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I like fooling around with photoshop and ill post some of the pictures I make here.

Use Photoshop to Make Your New Photos Look Like Antiques

In Photoshop, you can take a picture taken today and make it look like it was taken a hundred years ago.

1. Choose a picture you want to antique.

2. Select the entire image (Select>All) and send it to its own layer (Layer>New>Layer Via Cut).

3. Increase the canvas a bit (Image>Canvas Size) to give yourself about a quarter of an inch on the edges, which you will need later.

4. Select the layer that contains the image and go to the Hue/Saturation control (Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation).

5. Choose Colorize at the bottom right of the dialog box. This will turn the image into a single hue. To give the image a sepia tone, make the Hue setting about 40 and the Saturation about 30.

6. Scan an old photograph that has a lot of damage such as tears and scratches.

7. Convert the scan to grayscale (Image>Mode>Grayscale).

8. Go to the Levels command (Image>Adjust>Levels).

9. Push the darks (left arrow) and the midtones (center arrow) toward the right to drop out all the details of the photo, leaving the light-colored scratches visible.

10. Using the Move tool, drag the image with the damage onto the first image. This will place it in its own layer, which we will call the damage layer.

11. Place the damage layer in Screen mode (Mode setting in the Layer's palette). This will make the scratches appear as if they were on the image.

12. Merge the damage layer with the image layer.

13. With the Lasso tool, make a rough selection where you would like the image to appear torn. Send it to its own layer (Layer>New>Layer Via Cut).

14. Rotate the layer with the tear slightly and move it away from the rest of the image.

15. In a new layer, select a rectangular shape to resemble a piece of tape and fill it with white. Put that layer in screen mode and reduce the opacity so that it looks like tape.

The Pen tool is one of the most powerful tools for the creation of images. In Photoshop, it is the tool for creating vectors. It is my main tool for drawing, selecting, and creating masks.

At first sight it comes across a bit complex and difficult to use. Mastering it, however, could be one of the best things you do in Photoshop because it is the most flexible and powerful selection tool found in the application.

The Pen tool is one of the most misunderstood and underutilized ways in Photoshop to select elements of an image. The main reason for the neglect is that its use is quite different from any of the other Photoshop selection tools. In fact, the only people who seem to find the Pen tool intuitive are users of Adobe Illustrator or other vector-art apps that have similar tools.

Clicking and dragging with the Pen tool produces an anchor point with a handle. It is not until a second click is performed (producing a second anchor point and handle), that any line is actually created. What those little handles do has confused many to the point where they abandon the use of the tool altogether. In what direction should they be dragged? How long should they be? What is this thing?

Follow the path

Let's take a close look at this wonderful tool. The Pen tool creates what is known as a path. A Photoshop document can store up to 32,000 of these paths, which can be edited at any time. They can generate selections at any point. Paths can be used as guides for any of the other tools such as the Paintbrush. A path can be stroked or filled with any color or pattern.
Paths take up almost no memory. Having a few thousand of them will not make a noticeable difference in the storage size of your image.

You can make paths available to the Pen tool in two ways. In the options bar for the Pen tool, the two choices are at the left, next to the Tool Preset Picker. Even though there are three choices, only the first two apply to the Pen tool. The first creates what is called a Shape layer. This is a Vector layer that is filled with the current foreground color and uses the path created as a mask. Consult your manual for a full description of this function.

The second choice is the one I use the most. It creates paths.

Stroking the path can be done in couple of ways. One way is by choosing Stroke Path from the Path palette submenu. This will pop up a dialog box that enables you to determine which tool will be used to perform the stroke. The other way is to have the particular tool with which you want to stroke the path already selected, and then click the Stroke Path icon at the bottom of the Path palette.

You can fill the paths with a color by either choosing Fill Path from the Palette submenu or by clicking the Fill Path icon at the bottom of the palette.

The Pen tool enables you to make difficult and precise selections. There are many times when selecting a part of an image is difficult or far too labor intensive for the other selection methods and tools. As with the other selection tools in Photoshop, a feather radius can be assigned to the selection. This makes the selected area into a soft-edged shape.

You can make a path a selection in a number of ways. You can select Make Selection from the Path palette submenu. This brings up a dialog box where attributes such as the feather amount can be input. You also can drag the path over the Make Selection icon at the bottom of the Path palette. It also can be done by Command-clicking (Control-clicking on a PC) the path in the Path palette. If you use either of the last two methods, the resulting selection takes on any attributes previously assigned in the Make Selection dialog box (for instance, a feather radius).

A path is often used to surround an element in an image. It can also be a shape created to serve as a new element in an image. The path is made up of "anchor points," which determine the starting and ending point of each line segment. These anchor points can have "handles," which produce curved lines or "Bezier curves." An anchor point that has no handles makes a corner (or sharp) point, which produces straight lines.

Keep in mind a simple rule when using the Pen tool—click and drag in the direction that your line (path) will be traveling.

To add to the confusion, the handle that is pulled out is not the one that actually determines the angle of the line. It is the handle that faces the line that is controlling the curve. The handle you are pulling is locked to the one on the other side, so how you pull that handle is creating the handle that counts. As this handle is being pulled, a second handle is being made behind the point, facing the line. When the mouse button is released, the line is complete. It is that second handle, the one facing the line, which is controlling the path's shape. Grabbing and moving that handle affects the line.

How to Handle

The click and drag action produces a handle. This handle is not the line itself, but just the method by which a path is controlled. The actual line of the path is created when the second anchor point is created. The result is a line between the two anchor points.

