect the layer.

8. Duplicate the clouds layer. Select the upper layer and go to Edit >> Transform >> Flip Horizontal.

9. Select the girl’s layer from layers panel and drag it to the top, so that it would be your utmost upper layer.

Remember to remove the parts where layers turn to be on top of one another.

10. Take a photo of a lake with water circles. We used this one from Digital Free Photo, but again – this is optional.

Paste the layer unto your composition, so that the circles in the water will be “around” the girls or your main figure.

11. Using the Eraser Tool, remove the lower part of the girl’s layer, so create the illusion as if she is really sitting inside the water and the water circles are “from” her.

12. Set lake’s layer blending options to Luminosity.

13. Drag the Layers of the clouds on top of the water later and using eraser tool with soft edge (100px) remove the sharp parts, so that only the “steaming” clouds will remain, no edges.

14. Now to the hard bit – creating the plasma cycles.
Make a new layer (this is important) and place it on top of all the others.

15 Using the Elliptical Marquee tool, draw and ellipse. While the ellipse on the new layer is selected, Right-mouse-click and choose “stroke”. Apply the settlings below for the stroke effect:

16. Press Ctrl + T to free transform, and then right-mouse-click >> Prospective. Try to distort the round layer you have to it would look like the line is surrounding or flowing around the girl.

17. Using the Eraser tool with big soft edge, remove the “farther” part of the round, behind her head, like this:

18. While this layer is selected, go to Layer >> Layer styles >> Outter glow and apply the following glow settlings:

19. Duplicate the layer a several times and each time transform the round using the prospective settlings, so that the circles chaotically surround the main figure’s body.

20. Remember to leave the “front” part of the circle visible and erase the “back” part of it. This is more or less what you should have by now:

21. Flatten the Layer.
22. Go to Image >> Adjustments >> Levels and apply the following settlings to give the image an overall bluish hue:

23. Duplicate the layer.
24. While the upper layer is selected (and your background colour in the palette is set to white), go to Filter >> Distort >> Diffuse Glow and apply these glow settings.

25. Reduce the opacity of the “glowing layer” to 20% (or less, depends on your image).
26. Flatten the layer again to merge both layers into one.

27. Using some star brushes (download free on deviant Art resources page), apply the stars chaotically around and allover the glowing cycles.

28. Select the background layer (the artwork, not the stars) and to to Renters >> Lightening effect, apply the following spot light effect twice.

29. Get back to Stars layer, and go to Layer >> Layer Styles >> Outer Glow, and add the following glow using white #ffffff colour.

30. Duplicate the stars layer.
31. Go to Filter >> Blur >> Radial Blur and apply these settings.

You may choose to reduce the opacity of this layer if you feel the rounded blurred effect is too strong. That’s it, your artwork is ready:

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Author: Giackop

Source Photos

For this tutorial, we'll need two photos that I took. You can download them to follow along. These are my photos: castle photo and clouds photo.

What We're Making

Here's the composite we're making. Click to see a larger version:

Step 1

First of all, my apologies for this step. I waited for a good 20 minutes but that car didn't move, so I had to take the photo with it!

Anyway, just use the Patch Tool (J) to remove the car and the Clone Stamp Tool (S) to recreate the pattern of the bricks where it used to be.

If you've never used the Patch Tool, there are a couple of ways to use it. First, make a selection as you would if you were using the Lasso Tool, then click inside the area and drag with your mouse. Depending on whether you are using Source or Destination as your checked option you will either move the image inside the selection, or move the whole selection around. The Patch Tool will blend-in the area you've chosen when you let go. You can also use patterns and transparency. All in all, it's a great tool.

Step 2

Once the van has been removed, apply Filter > Render > Lighting Effects to make the light come from the top right.

Step 3

With the tool that you prefer, create a selection of the part that you want to hide. For example, I used the Pen Tool (P) to select the sky and the buildings around the castle. With the selection active, add a Layer Mask.

Step 4

Duplicate the background layer, desaturate it with Ctrl+Shift+U, apply Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur with 4-pixel Radius, and set the Blending Mode for the layer to Overlay.

Step 5

Now we need a photo with clouds and the rays of the sun coming from the right. I used this photo of mine that was perfect for this situation.

Send it to the back of the other layers.

Then duplicate it and set the copy layer Blending Mode to Lighter Color.

Step 6

Duplicate again the original background photo (Layer 1) and put the this new layer below the Layer 1 copy.

Set the Blending Mode to Multiply.

Step 7

Now turn off the visibility of the two castle layers, go to the Layer 1 copy, and merge the visible layers into a new layer with Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E.

Then desaturate it with Ctrl+Shift+U, set the Blending Mode to Overlay, and the Opacity to 50%.

Step 8

Make a new layer on the top of the other.

With a large, white, soft brush that matches the size of the light of the sun, just make a round spot.

Then apply the Luce filter that you can download free or use the previous tutorial about Lighting Through Clouds here on PSDTUTS, to make this light coming through the clouds. Set the Blending Mode to Overlay.

This is an example with black background to demonstrate the effect.

