Fantasy Art Photopshop Tutorial - Plasma in the Lake

This tutorial was originally posted on loreleiweb.com but due to technical reasons moved to pswish.com. The tutorial remains a copyright property of Lorelei (me!)

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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Crazy Lighting in Photoshop Tutorial

In this tutorial I will show you how to get a very cool effect that will look like the images below when finished:

The fist step is to get a collection of images that you want to bend to make your background. What I did was took the end effects of many of my tutorials, and used them so that you are able to follow along easier. You can use any images that you like, though I think the 3d abstract ones look the best.

So, lets start blending. First make an image with the bg color of this:

and a width and height of around 500

Now take your first image and put it in your picture. I used a 3d image.

Now on a new layer, past in another picture, and lower the opacity to around 50%

Now on a new layer, past in another picture, and lower the opacity to around 50% It may look

little bad now, but tick with me.

Once again, on a new layer, past in another picture, and lower the opacity to around 50%

Now, that's enough pictures for now. You can add more if you would like, just keep adding them until you are satisfied.

Now, make a new layer and change the mode to color. Fill your layer with this color:

Now, flatten your image by going layer> merge visible

Now take out your dodge tool, and start rubbing. Make it really light in the bottom left corner, and let the light slowly travel outward. Your image should look like this:

Now, on a new layer, take out your paintbrush, choose a small brush size and get out a light purple color. Start making dots around your picture, more of them towards the lightest areas, and less as you go out. Now change that layer opacity to around 50%. Your picture should now look like this:

Now I added some typography and other trendy image and I'm all done!Your image should look close to mine below.

How to Create Intense Light Streaks in Photoshop

A couple of subscribers left their comment on a previous post that collated a range of inspiring graphic artwork from digital artists across the world. The commentors asked how the light stream effect on some of the pieces was created. I did a little research and picked up a couple of tips from similar tutorials to present a walkthrough on how to create intense light streaks flowing around an object or person.

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Firstly find a subject to base the flowing light streams on. I picked out an image of a drinks can to relate to the original piece of artwork that inspired the subscriber.
Using the Pen Tool draw a path around the object, make the selection and paste into a new document using a black background.

Reselect the object by CMD/CTRL + Click on the layer, go to Select > Feather and enter 1px. Inverse the selection and hit delete.
Duplicate the layer and set the layer style to Multiply, drop the Opacity to suit.
These tips help the object blend with the background a little more realistically by erasing out the hard edges and altering the lighting and shadows.

On a new layer draw a circular marquee and add a Gradient fading to black with a colour of your choice, here I've chosen a cool green.
Transform the gradient and squash it vertically to add a little perspective.

Open up some kind of texture and paste it into the document. This particular image is a watercolour texture from the GoMedia Freebies. Desaturate to remove the colour.

Change the blending mode to Multiply to render the white areas of the texture transparent.

Back on the can or object layer add an Outer Glow through the Layer Styles, the key is to change the blending mode to Color Dodge to give a really intense glow.

Prepare a brush for creating the flowing light streams, experiment with the brush settings to give a thin tapered stroke. The main option to adjust is the Control and Minimum Diameter settings in the Shape Dynamics section.

Use the Pen Tool to draw a smooth flowing path, with the Pen Tool still selected right click and select Stroke Path, ensure the Brush option is selected along with Simulate Pressure.

Add another Outer Glow to the layer of the brush stroke using similar Color Dodge settings.

Draw as many streams as you like around the object, keeping the lines flowing as smoothly as possible in a variety of directions.

The Color Dodge effect works the best when the objects overlap the coloured gradient, here I scale up the gradient to allow for more light effects around the object.

Unfortunately the straight edges of the texture layer show through, use a large eraser to blend them out.

Add a little atmosphere to the object by placing a few blobs of colour on a new layer. Changing the blending mode to Soft Light will give a slight green glow to the object as if it is reflecting the green light from the intense glowing lines, overall adding a little more realism.

Make a selection from the object layer, inverse and delete out the unwanted area.

The light streams look okay flowing out from underneath the object but they would look a little better if they interacted in some way. Move the light stream layer above the object.

Erase out the majority of the lines leaving select areas which blend into or around the object.

A common addition to this trendy style is an array of glowing light particles. Setup another brush, this time play around with the Scatter, Spacing and Size Jitter options.

Brush in a range of dots and blobs with varying brush sizes to cover the whole of the object and flowing lines. Add the same Outer Glow layer style as the light stream layer.

Erase out the most of the particles to leave a subtle effect with slight differences in opacity.

Finish off the image with a few focal rings on multiple layers with very low opacity. These help relate to the objects that appear when photographing light with a camera, adding a little extra realism.