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Simulating various mother nature's happenings is probably most attractive task for everyone who take computer for its realization. The problem with computer is that he's, on every question, trying to give perfect results. But, our eyes don't fall on those tricks, revealing every detail.

Like you can see in the title, in this tutorial, we'll entertain ourselves with one very important element of nature - fire. Few hundred years ago, it wasn't very easy for man to make a fire. Luckily, time has changed. Photoshop will, with its extremly usable tools make our job easier. In matter of minutes, you'll "heat" yourself using only keyboard and mouse. Let's get to work.

Make a new document, size doesn't matter, with a white background. In my example, I've made it with 1500x10 px. Main form of fire, we'll make with Clouds filter which is located under menu Filters/Render. This filter make a random pattern in grey tones, which are very similiar to fog or cloud, what we can use in our next step. To make a kind of fire which is throwing its particles in air, we'll use one more filter called Polar Coordinates, located under menu Filter/Distort:



Check option Polart to Rectangular and press Ok. We made a distortion of picture which can be seen more on the upper part, so whole thing now looks like shape of fire, which we need. Even with that, we must work on its realistic.

Flame is very hot, on itself, because of extremly high temperature, which is "pushing" it to all its energy realize in light, relativly with very various intesities. So, we must add our flames a specific "glow" and contrast. Best solution for this is filter Accented Edges, which is located under menu FIlter/Brush Strokes. When his dialog opens, be sure to set Accented Edges in the fall menu. Value Edge width set on 5, Edge Brightness should be 38 and Smothness to 15 and press Ok. Result should be like on next picture:



Okey, our flame is getting more realistic, but the lack of colors seems it very "cold" and unnatural.
We'll "heat" whole thing with one more filter, and that's Lighting Effects (Filter/Render menu):

First, set the Light Type to Omni, and set Intensity to 35, and on the Preview window (small part of the Lighting effects dialog situated on the left side) you can see how our unfinished fire react on these values and parameters. To get the effect that our flame is heater in the bottom part, and gentle on top part, we'll move our light source to bottom edge of the picture. If you don't understand just make it all like on the picture below. His range, which is presented as a perfect ellipse, we're going to enlarge its radius to take at least half width of the picture. Let's get back to parameter editing. In the Properties frame, set the Gloss value to 84, which will disperse light on the surface. Then, set the Material value to 69, which will raise contrast. Parameter Exposure should be gently enlarged to 10, where we'll get on the whole lighting of the picture. Last parameter, Ambience, should be of value 8. At the end, we only have to choose colors of the fire. Click on the first ColorBox (on the frame Light Type), and in the Color Picker choose orange-like color. On our example that color is (R:243, G:126, B:31). In the frame Properties do same like you did on last ColorBox, only difference is that we need red-like color here (R:237, G:33, B:35). Clicking the Ok button, you'll excute Lighting Effects filter and our fire is lighten up.



We've seen that combination of a few filters is possible to make better results than it was on the beginning. Happily, every filter is occupated by a little Preview window, which is making our job much easier. After making this fire, you have rights to call yourself "digital fireman". Hope you liked tutorial, in the next tutorial you'll learn to make something like ice or something. Enjoy your stay on the blog, and bye bye 'till next time.

Again, open same photo you used in the first step. Save is as new .psd file (in our case it's VectorEye.psd). And here, too, we'll use commands Desaturate and Auto Levels. With help of Crop tool (hotkey - C) you have to make a slice of eye. We'll enlarge it 4-5 times using Image Size command in menu Image. Don't worry if your photo looks blurry and too big. In menu Filter/Distort choose filter Displace. In dialog, you need to set both Scale options to 10%, and for the Displacement Map set "Tile", and for Undefined Areas check on "Repeat Edge Pixels". Photoshop, then, wants you to show him path to the Displacement map. You can find some of them in the Photoshop's Plug-In folder. That map, which we need, is Honeycomb (10%).psd. After we selected map, we can see hexagonal pixelation which is used on the slice of an eye. Because, after vectorization, we want to escape from 90°-degrees picture, we'll use tool Dodge (hotkey - O) and brush out the edges of picture, which will give us transparent area, on that places of picture, and get eliptical shape of eye:



Here, too, we'll add one Treshold Adjustment Layer with value of 32. We need to create new set with name "Eye" and give him color you want. After that, using Magic Wand tool (hotkey - W) you need to select dark area and make a work path in Paths pallete. Next, create a new Solid color layer with RGB values of 32. And again, we're on our 'dry' work. It's about repeating process as you did in the previous step, with only difference, that we'll not make 8 repeatings, instead, here we're make only 4 of the drags of color, with values of 96, 160 and 224. Of course, result will not be detailed as in the first step. After that, it's posibble to have those artefacts again. You can remove them again with Direct Selection tool. 'Till next time, enjoy your staying on blog and bye.

