When you have the need to cut out a person or object from a background, one of the ways to go about it is by using the Quick Mask mode in photoshop. This feature allows you to control what you want selected, so you can easily copy, cut, and paste the object onto any other canvas or photo.

In this tutorial, we’ll walk through the process of cutting out a person (in this tutorial, I used a photo of my daughter) from a scene using Quick Mask Mode, then we’ll paste the person in another photo’s background.

Newer models of mobile phones, PDAs, and other devices carry functions similar to Photoshop’s Quick Mask mode. Mobile phone and broadband technology giant, O2 is said to be working on mobile phones that will be able to utilize these photo-editing functions. Though there is no specific date when these phones will hit the market, sources say that it will be sooner than expected. A feature like this will surely enhance your mobile phone and photography experience.

1. Open Photoshop.
2. Open a photograph of a person with a background.

Flags have a lot of use in many different projects. If you are a web designer, it can add some personality to your website by having them used as icons or sections relating to languages, locations, or political topics.

Then of course, you can also use them to show how patriotic you are.

In this tutorial, we’ll look at how to add shading and wave effects to a flag to give it more life and make it look more realistic. This tutorial uses the American flag, but it can be applied to any country’s flag.

Before	After

1. Open Photoshop.
2. Click File > New from the Main Menu.

5. Select the Magic Wand tool and select outside the flag (in the white area). This will select everything, but the flag.

11. In the Gradient Editor pop-up, change the gradient so it goes from a white to light-grey to white a few times (see the image below for example).

16. Hold down Shift+Ctrl+E once, to make the “Shading” layer merge with the “Flag” layer.
17. Remove any selections that are on your canvas.
18. Now click Filter > Liquify from the main menu.

2. If the rulers arn’t up already, go to View>Rulers to bring them up. Now drag out a horizontal guide and a vertical guide to make a crosshair in the approximate center of your image (drag out guides by clicking on the appropriate ruler and dragging out). Now select the Elliptical Marquee Tool (If you can’t see it, it will be under the menu in the top left tool on the tool window).

click in the middle of the crosshair and drag outward. While your dragging hit the Shift Key and the Alt Key, (shift contrains the ellipe to being a perfect circle and alt centers the cirlce around the crosshair) and let go. You should be left with this:

3. Now hold Alt and the cursor should change to having a small minus sign in it. With the alt key held down before you start, do the same as last time only make the circle you select smaller, to make a halo shape (if your getting confused, the key timeline goes: Hold alt, click and hold in the center of the crosshair, drag out a bit, release alt, press shift, press alt, and drag out to a circle size smaller than the first. Confusing but necessary).

You should be left with a ring shape selected. Being careful not to deselect it, go to Layer>New>Layer… and click ok. With this new layer selected, Set your foreground colour to white and fill your shape by going to Edit>Fill… leave the settings as the default (make sure it says Use: Foreground Colour!) and click ok to fill your basic halo shape. You will be left with something like this:

4. Pull up free transform by going to Edit>Free Transform and scale the halo down to where the halo should be in you picture. You won’t need the guides again, so go to View>Clear Guides to remove them. Now, create a new layer above the person layer, by highlighting the person layer and clicking create a new layer circled below. your layer order should be as follows:

5. Deselect any shape you may have highlighted and fill the new layer with black by going to Edit>Fill… and choosing Use: Black in the drop-down box. Select the Halo layer and choose ‘Merge Down’ from the Layer menu. Now, choose screen from the Layer Blending drop-down box and apply a Gaussian Blur to the layer, with a large radius, but not unnecessarily so.

6. Making sure that the Halo layer is selected, go to Image>Adjustments>Colour Balance. Make sure the preserve luminosity box is checked, and slide the Yellow/Blue all the way toward yellow (to -100) on Shadows, Midtones (if you have more time then play around with the colours for the best results).

7. Create a new layer and use the eye dropper tool to sample a light colour from the halo. Next choose a soft, medium size brush and paint over the top of the hair and set the Layer Blending Mode to ‘Soft Light’.

Your Done!

2. Also, be sure to go to the Properties inspector and change the background color of the stage to a light blue to represent the sky.

6. The “Create New Symbol” box appears. Enter the name “Big Cloud”, and click the “Movie clip” option. Click OK to create the “Big Cloud” movie.

