Learn how to create a plane crash in Photoshop

Learn how to create a plane crash in Photoshop

In this tutorial I will teach you how to create a scene with a plane crashing on a mountain. I will use ordinary images, and with simple techniques I will create an explosive horror scene.
Even with basic Photoshop skills, you can quickly find a path to create such photo manipulations.
Try to find good stock images with the same perspective, and you are on the good way.
PSD file is available for VIP members. zip size ~110 MB – 3540 x 2112 pixels

Things you will need:

1. Airplane image
2. Winter Mountain
3. Explosion and fire images : Register for a VIP account to download this set
4. Some Photoshop brushes – Available for VIP members inside the zip file at the bottom of the tutorial.

This is the final result:

For start I will open the image with the winter mountain in Photoshop.

With Lasso Tool I will select the mountains from this image.

Then I will add a Gaussian blur effect for the mountains. To add this effect you need to go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur

You can deselect the selection ( Press on CTRL+D ) and then go to Image > Adjustments > Curves and try to use something similar with my settings

My winter image will look like this. You can see a nice depth of field. If you are photographer I am sure you know what I mean. Click on the image to see a bigger image

My next step is to add a new adjustment layer. you can do it from the bottom of the layer palette. Use some values closed to mine

Now I will use the second image with the plane. I will place the image like in the following screen shot.

With Pen Tool I will make a selection around my plane. You can change the opacity value to 70 % or less so you can see better the plane.

I will right click on the selection and I will choose ” Make selection ”

You will see a selection around the plane. this is very good because I will invert the selection and I will delete the other part of the image. To invert the selection you can go to Select > Inverse or you can use the key shortcut ( SHIFT+CTRL+I ) and then hit the Delete Key from your keyboard. This is my result so far.

I will go one more time to Curves settings ( Image > Adjustment > Curves) and I will use the following settings:

You will need to download the following set of Stock images with Explosions. This set is available only for VIP members and you can see and download this set here : Download Stock Images

I will choose a image with a nice explosion, and I will place it in the front of the plane.

Change the blending mode for this layer to ” Screen ”

With the same technique I will place this nice image on the left side of the plane. Important rag this layer under the layer with the plane.

Duplicate the right layer with flames and make it smaller, and then change the blending mode to ” Saturation ”
With this little trick you can create a nice smoke.

I will use Polygonal Lasso Tool to create a selection around the back of the plane.

After you have the selection in place make sure you have the layer with the plane selected, and go to Layer > New > Layer via cut.
You just broke the plane in two different pieces. Very nice…, but the image still looks like a normal plane. All you need is to rotate the back part of the plane so it looks like a real plane accident. To rotate the back of the plane select this last layer and press on CTRL+T ( transform ). With mouse rotate the plane to the left. Click on the image to see a bigger size.

I will create a new layer ( place the layer under the plane layers ) and with Brush Tool draw a dark area between the two pieces.

I will use another stock image with flames, and I will place it in the gap and one under the engine. Click on the image to see a bigger size.

If you register for a VIP account you will be able to download a set of brushes to use in this tutorial. It has a few smoke effects, a crack and some sparks.
Step by step you have to add the brushes like in the following images.
After you load the brush in Photoshop, create a new layer for each brush and add some sparks on the front of the plane

On the engine you will add another brush on a separate layer.

The same brush I will add also on the front of the plane. I will place the smoke like it comes out from the cockpit. To create a more dense effect simply duplicate the layer with smoke. To duplicate a layer you need to select it and then press on CTRL+J.

You can use another brush to create the smoke from the middle of the plane.

The next step is to create a new layer ( press on CTRL+SHIFT+ALT) and add also the cracks.

One of my last steps is to add some snow around the engine, and also in front of the plane.

My Last step is to add some light around the fire. I will create a new layer ( press on CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+N ) and with Brush Tool I will add a orange color around the flames. Please set the brush opacity to 30%-40% when you make the drawing, and use a orange color.

This is my final result

Professional Hair Processing in Photoshop

Professional Hair Processing in Photoshop

Here I’ll show you how to make professional processing of hair in Photoshop, add different shades and bring some shine to the hair.

Ok, in the beginning you should find appropriate picture of woman with a long hair to work with. You can find the picture on Google Images or feel free to use mine. Open up the picture and begin making this tutorial with me.

