Graphics & Photography Tutorials Thread

[moments.]

That's a pretty sweet result although you might not use it very often in tags... Nevertheless, it still looks pretty cool although I personally would make the flare a little less bright.

 

[THIRTY-SIX]

This section shouldn't and isn't just about making tags.

It's good for people who want to learn photoshop tips and applying them their own way, rather than just to imitate.

 

[Renyui!]

Nice tut. I'll have to use it sometime (b")b

 

[Zebra Thunderhead]

Depth Tutorial by ♥ at KHInsider.com. Never posted it here. I'll be making a light and flow tutorial somewhere down the line.

 

[Michii]

Yayay, I made my first tutorial! Please post with resultsss!!! :'DD

Program Used: Photoshop CS2

Required: A good render, a lot of knowledge of photoshop, some c4d's and a scratchy texture, andandand they abilitiy to read bad directions. <321

Skill Level: Depends on where you're at, but I'd say intermediate to advanced.

'LE LINKKK! 8DDD

 

[moments.]

OMG Michii made a tutorial!
Love the outcome and although I won't use the entire tutorial, I might take little snippits from it here and there if that is ok.

 

[Ex Trainer Ruiisu]

is there any alternative links to those imagebam sites, i clicked on one and my computer lagged horribly, and my computer is made for photoshop use so i dont understand why it does so. But yeah alternative links like tinypic or devart if possible. thanks again ^^

 

[Zebra Thunderhead]

I agree, Michii's tutorial caused an uber meltdown when I clicked on it. Imagebam is usually pretty good but I think Michii's said something about a pdf... which would be a very large pdf.

 

[Michii]

Ahhh, I'm sorry. It worked fine for me, but I guess I didn't consider others. I tried uploading it on various sites, but none of them made it large enough to see. After the two above messages, I tried again on other other sites, but none worked. Thank you for making me take the initiative to make a deviantart account! :'D

Program Used: Photoshop CS2

Required: A good render, a lot of knowledge of photoshop, some c4d's and a scratchy texture, andandand they abilitiy to read bad directions. <321

Skill Level: Depends on where you're at, but I'd say intermediate to advanced.

'LE NEW LINK! DDD:

 

[Zebra Thunderhead]

Tag basics tutorial/explanations

Lighting:

If you enjoy creating AWESOME WHITE LIGHTS everywhere on your tag just to have someone go up and say, "looks like crap dude", then you need to learn that lighting is not just a white brush dot on the canvas. Lighting is a bit more in depth than that, and there are various kinds of lighting that you could possibly apply to your tag. Of course, that COMPLETELY depends on the stock of the tag, and effects you are adding. For basic use, you want to analyze the stock prior to actually adding a ton of effects and random splotches of ugly white brush dots everywhere.

1) Say you're a Paramore fan and what to make a tag using this stock image (https://www.weeklyreader.com/readandwriting/content/binary/paramore2-1.jpg). How would you effectively manipulate the lighting to best suit your tag? First of all, look at the stock before you do anything. Where's the light originally coming from? You will basically have to work with the light coming from that direction since it looks a lot more natural. In this case, the light is coming from roughly a 45 degree angle in relation to the front of her body, and therefore, if you were going to put some white brush dots anywhere, put them in the bottom right corner of the tag (assuming you don't horizontally flip the stock) so that it doesn't look like crap! If you put the lighting from the top left or bottom left, you're basically ignoring the stock itself and just creating cruddy effects that no one except for noobies will enjoy.

2) Don't ever just use the color white. I've seen it so many times it makes me want to puke. Want to know why you should never use white? Because pure white light would blind the hell out of your retina AND it looks like crap on a tag. You're probably asking me, or yourself, what color of light to use. The color? Doesn't matter. You could use a green light and I wouldn't care too much other than the fact it'd probably look worse than the vomit you get from food poisoning. Whatever color you choose is fine, but it's how you apply the color to make it look like real light. If your lighting is really, really, really saturated, then the areas where the light hits the stock have to be the color of the lighting as well (let's use green since I already mentioned it). If the light is really intense, it's fine to use white (I use off-white which is close to white, but not exactly white), but it should radiate the colour as the light ventures off from the centre of the source. Here's an example using one of my old tags from 100 years ago.

Tag:

Credit to my budden Ken

Yes, the light looks white, but you can tell that it would be light from the sun since it radiates a yellow colour as the light intensity weakens. By understanding how this works, you can make tags that have a lot of lighting to look a lot more natural than if you were to just put white. Also make sure that when you add lighting, don't just leave the stock as is. You will want to manipulate the stock a little so that it works with the lighting. Understanding colors is a great asset when working with lighting. If you take a look at the example, the light is yellow, so he darkened the shadows of the stock and given them a blue/green hue. If you had a red light, then you'd want to have shadows that were slightly more green.

3) Lighting from effects that you create are also important too. Say you had a stock of some guy looking down at his open hand, so you created some kind of awesome red energy ball or fire. What would you do? You'd add some lighting around that specific area so that the effect becomes integrated into the tag, and just isn't sitting there. Being able to effectively integrate such effects is what makes a tag that much better.

