by David Peters
Abstract art can be quite amusing, when you are working with Photoshop you can do pretty much everything from, creating an ocean to making pebbles looks softer. Backgrounds with light soft looking pebbles can be quite popular. To do it start by creating a new document. Fill the background with black color. Select gradient tool with the settings shown at the top bar. Apply it several times to create an interesting effect. From “Filter” menu select “Distort>>Ocean Ripple “. This will create an awesome background that you can use for anything really, your desktop, messengers or even on the internet.
In this example we will take picture of the Planet Earth (round), and reshape it into a Square! 1. First, open starting image. In this case, I’ll reshape picture of our Planet EarthOne of the things i will do is to play with a shadows a little, so to give our object sense of dimensionality. 2. Second, we will start by simple reshaping, as it is usually easiest thing to do. Go to “Filter -> Liquefy” and start morphing. Don’t be frustrated if it is not perfect, as it is not the point of this step, but try to make it similar to the picture below. 3. Now that we have made our basic shape, we need to take care of the second part. If you have any shiny parts on your picture, you should flatten them out by using “healing brush”.As we do not have that type of problem, we can move to next step. 4. Here, it will be helpful if you draw your square outlines on new layer on top of original picture, as to give you some guide in future steps.Also, don’t worry if the picture doesn’t fit perfectly into the square. 5. Now this step is going to further emphasize the role of light in completing the cubed effect. Using the guide layer above, get the polygonal lasso and select a single face of the cube as shown.Next get the eye dropper and take a midtone color from that area. Next get the paint bucket tool and fill in the selected area on a new layer above the Planet earth. Do the same for each face on the cube. As you usually don’t need to blur top face, you can go to “Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur”. When you are done blurring change the layer mode to “Overlay” and this will allow the detail of the image to show through while maintaining your adjustment to the light. Final step is to load the image back into the Liquify Filter and adjust the cube once more so that all of the faces fit the dimension of a cube. After that, you can see the final result! Excellent!
Using photoshop you can create some pretty awesome effects with pictures alone. Here is a step by step guide to show you how to blend and create a smooth waterfall. With your image open in Photoshop, grab your Lasso tool from the Tools palette: Select the Lasso tool from the Tools palette.You can also press the letter L on your keyboard to quickly select it.Then, with the Lasso tool selected, drag a selection around your waterfall. It doesn’t have to be surgically precise, but try not to stray too far from the edges of the waterfall: Use the Lasso tool to drag a selection around the waterfall.If you need help with making selections, check out our tutorial Unlock The Full Power Of Basic Selections. Copy the Selection Onto Its Own Layer. With the waterfall selected, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Windows) / Command+J (Mac) to copy it onto its own layer above the Background layer. You won’t see anything happen in the Document Window, but if you look in the Layers palette, you’ll see the waterfall on a new layer: Press “Ctrl+J” (Windows) / “Command+J” (Mac) to copy the waterfall onto a new layer.Step 3: Apply The Motion Blur Filter To The New Layer With our waterfall now copied to its own layer, we can create our “silky smooth” effect by applying the “Motion Blur” filter to it. To do that, go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, select Blur, and then select Motion Blur. This brings up the Motion Blur dialog box:mPhotoshop’s “Motion Blur” dialog box. Adjust the Angle of the blur so it matches the angle at which the water is falling. In most cases, this would be 90, since water would normally fall straight down. In my case, since the water is rushing so quickly over the edge, it’s actually falling at a bit of an angle, so I’ve set my blur angle to -77. The easiest way to match your blur angle to the water is to click inside the Angle value box and then increase or decrease the value one degree at a time using the up or down arrow keys on your keyboard, which is what I’ve done. Once you’ve set the correct angle, drag the Distance slider at the bottom until your waterfall looks nice and silky. I’ve dragged mine to a value of 73 pixels, which gives me a nice effect. The image after applying Motion Blur.
