In today’s tutorial you’re going to learn something a little different.

We’re going to cover some incredibly practical, basic tips that you can apply in order to create your own cost-effective photo manipulations from scratch. Not everyone has access to professional photography studios, and today you’ll learn how you can product high-end looking results on a very limited budget.

This includes everything from correctly setting up a photo shoot, to moving into Photoshop and covering post-production essentials. You’ll work with lighting, detail removal, color correction and photo manipulation.

Final Image

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Video Lesson:

Let’s get started!

In today’s tutorial you’re going to learn something a little different.

We’re going to cover some incredibly practical, basic tips that you can apply in order to create your own cost-effective photo manipulations from scratch. Not everyone has access to professional photography studios, and today you’ll learn how you can product high-end looking results on a very limited budget.

This includes everything from correctly setting up a photo shoot, to moving into Photoshop and covering post-production essentials. You’ll work with lighting, detail removal, color correction and photo manipulation.

Final Image

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Step 1: Organizing Your Photo Shoot

First of all we are going to need 2 light sources (when I say light source I mean anything that you can afford, from a single 150 watt halogen lamp to professional studio equipment). For this project I used:

- 2 x 150 watt halogen lamps
- A black canvas
- An mp3 player
- A headshet
- Cables

The next thing that you want to do is set up the scenery. The image below will help you understand what I mean.

As you can see we placed the “Light source 1” to the side of the model and the 2nd “light source” as a backlight. Now, if you have a decent DSL camera I suggest that you turn it to auto and take the shot. If you are a more advanced photographer you can switch to manual and use the parameters I used to take the photo.

F/5 , ISO 250, 1/50 s , Focal Length 18mm

And this is the result:

You can notice the yellow tones on the skin. That was caused due to the halogen lamps. On the next step we will fix the colors and add elements in order to achieve a more professional result.

Step 2: Fixing the background

In this step all we need to do is just paint the background with black color. Choose a nice soft black brush and start painting these areas

After you’re done use softly paint all the sides of the photo to create a vignette effect. Like this:

That’s the end of the preview!

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Today I’m hugely excited to share our first ever video tutorial for FanExtra members. Video tutorials are something that many of you have been asking for and we plan on releasing a lot more video content to follow this first tutorial.

If you enjoy this video and find it easier as a learning method than our regular written tutorials then please let us know in the comments below.

Tutorial Details:

Time to Complete: 45 minutes
Tools Used: Photoshop CS5
Difficultly: Intermediate

This tutorial is a video version of our existing written tutorial: Members Area Tutorial: Creating the Photoshop Manipulation ‘Birth of a New Era’

Let’s get started!

Final Image

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Video Tutorial

This detailed video tutorial will walk you through every stage of creating the photo manipulation Birth of a New Era. Our resident expert Cosmas Hiolos will teach you the vital skills needed to create this beautiful piece, and you can follow along with his workflow in real-time.

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• Existing members can login here to access this tutorial.

Photo manipulation is a true art form and it lets you create some incredible fantasy pieces.

In today’s advanced tutorial we’re going to be creating the photo manipulation piece ‘Birth of a New Era’ which features a man gazing out over a surreal landscape with a flaming earth in a dark ocean.

You can follow along every single detail and step of creating this piece, and will master techniques such as masking, gradient maps, artificial lighting, shading, color correction and professional sharpening.

Let’s get started!

Final Image

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Step 1 – Starting a new document

Create a new document. Go to file -> New.. and insert width :1750 pixels. Height : 1804 pixels, 300 pixels/inch as shown in the picture below.

Step 2 – Placing and editing the background

Now go to File-> place -> select the background image and click open. Now place the image as shown in the picture below.

Select the clone stamp tool (s) and try to patch the cracks of the ground (choose yes if asked to rasterize the object) and select a source point.

Now paint over the area that you want to patch

When you’re done patching the result should be similar to this.

Step 3 – Cropping the model

Open the image of the man on a separate document and choose the pen tool (p). name the layer “model” and put these parameters to the tool.

Zoom into the image of the model starting from the head and create the outline of the model with the pen tool. Lot’s of clicks will be needed here but with this method you’ll crop the model with extreme accuracy.

