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A fun idea to do is create an abstract picture, you can do anything you want to it. One fun idea is the add a fire look to a picture, here is a step by step way to do it: First thing's first, get a nice stock photo. I used a stock photo of an eye from deviant ART.First of all I opened the photo and resized it to 75% of it's original size. 1. After you've opened your photo up, duplicate the background layer then apply Filter > Distort > Twirl and use the default setting. That should have just distorted it slightly. Now change the layer mode for your duplicated layer to Lighten. That will have made the eye look a little bit alien-like. 2. Now brighten up the picture a little bit by adding in a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast...) Now this is the part where you choose the fiery color for your photo. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map. I changed the layer mode for this layer to Linear Light and lowered the opacity to 85%. 3.Ok, here are some nice optional effects.Before adding effects like these, you'll probably need to flatten your image (Layer > Flatten Image) then duplicate the one remaining layer. First, I applied Filter > Artistic > Rough Pastels with the default settings. Now change the layer mode for this layer to Lighten and maybe lower the opacity if you see it need sit. I lowered the opacity to 70%. 4. To finish this tutorial off, I flattened all the layers, applied Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen, faded the sharpen to about 40% (Edit > Fade) then I added in a little bit of tech and grunge.

In this example we will take picture of the Planet Earth (round), and reshape it into a Square! 1. First, open starting image. In this case, I'll reshape picture of our Planet EarthOne of the things i will do is to play with a shadows a little, so to give our object sense of dimensionality. 2. Second, we will start by simple reshaping, as it is usually easiest thing to do. Go to "Filter -> Liquefy" and start morphing. Don't be frustrated if it is not perfect, as it is not the point of this step, but try to make it similar to the picture below. 3. Now that we have made our basic shape, we need to take care of the second part. If you have any shiny parts on your picture, you should flatten them out by using "healing brush".As we do not have that type of problem, we can move to next step. 4. Here, it will be helpful if you draw your square outlines on new layer on top of original picture, as to give you some guide in future steps.Also, don't worry if the picture doesn't fit perfectly into the square. 5. Now this step is going to further emphasize the role of light in completing the cubed effect. Using the guide layer above, get the polygonal lasso and select a single face of the cube as shown.Next get the eye dropper and take a midtone color from that area. Next get the paint bucket tool and fill in the selected area on a new layer above the Planet earth. Do the same for each face on the cube. As you usually don't need to blur top face, you can go to "Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur". When you are done blurring change the layer mode to "Overlay" and this will allow the detail of the image to show through while maintaining your adjustment to the light. Final step is to load the image back into the Liquify Filter and adjust the cube once more so that all of the faces fit the dimension of a cube. After that, you can see the final result! Excellent!

Digital art is a fun thing to experiment with, you have all probably sometime seen picture that is entirely made of text. Here's how to do it... 1. Go to "Image -> Adjustments -> Threshold", and move the slider left or right, until you get satisfying picture... 2. Open the notepad, and type the words you want to it like this: 3. Next, copy that text, and paste it in new text layer you have created. After that, set up style and size of font, and rotate text until you are satisfied. 4. Next, right click on text layer, and click "Resterise Layer". Select the template layer and with the magic wand at a tolerance of 32 select the white area. Go to select>similar to select all of the light areas and then select the text layer from the layers palette. Next select text layer, and hit delete to clear the excess text and drag the template layer into the bin icon. Back the image up in white by making a new layer (Go to "Layer -> New Fill Layer -> Solid Color") with a white fill and dragging it underneath the text layer.

When you are doing photo effects you can create those images that sometimes ipods use, the first thing you should do is de-saturate the photo. Change the levels so the range is closer. (Basically slide the black and white sliders towards the gray slider.) Create a new layer. Fill it with #fb4700. Set blending mode to Hard Light. For the Person Duplicate the photo. Take out the background by either the selection tool. Create a new layer. On that new layer, take the character, and paint the person black where you want it black.Set the person layer to blending mode overlay. This will have the part that is not black come through to reflect that red and orange colors. For the Graffiti create new layer just below the layer with the solid color set to hard light. Take a black grunge brush and start grunging the layer. Then again add grunge with the color set to white. Take the eraser tool and take a grunge brush. You can then delete some of the grunge on the layer. Create new layer above all. Set the foreground color to #e6ff8e. Grunge this layer a little. Use it for accents.

when you are creating photo effects you can change the color of a photo without actually selecting the color. At the bottom of the layer palette click at the icon - create a new fill or adjustment layer(a ball half white/half black) and choose Hue/Saturation. At the Hue/Saturation window, choose any color at the edit, as an example yellow; Point at the image, with the eyedropper, the color that do you want to change. Move the Hue slider and choose a color. Now , with the shift key, fix the color(eyerdropper +) where the changed was not good .......... click OK. With the mask active, paint with the brush(with the set foreground black) where is no good(at that example the face and arms).

While texturing you can add cool looking scan lines to your picture. This is easy enough: Open Photoshop and click on File > New and set the width to 1 pixel, the height to 3 pixels and set the "Contents" section to "Transparent" for this tutorial. You will have to click on View > Zoom In a few times so you can see the palette.Now, right click on the "Brush Tool" and select the "Pencil Tool" and at the top of the screen set your "Brush " to 1px, your "Mode" to normal and your "Opacity" to 100 percent. Take your "Pencil Tool" and click in the center of your new palette so the top and bottom third are still transparent. Go to Edit > Define Pattern and save your new image as a scan line pattern like the example below. Next, open any photo you want to add scan lines to. Click on the "Rectangular Marquee Tool" and drag it over the photo. Now right click on the photo and click on "Fill" and set your properties to the image below. The "Custom Pattern" will be the one you just created. You can set your "Blending" options to what appears best for your photo.

Learn how to create a mac clock. Now we will have to create the shiny look. Please add noise both to your glare and your base as it will look more official compared to the Dashboard Clock. Now we have to create the clock it self so take out your Eliptical Tool and draw in a circle on top of your glare layer and fill it in with black. Now add the border around the black circle with the hex indicated below. Now we have to create the glare so if you want to get more detailed view, you can just follow my way. Place the original clock design near yours and draw a white circle inside the black circle about 1 or 2 pixels apart. After that grab your eraser tool and set the opacity to 75% and slowlu brush from the top until you get something like mine. I also added a small tiny border around the glare just to make it look a little nicer. Now we have to add all the digits inside. I personally liked how Arial Narrow looked on it so i added that font although i think Mac's designer used some other font that i am not familiar with or maybe just missed. Create a white circle in the center of the digits. Following that draw another red circle inside the white's circle center. Now by the alignment of the arrows on the clock, use your white circle as the base and grab your pen tool to draw out one of the arrows. Just by connecting to one side of the base of the circle and extending towards the numbered digit and then following back to the opposite base of the circle, you can easily acheive those fancy arrows. Repeat the steps again to create the short arrow as well. Now place the long arrow layer underneath the white and red circle layer. Following by going to the Settings of the circle and adding a drapshadow of about 75% opacity with the color filling of black. After you have done that, grab your line tool and set th weight to 2px and draw a line from the red circle to the selected digit on the seconds. Now your basically done, just grab your text tool and add the State and the AM/PM indicator on top. If your curious about the colors, you can just take the hex of the original design. Your final result should look like this:

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