Vanity License Plate

In this Photoshop tutorial I'll show you how to create a custom vanity license plate using a few basic Photoshop tools a piece of reference material and some creative layer stylings. 

Step 1

Open a new file (mine is 540×300 at 72ppi). It is important to note that although the size of the document doesn’t matter, you will need to adjust the layer styles we apply accordingly if you choose to play along at home. If you’ve read many of my other tutorials you’ll know that anytime I am trying to create a real object, I like to have a piece of reference to work from, so I’ve inset my example in the Step 1 graphic.

I’m going to fill the background with a pretty radial gradient ( #788e9e to #263744) because we’ll be first drawing in a light gray and I want to be able to see what I’m doing. You can fill the background with any color you like… except purple.

(*note: If you’re an 8 year old girl, you are of course the exception to the purple rule and you should use it to your little heart’s content.)

Step 2

Create a new layer by pressing the Create New Layer button at the bottom of the Layers palette and rename itPlate. Press the U key to switch to the Custom Shape tool and choose Rounded Rectangle from the menu at the top of Photoshop, make sure that the Fill Pixels icon is checked and set the Radius to 20 pixels.

(*note: If your layers palette isn’t visible, activate it by choosing Window>Layers from the main menu.)

Step 3

Set your foreground and background colors to #e9e9e9 and #d2d2d2 respectively, then drag a nice rectangular shape onto the stage. I took my tape measure to the garage and figured out that the standard US license plate is a 2:1 aspect ratio, so my rectangle is 500×250 pixels.

(*note: If you want to see the size of your shape as you create it, open the Info window by choosing Window>Info from the main menu.)

Step 4

Since most license plates have a reflective quality that makes the surface shimmer, lets add that effect with a little noise. Select Filter>Noise>Add Noise from the main menu, set the Amount to 2% and make sure that Gaussian and Monochromatic are checked before hitting OK.

Step 5

Double click next to the layer name in the Layers palette to bring up the Layer Styles dialog then add the following Drop Shadow and Bevel And Emboss.

Step 6

Create a new layer and call it Bevel. This is where the embossed bevel around the edge of the license plate will live.

Command-Click (PC: Ctrl-Click) on the Plate layer’s icon to load the plate as a selection (*note: the Bevel layer should still be selected as the working layer). Now from the main menu choose Select>Modify>Contract and set the amount to 5 pixels.

Lets fill the area with black. Press the D key to reset the foreground color to black and then press Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace) to fill the area with black.

Step 7

Lets now contract the selection again (Select>Modify>Contract) but this time lets go 10 pixels. Press Delete (PC: Backspace) to remove the area inside the selection and press Command-D to release the selection.

Step 8

Lower the Bevel layer’s Fill opacity (at the top of the Layers palette) to 0% making the black outline on the layer momentarily invisible, then add the following layer styles.

Step 9

It’s time to lay down the custom license plate letters (or numbers if you prefer). For this little number I tracked down a cool font called License Plate created by Dave Hansen. You can download it HERE or you can download the tutorial file at the end of the lesson and get both fonts used in this exercise.

Press the T key to call up the Text tool, set the text color to #404d5e and for my example the font size is 135pt.

Step 10

Create a new layer beneath the text layer we just created by holding down the Command (PC: Ctrl) key while clicking the Create New Layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette and rename it Text Bevel.

With the Text Bevel layer now selected, Command-Click (PC: Ctrl-Click) on the text layer icon to load the text as a selection. Now expand the selection by 5 pixels by using the Select>Modify>Expand option in the main menu and fill the selection with any color (except purple of course). I used this very attractive turquoise color. Go ahead and Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D) when you’re done to release the selection.

Step 11

Just like we did with the Bevel layer in Step 8, drop the Text Bevel‘s Fill opacity to 0% and the following Bevel And Emboss layer style.

Step 12

If you’ve switched tools for some crazy reason, press the T key to get the Type tool back. Set the text color to a nice shade of red like #c02922, switch to the font Mistral which you can download HERE or in the exercise files at the end of the tutorial. This is the font which the California logo on the license plate is based on. (*note: Those picky Californians took the liberty of changing things inside their text to make it cooler, but we’re not that fussy, so we’ll leave the nice Mistral font alone.)