Step 9

Just Burn the dark side of the castle and Dodge the light part of it with a large, soft brush. By doing this, we make it seem as if the light is coming from the clouds and hitting the right side of the castle, leaving the other side in darkness.

At this point we're almost done, but the image is overall quite dark and our blur earlier has left it slightly too blurry, so we'll fix that next.

Step 10

To finish the image, create a new layer above the rest and go to Image > Apply Image, use the settings "Merged", "RGB" and "Normal" for blending. This will create a new layer above the rest holding a copy of the image. Set this layer to Screen and about 70% Opacity. Then go through each layer and apply Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask and use the settings Amount: 250% and Radius .2px (Use a larger radius for larger images). This should sharpen the image back up to give us a good final result.

Click on the image below to see a larger version:

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Disclaimer:

None of the given Photoshop Tutorials are written by me. They are all taken from various sources on the Internet and I compiled some of them for you. Hope you understand. More are in the line.

Step 1:

Step 2:

Type/insert your text, nick or logo to use as your watermark.
The font I have used is Scriptin.

Step 3:

Go to File > define pattern. Save your pattern as any name you wish.

Step 4:

Open a random file, or you can use the file I have used .
The file is copyright protected, so no using it elsewhere =).

After choosing our file, we will insert our pattern which we just made.
Illustration is shown below.

Step 5:

Click on 'Pattern' and apply your pattern . You will have to choose your pattern from the different patterns there. The one you have created will probably be the last one listed.

Step 6:

Reduce the opacity to make it look milder/smoother. It's up to you as to how much you would like to reduce the opacity as it depends on your personal taste. I have reduced it to 22%.

The finished file:

Thanks for viewing this tutorial .
Stay tuned for more innovative tutorials in the future =) .
Cheers!

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Disclaimer:

None of the given Photoshop Tutorials are written by me. They are all taken from various sources on the Internet and I compiled some of them for you. Hope you understand. More are in the line.

For this tutorial you’ll want to find a photo of someone doing something that looks a bit larger than life. I used this photo that I found at the stock photo website Stock Exchange. For this tutorial you’ll need a photo that you want to manipulate and some special brush sets which I downloaded from here.

This will be the final result.

• 1. Download the brush set and install it.
• 2. Now I’ll show how to take a child with a big imagination and turn him into the powerful being he imagine himself to be.
• 3. We’ll start by creating a new layer on top of our original and filling it with black. Next we want to select Filter >> Render >> Lighting Effects >> Lens Flare
• 4. Use the 105mm Prime with the Brightness setting of your choice.

5. This will create a bright flash. Move it to the point where you want the ‘energy ball’ to appear.

6. You may notice that when you move it, you can see the edges of the layer. To rectify this, select the layer and add a ‘Layer Mask’.

7. Select default colors (white and black). With the layer mask selected, use the Gradient Tool >> Radial Gradient >> Reverse and drag from the center outwards. This will mask everything in a sphere around the center.

8. Set both of these layers to the ‘Hard Light’ setting.

9. I like to use the Image >> Adjustments >> Photo Filter to make the colors “pop”. I also used this setting to make the lens flare a bluish color. There are other ways to do this so experiment with your options.

10. Using the Brush set we installed earlier we want to apply them to the energy balls. I used the color black, with the layer’s Blend Options set to ‘Overlay’.

11. With this layer selected, set the Layer Style settings like so:

12. Using the same technique that we used in Step 7, we want to mask the edges of our brush layers.

13. To create the ‘arc of light’ we’ll use paths. Select the ‘Ellipse Tool’ and change it from ‘Shape layers’ to ‘Paths’. Now, draw a large circle or ellipse that includes both energy flares.

14. Once the arc is drawn we want to stroke it (no jokes please). Select a brush that’s very small, maybe about a brush with a 5px diameter and use the color white. Go to ‘Paths’ right click on the selected path, and select ‘Stroke Path’. Check the ’simulate pressure’ option, this will give the ring a bit of perspective with a heavier stroke on one side and a lighter stroke on the opposite side.

15. Repeat this step twice. Each time use a different brush setting that is bigger than the one before it. I started with the 5px brush, then I used a 45px brush followed by a 100px brush. Each time use a different color. The topmost (bigger) arc should be set to ‘Linear Dodge (Add)’ with an opacity of 35%. The middle layer should be set to ‘Overlay’ and the original (the white one) should be set to ‘Linear Dodge (Add)’.

16. I grouped these together then, using the technique from Step 7 again, I use layer masking to block one half of the sphere I created.

17. To create the energy ‘tendrils’ that are leaping from the arc. Duplicate the grouped folder from Step 16. Then merge the group or folder into one layer. Select Filter >> Liquify and distort the arc to look like it should for your image. Secondly, we’ll select Filter >> Distort >> Ripple and tweak it to look a bit more like electricity.

18. Now we’re done. Outside of some techniques that I used to make the image more polished, this completes the tutorial.

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Disclaimer:

None of the given Photoshop Tutorials are written by me. They are all taken from various sources on the Internet and I compiled some of them for you. Hope you understand. More are in the line.

