Best Photoshop Tutorials

Create a nature-fantasy composition with 3d text and light effects

by Sebastiano on 23/07/09 at 1:47 am

It’s time for another tutorial here at bestphotoshoptutorials.net. Today I will illustrate you how to create a cool retro-looking composition with nice light effects. We will use photoshop to combine stock images and illustrator to create  3d text.

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Download PSD File (368)

Final Image Preview:

Images Used:

• Desert tree
• Old paper
• Lion
• jumping person

Step 1

Create a 1000×700 new document and paste in the image of the desert tree. Click Ctrl+T if you want to apply the transform tool in order to resize the image. Now use the pen tool to extract  the jumping person and paste him into the canvas. As you can see in the screenshot, I have also applied the blur tool to some parts of the image, :

Step 2

We want to substitute the head of the person with the one of the lion. So select the pen tool and make a selection of the person’s head. Click Ctrl+Enter to activate the selection tool and then alt+add layer mask button to hide the head.

Step 3

Lets use the Quick Mask to extract the lion. Click on the quick mask button. Select the pen tool and make a selection of the head, then click Ctrl+Enter to switch to the selection tool. In this first step it’s not important to be accurate. Now select a large black brush and paint under the selected area. This area will become red. Ctrl+D to deselect.  Second step: zoom in, select the dune grass brush and go painting over the edges of the lion’s head. The aim is to select the pixels of the lion’s fur. Third step: click again the quisck mask button. Selection made!

Step 4

Place into the document the lion’s head. In order to flip horizontal the image simply go to Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal. Use the erase tool to erase the excess parts of the head.

Step 5

Now we can add some nice light effects. At first you can use the line tool to create lightning lines near the hands of our lion-man.  So create white lines and add outer glow (right-click on the layers of the lines>Blending Options>Outer Glow). Then create two white circles (the first near the mouth and the second near the abdomen) and apply the gaussian filter (Filter>Blur>Gaussian blur) with a radius around 10 pixels. Also use the dodge tool in order to light the parts of the lion-man near the light effects.

Step 6

Now we will create another light effect. This time select the poligonal lasso tool and make a selection as shown in the screenshot below. Then  select a large white soft brush (hardness=0) and paint in the selected area using the edges of the brush.

Step 7

I’m not satisfied by the colors of the image. So I decided to use an adjustment layer: go to  Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue/Saturation and set the following color options:

Step 8

Lets jump to illustrator, that we need to create a 3d text effect. The technique is really simple: write a letter, then go to Effect>3D>Extrude & Bevel and play with the options. Than switch the letter color from black to a light grey. Copy and paste into photoshop.

Step 9

Use the same technique and create other letters. You can observe that I’ve used the blur tool to blur the greatest letters, and I’ve applied a soft shadow to some letters.

Step 10

Paste in the paper texture above all the other layers. Resize it (Ctrl+T to activate the transform tool) and set the layer blend mode to overlay with opacity 50%.

We’ve finished. Hope you enjoy it!