Even if the market is flooded by newest versions of Corel, Illustrator and Freehand, that's not reason to turn our back to Photoshop when it's matter of vectors. To be quickest in our work and more sufficient, we should use every byte, that Adobe took from us when we installed this super-application. Taking in mind his "vector brother" - Illustrator, Adobe didn't want to make competition to himself if he gave us all tools and manipulation with vector graphics. No, he's still the best raster editing application, but it's giving us some vector suprises. In this tutorial you'll find out how to make very nice vector effects. Also, we'll show you how to make vector image of photo. Let's get to work!

Open Photoshop and the photo you want, without to many details and colors. Save it in new .psd file (in our case it's VectorMain.psd). With help of hotkey Ctrl+J copy Background layer and new layer rename to "Main". Then one more hotkey intervention, Shift+Ctrl+U. It'll excute Desturate command, which is totally taking the photo color. And, third time, we'll use one more hotkey which will excute Auto Levels, and it's Shift+Ctrl+L:



Then, on the bottom of the Layers pallete click on the little icon "Create new fill or adjustment layer" and choose Treshold command:



This is possible to open by menu Layer/New Adjustment Layer/Treshold... In the Treshold level field enter value which will make Photoshop to neglect all pixels which Lightness value is crossing entered value. For the beginning, we'll leave that value on 128, just to see how command Treshold is influencing on photo. Let's get back to layer "Main" and go under Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur. Scrolling the Radius slider to the right, we can interactively see how contures on the photo are getting simpler. Choose the value which will give you results similiar to these:



After you're statisfied with results, get back to the Treshold layer and change its value to 16. Doing this, big part of photo will disappear, what is totally understandable because we took low Lightness value. But, that's just what we need. Take Magic Wand tool (hotkey - W) and turn off option Contiguous:



Then click somewhere on the dark field on the photo. All dark areas of photo are selected. On the bottom of the Paths pallete click on the icon Make work path from selection:



Doing this, Photoshop "vectorizely" selected contour of selection. On the pallete Layers let's make one set by clicking the icon Create a new set, which is located on the bottom of the pallete. Give it reasonable name, something like "Main" and picture which will help us as orientation:

Okey, we now need one Fill Layer, and that's Solid Color Layer. You can open it from the menu Layer/New fill layer/Solid Color... or from the bottom of the layer pallete clicking on the icon Create new fill or adjustment layer. Make sure that the icon Work path is selected in Paths pallete.

After you made this layer it opens Color Picker dialog. We're interested in RGB values, which should be 16 in every field(R, G and B). Then, click on the icon of the eye next to layer set "Main", to hide this set of layers. Value Treshould should be changed to 64, which will show us one more part of photo. Again, we need tool Magic Want, with which will we click on the black area. Again, in the Paths Pallete click on the Make work path from selection icon, where you can see how the white area, recently made is getting bigger. Then, again, make a new Solid Color Layer and in the Color Picker dialog enter values 64 for R, G and B fields.

This proccess is repeating six more times, and with Treshold values 96, 128, 160, 192, 224 and 240. Of course, this is not entertaining so much, but we must do this to get best vectore picture. So, it all begins giving Treshold value, making new Work Path, making Solid Color Layer and entering same values of Treshold into the RGB fields in Color Picker dialog. After making every Solid Color layer, Drag&Drop that layer to your set, "Main" set actually. After finishing this hard work, your Layers pallete should be richer for six Solid Color Layers with corresponding Vector mask. Turn on, again, that little eye icon next to your "Main" set. This piece of art which is (probably, we hope so) your hand-made vector photo. If you more detailed look at the result of vectorization, you'll probably see small artefacts, which less/more sliped out from the vectorization. You'll get rid of them with help of Direct Selection tool (hotkey - A). Simple, on the layers pallete select Vector mask corresponding color of the artefact which you want to remove, then like making selection, frame out elements and press Backspace on the keyboard.



This is one way to get this vector results. Tommorow, I'll let you know the step 2. of this :) Enjoy staying on blog and bye.

