Superb Rule-of-Thirds---Photography

You might not know it, but if you're into photography, you might have noticed how better it looks than not following this rule in some cases. It's the Rule of Thirds, a simple rule to be followed so that your subject is placed within a certain area of an imaginary grid, which splits your picture in 9 equal areas.

kukkurovaca

Melissa.Photography.

Allard Schager

Arjun Purkayastha

Andy Farrer

Rob Overcash

Arjun Purkayastha

Jason

Jim and Becca Wicks

Andreas Wecker

Mark Whitaker

Stephen Chase

Doug Chinnery

Peter Allen

Steven Hammerli

Jeff Engelhardt

Gary Novak

Paola Sunny

Zhenya Semikhodski

Cool Text Effect with the Puppet Warp Tool in---Photoshop CS5

When Adobe started announcing some of the new features of the CS5 version of Photoshop they showed the Puppet Warp tool in which they played with an elephant's trunk. I was really impressed with that tool but never used it that too much, because of that I decided to give it a try, especially after seeing a screen cast with Russell Brown in which he was showing how to manipulate a rope with the Puppet Warp Tool.

So in this tutorial I will show you how to create a text effect using a photo of a rope and the Puppet Warp tool. This tutorial will only work with the CS5 version and I believe it won't take you too much time.

Step 1

Open Photoshop and create a new document. I'm using 2560x1440 pixels for the size. After that import a photo of a rope. The one I used is courtesy of Shutterstock and you can find it here

Step 2

We will be using the Puppet Warp tool to create our text effect, but to make it work properly the rope has to be really long. You will also have to extract the background of the layer, leaving just the rope. After that go toEdit>Puppet Warp. The default mode will show a mash over your object, to hide it just deselect the Show Mesh option.

Step 3

Now start adding points or joints, I don't even know how to call those things. As you can see in the image below, I added one at the beginning of the rope and one at the end. Start moving them around to see how they behave. Tips, if you hold ALT you can rotate the point, a little circle will show so you can use it as a controller. Also if you click on the point holding ALT you will delete it.

Step 4

Start creating your word, below you can see the R of rope.

Step 5

Keep editing, it takes quite some time to get used to how things work, it's important to not stretch the rope too much otherwise it will distort the image.

Step 6

Another really cool feature with the Puppet Wart is that you can change the order of the mesh in terms of depth, it's quite impressive how they do that but for example you can define with part goes on over the other using the Pin Depth icons.

Step 7

After a few minutes moving the points I got a quite convincing result for the word ROPE.

Step 8

Import the rope image again and connect it with the R, then do the same with the E.

Step 9

Add a new layer on top of the others and with the Brush Tool (B) use a very soft brush with black, paint the areas marked below to create some shadows. Group this layer into a folder and change the Blend Mode of the folder to Color Burn at 50% Opacity.

Step 10

Group all layers and duplicate the group, then with the duplicated group selected go to Layer>Merge Group. Change the Blend Mode of the group to Overlay.

Step 11

Using the rope image again, create another effect using the Puppet Warp tool.

Step 12

Import a paper texture and place on top of the other layers. The one I used is from Shutterstock and can be found here.

Select all layers but the paper texture, then group them. After that duplicate the group, select this new group and go to Filter>Convert for Smart Filters.

Step 13

With the Smart Object layer selected go to Filter>Blur>Guassian Blur. Use 8 pixels for the Radius. One cool thing about Smart Filters is that they behave like masks, there is a white thumbnail next to the Smart Filter sub layer that is like a mask, everything that is white gets the filter, what is black doesn't and the grey scales areas the filter is less strong. This is perfect to create a sort of depth of field effect.

With the Brush Tool (B) and a very soft brush, paint of the ROPE word area with black and also the whole rope that connects the word. Use the image below for reference.

Step 14

Select all layers and duplicate them, after that merge the duplicated layers and go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 15 pixels for the radius. Duplicate this layer, so you will have 2 blurry layers. The one at the top use Screen for the Blend Mode at 50% Opacity and the one beneath use Overlay for the Blend Mode with 50% of Opacity as well.

Step 15

Go to Layer>New Adjustments Layer>Hue and Saturation. Reduce the Saturation to -40.

Conclusion

The Puppet Warp tool is an incredible tool which shows an incredible technology behind it, like there are some things that are quite mind blowing such as the changing depths of the mesh. This tutorial was just an example of how to use it to create a text made out of rope. Now it's up to you to come up with much cooler ideas.

Click on the image for full preview.