9. Add a Motion Tween to the frames in between.

12. Once you have the two cloud movies completed, you are ready to add all the elements to the main stage in your scene.

13. First click to select the Airplane layer and drag the Airplane graphic symbol from the library. Place it somewhere in the middle of the stage.

14. Next select the “Cloud 1″ layer and drag the “Big Cloud” movie symbol on to the stage. Be sure to place it so that the cloud is off to the left edge of the stage.

15. Then select the “Cloud 2″ layer and drag the “Little Cloud” movie symbol on to the stage. Same thing, make sure it is off to the left edge, but place it somewhere lower or higher than the other cloud.

In this tutorial, we will learn to create a nice looking web button, only by using layer styles.

Select rounded rectangle tool and draw this shape. Fill it with #FF1A00.

Now right click the layer on the layers palette. Choose “Blending Options” from the pop-up list. Then apply these layer styles.

Our amber button is ready

This tutorial teaches you to create a nice looking background, which can be used in various design projects like in webpages, creating signature etc.

Start by creating a 300×300 pixel wide file.
Create a new layer by pressing shift+control+n together. Set the foreground color to #BB7D10 and background to white. Select linear gradient to fill the layer.

Go to filter>pixelate>crystalize and apply this value :-

Image after applying crystalize effect

Go to filter>stylize>emboss and give these values :-

Image after applying crystalize effect

Go to filter>stylize>glowing edges and give these values

Image after applying glowing edges effect

Go to filter>distort>polar coordinates. Click on rectangular to polar radio button and press ok button.

Image after applying polar coordinates

Now go to edit>fade polar coordinates and give 45 in the fade box

Image after applying fade effect

Now, duplicate the layer by pressing control+j. Go to edit>transform>rotate 180 degree

Change the layer mode from normal to lighten.

Group and merge all layers. Now press control+l to open levels command. Drag the slider to have shining look. Our background is completed.

In this tuorial, we will learn to create a nice looking flower abstract background.
Create a new file of 300×300 pixel wide.
Create a new layer. Use elliptical marquee tool to draw a circle and fill it with black.

Now, go to filter>render>clouds.

Press control+f several times until you have this :-

Go to filter>distrort>polar coordinates and click on rectangular to polar.

Image after apply polar coordinates :-

Press control+f several times until you have this shape.

Press control+u to open hue/saturation dialog box and give these values in it:-

Image after applying hue/saturation.

Press control+j to duplicate the layer. Go to edit>transform>flip vertical.

Group and merge all layers leaving the background. Press control+j to duplicate the layer. Rotate it to get this result.

Finally duplicate and rotate this shape as shown in the figure.

We now have a good looking flower type abstract background. Notice that I have changed the background color to black to have more contrast in the image

Find a picture of an inanimate object your want to characterise. In this tutorial, I will use this paint bucket:

Next, you need to find a nice large picture of someone, like the one below. Once found, paste it into the picture (press Ctrl +V on a PC) – note that you may need to scale and rotate the picture to match the size of the picture (press Ctrl+T to bring up the ‘free transform’ handles. You can also go to Edit>Free Transform).

Click the layer with the person on it, and then click the ‘Add layer mask’ circled below.

A brief description of layer masks:
The lighter the colour (in the layer mask, not in the picture), the higher opacity that point will be. Shown below, the layer mask you just added is completely white, which means the entire layer is visible. Black symbolises that the layer is invisible and all colours painted on to the mask will be in greyscale.

What you’re going to do now is click the layer mask (on the picture above, the square of white on the person layer). Choose the brush tool and take a soft brush at 50% opacity, with your foreground colour set to black. Alter the size so the diameter is roughly covers an eye.

Now start painting over the eyes, some of the nose and the mouth. If you did the other steps correctly, the persons face should be disappearing and the object underneath should be showing through. If black shows up where you’re painting then your painting on the wrong layer. It will look weird for now but once you have covered just the eyes, nose and mouth then hit Ctrl+I on PC, or go to Image>Adjustments>Invert to invert the colours of the layer mask. You should be left with something like this:

Obviously it looks messy, but now you can paint over the obvious flaws. The good thing about a layer mask is that you can redo parts of it without starting again (unlike the eraser).
Here is our completed mask:

The last step is the set the ‘Layer blending mode’ to ‘Luminosity’.