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Disclaimer:

None of the given Photoshop Tutorials are written by me. They are all taken from various sources on the Internet and I compiled some of them for you. Hope you understand. More are in the line.

In this tutorial, we're going to go a bit retro. You'll learn how to create halftone patterns and creatively cut up an image of a model holding a boombox. You'll then use those cut elements to make your design. We use some layer styles to get everything to come together cohesively. The effects are fun, and you can apply these methods to other designs as well.

Step 1

Start out by downloading/purchasing our image from iStockPhoto: Boombox Image. Alternatively, you could apply these techniques to an image of your choosing and still follow along (or as in the download PSD you could just use the 'comp' that iStock lets you download).

I downloaded the largest image available for this photo. There is some reason behind this madness: we'll be using cut images from the large photo to place into our design. Using the large image will allow us to have larger speaker elements.

Make a copy of this large photo. Open up the copy and resize it to 500px wide and make sure Constrain Proportions is checked so the height changes proportionally. Save this file as .psd and name it boombox_final. This will be our canvas for this tutorial. Also, open up our original large image we downloaded as we will be cutting some images from it starting in Step 3.

Step 2

Let's prepare our boombox_final.psd document. First cut out the boombox image. Also cut out the top half of our model. Below is an image of the top half of the model cut out. You can see the boombox cutout in the preview of the layers palette as well as the layer order. We need to cut out these pieces so that we can place elements behind them as we build our design.

Step 3

Let's jump over to our large image. Grab the Elliptical Marquee Tool. Draw a selection that covers the right speaker. Then Command/Ctrl-Click and select Refine Edge. Use the settings in the image below.

Step 4

Turn on Edit in Quick Mask Mode (Q). Then go to Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone. Use the settings below.

Step 5

Let's go back to Edit in Standard Mode (Q). Copy this selection.

Step 6

Now paste this cut out image of the speaker into the boombox_final design. And move it to the bottom left corner.

Step 7

Now we are going to follow the same steps to place some texture over the speaker. First make a small selection in our large stock photo. Then type Cmd/Ctrl-Click and select Refine Edge. The only difference in this setting is that we set our Feather to 15px. The rest is the same. Turn on Edit in Quick Mask Mode (Q). Then go to Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone. Use the same settings as we did before only this time change the Max Radius to 10 Pixels. Then go back to Edit in Standard Mode (Q). Copy the selection, then paste it into our design and move it to the bottom left corner over the speaker.

Step 8

We're going to jump over to our large stock image again. Grab the Brush Tool. Give it a Master Diameter of 900px and a Hardness of 0 percent. Turn on Edit in Quick Mask Mode (Q). Click in the center of the image. Then go to Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone. Use the settings in the image below.

Step 9

Let's go back to Edit in Standard Mode (Q). It should look like the selection below. Invert the selection by going to Select > Inverse. Copy this selection.

Step 10

Paste the selection into our boombox_final document. Give it a layer style of Lighten. You can see the white dots emerge in the bottom of our document. Place it so that it matches the image below. Then copy the speaker we placed before and move it behind our model, but in front of the large dots.

Step 11

Create a new layer in our boombox_final.psd design document. Turn on Edit in Quick Mask Mode (Q). Grab the Brush Tool. Make sure it's set to Master Diameter of 300px with a Hardness of 0 percent. Draw across the bottom of the image. Then go to Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone. Use the settings below.

Step 12

Let's go back to Edit in Standard Mode (Q). Create a pink gradient and draw it from the left and angle down to the right to get a result similar to the image below. Reposition this layer in the Layers Palette just above the speaker behind the boom box. Set the layer style to Screen.

Step 13

Step 14

Let's copy some elements. I copied the texture in the bottom left corner and placed it behind the bottom right of the boombox. I also placed a copy in the top right. I made multiple copies of the speakers. Then I used the Free Transform tool to scale them. The image below shows where these copies were placed.

Step 15

Create a new layer. Turn on Edit in Quick Mask Mode (Q). Grab the Brush Tool. Make sure it's set to Master Diameter of 50px with a Hardness of 0 percent. We make our line follow the edges of some of the elements in our design. Then go to Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone. Use the settings in the image below.

Step 16

Let's go back to Edit in Standard Mode (Q). Then fill our selection with a pink gradient.

Step 17

Set this layer to Vivid Light to achieve the effect below.

Step 18

Next we are going to make our text. Grab the Text Tool and write the word boombox in all lowercase. I used a font called Silom with -70 character tracking and 120pt type. I'll show the Layer Styles used to create the font effect in the screenshots following the image of the text effect below.

Step 19

Now we're just going to have some fun and copy some elements around the design until it looks cool. I copied the x and played with its Gradient Overlay colors. I placed a handful of them by the boombox and also up top. The gradients have different variations from pink to purple. I also used Free Transform to change the size and rotate the letters. I added a couple more speakers at the top left behind the large x. Then I copied the brush tool pattern we made a couple times and placed that over some elements top right and then top left. The final image is below.

Conclusion

Halftone patterns are a lot of fun, and like anything in Photoshop, they can be combined with layer styles to create some cool effects. Finding interesting areas of an image to copy and overlay your design. In this case we used a speaker. Try cutting out other parts of your next design to mix and match with various effects. Thanks.