Playing with Displace Filter in---Photoshop

I have been playing a lot with the Displace filter in Photoshop and I still get impressed with how powerful it is. Even though I have written some tutorials using it, I decided to try to recreate a different effect that I saw in one of the images submitted for the Daily Inspiration. It was a brick wall deformed like it was made of cloth.

So in this tutorial, or a quick-tips I will show you how to create a curtain made of bricks or how to deform a brick wall as it was a curtain. To do that we wil use a few stock photos, layer adjustments and the Displace filter in Photoshop CS5. The technique is pretty simple and the tutorial won't take you more than 30 minutes to go through it.

Step 1

Open Photoshop and create a new document. I'm using 2560 x 1440 pixels for the size. After that import an photo of a brick wall. The one I used is courtesy of Shutterstock and you can find it herehttp://www.shutterstock.com/pic-56014678/stock-photo-red-brick-wall.html

Step 2

Let's import another image, now of a girl opening the curtains. This photo is also courtesy of Shutterstock and can be found here. http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-44776357/stock-photo-a-young-woman-openi...

Step 3

With the Lasso Tool (L) or the Pen Tool (P) select the empty white. Once you select the areas you can go to Select>Refine Edges. Select the Smart Radius over the Edge Detection and then click on the brush icon on this panel to select the Refine Edges Tool. Paint on the edge of the hair to refine that area. Once you have the selection refined, go to Layer>Layer Mask>Hide Selection, or you can do that on the Refine Edges settings too.

Step 5

Now select the hands/arms of the girl and the curtains.

Step 6

Move the brick wall layer so it will be in front of the girl layer. As you can see in the image below, there's a marquee selection of the curtains and the arms of the girl.

Step 7

Go to Layer>Layer Mask>Hide Selection. Now you will have the brick wall in front of the curtains.

Step 8

Duplicate the girl layer and delete the girl using the mask of the bricks wall for reference. Then go toImage>Adjustment>Desaturate, then go to Image>Adjustment>Levels. Increase the black inputs and a little bit of the white. Check out the image below for reference.

Step 9

Change the Blend Mode of the Layer to Overlay. Your result will be something like the image below. You can make the effect strogner by duplicating the layer if you want, but then you will have to change the opacity otherwise it will get too dark.

Step 10

Now we will need the photo of the girl opening the curtains in Black and White. Open the file again in a document with the same size as your design (2560x1440) and then go to Image>Adjustment>Desaturateand then Image>Adjustments>Levels. Increase the black input and a little bit of the white input as well until you get a result like the image below. Save this file as a Photoshop format.

Step 11

Back to your design select the brick wall layer and go to Filter>Distort>Pixelate. Use 10 for the Horizontal Scale, 30 for the Vertical Scale. Select Stretch to Fit and Repeat Edge Pixels. Press OK and then another dialog box will open asking you to select a file. Select the Photoshop file you saved in the previous step.

Step 12

You will notice that the bricks will be distorted following the highlight and shadows of the curtain file. After that go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Gradient Map. Make sure that it's balck and white and the change the Blend Mode to Soft Light.

Step 13

On top of the other layers, go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Photo Filter. Use orange for the color with 60% Density.

Step 14

Let's add another adjustment layer, go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue and Saturation. Change theSaturation to -20.

Step 15

After all the layer styles you will probably get a result like the one in the image below.

Step 16

Import another image, this time a landscape image to be used as the background, like the girl is open this brick wall and now she can see this field. The image I used is courtesy of Shutterstock and you can find it here. http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-61151230/stock-photo-daylily-flower-at-s...

Step 17

With the field layer selected go to Image>Adjustment>Hue and Saturation . Change the Hue to -35 and the Saturation to -50.

Step 18

Add a new layer on top of the others and fill it with black, then with the Brush Tool (B) select a very soft brush and white for the color. Then paint with white in the center until you get a white ellipse. After that just change the Blend Mode to Multiply to create a vignette effect.

Step 19

Select the layer on top and then using the shortcut keyboard Command+Alt+Shift+E to create new layer with all layers merged into it. After that with this new layer selected go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 10 pixels for the Radius. Change this layer's Blend Mode to Screen and the Opacity to 60%.

Conclusion

You can repeat the same keyboard shortcut applied in the previous step and create another layer with all layers merged, then add some noise to the image. Go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise. I used 3% for the Amount and Gaussian for the Distribution.

The effect is done, and once again we used the Displace filter to add more realism to our design. I love the Displace filter and I've been playing a lot with it. In this example I used the curtains to distort the bricks. Of course this is just a concept, there's a lot of adjustments to be make in order to make it look perfect, however the technique is the same, the only difference is the amount of time you will have to put into it.

Now it's up to you, you can try different images and see the result, the most important thing is that you practice and have fun with Photoshop.