Hey guys. Thought I'd share a tutorial for something fun I do when I'm bored in photoshop but short on time. Really simple concept that can lead to very dynamic results.
By the way, I'm leaving this an open thread for random tutorials you guys might know that are interesting, feel free to share.
For this tutorial I'm using
Photoshop CS6, but any previous or future versions should work almost identically.
- Start by creating a New document that is a square, it can be any size
- Choose a
Foreground and
Background colour, again it can be anything your heart desires
- Fill the canvas with either colour
- Navigate: Filter > Render >
Difference Clouds
... - CTRL+F a few times to make the render more complex/mix the colours
- Next we need to break down the image a bit, so: Filter > Pixelate >
Mezzotint. Use anything you want, but I pick
Short Lines generally
- Now things will get a bit smoother, apply: Filter > Blur >
Radial Blur. Choose
Zoom, and select
Best quality, with the full amount
- To add more details, you have options. You can use
Mezzotint again, and re-apply the Radial Blur again (use the blur twice to optimally smooth things), or use something like Filter > Stylize >
Find Edges to more or less randomize your results. For this I'm going to use Find Edges and invert my image (CTRL+I), then apply Radial Blur again
- Now we need to apply some sort of distortion to our starburst. You have many options-- virtually anything in the Filter >
Distort panel, or Filter >
Liquify, or anything you can come up with. For this example I'm just going to use Filter > Distort >
Twirl at the default value
- Finally, duplicate your creation layer with
CTRL+J, Transform with
CTRL+T, right click on the image, and click
Flip Horizontal (you can rotate or flip the image however you like though)
- The last step is to select what blend mode you want your layers to interact with. Make sure your duplicated/topmost layer is selected and click above the Layers panel where it says "Normal", select either
Darken or
Lighten, depending on the type of render you've made, and you should get favourable results with one of them. If you have darker artwork, I suggest a lightening blend mode, but you'll see for yourself
Voila. This one was using "Lighten"
And here's the same artwork but inverted, with "Darken". I also rotated my duplicated layer 90 degrees
Take these instructions as a grain of salt, you have a great deal of freedom exploring the concept of blending bursts of colour with layer blend modes, this is basically an introduction into how they can blend and produce dynamic results-- the Radial Blur starburst shape is just a nice symmetrical example, the same pixelation with
Motion Blur instead, and then distorting it, can also produce some interesting things.
Here's a few more examples I made yesterday at work. Once you get this little workflow down, it takes less than a minute to make one. Impress your friends!!!
BONUS: Once you flatten your layers (
CTRL+Shift+Alt+E makes a flattened copy), applying the Oil Paint filter (CS6: Filter > Oil Paint; Above: Filter > Stylize > Oil Paint-- it's not in the older versions I'm pretty sure) can smooth out your lines and make them look like they were brushed in and not rendered so much (I also brightened it a bit):
Do share your results if you get anything interesting :P