You’re done!
You will find that some objects work better than others, and the same with faces, but it’s just a question of experimenting. Below is out final result:

In this tutorial, we will learn to manually colorize a b/w photograph.
Open the image of your choice.

Use lasso tool to select the face.

Now press alt key and select the eyes and lips. By this way, we are protecting these parts.

Use brush tool and change its mode to color. I have used #F0CFC0 color to fill the shape.

Use burn tool to darken the areas as shown by the arrow.

Again switch to the brush tool. Change the mode from color to multiply. Drag the brush over the parts shown by the arrows.

Press control+d to deselect and select the lips portion. Use alt key to draw a selection around teeths. By doing this we can protect the teeths to be colorized. Change the brush mode from multipy to color. Use #D0948C color;as forground and drag the brush over lips.

Use #A84D52 color as foreground and paint the cloths. Use lighter color (#56413C) to fill the cap.

You will notice that the buttons are still colored, which should not be. We will now desaturate them. You can select the buttons with elliptical marquee tool and than press shift+control+u to desaturate, or select sponge tool either selecting it through tools pallate or by pressing ‘O’. Use desaturate mode and drag the brush over those parts which we want to desaturate.

1. Open up the picture you want to edit.
2. Open up the liquify window by going to Filter>Liquify. Change the brush size so the diameter is about 3/4 the size of your victim’s face and choose the ‘Forward Warp’ tool.

3. Use short strokes to start pulling the cheeks of your victim out to make them look chubby. If you mess up, or distort the mouth too much then choose the ‘Reconstruct’ tool and brush over the area you went wrong in (try not to brush over the areas your happy with!).

Your done!

This tutorial teaches you to design a pixel floppy disk.

Create a new file of 24×24 pixel wide with transparent background. Zoom upto 1200%.
Draw this shape with 1 pixel wide pencil.

Draw another shape inside it.

Again draw this shape

Change the foreground color to #5E7A40 and draw a box which will be used for label.

Draw two #B0A8BD color lines inside the box. Fill the rest of the box with white.

Fill the upper box with #C4C9DC color and the second box with #ABDD7C color.

Add lines and fill the area as shown in the figure.

Zoom out to original size. Change the background to white and see your pixel floppy icon.

In this tutorial, we will learn to create a pixel icon which can be used for software, related to generate report.
Create a new file of 32×32 pixel wide.
Create a new layer. Use zoom tool or press control+ until you zoomed to 800% view. Select pencil tool and set the size to 1 pixel. Now, follow the picture to draw this shape.

You can see that our base tool is ready. Now, we will add shadow in it. For that, leave 1 pixel from the left black line. Draw two lines as shown in the figure. Use #B1AFAF for the first line and #606060 for the second.

Now, draw two more lines. Use #717171 color for that.

Leave one pixel and draw #60605E colored line as shown in the figure.

Draw the lines with pencil tool. Use black color for that.

Use #B1AFAF color to draw lines as shown :-

The tool is completed. Zoom out to 100% to have actual look of the tool.

Again zoom up to 800%. Hide the tool layer. Create another layer. Draw this notepaper shape with 1 pixel wide black color pencil.

Use #60605E color as foreground and draw some lines as shown in the figure.

The actual size of the notebook paper.

Now, unhide the tool layer. Move the layer, so that you can have better look of the notepaper. Our 32×32 pixel icon is ready.

This tutorial teaches you how to design this stylish logo.

Type ‘!’ from the key board.

Go to edit>transform>flip vertical.

Apply these layer styles in it :-

Image after applying the layer style. (Due to white background used in the tutorial, the stroke isn’t visible )

Duplicate the layer. Remove all formatting from it. Right click on its layer name in layer pallate and select color overlay. Apply the default ‘Red’ color overlay in it.

Draw this shape with ellipse tool. Color is not important at this point, so choose any color of your choice

Apply gradient overlay in it.

Image after applying gradient overlay

Now, place this layer as shown in the figure.

Group and merge all layers. Go to select>Modify>expand and expand it 3 pixels. Create a new layer, fill it with white and add 3 point gray color stroke in it. Add some text in it. Our logo is ready

Simply type the name below the logo.

In this tuorial, we will learn to create a nice looking web template for our web designs.

Create a new file of webpage size.
Create a new layer. Click on Polygonal Lasso tool and select the area as shown in the figure.

