We are on the 2nd tutorial. Here we’re gonna play with Ps and make thunder blasts out from hands. This is the source file:

• Boo (.jpg format)
Download and open it on Ps. Make a new layer above the ‘Background’ layer; press Ctrl+Shift+N, and we name it ‘Layer 1’ so you will type nothing on displayed dialog box.







Press G or Shift+G to activate Gradient Tool or you can choose it from the toolbox on the left.
Set the foreground and background colors to be default (press D), or you can click once on the double square in the middle of red circle. The results are foreground color become black and vice versa; the background color become white.
Look on the property bar above your screen, it is the Gradient tool property. Make sure ‘Mode’ is Normal (blue circle), and gradient style is Angle Gradient (red circle). Then click on Gradient Editor (green circle).


Here is the Gradient Editor; make sure the red circle one is active on the ‘Presets’; just click on it.
Look to the gradient bar; there are squares below and above. Click to one below, we start it from the left one.

Press Alt on keyboard then drag the left square to the right; follow the black arrow in the picture.
Press Alt on keyboard then drag the right square to the left; follow the white arrow in the picture.
Repeat two steps before until your gradient bar match the picture below. Click ‘OK’.


With Layer 1 is activated, drag the pointer start from one of his hand on arbitrary direction. It should be looked like this.


Go to menu and open Filter – Render, click on ‘Difference Clouds’. Now our picture is looked like below.


Press Ctrl+I to invert the color.


Then press Ctrl+L to activate ‘Levels’ dialog box. Adjust the three sliders on ‘Input Levels’. Feel free to experiment with the values. Click ‘OK’. What you see is lightning everywhere!


Look at to Layers Palette on the right-below of your screen or press F7 repeatedly if you don’t see it :)
Change the blending mode to ‘Screen’ (red circle), and click on button in the blue circle to make a new layer mask.


Repeat those steps on a new layer so you will see your picture like this.



















Everything is looking good now, but you can add some more magic. Let’s change the background color; click on layer named ‘Background’, which is our original layer before. Then click Adjustment Layer button (red circle) and choose ‘Hue/Saturation’.


Fill the check box of ‘Colorize’, adjust the Hue and Saturation sliders to something like in the picture, feel free to experiment with the Hue slider. Click ‘OK’.


Done! Here is the result. Click here to open full size result file.

Note: Original source file by Marcus J. Ranum

I prefer to post non-basic one because I think it will be nice as a starting page. I just played around with the blog templates and want to see how it will become. So, full article with some images will show the true display and performance, I hope. I promise to post the basic one. Okay, here is the first tutorial.
I’ll show you the power of selection features in Adobe Photoshop (we’ll say it Ps to the rest). As we know that there are so much selection tools in Ps and one of them is channel. Channel will work together with masking then make everything possible. Picture below is the result of that.

Looked weird? Yeah, but it simply easy to manipulate like the above one. I’ll give the source files you can download from the links below:

• the Kid
• the Jar

Put the downloaded files in one directory, not a must, but it will make your life easier, just keep it simple. Open those ones in Ps, I’ll show you how to do it in many ways on later basic tutorial. I assume you already know about this piece of cake. Now we have two files opened in Ps.
Focus on the Kid; we will remove his annoying background. But before that we have to change the Background layer to be a normal layer. This action can be done on layer palette, push F7 button on your keyboard repeatedly to notice where the magnificent palette is. Have you found it? There is a little cute thumbnail on the palette with same picture like the big picture we have on canvas and a ‘Background’ text on the right. Double click on that thumbnail and a nice dialog box will ask you to give the layer a new name, you can ignore it or give the new one. Click ‘OK’. Now the layer becomes a normal layer so you can give it transparent color or useful masking. Put one new transparent layer below and give it a flat color like Red (255,0,0) or Green (0,255,0), use Paint Bucket tool to do this or use another faster method.

Open the ‘Select’ menu from the menu toolbar and click on the ‘Color Range…’ the almost wonderful selection tool. What? Almost? Why? Ehm, you will know after this one.
In the Color Range dialog box you will notice the kid will be black and white — grayscale precisely. The bright or near white is the selection, the dark and near black one is the unselected area. We want to remove the background; hence we have to make the kid become black. Click on the background area of the picture until you find the good composition of black and white like the picture below, the brighter the background the easier your work later. While you make the white one, keep the kid as dark as possible. Do not hesitate to use Fuzziness slider; it is your friend to expand the selection. Can’t make only black and white directly without those annoying grayscale? Yeah, not so wonderful, we have to clean it by brush and blah blah blah and yadda yadda yadda. Click ‘OK’.

Make sure ‘Layer 0’ is activated then press ‘Add layer mask’ button. The Kid become red; it tells us that the masking color is inverted.

With the mask is active, pres Ctrl+I to invert the color.

Activate Channel Palette and turn on the visibility of ‘Layer 0 Mask’, and vice versa; turn off the RGB Channel. Canvas shows us black, white, and grayscale colors.
The following two steps are optional but if you do it, you will have easier work to do next;
Go to Image – Adjustment – Brightness/Contrast. Set the contrast slider to a higher number to make darkest color become black. Click ‘OK’.
Activate ‘Level’ tools (Ctrl+L); feel free to set the three sliders (black, gray, and white) on upper window to find best result, but don’t move too much. Click ‘OK’.
Use Burn Tool (R) to darken the dark area till it’s color become black; choose ‘Shadows’ color in the ‘Range’ drop-down menu.

Use Dodge Tool (R) to brighten the kid till it’s color become white; choose ‘Highlights’ color in the ‘Range’ drop-down menu.
To remove his chair you can use Brush Tools (B) with black color on that masking channel.
It should be looked like this picture:

You can smooth the jaggy edges with Gaussian Blur Filter applied to masking layer, just put the small number, 0.5 to 2.0 would be appropriate.


Move ‘Layer 1’ from the Kid to the Jar canvas by using Move Tool (V). Transform (Ctrl+T) it to fit in the jar.


We don’t need the Kid’s layer mask, so we can delete it and make a new one; just move the masking layer to the trash can in the right-bottom corner of palette, and click on 'Apply'.


Deactivate the Kids’ layer
Activate the Jar’s layer, go to Channel palette and click on the thumbnail or its name one by one to find the most contrast grayscale image. In this picture we found it on Red channel. Click on ‘Load channel as selection’ button.


Activate again the RGB channel and go to palette Layers.
Activate the Kid’s layer and turn on its visibility.
Click on ‘Add layer mask’, it should be looked like this now:


Pretty easy, huh? Like a charm! Now you can clean some little weird in front of the Kid’s pants and legs. Use Brush Tool (B) with lower opacity on layer mask to brush the green of the jar out.
You can add color fill adjustment layer with clipping mask on the Kid layer to make him a little green.


On the Result file you can discover how to make the whole background by using Gradient color.
The result file can be downloaded here:

• The Result (in .psd format)

Note:
The copyright of source files are belong to the respected photographers.
If you find the origin please do not hesitate to give the link to me.

We are here to play around with graphic design. Photoshop and CorelDRAW are our basics. Feel free to colaborate!

Thank you,
[rexluther]