It should really go without saying that you can now click on the stage and type the word California… unless of course you’re license plate is from a different state, and in that case, you’re on your own. Lets also lower the Fill opacity of the California layer to around 80%.

(*note: When you’re done with the text, it’d be a lovely idea to drag this layer to the top of the layers stack, just to keep our previous text and it’s associated bevel next to each other.)

Step 13

With the California lettering firmly in place, lets click back to the Plate layer and punch some holes in it. Choose the Elliptical Marquee tool, which is in the fly out menu for the Rectangular Marquee tool. If you’re confused, press the M key to select it from the Tools palette, then click and hold on the tool until the fly out menu appears.

Holding the shift key to constrain the selection to a perfect circle, click and drag a selection where your first hole lives. Now just press Delete to remove the selected area and repeat for the other 3 holes. Because I’m completely anal, I actually resized my reference picture license plate to the same size as my document and cut the holes accordingly. I’m sure this surprises you because of the whole California font speech in Step 12… but I’m selectively picky, what can I say?

Step 14

We all know licence plates wouldn’t be cool without all those expensive stickers we "get" to pay to add every year, so lets add a few of those. I figure if you can make Rectangular Marquee selections and know how to use the Type tool, I shouldn’t have to walk you through this part… and If you can’t, then you haven’t been paying attention and you should go back to Step 1 and try to learn something this time.

So this would be my finished product with the pretty stickers added.

Step 15

You could go crazy with some of the grunge brushes I handed out in the Hero Header II and Create An Old Envelope tutorials, and bend the edges a little like in the Sticker Edge Peel lesson to really age the plate.

Step 16

And if I actually owned this vanity plate… and a Lotus… Shazam!! Our final result.

Manipulating a WW2 Fighter Aircraft

Preview of Final Results

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Manipulating a WW2 Fighter Aircraft Photoshop Tutorial

Step 1

Create a new document with dimensions; 550x400px then go here and copy this image then paste it into your document and scale and move it until you’re happy with it then change the blend mode of this layer to multiply.

Step 2

We are going to add some noise to the plane because at the moment it looks a bit too clean and unrealistic. Create a new layer above the plane then go Filter>Noise>Add Noise and use a value of 50% and check uniform and monochromatic.

Step 3

Set this layer to 40% opacity and change the blend mode to soft light then Alt+click between the noise layer and the plane in the layers panel to add a clipping mask.

Step 4

Since this is an image of a model plane then the propellers are obviously not moving so we’re going to make them move in Photoshop; to do this we first have to make a copy of the plane then extract the propeller. First hold Alt and drag the plane layer above the noise layer, this will duplicate the layer but not break the clipping mask. Now hide the original plane layer then select the new plane layer and add a layer mask by pressing the layer mask button in the bottom of the layers panel. Now select the brush tool and choose a hard round brush, change the foreground color to black and start painting around the propeller; the parts that you paint on will be hidden. GO round the propeller and change the size of the brush regularly to suit the part you are working on. Keep at it until you have something like this and don’t worry about being accurate here it wont really matter as long you have the basic shape.

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Step 5

Duplicate this layer then right click on the layer mask and select ‘Apply Layer Mask’. Select the smudge tool and choose a brush with 0% hardness andd a size of about 60px then change the strength to 50%. None blade at a time, just drag from the blade anti-clockwise slightly a few times to give the smudged effect shown below.

Step 6

Repeat step 5 but this time drag out a bit further then change the opacity of this layer to 50%. 

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Step 7

We’re going to make make it look even more like its spinning as well as adding some smoke at the same time. Create a new layer then select the brush tool and with a 0% hardness brush with a diameter of about 10px draw two rough circles one in black and one in the same color as the tip of the blades. 

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Step 8

We now need to blur this so go Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and use a value of 20px and you should get something similar to this. 