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Disclaimer:

None of the given Photoshop Tutorials are written by me. They are all taken from various sources on the Internet and I compiled some of them for you. Hope you understand. More are in the line.

In this tutorial, we're going to go a bit retro. You'll learn how to create halftone patterns and creatively cut up an image of a model holding a boombox. You'll then use those cut elements to make your design. We use some layer styles to get everything to come together cohesively. The effects are fun, and you can apply these methods to other designs as well.

Step 1

Start out by downloading/purchasing our image from iStockPhoto: Boombox Image. Alternatively, you could apply these techniques to an image of your choosing and still follow along (or as in the download PSD you could just use the 'comp' that iStock lets you download).

I downloaded the largest image available for this photo. There is some reason behind this madness: we'll be using cut images from the large photo to place into our design. Using the large image will allow us to have larger speaker elements.

Make a copy of this large photo. Open up the copy and resize it to 500px wide and make sure Constrain Proportions is checked so the height changes proportionally. Save this file as .psd and name it boombox_final. This will be our canvas for this tutorial. Also, open up our original large image we downloaded as we will be cutting some images from it starting in Step 3.

Step 2

Let's prepare our boombox_final.psd document. First cut out the boombox image. Also cut out the top half of our model. Below is an image of the top half of the model cut out. You can see the boombox cutout in the preview of the layers palette as well as the layer order. We need to cut out these pieces so that we can place elements behind them as we build our design.

Step 3

Let's jump over to our large image. Grab the Elliptical Marquee Tool. Draw a selection that covers the right speaker. Then Command/Ctrl-Click and select Refine Edge. Use the settings in the image below.

Step 4

Turn on Edit in Quick Mask Mode (Q). Then go to Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone. Use the settings below.

Step 5

Let's go back to Edit in Standard Mode (Q). Copy this selection.

Step 6

Now paste this cut out image of the speaker into the boombox_final design. And move it to the bottom left corner.

Step 7

Now we are going to follow the same steps to place some texture over the speaker. First make a small selection in our large stock photo. Then type Cmd/Ctrl-Click and select Refine Edge. The only difference in this setting is that we set our Feather to 15px. The rest is the same. Turn on Edit in Quick Mask Mode (Q). Then go to Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone. Use the same settings as we did before only this time change the Max Radius to 10 Pixels. Then go back to Edit in Standard Mode (Q). Copy the selection, then paste it into our design and move it to the bottom left corner over the speaker.

Step 8

We're going to jump over to our large stock image again. Grab the Brush Tool. Give it a Master Diameter of 900px and a Hardness of 0 percent. Turn on Edit in Quick Mask Mode (Q). Click in the center of the image. Then go to Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone. Use the settings in the image below.

Step 9

Let's go back to Edit in Standard Mode (Q). It should look like the selection below. Invert the selection by going to Select > Inverse. Copy this selection.

Step 10

Paste the selection into our boombox_final document. Give it a layer style of Lighten. You can see the white dots emerge in the bottom of our document. Place it so that it matches the image below. Then copy the speaker we placed before and move it behind our model, but in front of the large dots.

Step 11

Create a new layer in our boombox_final.psd design document. Turn on Edit in Quick Mask Mode (Q). Grab the Brush Tool. Make sure it's set to Master Diameter of 300px with a Hardness of 0 percent. Draw across the bottom of the image. Then go to Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone. Use the settings below.

Step 12

Let's go back to Edit in Standard Mode (Q). Create a pink gradient and draw it from the left and angle down to the right to get a result similar to the image below. Reposition this layer in the Layers Palette just above the speaker behind the boom box. Set the layer style to Screen.

Step 13

Step 14

Let's copy some elements. I copied the texture in the bottom left corner and placed it behind the bottom right of the boombox. I also placed a copy in the top right. I made multiple copies of the speakers. Then I used the Free Transform tool to scale them. The image below shows where these copies were placed.

Step 15

Create a new layer. Turn on Edit in Quick Mask Mode (Q). Grab the Brush Tool. Make sure it's set to Master Diameter of 50px with a Hardness of 0 percent. We make our line follow the edges of some of the elements in our design. Then go to Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone. Use the settings in the image below.

Step 16

Let's go back to Edit in Standard Mode (Q). Then fill our selection with a pink gradient.

Step 17

Set this layer to Vivid Light to achieve the effect below.

Step 18

Next we are going to make our text. Grab the Text Tool and write the word boombox in all lowercase. I used a font called Silom with -70 character tracking and 120pt type. I'll show the Layer Styles used to create the font effect in the screenshots following the image of the text effect below.

Step 19

Now we're just going to have some fun and copy some elements around the design until it looks cool. I copied the x and played with its Gradient Overlay colors. I placed a handful of them by the boombox and also up top. The gradients have different variations from pink to purple. I also used Free Transform to change the size and rotate the letters. I added a couple more speakers at the top left behind the large x. Then I copied the brush tool pattern we made a couple times and placed that over some elements top right and then top left. The final image is below.

