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Money Style Illustration in Photoshop
Last Saturday I went to the movies to watch Wall Street Money Never Sleeps. It was a nice movie, even though I was expecting something much better in terms of story and special effects, there were some cheesy ones, however in the end during the credits the design they created a really nice animation with money illustration, I don't know the name of the effect in english, but I loved it, so I came back and decided to try to do that in Photoshop. So in this tutorial I will show you a nice technique to create a simple money style illustration using a regular photo, it's not as perfect as the money illustrations we see in the dollar bill for example, but it's a quick tip. There might be different ways so if you know another one share with us, this was the one I came up with and it's very easy. Step 1 Open Photoshop and use a photo that you have or want to apply the effect, in this case I will use of myself, the one I use on Twitter. This photo was taken by John Arlington and you can get more info about him at http://dbox.com.br Step 2 Go to Image>Adjustmenst>Desaturate. Step 3 Go to Image>Adjustments>Levels. Change the black input to 50 and the white to 150, also, change the grey input to1. Step 4 Go to Filter>Blur>Surface Blur. Use 30 pixels for the Radius and 20 for the Threshold. Save this PSD file as Displace.psd. We will use 2 files for this tutorial, one will be the displace and the other the real design. Step 5 Undo some of the steps until you get the greyscale image. Save it as me.psd. Then go to Image>Adjustments>Levels. Use 15 for the black input, 1 for the grey and 205 for the white. Step 6 Go to Image>Mode>Greyscale, then go to Image>Mode>Bitmap. Use the default settings, my output is 240 pixels/inch because my input is the same, so that value will vary depending on the input you have. Also for the Method use Halftone Screen... Step 7 The next dialog box will be the Halftone Screen settings. Use Line for the Shape and 30 lines/inch for the frequency. Also, change the Angle to 0. Tip: Depending on the resolution of your image the frequency might change, so you will have to try some values until you get the best result. Step 8 This is the result you will have after you change your document to Bitmap mode. Now let's change it back to Greyscale. Go to Image>Adjustments>Greyscale. Step 9 Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 0.5 pixels for the Radius. You can use 1 as well. All these values will vary depending on the resolution of the image you are using. Step 10 Go again to Image>Adjustments>Levels. Change the white input to 110. Step 11 Go to Filter>Distort>Displace. Use 1 for the Horizontal Scale, 3 for the Vertical and then Stretch to Fit and Wrap Around for the other options. Press OK. Another dialog box will open to select the Displace map. Select the Displace.psd file we created in the step 4. Step 12 Now the displace filter will distort the image so the lines won't be uniform and horizontal. Conclusion Now you can add your logo and play around with other effects. The displace filter is one of the coolest filters in Photoshop because we can create tons of different effects with it, like this tutorial. As I mentioned before the whole idea for this tutorial came when I was watching the credits of Wall Street Money Never Sleeps move where they show some money designs. Detail You can play a little bit more increasing the level and also the gaussian blur. Another Example Here you can see another version using a paper texture and then with Hue and Saturation I gave this green tone to the design. Also use color burn for the blend mode for the image layer that will be on top of the texture. Detail 2 Download the Photoshop File Click here to download the Photoshop file used for this tutorial
Playing with Displace Filter in Photoshop
I have been playing a lot with the Displace filter in Photoshop and I still get impressed with how powerful it is. Even though I have written some tutorials using it, I decided to try to recreate a different effect that I saw in one of the images submitted for the Daily Inspiration. It was a brick wall deformed like it was made of cloth. So in this tutorial, or a quick-tips I will show you how to create a curtain made of bricks or how to deform a brick wall as it was a curtain. To do that we wil use a few stock photos, layer adjustments and the Displace filter in Photoshop CS5. The technique is pretty simple and the tutorial won't take you more than 30 minutes to go through it. Step 1 Open Photoshop and create a new document. I'm using 2560 x 1440 pixels for the size. After that import an photo of a brick wall. The one I used is courtesy of Shutterstock and you can find it here http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-56014678/stock-photo-red-brick-wall.html Step 2 Let's import another image, now of a girl