In Digital art you can easily create a “mac” style background. You can use these in all sorts of situations, including the obvious - your desktop as well as part of your designs or for corporate work (power point presentations, flash work etc) in photoshop. BACKGROUND LAYER We begin with a blank canvas and then draw a subtle gradient across it. (I’m using a 1280×1024 canvas here) Don’t be fooled by the black border incidentally, that’s just photoshop. So anyhow I’ve chosen two orange colors that are very similar to each other to make a very subtle gradient indeed. Add a NEW LAYER Now take your Polygonal Lassoo Tool (shortcut key L) and draw in a rough triangular selection as shown. Then take a really fat soft brush (size 300 or so) and draw some faded in white with the edge of it, again as shown. Be careful not to make it too strong however. Set your white from step 2 to ‘OVERLAY’. NEW LAYER Now again take your Polygonal Lassoo Tool and do a similar triangle but back and against it (like shown). This time add some black. I actually used a gradient fill here using Black and nothing. You can get this type of gradient by selecting your gradient tool then dropping down and choosing the second one along: Set your black layer to Overlay & 34%. NEW LAYER Now use the Pen Tool and draw a nice looking curve. The secret to nice curves with the pen tool is dragging the handle a long way. Join the path back up so its one continuous blob, then right click and select “Make Selection” You should now have a selection of a nice curve (as shown). Once again use the gradient tool this time with White fading to nothing and add some white. Set this layer to Overlay and you should have something similar to whats shown. NEW LAYER And again grab the Pen Tool and this time make a new even more interesting shape. You can see the shape I created on the left Close the shape back in on itself so its one continuous path and again right click and choose “Make Selection” Now with your selection, grab that fat soft brush again (size 300) and add some Black just at the top on one side (as shown). Don’t let go of your selection as we’ll need it for the next few steps NEW LAYER Now choose a selection tool (doesn’t matter which one) and hit the Down arrow key 10 times. You need to have a selection tool on or else you can move your selection around and instead Photoshop will try to move some of your artwork (since you are on a new layer it will give you an error) so make sure you’ve chosen a Polygonal Lassoo tool or one of the others. Now press CTRL-SHIFT-I to inverse your selection. Then with your soft brush (size 300) paint some black down the bottom as shown. When you’re done set the layer to ‘Overlay’ and fade it back to 60% NEW LAYER Now press CTRL-SHIFT-I to inverse your selection again (back to the original) and this time paint some nice white as shown. Note that because we’ve moved our selection down back in Step 8, this won’t quite align with the black. NEW LAYER Now grab your gradient tool, choose white to nothing and set it to ‘Radial Gradient’. Then add a white light up the top left as shown. Set this layer to ‘OVERLAY’ Now at the moment the colors aren’t looking quite right, if I was really energetic I’d go back to the beginning and start again with a different set of oranges, but instead we’re going to do a quick adjustment NEW LAYER On the new layer add a fill of a good orange similar to as shown. Set the blending mode to “Colour” and opacity to 55%. This should adjust nicely. NEW LAYER Now once again use the usual method of using the pen tool to draw a nice curved selection (as shown) and then right click and choose “Make Selection Use the White - Nothing gradient and add a smooth white transition from left to right as shown. And set the layer to ‘Overlay’. NEW LAYER As you can see we’re getting close. Now create one final curved selection down in the bottom left add a white gradient fading to nothing (our favorite tool as you can see) and switch to ‘Overlay’. For the final touches I added a tinge of black overlaid bottom right and a bit more white overlaid on the top left. But these are inconsequential changes. You might want to go through and polish yours up a little too at this point because other than that you’re done!
when you are creating photo effects you can change the color of a photo without actually selecting the color. At the bottom of the layer palette click at the icon - create a new fill or adjustment layer(a ball half white/half black) and choose Hue/Saturation. At the Hue/Saturation window, choose any color at the edit, as an example yellow; Point at the image, with the eyedropper, the color that do you want to change. Move the Hue slider and choose a color. Now , with the shift key, fix the color(eyerdropper +) where the changed was not good ………. click OK. With the mask active, paint with the brush(with the set foreground black) where is no good(at that example the face and arms).
While texturing you can add cool looking scan lines to your picture. This is easy enough: Open Photoshop and click on File > New and set the width to 1 pixel, the height to 3 pixels and set the “Contents” section to “Transparent” for this tutorial. You will have to click on View > Zoom In a few times so you can see the palette.Now, right click on the “Brush Tool” and select the “Pencil Tool” and at the top of the screen set your “Brush ” to 1px, your “Mode” to normal and your “Opacity” to 100 percent. Take your “Pencil Tool” and click in the center of your new palette so the top and bottom third are still transparent. Go to Edit > Define Pattern and save your new image as a scan line pattern like the example below. Next, open any photo you want to add scan lines to. Click on the “Rectangular Marquee Tool” and drag it over the photo. Now right click on the photo and click on “Fill” and set your properties to the image below. The “Custom Pattern” will be the one you just created. You can set your “Blending” options to what appears best for your photo.
Want to create a web 2.0 label? This is easy enough just follow the steps: Step 1) Create your canvas, I suggest a large size so you create lots of detail, the final image can be scaled down later. Step 2) The next step is to draw your shape, this can be any shape. Use the preset shapes in Photoshop or download some new ones off the internet. It doesn’t matter what colour it is. Step 3) Next apply a layer style to the shape, I recommend using the Web 2.0 layers and gradients pack, here. Although you can make your own. Step 4) As well as this I suggest using a bevel and emboss. Use are large size and reduce the opacity of the shadow. Step 5) Add you text. I’ve used Trebuchet MS. Use the character palette to move the letters into a good looking spacing. Step 6) Again, use one of the white layer styles in the pack and apply this to the white text. Step 7) You now have a cool looking Web 2.0 label to add to your web pages. Step 
One optional step that I suggest adding is a drop shadow, this adds a lifted effect to the label. Step 9) Flatten and remove the background and save as a .png. This can now be added to any web page.