The first thing that you should make to bring some shine to the hair. Select the Dodge Tool (Brush: 100px, Range: Highlights, Exposure: 30%) and brightened some parts, as shown below:

After that select the Sharpen Tool to add a bit of sharpness in some places.

Ok, move to the next step. Now, proceed to the coloring of hair. I prefer to create multiple strands and make them different colors. For this effect use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to create selection as on my picture below and fill selected area with color of #ef8008 on the new layer.

After that create five more selections and fill each of them with such colors: #f51464, #cd1bd4, #416fb4, #41b0b4 and #b1ce06.

Ok, remove selection with Ctrl+D and apply Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur with next presets:

Change layer mode to Overlay and see the result now:

After that duplicate current layer with Ctrl+J and reduce opacity to 20% for this layer.

Ok, we are done with woman fringe. Move to the lower part of hair. Create a new one layer and make a new selection with Polygonal Lasso Tool, then fill this selection with color of #b1ce06 on the new layer.

Add five more lines in the same way and using the same colors as before.

Ok, remove selection with Select > Deselect and apply Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur with similar settings to these:

Change layer mode to Soft Light and you will see the result.

To increase the intensity of color duplicate layer with Ctrl+J and set opacity to 60% up for this layer.

Ok, on this step we are done with this tutorial. On the picture below you can see the difference before and after. Looks really nice as for me, isn’t it?

Return home. Published Dec 27th, 2009 under Photo Effects.

BlueLaguna Logo

Adobe Photoshop

I will be using Adobe Photoshop CS2 to design this logo. Many swear by illustrator, but I believe for the purposes of making a tutorial, it'd be best to use photoshop as it will cater to a wider audience. More people have used photoshop than Illustrator. Besides, I've created 95% of all my logos in Photoshop, so take what you will.

Let's Start : The Project

A buddy of mine runs a gaming website, bluelaguna.net, and he has wanted a new logo for some time, so I agreed to do it for this tutorial. So let's take a look at the current logo:

(Note: The image above isn't a logo, it's an entire header. The actual name bluelaguna.net along with the slogan is the actual logo. I thought it would be a good idea to show the entire header though to see how it reacts with the overall design.)

One of the most important things this logo lacks is readability. When a user visits a web site, or visits any medium in which a logo is displayed, the first thing that hits them should be the logo. And for some reason or another, the first place us humans look is the upper left hand corner of a site. The current logo is placed in the middle of the header and the small font and the dark blue in "BLUE" is hard to read.

There's also nothing exciting with this logo. For a logo to be effective, it has to "brand" an image, it needs to stick in your head. All this logo is is times new roman on caps lock.

Now that we've gone over why their current logo is not suitable, let's begin with the actual tutorial.

Gathering Information

It's important to always know the specifics of what you or the client is looking for before you start. Generally for most projects, I only need to ask the client 5 questions:

	1. Name of the service/product:	BlueLaguna.Net
	2. Any slogans to use?:	"Your #1 Source for RPG Media"
	3. Any specific color schemes in mind?:	Match the current design
	4. What are you trying to convey through the logo?:	Serious game-related site.
	5. Any other specifics:	You don't have to use the current header design. Get crackin'

Pretty straight forward, now we know what we have to work with.

1. Setting up your Document in Photoshop

• Once you have photoshop open, go to File -> New. Then specify the name of the logo, and a width of 600 and a height of 500.
• Then click "OK" (Refer to the screenshot below).

After you click "OK" Your setup should look like this: (I'm on a 1600x1200 resolution.) For the menus on the left, I have the layers view, and the Characters in view.)

2. Experiment with Font Selections

As a starting point, I always experiment with a font that I think will work well with the logo. You have to develop an eye for what font will or will not work, with the specifics of the project in mind. Since for bluelaguna we're trying to focus on a serious yet gamer'ish feel, a serious font selection might be the best bet. Having yourself an arsenal of fonts is very important. I have several thousand myself.