Conclusion

Halftone patterns are a lot of fun, and like anything in Photoshop, they can be combined with layer styles to create some cool effects. Finding interesting areas of an image to copy and overlay your design. In this case we used a speaker. Try cutting out other parts of your next design to mix and match with various effects. Thanks.

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Age Progression - Photoshop Tutorials

Disclaimer:

None of the given Photoshop Tutorials are written by me. They are all taken from various sources on the Internet and I compiled some of them for you. Hope you understand. More are in the line.

Here’s a little tutorial showing you how I basically go about aging a woman’s face in Photoshop.

Preface

I've been asked several times by different members to post a tutorial on how I age-progress a person. So, here it is!

Men and women age a little bit differently but since I've only aged female celebrities thus far, I'll just focus on women for this tutorial. I’ll be using the image of Katie Holmes that I did for a past W1K contest, as an example.

Step 1: Choosing an Appropriate Photo

When deciding to age-progress a celebrity’s face, I try to select a picture that is touched-up as little as possible.

I find that candid shots, or any shots that have not been taken in a studio, work best because the resulting harsh lighting reveals more of the skin’s details i.e. slight bags under the eyes and faint wrinkles. The appearance of such details makes it all that much easier to visualize how your subject will age. Visualizing what the end result will look like brings you one step closer to aging her face realistically.

In Katie’s case, we can see very faint horizontal lines on her forehead, fairly obvious lines under her eyes and lines bracketing her mouth.

Step 2: Collecting Reference Material

Reference material is key in my method of aging. Keeping Katie’s face in mind, I scoured the Web, looking for faces of old women who either resemble Katie and/or share the same facial expression. Here, Katie is smiling with her face positioned at a 3/4 angle so I tried to gather as many pictures of old women who are smiling in the same manner or close to that. I then opened up the picture of Katie in Photoshop and pasted the found images around her face on a separate layer, spread out to provide easy visual access.

Another kind of reference I like to use but is usually hard to find, is pictures of the subject’s parents. I managed to find a couple of reference pictures of Katie’s mother online and they really helped me to decide whether or not to give Katie a double chin. Since her mom has quite a bit of mass under her chin, I decided I would apply that to Katie too.

Step 3: Thinning Brows

Now the fun begins! The first thing I like to do is to thin out the subject’s eyebrows and eyelashes. The older people get, the thinner their hair gets - either because hair falls out and/or because it dries out as it greys.

So to achieve this, I like to use the Clone Stamp tool at 100% with a relatively small brush size depending on the size and resolution of the image. I sampled the surrounding skin to thin and reduce the number of hairs.

Step 4: Mold the Face

Next, I like to add the basic sags to the skin. I do this in the Liquify mode. I tried to create sagging effects to the cheeks, jowls and the cliff just above the eyes by using the Push tool. For the eyes, I tried to be subtle; otherwise she may end up looking somewhat ghoulish.

From what I’ve learned about the aging process, I know that while bones cease to grow, and in fact shrink, cartilage does continue to grow. As a result, the end of a nose may appear larger as a person grows older. So while I was still in the Liquify mode, I used the Push tool to extend the length of the nose slightly. Then I used the Bloat tool to also enlarge it slightly, being careful not lose the essential quality or character of the nose. Go too far and it may not look like Katie anymore.

Step 5: The Aforementioned Double Chin

Based on her mother’s pictures, I then added a fairly massive double chin. I initially used the Airbrush tool with some fairly broad strokes, sampling the colors that were already in the area of her neck. I then worked in the details with a finer brush size. Also, keep in mind that I was also using the other reference photos of older women to guide me.

Step 6: Wrinkle Up the Eyes

For me, the most important parts to get right are the eyes. They can make or break the project. Done wrong and the picture may no longer be identifiable as one of Katie Holmes anymore. I sought out the fine lines around the eyes and I tried to imagine how they would progress into wrinkles. I then extended them in length and width accordingly. Referencing the pictures of old women helped a lot with this step.

I used a combination of the Stamp tool and Brush tool. I wish I could explain my technique at this point in a more clinical manner but mostly I relied on my artistic instincts. I emphasized the wrinkles around the eyes by widening and deepening the lines slightly and increasing the contrast by darkening the recesses and lightening the edges. Also, I extended wrinkles to the cheekbone areas. I then applied the same technique to the wrinkles around the mouth and to the forehead.

Step 6: Reducing the Lips

In this step, I work on the lips. As people grow older, the outline of the lips tends to recede. Using the Stamp tool, I sampled the skin surrounding the lips and thinned them out.

While I was at it, I also added a few vertical wrinkles above the lips to give her a bit of a "prune" effect. We just want a hint of that, so don’t carve out deep lines; deep lines would only be necessary if she was puckering her lips.

Step 7: Planning Out More Wrinkles

Here, on a separate layer, I faintly outlined or sketched, with a relatively thin brush size, areas that I may or may not add more lines and wrinkles to. It’s easy to get carried away with the addition of wrinkles. So, I stopped, took a step back and assessed where to take to image. For me, it's essential and a great test to see what best works.

Step 8: Touching Up the Wrinkles

Based on the previous step, I added wrinkles where I thought they were needed most.

