The Forest by ~theflickerees-stock

1) Begin by creating a black to white Gradient Map and setting it to Luminosity.
This helps brighten the light colours, and deepen the dark colours.

2) Create a Hue/Saturation layer and set Saturation to -50

3) Create a Brightness/Contrast layer and use the following settings:
Brightness: 10
Contrast: 10

4) Create a Selective Colour layer and use the following settings:
Reds: -100 | 0 | 0 | 0
Yellows: +100 | +100 | -100 | +100
Greens: +100 | +100 | +100 | 0
Whites: 0 | 0 | +18 | +50
Neutrals: +41 | 0 | -12 | 0
Blacks: 0 | 0 | 0 | +3

You may need to edit these settings depending on your image, but what you’re looking to create is a very blue, winter-like image. Don’t worry too much if there are little bits of colour which won’t change, or if it looks too blue, we’ll be fixing the saturation later.

5) Create a Hue/Saturation layer and set Saturation to: +10

6) Create a Photo Filter and use: Cooling Filter (80)
Set it to 50% Density
Now set the layer to Lighten

7) Finally create a Hue/Saturation and set Saturation to: -40
This helps tone down the blue colours and create a cold, winter atmosphere.

What are they?

Gradient Maps can provide an attractive method of toning whilst being quick and easy to do. They are editable and flexible and exist on a separate layer, allowing you to work with them. They can also be worked into Layer Masks.

Below are two locations where you can find the Gradient Map option.

The option below may not be available to you. If you want to make it available, go to Window > Adjustments.

How do they work?

A Gradient Map maps each pixel to an RGB triad found in the active gradient, in proportion to its brightness level. The left side of the gradient colours the dark pixels, and the right side of the gradient colours the light pixels in accordance to the colour they are set.

For example, if we consider this simple gradient image, with two additional circles…

And add a gradient map to it…

Our image becomes:

As you can see, the black has been coloured yellow, to correspond with the layer; likewise, the white has turned purple. The grey shades in the middle have changed to a mix of the two hue’s dependant on their shade. If you look closely, you will also notice that the black border has been changed to yellow.

Does this work on colour?

Answer: Oh yes!

Water lily 3444 by *fa-stock

The same gradient as we displayed above has been used. The text has remained white as it is placed on the layer above.

An example of one in use:

Let’s use the same image again.

I am also going to use the same gradient map, except, we are reversing it.

Once inverted, I have changed the layer style to “Overlay”, creating this effect:

Conclusion

Gradient Maps are a great tool, and one which you should definitely get used to working with. Try making your image greyscale before applying the Gradient Map, or try different layer styles! Any questions? Pop them in the comments below!

What do you think of it? It’s going to feature on every new wallpaper and resource preview. It won’t go into signatures, since I don’t want to overwhelm them, so they’ll continue to only have a discreet textual watermark.

Death of a Star

Credits:
Cracks | Bokeh

See, Hear no Evil

Credits:
C4D | Textures | Stock | Debris 1 | Debris 2 | Debris 3

1) Don’t stress yourself out about it

People are not expecting you to write an award-winning article on the incredible depth of specific areas of philosophy. People want to know what you’re working on, and what you’re interested in currently. Doesn’t matter if you’re working on a graphic novel or a new web design for partypoker.com – it’s all about showing people that you’re up to something, rather than firing off some new content into your portfolio and expecting people to check on a regular basis.

2) Talk about the work of others

If you’ve seen other designers come up with things you’re really into, link to them, talk about them and discuss why you enjoy their work with the people who hang out on your blog. Not only is it a wise idea as you’re essentially broadcasting that you’re happy to promote the work of others (this will help you in the long run when you’ve got big stuff coming out), you’re also showing that you have interests and thus, are interesting.

3) Offer advice

If you’re knowledgeable about design, then sharing that knowledge with others is really going to help them. If you’ve ever read tutorials on the web (you probably have, at some point), that content you read was provided by someone who took the time to craft it. Give back a little, and you may find that people start using those posts as the basis for learning about design.

So don’t stress out – write, think, share knowledge, promote the stuff you love by just talking about and linking to it, and have fun updating your audience.

Credits:
MrRobin Bubble C4D Package 2
Nebula Resource Pack
Packing – Bubble – 2
Clear Blue Water Background Stock

(Isn’t the new skin lovely btw!)

Still needs a bit of work doing to it, and I’ll update you all with it once it is done.

Navigation has been taken down for now, as I’m testing using MySQL/PHP in wordpress pages.