opening the curtains. This photo is also courtesy of Shutterstock and can be found here. http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-44776357/stock-photo-a-young-woman-open… Step 3 With the Lasso Tool (L) or the Pen Tool (P) select the empty white. Once you select the areas you can go to Select>Refine Edges. Select the Smart Radius over the Edge Detection and then click on the brush icon on this panel to select the Refine Edges Tool. Paint on the edge of the hair to refine that area. Once you have the selection refined, go to Layer>Layer Mask>Hide Selection, or you can do that on the Refine Edges settings too. Step 5 Now select the hands/arms of the girl and the curtains. Step 6 Move the brick wall layer so it will be in front of the girl layer. As you can see in the image below, there's a marquee selection of the curtains and the arms of the girl. Step 7 Go to Layer>Layer Mask>Hide Selection. Now you will have the brick wall in front of the curtains. Step 8 Duplicate the girl layer and delete the girl using the mask of the bricks wall for reference. Then go to Image>Adjustment>Desaturate, then go to Image>Adjustment>Levels. Increase the black inputs and a little bit of the white. Check out the image below for reference. Step 9 Change the Blend Mode of the Layer to Overlay. Your result will be something like the image below. You can make the effect strogner by duplicating the layer if you want, but then you will have to change the opacity otherwise it will get too dark. Step 10 Now we will need the photo of the girl opening the curtains in Black and White. Open the file again in a document with the same size as your design (2560x1440) and then go to Image>Adjustment>Desaturate and then Image>Adjustments>Levels. Increase the black input and a little bit of the white input as well until you get a result like the image below. Save this file as a Photoshop format. Step 11 Back to your design select the brick wall layer and go to Filter>Distort>Pixelate. Use 10 for the Horizontal Scale, 30 for the Vertical Scale. Select Stretch to Fit and Repeat Edge Pixels. Press OK and then another dialog box will open asking you to select a file. Select the Photoshop file you saved in the previous step. Step 12 You will notice that the bricks will be distorted following the highlight and shadows of the curtain file. After that go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Gradient Map. Make sure that it's balck and white and the change the Blend Mode to Soft Light. Step 13 On top of the other layers, go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Photo Filter. Use orange for the color with 60% Density. Step 14 Let's add another adjustment layer, go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue and Saturation. Change the Saturation to -20. Step 15 After all the layer styles you will probably get a result like the one in the image below. Step 16 Import another image, this time a landscape image to be used as the background, like the girl is open this brick wall and now she can see this field. The image I used is courtesy of Shutterstock and you can find it here. http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-61151230/stock-photo-daylily-flower-at-… Step 17 With the field layer selected go to Image>Adjustment>Hue and Saturation . Change the Hue to -35 and the Saturation to -50. Step 18 Add a new layer on top of the others and fill it with black, then with the Brush Tool (B) select a very soft brush and white for the color. Then paint with white in the center until you get a white ellipse. After that just change the Blend Mode to Multiply to create a vignette effect. Step 19 Select the layer on top and then using the shortcut keyboard Command+Alt+Shift+E to create new layer with all layers merged into it. After that with this new layer selected go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 10 pixels for the Radius. Change this layer's Blend Mode to Screen and the Opacity to 60%. Conclusion You can repeat the same keyboard shortcut applied in the previous step and create another layer with all layers merged, then add some noise to the image. Go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise. I used 3% for the Amount and Gaussian for the Distribution. The effect is done, and once again we used the Displace filter to add more realism to our design. I love the Displace filter and I've been playing a lot with it. In this example I used the curtains to distort the bricks. Of course this is just a concept, there's a lot of adjustments to be make in order to make it look perfect, however the technique is the same, the only difference is the amount of time you will have to put into it. Now it's up to you, you can try different images and see the result, the most important thing is that you practice and have fun with Photoshop. Download the Photoshop File Click here to download the Photoshop file used for this tutorial