Introduction

Heres a really easy way to replicate the “linen” look that Apple uses throughout their stuff (Lion’s Mission Control background). Just by using the Noise and Motion Blur filter you can come up with a really cool looking effect.

Step 1

In Photoshop create a new document. Fill the background layer with #aeb6ba. Create four new layers fill the bottom two with white and the remaining two with black.

Heres what layers you should have:

Step 2

Select Layer 1 (Bottom white layer). Go to Filter->Noise->Add Noise…. Use these settings or play around with something you like.

Repeat this process for each of the layers but change the Amount Percentage each time. Heres what I did:

• Layer 2 – 70%
• Layer 3 – 65%
• Layer 4 – 55%

Hint

When reapplying Add Noise you can use the keyboard short cut: Cmd+Option+F to bring up the filter dialog again but allowing you to edit its options (Unlike Cmd+F which reapplies the filter with the same settings as last used)

Step 3

Now we get to make it actually look like something besides a couple layers filled with noise!

Starting in Layer 1 go to Filter->Blur->Motion Blur… change Angle to 0 and distance to 70 pixels (Again this is all preference, play around with it and see what you like best! It doesn’t hurt to explore a little bit).

Select Layer 2 bring up Motion Blur (Cmd+Option+F) change Angle to 90 degrees and distance to 75

Step 4

Repeat Step 3 but do it on Layer 3 and Layer 4 and changing the Distance a little bit.

NOTE: Make Layer 3 0 Angle and Layer 4′s Angle be 90

Step 5

Change Layer 3 and Layer 4‘s Layer Properties to Screen

Finally change Layer 1 and Layer 2‘s Layer Properties to Multiply

Conclusion

You might notice that the edges of your document look a little funny if this is the case just crop it down so they are gone.

Other than that, you’re done! That was a incredibly simple way to create a pretty cool looking effect! You can always play around with the background color to change the color of your “Linen”.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and learned a few things! If you have any questions feel free to email me or comment below and I will try my best to respond.

Its in its early stages so there might be some bugs and there aren’t that many features, so if you see anything that stands out or you would like to suggest a feature for it please send me an email at contact@tutdrop.com

Thanks and I hope you like it!

Also, I will be writing more tutorials shortly!

“Here’s a huge .psd kit with a ton of great resources for adding light leaks and film-like tones to your digital images. Inside the .psd are fourteen layers of real light leaks that can be upscaled or downscaled to any size, as well as five tone adjustment groups. Completely free for personal and commercial use.” – from coltonrabon.me

Download Light Leak Kit here

This weeks Website of the Week

This week’s website is the website CreativeMints.com, www.creativemints.com for their incredible graphics and nice use of the navigation!

Runner Ups

Premium Pixels
Tea Round App

I am a member of Forrst, but not of Dribbble. Even though I’m not a member of Dribbble I still visit it pretty frequently to look at all the “shots” that the players are submitting. The talent on those websites are really incredible and its fun to look at and get inspired on designing things and how good you could hopefully become!

Are any of you members of either? If so leave a comment of your username! My username on Forrst is willstumpf.

If you haven’t checked them out, make sure you do!

Introduction

In this tutorial I will be teaching you how to create a cool looking effect that Apple used in their new iPod Touch Ads and stuff.

Heres what were making:

Of course my or your results will look exactly like this but were not learning how to accomplish this just to copy Apple! We’re learning it so you can apply this to other instances as well. Lets begin!

Step 1

In this tutorial you will need to get a picture of a finger print, I found the one I’m using by a simple google search.

Once you found a finger print, create a new document and paste the print into the document. The finger print I’m using was pretty big so I had to scale it down to about 75px by 115px

Step 2

I’m going to spell touch so I need five of the finger prints, so duplicate the layer as many times as you need and put them next to each other over lapping a tiny bit.

Step 3

Okay now its time for the fun part! Coloring the finger prints.

You might think this is going to be hard but its actually incredibly simple! So lets get started.

Create a new layer above all the other layers. Change the Blend Mode to Color.

Command+Click a finger print layer (I’m going left to right) to select it, then with your newly created color layer fill the selection with #ff7c21

Step 4

Now all we have to do is repeat Step 3 four more times, but each time change the color.

Heres the colors in order from left to right.

#1 #ff7c21
#2 #fb321d
#3 #2b6aff
#4 #0098d1
#5 #a9da56

Step 5

One more final touch left on the color. On #2 add a radial gradient at the bottom to about the middle using a foreground to transparent gradient. Set your foreground to: #fd3180

Add another radial gradient on #3 on the top left, again use a foreground to transparent, set your foreground to: #e067f3

And lastly, another radial gradient on #5, from the left to the center. Set your foreground to #69bfe0

Step 6 – Final Step!

For the final step all we have to do is add text!
Create a text layer (T) and write “touch”. set your font settings to: Lucida Grande at 100pt with 85 tracking (spacing) and color #ffffff.

Create another text layer this time have the font Myriad Pro and set it to Semibold and the size 165pt with -65 tracking

Move the touch text in front of the finger prints, play around with your font size and spacing till it looks right, it will be different for you depending on how close you put each print and what size you made them. Lastly, move the iPod text layer above the finger prints and center it on them and thats it!

Conclusion

Congratulations! You completed this incredibly easy tutorial to show you how to create the finger prints like Apple did for their new iPod touch! Hopefully you learned enough from this tutorial to create your own things using these methods. Thanks for reading and if you have any questions please leave them in the comments or send me an email.

Incredible…

Check out these amazing iOS icons made in pure CSS! They are incredible. It’s certainly not the most practical way to draw icons but it sure is pretty neat that someone took the time to do it and how well they turned out! CSS3 is powerful and useful.