Select the Text Tool on the left menu: (As shown on the image to the right) Adjust the settings on the Text Properties at the top to match these settings: In the character window to the right, set AV to -60 as shown below: (This simply shortens the space between each separate character, I like starting out with this setting, I don't know why :) Type "BLUE LAGUNA" in the document space (First, be sure that the background is white, you can use the fill tool for this. And I've decided to go with all caps to start out with, since all caps is generally deemed more serious). With the type tool selected, and layer 1 selected, select the font list menu (where it says Arial): You can do this next section in either three ways. - Hit the "Down" arrow to change the font view of "BLUE LAGUNA". - Hit the Down Arrow of the Font List to see the list of available fonts with a tiny preview of the font. - Download a font viewing program. I personally just use the first method, although I sometimes use a font viewing program. Our goal here is to find fonts that might work with the logo. Once you come across a font that looks like it could work, you should Duplicate the layer in the Layers Window to the right, and then hide the previous layer (The layer you right clicked and selected "Duplicate" from. This way, you've saved that font selection (the hidden layer), and you have a new layer to find more fonts from):

3. Good and Bad Font Selections

Since our goal with this particular logo is to be serious, we need serious looking fonts. It simply takes time to develop an eye for what is serious and what isn't.

Here are a few examples of bad font selections for this project: The first logo (the top), has a very laid back, fun / unprofessional tone to it. The second logo is simply "goofy" looking, and it's generally always bad to select a logo that has an inherent shadow. The third logo is way too "ragged" with its frills all over the place, definitely a no go. Calligraphy logos are generally outdated, especially ones with weird "drops" coming from them. The last logo you can hardly even read. Remember, a logo should be easily readable.

Here are a few examples of good font selections for this project: All of these logos with the exception of 4 and 6 are pretty much similar. #1, 2, 3 & 5 are all very simplistic and serious in appearance. Logo 4 still appears "serious" even though it is significantly different from the rest. I chose this just in case I want to experiment with piecing together fonts for the word "Blue" and "Laguna". Logo 6 is a very bold / italicized logo that says nothing but serious.

4. Finalizing a Font Selection

Once you have some possible font selections, each in their own layer, you further analyze them and see which works. With logos that have more than one word, most of the time it is good to separate the appearance of the words from each other. Since this particular project has two words, "Blue" and "Laguna", we're going to want to separate them by possibly choosing two different fonts. You can also separate words from each other by keeping the same font, but changing the color. So I'm going to experiment with the 6 good font selections above.

This is what I've come up with: Although I didn't use one of the 6 fonts I selected initially for the word "blue", I simply used an unboldened version of "LAGUNA", which keeps a consistent feel but also allows for separation of the two words.

5. Adding in a symbol

Sometimes logos work well with only the use of fonts, but most times adding in a relevant symbol of some sort will really make a logo stand out. When I say "symbol", I mean any part of the logo which isn't actual text. So let's start with the first font selection from above:

Now here is where having an eye for design and experience is a really big help. We need to begin contemplating ideas of what exactly we can add to this logo to make it awesome. So, the first thing I do is just sit there and stare at the font selection and think of what exactly the product/service/site is all about. Well, BlueLaguna.Net is about gaming, more specifically speaking, it's a site that offers RPG media (Role Playing Game) media. Therefore, we have two things to work with: RPG and Media. What exactly can we associate with both RPG and Media? Well, we don't necessarily have to convey both RPG and Media through the logo (if you try to get too complex, the logo will become cluttered). We can choose one or the other if we want. I think it'd be most logical to focus on the whole RPG aspect, as you can find media all over the place and it isn't an entirely unique concept.

So let's do some research on Role Playing Games. We need to figure out a symbol which can really represent RPG. The current BlueLaguna.Net features a 3d female, perhaps that has something to do with RPG? Well, let me do a search on images.google.com for "RPG". The results turn back a few different female characters, Hmm! The first few results, keeping in mind the 3d female character on the current header of bluelaguna.net, seem to suggest that depicting a female in the logo might be the best bet. It also seems that weaponry / mystical environments are associated with RPG as well.

Now that I know what I can associate with RPG, I can come up with some possible ideas for a symbol. I think maybe featuring a face of one of these RPG'ish females with maybe a hint of mysticism.

The Pen Tool is your Friend

The most important tool when it comes to logo design is the pen tool. If there is one tool to thoroughly understand, it should be the pen tool. The pen tool allows you to create any shape(s) you want, and maintain vector format (which is very important if you ever want to size your logo up n' down (for professional print or whatever.)