4) Lighting cannot only add a more natural feel, but add depth if used correctly. Say you had a tag that was all renders and was really busy, but despite all the 3D effects, it looked flat. Well, by adding lighting and shadows to certain areas, it creates a sense of how some things are closer and farther away from each other just by how you integrate the lighting. You can create a sort of "tunnel" effect with proper use. If you take the previous example with the monster and intense sunlight, you can observe how the intense light creates a sense of depth. Since the light is so bright and shines inwards towards the viewer, it gives them the sense that the light is far away, and everything else in the tag is much more closer, effectively creating depth.

5) Lighting is not without shadows. Light and shadows go hand in hand, but there will be times when the shadows just won't work.

All in all, everything I've said only works if you practice and are creating a tag where lighting is necessary. Some tags just look bad no matter what kind of lighting you put in, and the moment you remove it, it's amazing. Just because it looks nice doesn't mean you should put it in practice all the time. With my current sig, there is no light source whatsoever, yet it still looks good. And remember, lighting does not only effect the stock, but everything around it as well.

Flow

The stock you choose determines the flow of your art piece. For example, if you were to choose a stock such as this:

There is virtually no flow. But if you were to choose to use a stock like this:

You can easily see the flow in the stock because he's pointing. Flow's really easy to master because all you have to do is determine which way your stock is moving. PICK DYNAMIC STOCKS! Crappy stocks like that dog suck and make crappy tags. If you mess up on flow everybody gets laughing rights because it's really hard to screw up.

Typography

Also known as TEXT. Text is even harder than light to master. Even some of the long time veterans don't have it down. Text isn't always necessary, and should never be forced. This means that not every tag needs text. If it doesn't follow the flow, or even just doesn't feel right, then just take it out. More often that not, the tag will look a lot better. If you're a beginner, you'll be better off just leaving it out. You can gain insights about typography and how to improve it here. There's also a typography tutorial on AppendixSquared but I probably shouldn't post it here since the watermark has swears. (:

I guess that's really all the basics you need to know.

 

[Ex Trainer Ruiisu]

Ahhh, I'm sorry. It worked fine for me, but I guess I didn't consider others. I tried uploading it on various sites, but none of them made it large enough to see. After the two above messages, I tried again on other other sites, but none worked. Thank you for making me take the initiative to make a deviantart account! :'D

Program Used: Photoshop CS2

Required: A good render, a lot of knowledge of photoshop, some c4d's and a scratchy texture, andandand they abilitiy to read bad directions. <321

Skill Level: Depends on where you're at, but I'd say intermediate to advanced.

'LE NEW LINK! DDD:

Thanks a million ^^ ill be using this tut asap

 

[Gummy]

Ahhh, I'm sorry. It worked fine for me, but I guess I didn't consider others. I tried uploading it on various sites, but none of them made it large enough to see. After the two above messages, I tried again on other other sites, but none worked. Thank you for making me take the initiative to make a deviantart account! :'D

Program Used: Photoshop CS2

Required: A good render, a lot of knowledge of photoshop, some c4d's and a scratchy texture, andandand they abilitiy to read bad directions. <321

Skill Level: Depends on where you're at, but I'd say intermediate to advanced.

'LE NEW LINK! DDD:

I loved the tut, Mimi! Here's my outcome:

I thinK I'll use this in my theme sometime soon. Thanks again ^^.

 

[moments.]

Wow nice guide there Color Me Evil. I read through all of it amazingly and it was quite excellent! I think there are plenty of people here who could earn something from your lighting 'guide' as it was very in depth and gave various examples.
I will definitely use it!

 

[Zebra Thunderhead]

Hopefully it will help people understand the basics so whenever someone says something they don't wig out cause they don't know how to achieve something/know the vocab.

 

[Dukey]

Great tut Michii, here's my outcome//

I'll be using this as my theme for a while =]

 

[Loki]

Outcome:

Program Used: Photoshop CS2 (Though CS+ should be fine.)
Required: Listed in the tutorial.
Skill Level: Easy (Debatable)

The thing with this is, you mostly need to know your color wheel and be good with erasing and stuff to get rid of color adjustment layers and stuff. (And as always, you need to be able to interpret what I'm saying, because I suck at explaining.)


Got Manga?

 

[Zebra Thunderhead]

Hot tut Loki, I'll try it out when I'm done with college apps for the day. XD

 

[Renyui!]

Awesome tut, Loki. Will use this later. Katekyo Hitman Reborn ftw.

 

[Zebra Thunderhead]

hai kids, today we're making this tag:

Program Used: Photoshop CS2 (NOT GIMP FRIENDLY, it requires selective coloring)
Skill Level: Intermediate I guess
Required: Smudging brushes, splatter brushes, probably other stuff

click pls

I'd love to see your results!

 

[moments.]

Oooh sweet tutorial!
I will test it our later and post my result!