Monday, 22 February 2016
electrifying album art (very first post)
Electrifying
album art
Introduction
This
tutorial is a bit involved and assumes that you are proficient enough in
Photoshop to follow along without me holding your hand. That being said, lets
jump right in.
Step 1
I took this
photo at a show The Killers played at Madison Square Garden in
New York this past summer… packed house, great crowd… anyway, here’s the photo.
The image is included in the lesson files available for download at the end of
the tutorial.
Lets first
start by drawing a nice curvy path with the pen tool that we’ll use as our main
wrapping glow line. In the Paths palette be sure to rename the path so you
don’t loose it when we create a new one.
Step 2
Create a new
layer called "First Stroke" and switch to the Brush tool. Choose the
5 pixel round brush with hard edges, set the foreground color to white and
click back to the Pen tool. Now simply Right-Click (Mac: Control-Click)
anywhere on the path and choose Stroke Path. When the dialog box pops up choose
Brush and Simulate Pressure. The pressure simulation will ensure that the
stroke tapers off at each end.
Step 3
With your
tool of choice remove the sections along the stroke that should be behind your
subject. I use the Pen tool
Step
4
Add an Inner and Outer Glow as shown
below. The blue color I’m using in both styles is #6d9bff. This will be the
only layer style we’ll be using and we’ll copy and paste this one onto
subsequent layers as we go.
Step
5
Duplicate the "First
Stroke" layer, clear the layer styles and add a 6px Gaussian Blur. This
will add an additional glowing effect around the original stroke.
Step
6
Create a new layer called
"Particles", activate the Path we created earlier and switch to the
Brush tool. Choose a round brush of 3 pixels with a hardness of 0%, then under
the Brushes palette set Shape Dynamics and Scattering to the following. (*note:
make sure your foreground color is still white)
Step
7
Switch back to the Pen tool and
stroke the path just like before, then remove the overlapping sections. This
time the eraser tool will probably be the easiest way to remove the overlapping
dots.
Copy the layer style from the
"First Stroke" layer and paste them into the "Particles"
layer. (*note: This can be done easily by holding down the Option (PC: Alt) key
while clicking and dragging the style icon from one layer to the other.)
Step
8
Create a new layer called
"Second Stroke", create a new path similar but not the same as the
original with the Pen tool (or duplicate the earlier path and change it a
little) then repeat steps 2-5 but this time use a 3 pixel brush and reduce your
Gaussian Blur to 3 on the copy layer. Play with a lower opacity on these layers
until the effect looks right to you and don’t forget to copy the layer style
onto the "Second Stroke" layer.
Step
9
Now that the glow effects have been
completed it’s time to really have some fun with this image.
Click on the Background layer and
duplicate it by pressing Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J). Choose
Image>Adjustments>Threshold from the main menu and use a setting around
85. This will obviously vary depending on your application of the technique.
Step
10
Grab the Magic Wand tool by pressing
W and then click anywhere in the field of black. This may not have selected all
the black if there are isolated pockets so choose Select>Similar from the
main menu to ensure all the black pixels are selected.
Invert the selection by pressing
Command-Shift-I (PC: Ctrl-Shift-I) then drag the layer to the trash and select
the Background layer. (*note: your selection will still be active.
Step
11
Duplicate the selected area by
pressing Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J). This will create a new layer with just the
selection copied onto it. Call this layer "Partial".
The selection will be gone and it
won’t look like anything has happened, so create a new layer between the
"Partial" layer and the "Background" layer, call it
"Black" and fill the entire layer with black.
Step
12
Click back to the
"Partial" layer and use the eraser to remove all those annoying
artifacts outside the artwork that we want to keep.
Step
13
For my finished image I added the
graphic as an CD album cover.
Lesson
Files + Additional Resources
Download the free .PSD file and
other lesson file
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)