Fill it with #1F371F color. Duplicate the layer by pressing control+j. Move it just below the first layer. Change its color to #107030.

Again, duplicate the second layer. Change its color to #60BF40. Also place it below the second layer.

Create another layer. Use Rectangular Marquee Tool to select the area as shown in the figure.

Fill the selection with #FF9800.

Press control+d to deselect. Remove the unwanted area.

Draw this shape with the help of Rectangle tool. Use #FFC800 to fill the shape.

Apply gradient overlay in the shape.

Image after applying gradient overlay.

Type some text in it.

Add company logo. I have used 4 autoshapes here representing four images.

Draw this shape with rectangle tool. Use #CFCFCF to fill the shape.

Type ‘News’. Change the text color to #1F371F. I have used these settings for the text :-
Font Name = VAG Rounded
Size = 16 points
Also add #1F371F color line below the ‘News’.

Draw a white color rectangle with Rectangle tool. It represents the image here. Type the text related to the image. Use #1F371F color and 10 points size for the text.

Draw this #6FBF4F colored shape with rectangle tool.

Type ‘Introduction’ and add some text below.

Duplicate the grey color content box shape and place it at right side of the canvas.

Add some text with the same settings as we done for ‘News’ content box.

Duplicate the shape in which we applied the gradient overlay setting. Place it as shown in the figure.

Add copyright information below the layer. Our web template is ready

The techniques used in this tutorial will help demonstrate some of the useful tools that and blending properties that can be applied to simple 2D graphics to make them look more 3 dimensional. It also demonstrates some of the painting and erasing techniques that will help you in future photoshop projects.

To demonstrate these tools and techniques, we’ll look at how to create two links and intersect them together like the image below:

1. Open Photoshop.
2. Click File > New from the main menu.

6. Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool.

Make sure that you draw the inner-circle selection in such a way that it gives more mass to the left side. Your selection should look similar to the image below:

11. Right click the “Link 1″ layer and choose “Blending Options”.

19. Make sure that “Link 2″ layer is active, since you will be working on this layer for the remainder of the tutorial.

20. Go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal from the main menu.

Here is a simple tutorial that walks the artist through the process of creating text inside of a splash graphic. I also like to think of this as a “Wax Stamp” or “Wax Seal”, the kind you typically see when letters are sealed on the back of the envelope with a wax imprint.

Another good idea for these is using them for signatures or to draw attention to sections of your website. The splash always seems to draw the eye, because it signifies a sense of motion and activity.

1. Open Photoshop.
2. Click File > New from the Main Menu.

9. Right click on any part of any path, then choose “Make Selection” from the pop-up.

17. Choose the Text tool, select the font of your choice, and choose white for the text color.
18. Type a message across the splash graphic.
19. Select Edit > Transform from the main menu.

In this tutorial, we will learn to create a realistic rose petal. The design can be used in various projects like in creating greeting cards, creating backgrounds etc. Create a new layer by pressing shift+control+n together. Select pen tool. Click on paths and draw the paths as shown in the figure.

Adjust the nodes to have rounded corners.

Now, right click anywhere in the paths and select make selection. Give ’0′ as feather radius.

Fill the selection with #D70863 color.

Apply inner shadow as shown in the figure. rp5.jpg

Image after apply inner shadow.

Select this brush type.

Create a new layer. Use #FBE496 as foreground and drag the brush as shown in the figure.

Change the foreground color to #C88007. Using the same brush drag the brush over the lower part of the layer. Our rose petal is ready.

Take a look at the images, which I created using this rose petal. Use your imagination and you will have more great results like these

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Open Photoshop.
2. Click File > New from the Main Menu.

6. Now we’ll start building the box. Click the Polygonal Lasso tool.

11. Use the Polygonal Lasso tool and draw a border for the front of the box.

17. Next, we’re going to add a gradient to the Background layer. This will create a “White Limbo” effect. This effect is useful so that you don’t have to create a surface for the box to be resting on. To create this effect, select the Gradient tool.

28. Finally, the last thing we need to do is add the cover art to the front of the box. In this tutorial, we’ll use the GraphicMentor logo and add it along with some text. So, first thing to do is copy and paste the logo into a new layer that is above the Box layer.

*One important note: If you want to distort text, it needs to be rasterized first. To do this, right click the text layer and select “Rasterize Layer”. Then you will be able to distort it.