Overall, I found that the wrinkles and lines seemed a little flat in comparison to the rest of Katie’s features. They needed more definition so that they could pop out more. So, I highlighted the raised edges of the individual lines with the Brush tool and with a lighter skin tone.

Step 9: Hairy Lips

Facial hair becomes an issue with most women as they age. For some strange reason they lose it in the brow area and grow it back around the mouth area. I didn’t want Katie to be the exception so with a very fine brush size and the Brush tool, I added hairs to her upper lip.

I tried to make it as subtle as possible. Hairs too thick or dark would draw the viewer’s attention straight to her mustache and I didn’t want that. I also added more wrinkles to the area below the corners of her mouth.

Step 10: Refining the Neck

I decided that the neck was too smooth for a woman of 75 years of age. So I added finer wrinkles to that area. Also, I added more mass and weight to her jowls with the airbrush by increasing the value of the tones in those areas thus creating more contrast between surface planes.

Step 11: Adding Age Spots

A key component to effective aging of a face is the addition of age spots.

So at this point, I sampled one of the darker skin tones on her face, and on a separate layer that was set to Multiply and 30% opacity, I brushed them in and tried to create irregular shapes (there IS no perfect age spot). You can add as many as you like; the amount varies from person to person. I decided to be conservative with Katie.

Step 12: More Refinements

I took a little break from it and came back to it later to possibly get a better perspective on it. When I looked at it, at this point, I decided that certain areas needed refining and added detail. This is the beauty of working with a high-resolution file; I can zoom in real close and deal with a wrinkle up-close and personal.

Unless their teeth were subjected to regular whitening, most people’s teeth yellow with age. Gums also recede, showing less gum and more bone. And so with that in mind, I sampled a yellowish-brown color and on a new layer that was set to Multiply and 30% opacity and painted that color to the teeth with the Brush tool. Her gums didn’t show to begin with, so receding the gums here wasn’t necessary.

Step 13: Preparing the Hair

The finishing touch here is greying the hair. I began by creating a mask defining the area of the hair. I used the brush for this and tried my best to define as many loose strands of hair that I could.

With this mask as a selection, I then created a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and reduced the saturation to –63.

I then created a new adjustment layer based on the same mask and adjusted the Brightness/Contrast to brightness +9 and contrast –36. As a result, I found that the darker areas were too pale and caused a loss of depth and so to adjust that, I then selected the mask and scratched out the darker areas with a 5px brush size at 50% opacity so that they could show through from the original image.

Step 14: Hair Raising

The next step was to raise the hairline and thin out the hair. Hair loss is common with both sexes.

I sampled the area at the top of the forehead and extended the skin area above the original hairline.

Step 15: Greying the Hair

A lot of details of the hair were lost in the previous step so with a thin brush size at 80 percent opacity I drew in fine grey hairs, sparsely laid out.

Patiently, slowly, stroke by stroke I added more and more hairs until I was happy with the amount of grey I had added.

Step 16: Finishing Touches

Finally, I took a step back, refined a few wrinkles here and there ET VOILA!

I hope this tutorial was insightful. It may not be the most technically detailed tutorial but it gives you a good idea of the process I go through to get the job done. Hopefully, it will help you create your own trophy-winning images for future Fountain of Age contests!

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Tip 1: Two layers of semi-transparent gradients is fine. Twelve layers of semi-transparent gradients is not
Whenever you add a transparency layer, you add another run of rendering to all the pixels in that layer. Doing that once or twice is fine… most machines can handle that. But when you have a bunch of them, you’re begging to bring the machine to a crawl. Look at the two gradients below…

The one on the right is a solid background with two transparent gradients (a light one at the top and a dark one on the bottom). The one on the left is a single gradient. The one on the right required three passes to render. The one on the left requires one.

This does not mean that you can never have transparency in your application. But if you can figure out an economy of layers when using transparency, you’ll save yourself from from developers who are willing to make the design trade off to speed up the application.

Tip 2: The Grid layout is your new best friend. Understand it. Use it. Love it.
I once worked with a designer who used Blend and made the most beautiful screens in Blend. But when it came to implement his designs, the developers ended up ditching most of his work because every element was inside a layout inside a layout inside a layout… etc. This ends up being a huge performance killer because every layout means another set of layout calculations for the layout manager.

Instead, make creative use of the Grid layout. Within the Grid layout, you can create columns and rows with the following options:

Auto (with Min/Max options) - This column will ask the items inside it how much room they need and will expand or contract to give them exactly the room they need and no more (within the min/max limits).
Fixed Width/Height (”80″) - A fixed height or width will take exactly that many pixels of space. Easy enough.
Star (”*”) (with Min/Max options ) - this can be used as a decimal or a percentage… “.8*” or “80*”. It asks the container holding it how much room it has. After the Auto and Fixed columns or rows allocate their needed space, the “*” ones take up all the remaining available space unless hindered by the min/max limits.
A single grid can use any number of rows and columns using any combination of Auto, Fixed and Star. You would be shocked at how flexible this is. (Click here to see that flexibility in action.) You can build whole screens using a single grid. I don’t recommend that, but keep the idea of fewer layouts in mind when you are translating designs. Not every element in the project needs to be inside its own layout.