Another cool thing about them is that they are scaleable and look pretty decent when you make them really big or really small.

Article: iOS Icons Made in Pure CSS – Article

Icons: iOS Icons Made in Pure CSS

Step 1

Open the photo that you wish to edit and the first thing you want to do after that is duplicate the photos layer. This will make it so much easier if you decide that you want to start over and have accidentally over written your original picture file! Because now you will be working on the duplicated layer rather then the first one.

In this tutorial I’m going to be using a picture of a baby I found on sxc.hu.

Step 2

We need to make a selection of the baby just on his upper body and head. An easy way to do this is to use the Quick Mask Mode to get to it just hit Q. When you hit it nothing noticeable will change, the only thing that does is the quick mask button on the bottom of your tool bar gets selected.

Once your in the quick mask mode select the Brush Tool (B). Hit D (Resets your default colors to black and white) and start brushing over the baby. If you did it right you should be coloring the baby red not black. When you’re done covering the baby hit Q again which should select everything BUT the baby. To fix this just hit Command+Shift+I or Control+Shift+I if you’re on a PC.

Create a new layer and fill it with a color and hide the new layer. This is only so we can get that selection any time we want and we don’t have to repeat this step of selecting the baby with the quick mast tool anymore.

Step 3

With the new selection go back to the pictures layer (not the original the duplicated one!) and hit Command+C (Control+C) to copy it then paste it Command+V (Control+V)

Now you should have just the selection on a new layer. Open Levels (Command+L) and play around with the sliders until you get a darker, but not unrealistically dark, looking subject.

I did: 9, .64, 247

Step 4

Select the Pen Tool (P) and draw a shirt on the baby. Select the layer (by Command+Clicking on the layer) then hide the shirt layer.

Step 5

With the shirt outline still selected go to the first layer and hit Command+C then hit Command+V which should create a new layer. move that layer above all the other layers.

You should start seeing a tan baby with a farmers tan! All we need to do is add a few more touches then were done!

Step 6

Open Levels Command+L and play around with the sliders till you get a lighter subject. I put mine on:

0, 1.15, 241.

Then open Hue/Saturation (Command+U) then make the Lightness about +15

Step 7 – Final Step!

Select the shirt layer, then go to Select->Modify->Contract and enter 3px. Inverse the selection, Command+Shift+I, and apply a Gaussian Blur, Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur make the radius 1.0 pixels

Conclusion

You’re finished! Now you know how to take any picture and give someone a farmers tan! If you wanted to remove a farmers tan from a picture it would be a lot alike this tutorial! All you would need to do is select the farmers tan then feather the selection and use levels to make the selection match the rest of the skin. You might need to play around with other adjustment tools like Curves or Brightness/Contrast and not just the Levels.

Step 1

Create a new document, I made mine 1100px by 700px. It doesn’t matter what you use so use whatever you want. Fill the background with a color that you want. I chose #f9eddf.

Step 2

In this tutorial I’m going to be making the banner wrap around the container of a website. If you are going to do this aswell, create a new layer above the background layer and make the container using the Marquee Tool. I made mine 600px wide and 100% tall and filled it with white.

Step 3

Select the Marquee Tool (M). Make a selection a little bit wider then the container. I made mine 686px by 60px (Remember my container is 600px wide). Fill it with #f26c4f

Step 4

Duplicate the layer you just made, select the Move Tool (V) and move the newly made layer down about 40 pixels

An easy way to do this is to use the arrow keys while holding down the Shift Key. Each time you move the selection while doing this will move it 10px. So just hit the down arrow four times.

Move layer below the container.

Step 5

Select the Polygonal Lasso Tool (L) and cut out the ends of the layer that you just made in the last step by drawing a triangle from each point to somewhere in the middle of the banner.

When you have drawn the selection hit Delete

Step 6

With the Polygonal Lasso Tool still selected draw a triangle at the bottom of the first banner going all the way to the bottom of the second one.

To create a triangle that looks good, create Paths (The easiest way to create a path is to turn on the Rulers and just click and drag from the ruler on to the document and unclick where you want to place the guide) on the outer side of the first banner as well as the bottom side and on the second banner create one on the inner side as well as the bottom of it. If that was confusing look at the picture to see the guides as well as the selection I drew.

Once you have made the selection create a new layer and fill it with #a54a36. Duplicate the first triangle layer and use Free Transform to flip it horizontally and move it to the other side of the banner.

Step 7

All that’s left is just adding finishing touches to the banner.

You can create a shadow, to do this duplicate both layers of the banner and fill them with black. Move them down a few pixels and change the layer opacity to 10%.

Lastly, Add text to the banner and your all done!

Step 1

Set your Foreground Color to #FFFCDB, select the Rectangle Tool (U) and draw a square (hold shift)

Step 2

Go to menu Edit > Transform > Warp. Now you should see an overlay grid on top of the square. Drag the points, handles, or any where in the grid to warp the image.

Step 3

Select Free Trasnform (Command+T) and rotate the note a little to the left. Set your foreground color to #FFF799. Open Layer Styles, select Gradient Overlay Use the foreground to transparent gradient and click and drag the gradient to the top section of your note.

Note: Depending on how much you rotated your note, your Angle will be different then mine!

Step 4

Control click the note layer, (Command+Click the Thumbnail) create a new layer below the layer. Fill it with black. Apply the Gaussian Blur filter with a radius of 8 pixels. Go to menu Edit > Transform > Distort, hold down Alt+Shift and drag either of the top corner anchors in until you cant see the shadow on the sides of the note. Now, drag the center anchor down until you cant see the shadow above the note. Use the arrow keys to nudge the shadow down and to the left a few pixels.

Lower the shadows Layer Opacity to 55%

Final Image