Keep working with the pen tool.

Almost there!

Now close the outline and we’re done with the pen tool

You can see how many clicks we did in order to create the outline of the model!

Now go to the paths palette, right click on the path layer and choose “make selection”.

When a window pops up click feather radius 0,5 pixels and click ok. This will soften the edges of the model we’re about to crop!

Go to the layers palette, double click on the locked layer and then hit ok (this will unlock the layer). Now while the selection is active click on the “add layer mask” button witch is located at the very bottom of the layers palette.

Voila!! Now our object is cropped and ready to be inserted to the project!

Step 4 – Inserting the model to the project

Now that the model is cropped we want to insert it into the project. Just select the whole layer of the model with the mask and drop it to the main project.

Now the model has been inserted.

Now go to edit -> free transform or just hit ctrl+t to resize the model and then position it to the center.

Step 5 – Editing the model

When we cropped the model we left a small detail that needs to be fixed. Choose a black colored small brush, select the mask of the model and paint that small detail on his hand to get rid of the unwanted grass we left at first place. Like this!

Move down to the models feet. We are going to add some shadow to the model now. Choose a soft brush with hardness 0% and sixe 25 pixels. Under the layer of the model create a new group and name it shadow. Now create a new layer and start painting with black under his feet like this.

When you’re done put 60% to the opacity of the layer. The result should be similar to this. See how nice the shadow we made shows up?

Now make another layer, underneath the layer of the shadow and name it shadow 2. Paint with the same brush and color like this. When you’re done put 60% to the opacity of the layer

The result should be like this

Step 6 – Adding the water ripple

Now are models fits pretty well to the outcome so far. The only thing is that the model looks like standing above the water on solid ground. Let’s change that and make the model stand into the water.

That’s the end of the preview!

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In this tutorial we are going to learn how to create fantasy wallpaper using stock photos. Follow these simple steps to learn how to combine simple stock photos in order to create a fantastic artwork that can also be used as a desktop background, by applying techniques in Photoshop like using masks, lighting, shading, cropping, color correcting, blurring and much more.

Final Image

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Step 1

Go to file -> New and put width: 1920 pixels. Height: 1080 pixels. Tick also the boxes “constrain proportions” and “resample Image” as shown in the picture below.

Step 2

Now go to File-> place -> select the image of the valley and click open. The image will automatically be inserted to Photoshop as a smart object. Now place the image as shown in the picture below.

Step 3

Now go to the layers palette and right click on the “background” image and select “duplicate”. Name the layer as background blur as shown below.

Then go to filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur and add 2,2 to the blur radius.

Step 4

Now open the image of the cliff. Choose File -> open -> and select the image.

Now go to the layers palette and double click on the layer “background”. Notice that the layer is locked.

Now name the layer Main cliff and click OK, this will unlock the layer.

Choose the magic wand tool and make one click on the sky as shown in the picture:

Now hold down the shift key on the keyboard and select all the unselected areas.

Click until all the areas of image are selected except for the cliff. The result should be similar to this :

While having the magic wand selected, right click on the mouse and select “refine edge”.

Now put the parameters like this: View -> overlay, radius -> 0,0 px, Smooth -> 4 px, Feather -> 1,2 px, Contrast 0%, Shift Edge 57%. Click ok

Wile the selection is still on, right click on the mouse and select inverse. This will select everything but the cliff.

Go to the layers palette and add a mask. After you do that go to image -> image rotation -> Flip canvas horizontal.

Step 5

Now let’s place the image of the cliff into our Photoshop project while keeping the mask.

Make sure you have selected the move tool (v) and the layer of the cliff selected as well. Now drag the image of the cliff into our Photoshop project.

The result should be similar to this.

Great! Now position the image of the cliff on the right corner at the bottom. Like this :

Choose the brush tool (B) right click and set a brush size of 35 px and hardness 70%.

Select the mask of the “main Cliff” layer. Set as foreground color black and background color as white, default (d,x). No start painting with black color the edge of the cliff like this

When you’re done the result should be like this.

That’s the end of the preview!

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