Tip 3: Use Borders, not Rectangles
Borders play nice with pretty much anything you want to do with the added benefit of being able to put stuff in it. Additionally, they are really simple layouts, so they don’t use much overhead. Take a border and put a Grid into it and you have a visually compelling and flexible combination.

Tip 4: Draw simple vector art inside Blend.
Mike Swanson has a fantastic Adobe Illustrator-to-XAML plug-in. I’ve heard that some people can use Expression Design quite well. But unless your project is extremely visual in an artsy kind of way, you should just draw simple vector art inside Blend. Not only will you save yourself the exporting-importing trouble, your XAML will look nicer and be easier to change later on.

I usually draw with the pen tool inside a Grid layout and then use the direct selection tool to make the tweaks I need.

Tip 5: (Silverlight Only) Plan on using only a few fonts
Most of my experience with fonts in Silverlight have been somewhat painful. Hopefully we’ll see that change in Silverlight 3, but in the meantime it is something that I’ve seen even experienced developers fight with. Watch this video by Tim Heuer… it will help. () And put this blog on your RSS feed… I’m working on a step-by-step tutorial for this geared at non-developers.

Tip 6: Work in “Split” mode in Blend and goof around with the XAML every now and again
Blend as a drag-and-drop design tool is absurdly powerful. Using Blend, you could build an interactive wireframe prototype in 15 minutes and never touch a line of code.

But as awesome as it is, it will be necessary from time to time to go into the XAML and tweak this or that or comment something out or copy-paste something else. Simply put, understanding XAML will make transitioning your designs a breeze and having Blend in “Split” mode will let you know just what your work in the design space is doing to the XAML. It’s a pretty painless way to start the XAML learning process.

If you’re interested in getting into the XAML a little more, I would recommend using Visual Studio 2008 in tandem with Blend. It offers intellisense (auto-complete for code) and integrates extremely well with Blend.

Hope that helps… If anyone has any questions, feel free to post them here.

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Defining the Media Type

First let us have a quick think about what possibilities this opportunity to restyle your page for a different output medium gives us all as designers. You’ve probably witnessed what a mess some pages can look once they’ve been transferred onto paper — useless navigation areas and ads take up space, paper and ink. The page can often look cluttered and can become illegible given the more restricted dimensions of the page.
Over the last few years it has become customary for large sites to offer links to ‘printer-friendly’ pages — separate pages that were stripped of this unnecessary content. These pages were time-consuming to generate and costly to maintain, and so disparities between the content on the two versions of the same page often crept in. With the simple CSS methods in this tutorial, nothing more than a second stylesheet would be necessary for all of these pages to print perfectly.
There are even more browser types to consider, such as aural browsers, which read webpages aloud to their users; or Braille displays, which can create interfaces from a webpage readable to their blind users. The software that drives these applications will often include a default stylesheet which will apply stylings relevant to the medium, but now you can get in there and add your own styles to these outputs.

Media Options
There are ten different media types defined in the » CSS-2 specifications. They are:

• all (default if no other is specified)
• aural
• braille
• embossed
• handheld
• print
• projection
• screen
• tty
• tv

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Don't Create Multiple Pages or Fiddle with Scripts
You've decided to make your site "printer-friendly". You read the article on what it means to be printer friendly, but now you have to decide how you want to do it. There are several options:

1.Make a copy of every page or article - and manually remove all the non-printer-friendly stuff.
2.Use a (CGI, PHP, JavaScript, other) script to remove the non-printer friendly stuff on the fly.
3.Write a style sheet for print.

The drawback to option one should be fairly obvious to most people. It is very labor intensive and requires that for every page on your site, you create a second, duplicate page.
Option two is the most common choice right now, because it mitigates the problems of option one, and with a small change in how you write your Web pages, you can set it up for every page on your site. But if you don't have access to CGI or you just don't feel comfortable with programming, this method can be challenging, if not impossible.
Cascading Style Sheets to the Rescue
Luckily, CSS was not written with just Web pages in mind, and with just a few extra codes you can create a printer style sheet that removes all the non-friendly options on your page and even takes into account issues such as typography and readability. And you don't have to write two different copies of your page or do any programming to build it.
Defining a Style Sheet for Print
As with screen style sheets, you use the <link>element to define the print style sheet your Web page should use:<link media="print" href="print.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet">
The only difference between this link element and the link to your screen style sheet is the attribute:media="print"Most style sheets are written for the screen, so the media can be left off, or written as:media="screen"
Building the Style Sheet
Change colors to black on white.
Change the font to serif.
Watch the font size.
Underline all links.
Remove non-essential images.
Remove navigation.
Remove some or most of the advertising.
Remove all JavaScript, Flash, and animated images.
Change these rules into CSS

: Black on white with 12-point, serif fonts:
body { color : #000000; background : #ffffff;
font-family : "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size : 12pt; }

Underline links:a { text-decoration : underline; color : #0000ff; }
I also like to make the links blue, to stand out on color printers.
Remove Non-Essential Images, Ads, Navigation, and ScriptingThe best way to do this is to put

