by Chad Neuman

We can use Adobe Photoshop not just for editing photos but for creating artistic design and effects as well. Here’s one way to create an interesting and aesthetically-pleasing look.

Step 1
Open Adobe Photoshop and go to File>New and set the Width and Height to 1000 pixels. Click OK.

Step 2
Set the Foreground color to a dark color such as dark blue, black, red, etc., by clicking the Foreground Color Picker on the bottom of the Tools palette. I set it to #09005e. Click OK.

Step 3
Press Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace) to fill the Background layer with this dark color.

Step 4
Next, press the Create a New Layer icon on the bottom of the Layers palette. Choose the Brush tool and set the Foreground color to white. Set the brush size to 700 pixels, soft-edged.

Step 5
Click the brush once just along the side of the canvas.

Step 6
Click the Move tool and make sure Show Transform Controls is selected up on the Options palette. Click-and-drag the side of this layer to make it about this size and press Return (PC: Enter) to apply the changes.

Step 7
Next, click Cmd-J (PC: Cntrl-J) four times to duplicate this layer so we have five layers with the brush pixels we just created.

Step 8
With the top layer selected (Layer 1 copy 4), go to Filter>Distort>Twirl and set the twirl to -100 and click OK. With the Move tool, move this layer slightly to the right and we can see the effect.

Step 9
Repeat step 8 but for the four other layers with the brush pixels on them: Layer 1 copy 3, Layer 1 copy 2, Layer 1 copy, and Layer 1. But instead of -100, set the Twirl to -50, 50, 100, and 150. Using the Move tool to move the layers around, we can see the various shapes.

Step 10
Next, rotate the various layers with the wavy shapes by hovering the mouse cursor near the corner of the transform controls and click-and-drag. Try various angles, my example looks like this.

Step 11
Click the Create a New Layer icon on the Layers palette, and click once with the Brush tool in various areas of the canvas with various colors. Change the Layer Blending Mode to Soft Light. Now we have a nice piece of art for a design.

by Chad Neuman

Photo mosaics are photos comprised of many other photos. Photos are places in square or rectangle areas of the image, almost like pixels. Each photo has a certain hue that matches what the part of the master photo should be. Here’s a quicker way than trying to find photos that match specific parts of a photo.

Instead of having the hue in each photo represent that area of the master photo, we’ll have the color of the master photo show through to the tiled photos. And instead of having to find dozens or hundreds of photos, we’ll just need a few. This technique can be used for advertisements, personal photos, promotional brochures, annual reports, and other creative designs.

Step 1
Open up a photo of what you want to be the master photo. You may try having a few people’s faces make up another person’s face, or photos of nature making up another photo of nature. For my example, I am going to have different coastal nature photos to comprise a photo of a woman’s face. Be sure to use the Crop tool to crop closely along the face.

Step 2
Next, get four photos you’d like to use as the texture of the master photo. We could use two photos and checkerboard them, but let’s use four for this example. As you can see, these photos are quite large and need to be made much smaller to be the tiles.

Step 3
Select the Crop tool and up on the Options palette, set the Height and Width to 25 px, 50 px, or 75, depending on how big you want the tiles to be. Also change the resolution preset to what the resolution of the master photo is. For my example, it’s 72 pixels per inch. Note: Be sure to set the Width and Height to pixels, otherwise it may enter inches by default and the image will be too large.

Step 4
Next, click-and-drag to crop all four photos to the preset size. Either press Return (PC: Enter) or double-click inside the crop area after drawing the crop. Then multiply whatever width and height you set it to by two, and then create a new file with this for width and height. Since I set mine to 75 pixels each, my new file will be 150 pixels by 150 pixels. Make sure the resolution is the same as what the preset was set to. Name it tile.

Step 5
Next, select the Move tool and click-and-drag the four photos onto the new file to make a checkboard pattern. After moving, try the keyboard arrows to fine-tune the placement. Each new placed photo will be on its own layer.

Step 6
Desaturate the image by going to Image>Adjustments>Desaturate for each layer, or merge the layers first by pressing Cmd-E (Ctrl-E) and then desaturate. Go to Edit>Define Pattern and name it something appropriate, such as “beach photos” or “tile.”

Step 7
Make sure there are not a lot of blank pixels, or too bright pixels, in the tile. This can cause the final result to look funny. I noticed the upper right hand photo had too much brightness on the top so I replaced it with another beach photo.

