Image Effects, Filters, Masks and Other Image Processing Methods

Recently I was in need of a method to create a quick smoke effect for an ad that included text within the puffs of smoke. I found that the effect could be easily created by using the Smudge Tool in Photoshop to distort the text around the smoke. Let’s take a look at how this can be accomplished.

Pixastic is an image processing library written in JavaScript. It uses the HTML5 Canvas element to apply effects such as blur, hue/saturation adjustment, emboss, invert, flip, etc.

Pixastic works by utilizing the HTML5 Canvas element which provides access to raw pixel data, thereby opening up for more advanced image effects. This is where the "experimental" part comes into play. Canvas is only supported by some browsers and unfortunately Internet Explorer is not one of them. It is however well supported in both Firefox and Opera and support for Safari only just arrived with the recent Safari 4 (beta) release. Chrome currently works in the dev channel. A few of the effects have been simulated in IE using the age old proprietary filters. While these filters are much faster than their Canvas friends, they are few and limited. Hopefully we will one day have real Canvas on IE as well.

Processing the images from the camera to fine tune the brightness, contrast and color balance, but I fancied playing around to inject a little hyperreality with some moody color casts and epic lens flares to subtly enhance the photo.

Often when post-processing a photograph the aim is to carefully fine tune the levels and colour balance to capture the real life scene, but sometimes it's worth taking the edits a little further to enhance an image with hyper realistic effects. Applying colour casts, increasing the contrast and adding lighting effects can give an image an intense mood just like we see in magazines or on billboards.

Changing the blending mode of the Gradient Map to Overlay to allow the new colours to interact and alter the tones of the original image, generating a subtle colour cast. And droppin the opacity to lower the contrast to add the full impact of the effect.

In this Photoshop Tutorial Graphic Designer Roberto Blake will show you how to use the Pen Tool to Mask complex objects with hard edges in Photoshop CC. Technique will work in most “Modern” versions of Photoshop, if you have at least Photoshop CS3- Photoshop CS6 you should be able to follow this tutorial without any issue and use these techniques.  There are several ways to do masking in Photoshop but some are better applied to specific types of images and learning what works best for you does take some time to figure out. Ultimately the right tool is the one that produces the results that you want in the time you have to work on it.

In the past, when I wanted to create a paint-like effect, I always opened Photoshop and relied on the trusty old bitmap graphic. That is, until I discovered the Bristle Brush in Illustrator. The Bristle Brush (which is actually a set of brushes) allows you to paint with layers of vector strokes that apply different shades and transparencies to the stroke. The result is a beautiful and realistic looking paint stroke that is 100% vector.

Giving a subject a dispersion or splatter effect can create an incredibly dynamic image. The best part is, it’s very quick and easy to do with a few Photoshop brushes, but the end result can look very complex as if it took you hours to create. In this tutorial, I’m going to walk you through 3 easy steps to create this dispersion effect.

Print designers often work with digital illustrators and CG artists to help produce their work. In this tutorial, we will continue to develop a character concept from a Cgtuts+ tutorial by Nacho Riesco and show you how to create a print ad by combining photo manipulation techniques with some renders from another tutorial. Let’s get started!