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fig. 1, DIV size is computed in most browsers when absolute positioning is specified.
A bit of research revealed that I’m certainly not the first person to discover this.
“In browsers that support CSS you can specify all four edges and let the browser compute the width and the height. Unfortunately this doesn’t work in Internet Explorer…”—Autistic Cuckoo
“Technically you can use both a right and a left property and leave the width as auto. But unfortunately IE does not support this…”—css-discuss
In general, this little bit of CSS trickery seems to have been discarded due to its incompatibility with IE5 and IE6, and as a result has remained largely unnoticed, although it’s nice to see that IE7 now supports these “conflicting” absolute positions.
Incompatibility doesn’t make the discovery useless. Our original statements may still apply to IE5 and IE6, but we now have a different set of statements for all other browsers.
In all browsers except for IE5 and IE6
A div is rectangular.
All four corners of a div can be absolutely positioned on a page.
If the location of diagonally opposing corners has been determined the width and height is implied.
An alternative solution for IE
What does this mean? It means our assumption that only one corner of a div can be absolutely positioned on a page creates a problem specifically for IE5 and IE6. As it turns out Internet Explorer actually offers us its own alternative. Earlier on, I said that you can’t mix pixels and percentages, but that wasn’t strictly true: you can in Internet Explorer.
Using the power of dynamic properties, it is now possible to declare property values not only as constants, but also as formulas.
Dynamic properties are undeniably powerful, but as they’re only supported in IE, they tend to be of little real use.
But, once again, incompatibility isn’t a reason for discarding this little trick. Being able to determine the width and height of our divs as a formula means we can specify “the width of the page minus 40px.” As long as we can do that in IE5 and IE6, we can modify our original assumption #4 just a little bit and settle on our final set of statements.
In IE5 and IE6
A div is rectangular.
Only one corner of a div can be absolutely positioned on a page.
The location of the diagonally opposing corner must be determined by the width and height of the div.
The width and height can be determined using dynamic properties.
In all other browsers:
A div is rectangular.
All four corners of a div can be absolutely positioned on a page.
If the location of diagonally opposing corners has been determined, the width and height is implied.
Ah! Now that’s much more like it. As long as all of the above statements are true, we really should be able to put our entire template together using (almost) pure CSS.

In modern browsers
Our CSS for all modern browsers is now strikingly simple.
We specify the width and height of the body as 100%. (This is actually only needed for our Internet Explorer solution, but there’s absolutely no harm in including it in our main CSS.)
We hide the overflow in the body and html because we never want to see those scroll bars again.
We set the overflow to “auto” for the left and right panels, and hide it in the header.
The header has a width of 100% and a constant height of 80px.
For the side panel we specify the top (header height + padding), left (padding), and bottom (padding) positions. Then we give it a constant width of 200px.
For the right panel we specify the top (header height + padding), left (padding + side panel width padding), right (padding) and bottom (padding) positions.
All of that is very easily translated into the following CSS: <style type="”text/css”">
html {
overflow: hidden;
}
body {
overflow: hidden;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
}
#header {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
position: absolute;
top: 0px;
left: 0px;
width: 100%;
height: 80px;
overflow: hidden;
}
#side {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
position: absolute;
top: 100px;
left: 20px;
bottom: 20px;
overflow: auto;
width: 200px;
}
#main {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
position: absolute;
top: 100px;
left: 240px;
right: 20px;
bottom: 20px;
overflow: auto;
}
</style>
Creating the exception for IE5 and IE6
In IE5 and IE6 the bottom and right attributes of the main and left panels are just ignored.
This means that the top left corner is still pinned in place for each of our divs, and we just need to define our widths and heights.
We want the height of both the main panel and the side panel to be 100% of the height of the page minus the header height and the top and bottom padding (100%-80px-20px-20px).
We want the width of the main panel to be 100% of the width of the page minus the width of the side panel, the left padding, the right padding, and the gutter padding (100%-200px-20px-20px-20px). The width of the side panel is a constant, and has already been defined, so nothing needs adding here.
By using a conditional comment we can include these expressions for IE5 and IE6. (Line wraps marked » —Ed.)
Don’t forget: we specifically had to set the height and width of the body to 100% for this to work, but we didn’t need to hide that from other browsers, so it’s included in the main style sheet.
Beautiful
And there we have the finished layout.
Okay, those dynamic expressions aren’t valid, but they are at least hidden from the browsers that don’t need them. Although they’re presented as CSS those dynamic expressions are in truth JavaScript, and as such they won’t work in IE5 and IE6 if JavaScript is turned off.
But then, none of the alternative solutions would work in that situation either.
{Although this technique was developed independently, an article that suggested many of the same methods was published in 2004 by Alex Robinson. —Ed.}
Known issues
There’s a small and annoying bug in Opera 8. Although the side div resizes correctly when the page first loads, it doesn’t dynamically resize when the window size is changed.
This seems to be because we’ve given it a constant width, and I have, so far, been unable to find a way around this issue. Happily, it’s fixed in Opera 9, and it isn’t a particularly critical bug to begin with.

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