Step 8
Next, open the original master photo. Click the Create New Layer icon on the Layers palette. Go to Edit>Fill and select Pattern. Change the Custom Pattern to the pattern we just created. Make sure Mode is Normal and Opacity is 100%.

Step 9
This will fill the second layer with the pattern. In the Layers palette, change the Layer Blending Mode of the top layer to Overlay. There we have it, a photo mosaic!

Bonus Step
Let’s say you want to create a photo mosaic that actually uses the original hues from the tiled photos to make up a larger photo, instead of having the hues overlay onto the tiled photos like in this technique. You’ll need many more photos with varying hues and patterns and a computer program to do that, unless you have a lot of time on your hands. PC users go to http://www.andreaplanet.com/andreamosaic/ and MAC users go to http://homepage.mac.com/knarf/MacOSaiX/Download.html and download the program to do this. There are some pretty neat examples, including Van Gogh’s starry night consisting of many different photos.

by Chad Neuman

You can use photos and trace over them in Adobe Illustrator to make some unique effects and vector art. If the vector art resembles the original photo to the average person, then you run into copyright issues. If your trace is going to be somewhat similar to the original photo, then there’s one way to get around the copyright issues, and that is to use public domain images. Generally, very old images (number of years depends on the country you live in) and images created by the government (think WWII posters and NASA photos) are in the public domain.

I got this public domain image from Alice in Wonderland book from the 1800s, scanned onto a web site. There are thousands of other images out there in the public domain.

Step 1
Open a new document in Illustrator, go to File>Place and place the public domain image of Alice. Open the Layers palette and click the Create New Layer button at the bottom of the palette to create a new layer. This is to keep our new vector shapes on their own layer.

You can use various colors for your trace, but for this one I want to keep it simple with just black traces. Use the Pen tool (or the Pencil tool) to trace over the dark parts of this line drawing. Manually tracing allows us greater control and also lower number of paths and anchors than we would have with Live Trace.

Step 2
For the curvy parts of the drawing, use the Pen tool and click once on one end of the dark area. Next, click-and-drag slightly so the path curves along the shape.

Step 3
Some dark areas are smaller and thinner than others. To avoid a blocky appearance, curve the edges by clicking-and-dragging as you click anchor points with the Pen tool. When you draw back to the original starting point for each shape, hover over the original point and click to close the path.

Step 4
As you draw each shape, try clicking the Eye icon on the Layers palette next to the layer that the original image is on. This will allow you to see just the shapes without the image underneath and help you determine if there are any missing parts.

Step 5
I added a few new shapes which make this trace look a bit different from the original photo. These ripples I made using the Pen tool make the girl look like she’s standing in water.

Step 6
Her hand ended up being awkwardly in the air, so I added a cigarette. (I don’t smoke, but hey, this Alice does).

Here’s the original image next to the vector illustration that I traced from it.

I’ve also included a few examples of public domain images you can trace over for unique art. Check them out. You might get some great ideas.

You can also find many resources linked at the bottom of this Wikipedia entry. Click on some of the links and see what’s out there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources

by Chad Neuman

Using custom brushes can be useful for adding unique backgrounds or strokes to a design. But one uncommon way to use them is to make their stroke very large, causing some interesting effects for use as backgrounds or other abstract designs.

Step 1
As an example, let’s click-and-hold onto the Rectangle tool, which will bring out a side menu which includes the Ellipse tool. Select it and draw out a circle. Hold Shift to make a perfect circle.

Step 2
On the Control Palette, change the stroke to a different brush.

Step 3
Choosing this example brush will change the stroke to something like this.

Step 4
Next, change the size of the brush to a higher number.

Step 5
The circle doesn’t look like a circle anymore. This causes this interesting look, but let’s make something a little bit better.

Step 6
Select the Star tool from the same toolbar area.

Step 7
Change the Stroke of the brush to 100 pt and to this brush shown here.

Step 8
The effect causes it to not look like a star anymore, but this abstract background.

Step 9
Ctrl-click (PC: Alt-click) and drag the object to a duplicate, and do this twice to make two. Change the color of the Stroke of the designs, and adjust the Opacity in the Transparency palette.

Step 10
Finally, place a raster image (File>Place) and apply a Live Trace (for this one, I used the Type preset).

Step 11
Click Expand, and use the Direct Selection tool to select some parts of it and delete them. Now we have a unique, abstract design which can be used as a background or even a logo.