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Step 9

We’ll take a look at where we’ve got to so far, we’ve added the noise first to make it look a bit dirtier then we isolated the propeller and and smudged it to look like its moving. Isolating parts of an image is a really important technique to start using as you’ll often need to edit parts of a stock image and it’s often much easier to isolate the parts whether you want to blur the part, alter some colors or change the shape and size of it. Lastly we just used a quick and simple way to add some more motion by quickly drawing a circle then heavily blurring it. Now just turn the visibility of the original plane back on and you should have something looking like this.

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Step 10

In the next few steps we will be adding some burn marks, flame and smoke so we need a really good stock image to use for this, The one I use all the time for this kind of thing can be found here. I’ve shown what it looks like below and you’ll notice that it’s perfect for this kind of thing; it has flames, burn marks, smoke and even bits of debris. First paste this image into your document and scale it down to roughly your document size.

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Step 11

Basically now we’re going to copy part of this image onto the side of the plane, the easiest way to do this is to first duplicate the layer with the van in it then hide the original van layer. Now either use the eraser tool or the lasso tool to remove all except the the front corner of the van with burn marks, just do this roughly then rotate and scale this layer and place it over the plane like so, I used a soft eraser brush just to remove the hard edges.

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Step 12

Now click the layer mask button in the layers panel to add a mask to this layer. Now select the brush tool and choose a soft round brush then change the foreground color to black then in the main toolbar change the opacity to 20%. We want to get rid of most of the flames here so do this by brushing over them (make sure you are working on the mask not the layer). As well as brushing over the flames we also want to hide some parts that are a bit too harsh or generally don’t look right.

Step 13

You’ll have noticed that some parts of this layer run over the wing or outside the plane, to fix this you have to change the brush to about 85% hardness and an opacity of 100% then brush over the wings and around the plane. Use the image below for reference.

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Step 14

We’re going to add in some smoke now so create a new layer then select the brush tool and choose a 50px round brush with 0% hardness and an opacity of 10%. With the foreground color set to black, brush some smoke onto this layer; the best way to do this is to click continually rather than dragging. Try and get something that resembles the image below.

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Step 15

Now we’re going to make it look like the tail is burning and we are going to do this in the same way as we did to put the burn marks on the plane. First duplicate the van layer again and drag the duplicated layer to the top of the layer stack then get rid of the parts you don’t want. Then place this layer over the wing, it doesn’t matter what part of the image you use as long is it looks like burning metal.

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Step 16

Now add a layer mask then with a hard black brush at full opacity, hide the parts that go outside the wing so this layer should now be the same shape as the wing. Next change the blend mode to hard light, you can experiment with some other blend modes if you want here.

Step 17

Now to actually add the flame, again we do this in the same way so duplicate the van layer, drag it to the top of the layer stack then find a good flame (I liked the one just above the tire) then hide some of the other parts and soften the edges. Now rotate and scale it to get the flame in the right position like so.

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Step 18

Add a layer mask to this layer then with a soft brush at varying opacities hide all the parts except the flame and also brush away parts of the flame to shape it slightly. Lastly, with a hard round brush at full opacity, brush over the wing so the flame doesn’t look like it comes in front of the wing. Make sure the edges of the flames aren’t too hard or it will look unrealistic.

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Step 19

I wanted add a flame coming from the propeller, this had to be less visible as I figured the propeller would probably dissipate the flame. You should be able to work out how to do this but I’ll go over how I did it. First duplicate the flame layer then drag it above the propeller then go Edit>Transform>Warp and shape the flame a bit like so. Note that I’ve hidden the back flame in the images below just so you can see this flame more clearly.

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Step 20

Add a layer mask and soften this flame a lot by brushing over it with a soft black brush at a medium opacity until you get something similar to the image below.

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Step 21

That’s as far as I’m going to take you but there’s a lot further you can go, a few ideas to try would be to make it look like one of the blades are on fire or to add some falling debris or even break one of the wings.

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Step 22

The last thing I did was to add a simple background this can be any image of a sky, however the image has to be fairly light because we have the plane layer set at overlay, this was so we didn’t need to remove the white background from it but it does limit us to placing the plane over a light background. If you want to use this on a darker background then you would have to extract the plane which isn’t all that hard as it is on a white background anyway. Hopefully you learned some skills that you can transfer to other projects and have fun setting things on fire and generally destroying stuff.

