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Photoshop is the main tool many designers use to bring funky and rather
unnatural creations to life. In many cases, an artist will layer various
effects on a photographic base to create visually impressive montages.
Sometimes, however, a single effect can produce production-quality graphics all
by itself. The aim of this tutorial is to show you a remarkably simple way
of creating energy swirls using a single technique, and then extrapolate the
method to create a visually stunning masterpiece. Enjoy!
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Step 1: Create a blank document of any size (800px
by 600px is a good start) and fill the background with a solid black colour.
Select Filter > Render > Clouds from the main menu & make sure you
have black and white selected as your background and foreground colours
respectively. If you do this right you will have a cloudy texture like the
one on the left. |
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Step 2: Apply Filter > Pixelate > Mezzotint
with the type list-box set to Short Strokes. After a
little processing time you should end up with an image that resembles the
one opposite.
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Step 3: Its now time to create the main effect.
Run Filter > Blur > Radial Blur with your settings defined as
follows:
Amount: 100
Blur Method: Zoom
Quality: Best
Do this twice and you should end up with a common 'warp' effect like the one
on the left. Once you have done this, duplicate the layer once
(there should only be one layer in your document - i.e. the background).
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Step 4: With the bottom (background) layer
selected in your layer palette,
twirl the image a little by running Filter > Distort > Twirl with an
angle of +120.
NB. Don't be too alarmed if your twirls and/or final result does not
exactly match my own. Steps 1 and 2 have an element of randomness, so the
image is a little different every time. It makes this tutorial more
fun, dontchathink? ;) |
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Step 5: It looks interesting so far, but we can make
it look better. To
make your image look like the one opposite, select the top (duplicate) layer, and repeat Filter > Distort > Twirl, this time with the angle set to -180. Change
the layer's blending mode to Lighten to phase the two layers
together. Other blending modes have different funky effects, so feel free to experiment! |
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Step 6: Its time to add a little colour.
Choose Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation from the main menu
and enter in the following settings:
Hue: 0
Saturation: +25
Lightness: 0
Colorize: Checked
This will give your layer a reddish hue. You aren't limited to this
colour, of course - feel free to choose a different one if you wish.
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Step 7: It looks good, but we can still improve upon
it. Repeat step 6, but this time on the original background layer, and
with these settings:
Hue: +202
Saturation: +63
Lightness: 0
Colorize: Checked
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Step 8: As a final touch, merge both layers
together by choosing Layer > Merge Visible from the main menu.
Once this has been done, run Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask with
these settings:
Amount: 100%
Radius: 0.5px
Threshold: 0
These settings can be varied to your own personal taste.
And that's it - you're finished! It may be prudent to crop away the
outsides of the image to remove filter grain, but I'll let you do that.
Have fun!
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- Tutorial written by Joe
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