Obsidian Dawn » Tutorials

Creating Faux Bokeh Backgrounds in Photoshop Tutorial

Stephanie — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:59:16 +0000

This tutorial will walk you through how to create a faux bokeh background in Photoshop. For those of you that are unsure about what bokeh is, it is a Japanese term used in photography. It is used to describe the qualities of the area of a photo that is out of focus, and is used to help draw your eye to the subject of the photograph. Some pretty cool things happen with bokeh, too. Especially where lights or heavily lighted areas are concerned. Have you ever looked at a photograph or been watching a movie, perhaps where it was dark out, and the lights in the background are all blurry, but instead of just being blurry they appear as these odd gatherings of circles and/or polygons? I didn’t notice it all that often until I started looking, and now I see it everywhere!

You’ll need to grab my Bokeh Photoshop & GIMP Brushes to follow along with this tutorial. This tutorial is specifically geared toward Photoshop users. If you’re a Photoshop Elements or GIMP user, you should still be able to follow along, though the steps may not be exact for you.

Let’s get started!

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Installing & Using Photoshop Custom Shapes

Stephanie — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:39:06 +0000

This tutorial will walk you through how to install and use Photoshop’s custom shapes. You can find our shapes here.

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Creating Seamless Textures in Photoshop Tutorial

Stephanie — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:53:42 +0000

This tutorial will walk you through how to create a seamless texture in Photoshop. I created the tutorial using Photoshop CS2, but it should work almost exactly the same for most versions of Photoshop from 7 and up. (It may work for 6 and under, too, but I’ve never used those so I have no idea.)

Please keep in mind that this tutorial is for textures… not patterns. A texture is something like granite, dirt, or bark, while a pattern is something like lace, or anything with a design on it.

Enjoy, and let me know if you have any questions!

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Paths in Photoshop Tutorial

Stephanie — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:02:41 +0000

This tutorial will walk you through how to use Paths in Photoshop. It explains the general workings of paths, as well as how to use them to do specific tasks.

Tasks such as how to create vector shapes using paths, how to replicate and resize something as large as you’d like, how to use a brush along a path and have it fade out or get smaller as it goes, etc. The uses of paths in Photoshop are limitless!

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Creating Realistic Flames in Photoshop Tutorial

Stephanie — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 03:05:45 +0000

This tutorial will explain how to make the best use of my flames brushes & patterns to create realistic looking flames and fire.

The flames brush set has always been one of my most popular sets. I’ve seen some people do amazing things with it.

Similarly, one of my most popular questions is: “How do you make your flames brushes look like they do in your preview images?” So, I’m giving this in-depth tutorial as an answer!

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Removing Transparency with Brushes Photoshop Tutorial

Stephanie — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:03:55 +0000

Some brushes were made to be transparent, others were not. And because of the nature of Photoshop (or PSP/GIMP) brushes, sometimes they end up looking that way when they shouldn’t. This tutorial will explain how to remove the transparency from brushes, when needed. It is the singlemost important concept in making image-based brushes look realistic.

The tutorial has been made with Photoshop in mind, but these principles are all very basic. If you understand how to use layers in PSP (Paint Shop Pro) or GIMP, you should be able to follow along with this tutorial.

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Advanced Brush Techniques in Photoshop Tutorial

Stephanie — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:44:19 +0000

So, you’ve learned the basics of how to use Photoshop brushes. What now?

There’s a whole lot of options for those brushes, actually! You can use Photoshop’s brush options to change the orientation, shape, spacing, scattering, angle, etc of how those brushes are applied. This tutorial will show you a few of those options, as well as some examples of how they can be used to create patterns, etc.

This tutorial is suitable for any Photoshop user, from beginner to advanced. However, a more advanced user will understand all of the different brush options much more clearly. A beginner can still follow along, though. If you have trouble understanding my explanations of the different options, try them out for yourself and see what they do. Or, stick to the steps that I specifically tell you to do, and you’ll see some changes in the brushes yourself!

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Installing Photoshop Patterns Tutorial

Stephanie — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 05:30:42 +0000

This tutorial will walk you through how to install and use a Photoshop pattern set. You can find our patterns here.

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Creating Realistic Embroidered Text or Designs in Photoshop Tutorial

Stephanie — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 05:22:21 +0000

This tutorial will help you create realistic embroidered text or designs. Not only does it create the texture, but when you embroider something, the edges of that object are not going to be completely straight or flush. There will be “bumps” from where each stitch of thread on that line ends. This should also help explain how to create those, for a realistic embroidery effect.

It can be used for text, as I’ve shown here, or really for any other shape or design, as well.

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Using Multiple Colors with Photoshop Brushes Tutorial

Stephanie — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 04:15:02 +0000

Have you ever used a brush and thought how pretty it would look, if only you could make it show up in more than one color? Being able to change the color of Photoshop brushes upon application is a beautiful thing, but sometimes the colors on image-based brushes and the like can look rather… flat in color. This tutorial will show you how to add multiple colors to the same brush.

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Creating Photoshop Brushes Tutorial

Stephanie — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 01:29:45 +0000

This tutorial will walk you through how to create brushes in Photoshop.

It details how to create the brushes themselves and save them into a set.

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Installing Photoshop Brushes (& GIMP!) Tutorial

Stephanie — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 00:55:17 +0000

This tutorial will walk you through installing and using brushes from this site, and should be very similar to the procedure used to install brushes from just about anywhere. It is a beginner tutorial, so those just beginning Photoshop will understand it – but it’s not so tedious that more experienced users will be too bored.

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