Thanks For looking at this Go to www.YouTube.com/TTGxBoeing For more 

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Alien Invasion! A Photoshop Tutorial..

So, I was looking at this photo of horrendous flooding and I though, Hey - let's make it even more horrendous!! SWEET!  

OK, here we go! Now is a great time to grab a few beers and set your Victoria's Secret catalog aside. Don't forget the page you were on as it may or may not come into play later. Most likely not. OK...download that low-quality image above and lets get to work!! 

To start off, I selected the top half of the sky and copy/pasted it onto a new layer. After that, I adjusted the Shadows/Highlights to darken up the mood a bit. After that, I used my buddy "google" (Seriously - TRY these guys. They're gonna be huge.) and did an image search for stormy clouds. I actually have a bunch of my own in a personal arsenal, but for the means of this tutorial, we'll use all fully accessible items. I then pasted the stormy clouds over the top of my scene, adjusted the values to a more purple tone and blended in the bottom half. 

End result went something like this:

Next up, add more clouds! I went a little darker on the lower set of clouds. When all was set in place, I made a new layer (COLOR layer mode) and painted red everywhere I wanted it. 

A-Whabbap!

And here comes the fun part! Using everyday items, we're going to create our spaceship in the clouds! Mine was actually made from the front of a corvette (top) and the bottom part was made from a canon camera lens! We'll call that the beam-emitter. Because damn, all aliens have huge beams. 

After the ship placement, I added some moody borders to the photo using multiply/overlay layers and brushed in a bit more red. 

 -(Meep.)

Spaceship is in, now lets add a little light underneath the edge of it. Next, add a little dark shadowing around it with your linear burn layer mode. Use red. Also, I adjusted the shadow/highlights on the ship to give it a darker tone, and burned some of the ships edges for depth. 

Something like:

Next up - A little mood lighting! I used a photo of the Capitol Building and completely darkened out any of the negative shading values (see below). I then overlayed the lights onto the ships base (using linear dodge), and added a little extra to the top where the top meets the clouds. 

Shooting for:

Hey now! Let's add some BEAMS. take your brush tool and hold SHIFT to make a straight vertical line. Use a very light pink. Now, set the layer mode to linear dodge. You can see the outcome below. Lastly, copy the darkened clouds from the horizon line and add them around the entry point of the spaceship and the sky. This will give some MOOD. 

Yeah, mood:

Same technique, but this time use a darker red and overlay it on the other, thinner beam. 

Larger beam, please:

OK, it's time to get this thing rolling. We need a darker, more stormy atmosphere. This spaceship needs to be mean, so lets darken the sky, add some contrast to the clouds and darken the water by adding purple softlight and red overlay to the water base. 

Ahhhh, getting there:

Darker! apply a multiply layer of the clouds over itself to give that sky some strength over the ship. burn underneath the ship as well so the cloud consistency carries through the horizon. Also, start applying more light rays from underneath the ship using the overlay layer mode. I used yellow to keep it fairly subtle. 

Ahhhh:

OK you may have noticed in the last photo I started adding an "electric" look to the BEAM OF DEATH. This can be done through tiny lines treaks (done in orange or yellow) overlaying the thicker light coming from the base of the ship. I added some more lightning to the sides of the ship as well.... 

 -(Pobles.)




A little more lightning, and some rings outside the ship. this was done using the brush tool and applying the layer mode as "linear dodge" over the other clouds. 

Womp!

Add a little more light/shadow toning in the clouds. Next, again using linear dodge and a darker orange, overlay a large brush to the bottom of the beam to add some glow to the tree region. I added another thinner and stronger layer at the tree/beam meeting point to create an explosion effect. 

FYAH!!!

Now let's bring in another cloud photo. Adjust the Variations on the clouds to bring in the red tone we want. Next, adjust the levels to emphasize the shadows (bring in the left triangle towards the center). Set the layer mode to Hard light. 

Like this:

Almost done! Add a bit more ligtning to the sky and add more shadow burning to the water a edges of the photo. Shoot for this. 

Like this:




Ok that's it! Hope You had fun because i did :) K thanks and look at my YouTube Channel i'm just makeing some videos now thanks www.Youtube.com/TTGxBoeing