Hi, this will be hard to write for me because I have to learn you this without any complication. You can see the picture result at the end. This will be very good lesson for all of you beginners and maybe intermmediate. You'll learn:

In 3ds max -

1.) Making plane and adding texture to it
2.) Placing reactor wind and animating it
3.) Adding lights
4.) Rendering wavy flag, disturbed by wind

In the Photoshop -

1.) Add details to the picture
2.) Add noise
3.) Make glassy orb

You'll need:

1.) Photoshop and 3ds max (no matter which version, it matter to have reactor plugin)
2.) Vector picture of the flag you want
3.) Motive of your country (pyramid, castles, whatsoever)
4.) A lack of time (I need double lack of time :))

I'm gonna be clear in this lesson.

Open 3ds max. Make a new plane in Top viewport. Set its sizes:

Length: 20
Width: 40

Then open Material Editor (hotkey - M). Click any free slot in Material Editor and click little grey box next to Diffuse. It'll open Material Browser, then click Bitmap and browse the vector picture of flag and click Ok to set it as Diffuse map. Then click the Assign Material to Selection. Be sure that you selected plane you made before! It should look like this:



Then click the Select and Rotate tool in 3ds max and make sure the Angle Snap tool is turned on. If it's turned od, it'll make our rotating easier by snaping the rotation on every 5 degrees. Rotate the plane on the x-axis by 90 degrees.

Then select Wind tool which you can access through the Reactor toolbar or by going to panel Create, Helpers tab and choose Reactor from pop-up window. Then you can click Wind box. Then make the wind helper in the left viewport pointing directly to the front of the flag!

It should look like on this picture:



Now this is most important moment. You must create Cloth Collection. You can access it at the Reactor toolbar or at the same place as Wind. Then make it where ever you want. It doesn't matter, because that will not be rendered. Then click on the Cloth Collection you made and at the Modify panel under Properties pull-out menu, click Pick, and select flag plane on the viewport. You'll notice it doesn't adds flag to the Cloth Collection. We must add reactorCloth modifier to the flag. So, click the flag plane and under Modify panel choose modifier Cloth. Now try again clicking on the Cloth Collection, click Pick button and select flag!

What happens now. It works, a miracle. Okey, now select the Wind helper and edit this values:



Now, when you set everything as I said, go to the Material Editor, to edit our flag material. We want it to look better. So, click on its slot and edit values like the ones below:



As you can see, I added the Specular level map. So click on the box next to the Specular level map and from the Material Browser choose Fallof and set these settings:



You should also add MeshSmooth modifier with lterations 2 to the flag plane. Actually, do that if you want to have smooth surface. I added it!

Now the lighting. Add one sky, no matter where. Then make two area spot lights. Your viewports should look like this:



Now, select one by one areaSpotLight and check on Targeted (in the Modify panel), turn on Shadows and set shadows to Ray Traced Shadows. Set Multiplier to 0,8 for one, and 0,5 for other areaSpotLight.

We're almost finished in 3ds max. Go to the Rendering/Render... and set Mental Ray renderer and set Output size to 3508x2480 px. And of course at the Render Output, set in which folder do you want to save picture! Then at last in the Indirect Illumination set these options:



Now at last click Render button to render the picture!

This is what I get:



We've finished our work in 3ds max. You'll not get same result probably but no matter. It will be video tutorial on this in few days, to get your work easier.

We're getting back to Photoshop. Open the Photoshop and the picture you just rendered. Copy the background layer and rename it to Flag soft light. Then click on the new made layer and change its blending mode to Soft Light! Then go under the menu Layer/New adjustment layer/Hue/Saturation. Set its name to "Flag - Hue/Saturation" and click Ok. It'll open the Hue/Saturation window automatically. Lower the Saturation scroller from about -60 to -80. Whatever you want. I set my to -70. Be sure Colorize is unchecked and then click Ok. The image should be a bit 'greyed' now. Now, we want to lower that grey by adding a gradient. Make a new layer, rename it to Flag Gradient. Select the gradient tool. Set colors to your flag's color. In my case, it's yellow and blue. Now drag the gradient tool from the bottom left corner to the top right corner. Now, change the blending of the layer Flag Gradient to Color blending and set its opacity to 50%. This is how it should look so far:



We're finished with the flag. Now it's time for the motive of the country. I'll put the motive of our stone made sculptures from the middle ages called 'stecak'. Make a new layer and rename it to Motive Base. Make an elipse in the middle of the picture and set colors you want for the gradient. Then from the top of the elipse drag the gradient tool to the bottom of the elipse. Then add the Underpainting... filter from the Filter menu and Artistic sub-menu. Then, double click on the icon next to the Motive Base layer and add Drop shadow with your own values.