The rule mentioned previously, as most rules, has exceptions. Sometimes you might want to pull the handle in the opposite direction from that which the line is following. These moves produce lines that exaggerate the curve or have the line curve back on itself.

The length of the handle determines the height or depth of the curve.

The click and drag procedure is applied for each additional point until an entire shape is completed. The shape can be a closed path. This means that the shape is one complete form such as a ball. The path can be an open path. This means that the starting and ending points do not meet. This can be used to create an arc.

A path is closed when after creating a shape the final anchor point is clicked directly over the original, starting anchor point.

There are times, however, when the next point must follow a different curve. In this case, it is necessary to create a new handle from the last anchor point to follow this new curve.

Pressing the Option key (Alt on a PC) while clicking and dragging the anchor point produces a new handle, which can be set to an entirely new angle. It is important to note that you click and drag from the anchor point and not the handle of the point. If you click the handle it will produce a new anchor point in that position.

The best way to learn this is to play, play, play.

Creating lightning is a snap with a couple of filters and adjustments.

The main filter used to create the lightning looks at areas of contrast to determine shape.

On a blank, white Photoshop canvas, paint a black shape with a large Paintbrush that will follow the basic line you want your lightning bolt to be. Keep in mind it is the edges of the stroke that will be the actual lightning.
If you want a second bolt then paint it on the opposite side of the first paint stroke.
Fill in the area between the two strokes.
Apply a Gaussian Blur (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur) filter with an amount large enough to heavily blur the shape (about 25).
Apply the Difference Clouds filter (Filter>Render>Difference Clouds).
Invert the image (Image>Adjustments>Invert).
In Levels (Edit>Adjustments>Levels), move the black slider to about 130 and the gray slider to .25.
If your second bolt is to be attached to the first then select it and send it to its own layer (Layer>New>Layer Via Cut).
Put that new layer in Screen Mode and position it where you want it. Flatten the file making sure all areas outside the lightning are black.
Transfer the file over to the document you want the lightning to appear in and put it in Screen Mode for the Black to disappear.

Wizard lightning

This is a slight variation to the above effect in that you will create many lightning bolts streaming from a central point. If the source of the lightning is not in the center of the image then it is crucial to make the file where you are creating the lightning larger than the file where it will be placed so that you have enough room to make the lightning bolts bleed off the page.

In a Photoshop file like step one above, draw a series of long, vertical black rectangles. Each rectangle will produce two lightning bolts. The more rectangles, the more bolts you will have.
Blur the shapes as above.
Apply the Polar Coordinates filter (Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates) with the Options set to Rectangular to Polar.
Now follow steps five through seven in from the above tutorial.
To add color to the bolts use the Hue/Saturation control (Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation) set to Colorize. Play with the Hue and Saturation sliders till you get the desired effect.

1. Choose a Feather radius for the Lasso selection tool. The radius should be high enough to give you a very soft edge.

2. Select the couple and copy them over to the image of a wine glass.

3. Place them in position.

4. With a very soft-edged Eraser, touch up any parts of the layer with the couple that might be overlapping the edge of the wine glass.

5. Double-click the layer of the couple to bring up the Layer Style dialog box.

6. At the bottom of the Blending Options: Default section you will find Blend If.

7. Move the highlight (white) sliders for the Underlying Layer over to expose any highlights that might be on the wineglass. Pressing the Option button (Alt on a PC) allows you to separate the slider to add a sot edge to the transition.

written by Bert Monroy

11/05/2002

It was difficult to create fire using earlier versions of Photoshop. Photoshop 7's Liquify feature has changed all that. On today's show I'll show you how to use Liquify to create realistic fire.

1. Create a new file that's square in shape and set the Background to black.

2. Using White, type in a word you wish to set on fire.

3. Rasterize the text (Layer>Rasterize>Type).

4. Duplicate the layer with the type.

5. The first filter to be applied works only from the left or the right. You want the effect to happen from bottom to top. Rotate the duplicate text layer 90 degrees clockwise (Edit>Transform>Rotate 90 degrees clockwise).

6. Apply the Wind filter from the Left (Filter>Stylize>Wind). Apply it a couple of times to get long streaks.

7. Rotate the layer back to its original upright position (Edit>Transform>Rotate 90 CCW).

8. Apply the Gaussian Blur filter (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur). Give it just enough to soften the streaks.

9. Create a new layer behind the layer you just blurred and fill it with black.

10. Merge the two layers. Make sure you do not merge the background or the original text layer.

11. Go to the Liquify filter (Filter>Liquify). It should display the currently selected layer (blurred, streaked text) to be modified.

12. Using the Warp and Turbulence tools within the Liquify filter, distort the streaks into flames. Use small brush shapes and Warp to pull out additional flames from the edges of the text.

13. When you feel you're done, click OK and exit Liquify.

14. Switch the mode of the layer to Screen. This exposes the untouched underlying image where the top layer is black.

15. Go to the Hue/Saturation command (Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation). Click the Colorize button to change the hue of the flames and set it to a color that's a warm yellow, about 40 on the Hue bar. Push the Saturation up to 100.

16. Duplicate the layer of the flames. Then go into the Hue/Saturation command, turn off Colorize, and enter a hue change of minus 20. This moves the yellow in the direction of orange.

17. Set the mode of the duplicate to Overlay. This introduces some reds into the flames as seen.

18. Go back to the layer with the original white text and bring it to the front.

19. Click the Lock Transparency button in the layer's palette and fill the text with a gradient from yellow to dark brown. You might want to add a Layer Style of Inner Glow with Red for the color and Normal for the mode.