It's always good to draw your logo by hand without copying over a picture (vector tracing), but if you aren't very talented and don't have much experience, it might be your only option. So for the sake of making the biggest impact on this tutorial, I will teach you all an awesome technique for creating great looking symbols for you logos.

Finding a suitable picture

If you're going to trace, I always suggest using a site like istockphoto.com to find the image and pay for it. This way you won't be using copyrighted images to trace over. Or taking your own picture to trace over. Unfortunately though, istockphoto has nothing with RPG or "anime". So I just went on images.google.com and found a picture which I think is suitable, here it is:

When I came across this picture, I got the idea that I can vector trace over her face and hair to create what I want, and then integrate it along with the font selection in some unique way. So once you've found the picture you want to trace (if not the same one), save it to your hard drive, open it up in photoshop, CTRL-A, CTRL-C to select it and copy it, and go back to your main logo document and CTRL-V. Now you've imported this picture into your logo document. Once you've imported it, with her layer selected, you can cut off the bottom half of her body. (Select the first tool in the upper left corner of the tools menu, Rectangular Marquee Tool), select the bottom half of her body and hit the delete key. Your screen should look something like this by now (You can hide the text layers behind it).

Vector Tracing

Now select the magnifying glass in the tools menu and select around the girl, it will look like this zoomed up to about 400%:

Now select the pen tool in the tools menu:

Make sure that the foreground color (the black square at the bottom of the pic to the upper right ---^) is the same dark blue color of the text we specified.

In the layers window to the right, select the little round circular > icon on the upper right corner of the window, and click on "Create New Layer" in the window that comes up. Hit "OK" and then in the layers window, with the new layer selected, change the Opacity to 0%. We do this because once we start tracing over the image, we don't want the dark blue color hiding the picture of the girl below.

And with the pen tool selected, click a point somewhere on the outline of the hair (at the top), and then click to make another point somewhere on the hairline where the line will begin to form. You can hold down and "direction" the angle of the line to create a certain type of curve. It takes awhile to get the hang of, but it's very easy once you get the hang of it. After plotting points of an entire section of hair, yours should look similar to this: (Note: I've lightened the opacity of the girl to illustrate what your lines should look like so far)

(opacity 100%)

It's not perfect, but for now it's a good start.

Now I'm simply going to continue creating more shapes, like the facial features. After 15-20 minutes or so of creating the different facial features and the face itself, here is what I have come up with:

As you can see, I specified a different color for the face (light blue). And by now I have around 15 different layers. There's a separate layer for the top portion of each eye, the bottom portion of each eye, the middle, and the small glare. There's also a layer for the face background, and the ear. So let us continue and add some shading...

After about 20 more minutes of shading, this is what I've come up with: There are a total of 3 different layers for the hair. It's somewhat of a tedious process to do hair shading simply because there's a lot of strands of hair! But you have to just condense them and get the general idea of the shading and it will work out well. Then I did some light shading work on the face and the neck. Now I consider the actual draft of the symbol complete. Let's make our initial text layer visible and see what we can do to integrate the symbol with the text.

First, you will want to select the very last to the very first vector layer that you created (you'll have a couple dozen or more), hold down the shift so you can select them all. Then in the layers window click the little circular round button and select "New Group From Layers". This will put all of the layers of the girl, into one easily manageable layer group. This way, you can move around the one group and it will keep all of their positions together so it won't break up her face.

Now this actually doesn't look too bad, in and of itself. But the proportion of the anime head is too big, in relation to BLUELAGUNA. So we will want to scale down the head. Let's try moving it over to the left, and adding the slogan + the ".net" text. This is what it looks like:

Now it looks pretty damn good eh? The only other thing I did, was with the pen tool, I added a white shape over the "B" in "BLUE" so that the face doesn't collide with the B.

Unfortunately I messed up and didn't design this over the dark blue'ish background that the bluelaguna.net has. So I'm going to change the colors of the logo to fit a background of an appropriate header for the site.

As you can see, simply changing colors around can really change the look and feel of a logo. I'd consider this logo a winner.

6. Conclusion

I can pretty much guarantee you that if you're a first time user of the pen tool or photoshop for that matter, it won't turn out so pretty like mine did. It takes some time and patience to really get the hang of it. It's all about getting a little creative and working at it for awhile.