Now, if you lost selection of the Motive Base layer, you'll get selection back by holding Ctrl and clicking on the icon next to the layer Motive Base. Then get back to the new made layer rename it to Stone Texture and open the texture you want and add it to this layer.Then go under Selection menu, Modify and click Contract and contract the elipse selection by 10 px. Then click Ctrl+Shift+I to inverse the selection and click Delete to delete everything except the elipse texture. Then change the blending of the layer Stone texture to Multiply and set its Opacity to 50%.

Now, we're going to make a new layer and call it Motive. Then open the motive you want and drag it onto that layer. Double click icon of the layer Motive, it'll open Layer Style again. Turn on Stroke and set the color to white. Then change the blending of the layer Motive to the Color, to get the texture of the stone for our motive. Because this motive of our country of a man holding his hand up is sculpted on the stone. That's our national treasure (now there's a pyramid too :)).

Now get back the selection of the layer Motive base and make a new layer and call it, Shine #1. Fill the selection with white color. Set the blending of that layer to Overlay and click Add Layer mask in the Layers pallete. Now when you made layer mask it selects mask automatically. Fill the mask with black color, whole mask. Then take a Brush tool, white foreground and still editing mask of the layer, brush the top of the motive. Before brushing you should lower the flow to about 40%-50%.

Again new layer, rename to Shine #2 and get back selection of the layer Motive Base again. Fill it with white again. Then click Add Layer mask again. Now, leave the white color of the mask of the layer. Then change blending of that layer to the Soft Light. Then take Brush tool again and take black color. But be sure to be brushing on the mask of the layer, not on the layer itself. We want to color mask. Brush the mask on the top of the motive. Then just duplicate that layer once.

Then make a new layer called Frame and fill it with black. Change its blending to the Color. And double click its icon to open Layer style again. Turn on Stroke and set black color, Inside and its blending to Color. Then just click Ok and set the Fill of that layer to 0%.

One more thing and we're finished. Add new layer and rename it to Inner Shadow. Now get back selection like you done before, but now selection of Stone Texture layer. Color the selection with black. Add layer mask again and leave the color of the mask at white color. Now with same selection, go under Select menu, Modify and click Contract and contract it to middle of its size. Then go again in the menu Select but now click Feather and set to 60 px. Then just fill the contracted selection with black color.

Now we only left the text if you want to add it. I'll add it. Select Horizontal Type Tool and type text you want. Center it just under the motive, then right click on the text layer and click Rasterize Type. Then Double click on the icon next to text layer and turn on Drop Shadow. Set the values you want, I have set distance to 5, spread to 4 and size to 14.

Whoa man, I really like it. I hope your thakful on this tutorial. I am exosted. I would like to thanks to Vedad Dizadarević for giving me an idea, support and lot of help about this work and tutorial. Thanks Vedad!

We're finished!!! My result is this:



Now, I also wanted to archive you all files I used in this tutorial so you can work with them if you don't understand them.

Archive download link

That would be that, I'm exosted. I hope you like tutorial. It'll be in few days in Video explained. So, bye once more, enjoy your stay and happy designing :))

Hi my dear Photoshop lesson followers :) I'm happy to have time to write tutorial every day. Very often thing on the forums and on the websites, are the fake pictures similiar to this:

"Hey, what's up people. I've bought new computer AMD xx, Intel xx ...."

and their lies never stop. Then when you ask them for a screenshot, they actually send you screenshot with details. But there are to posibillites. Maybe he's very rich and can have every new thingy for computer when it unleashes from companies, or he's a perfect damn lier and great artist in 2D programs. That's very easy to do. In this lesson, I'm not going to teach anyone to lie, altough you can mess with someone, tell him you have new computer. It'll be funny :)

Now, take a screenshot of whatever you want. You can take a screenshot of computer properties (right-click, properties on the my computer icon) or you can install application such as Everest.

Take a screenshot, it should look like this:



Now, what you're going to do. We want to delete the 512 RAM and get 4096 MB of RAM. So, select the 512 MB RAM text and take a Patch tool. Now drag that selection under text (to the grey color) and release. You mustn't drag it on the other text, because you'll not get the result we want. Voila! We did it, we succesfully deleted the text, and we didn't lost the color.

Now take a Horizontal Type Tool and type let's say "4096 MB of RAM" and type these values for the text:



Position the text just under the xx GHz, or MHz (depends on computer). Now, right click on text layer and select Rasterize Type. Take a Blur tool, size 85 and strenght to 5%. Then click on the text once, just once! Then change the opacity of the text layer to how about 69%-75%. Your choice. And we're done. Nothing hard, isn't it? :))

This is my result:



It maybe doesn't look just like the above, but with a little of experimenting today learned things, you'll win and this lesson. So enjoy your stay on the blog, happy drawing and bye. :)