Scary signboard "Welcome to Silent Hill" - Adobe Photoshop Tutorial

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial

Learn to create a signboard "Welcome to Silent Hill" (or wherever you want) in horror movies style.

Let’s start with creating a new document, with 400px by 400px with a transparent background:

Create this gradient, with colors from #000000 to #aea27d. Observe that the gradient is not equal, the black pat is bigger:

Now, create a new layer and in the tool palette set the foreground color to #d6c795 and background color to #444444:

Go to menu Filter > Render > Clouds. That is how your picture must look like:

Now, add layer mask to our layer with clouds:

Select a gradient tool with a white-to-black gradient and drag it in the mask from very top of the document to the bottom. So only half of the clouds remained visible:

Now, create a new layer. With a Rectangular Marquee Tool make a selection area about 250x20 px and fill it with a # c8bd97 color. That is going to be a board:

Duplicate this layer four times to make five boards:

Now, select first board by Ctrl+click on a layer icon in a layer palette (F7), go to menu Filter > Noise > Add noise, and add noise with a following settings:

Go to menu Filter > Blur > Motion blur, and add this filter with a following settings:

First board is almost ready:

Press Ctrl+D to deselect, and repeat this two filters to other boards:

Now apply to each boar this Bevel and Emboss effect:

That is how they must look now:

Now, to make our boards look more realistic, add to each board filter Sharpen (Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen) two times! Two times – not just once! :). They must look like this:

Now one by one, go to Edit > Transform > Rotate, and rotate a little bit each board in different directions as it is shown:

Using Rectangular Shape Tool – draw two rectangular shapes as it is shown below. I’ve used black color, but it doesn’t matter which one you will use:

Apply to each of our shapes this gradient:

That is how it must look like:

Now, select each of our board levels and merge them into one (Layer > Merge Layers). After that, create a new layer and write “Welcome to Silent Hill” with a #770f07 color.

Rasterize our text layer, than marquee our boards layer, go to menu Select > Inverse, to invert the selection. Make sure that the text layer is active, and press Delete – to clear superfluous text.

Now, go to our background layer. Apply to it - menu Filter > Render > Lighting Effects, with this settings:

That is what we must get by now.

Now from a Tool Pallete – take a Burn Tool with a following settings:

And apply it to the places where it is shown:

Now, merge our two rectangular shapes, go to Filter > Brush strokes > Spatter, with a following settings:

Voila! The scary (or not too scary :)) picture is ready!

Vector flower - Adobe Photoshop Tutorial

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial

Learn to create a vector flower in Adobe Illustrator:

Let’s start with opening a new document A4 format. Change the Fill color to black, and Stroke color to None:

After that, select a Rounded Rectangle tool:

And click on any place in our document. You should see this window. Apply settings as on the picture:

That’s our rounded rectangle:

Now, take a Direct Selection Tool (A), and select two points in the upper left corner, as it is shown:

And press the right arrow key 15 times. Your figure must look like this right now:

With the same Direct Selection Tool (A) select two points in the upper right corner, and press the left arrow key 15 times. The result must be as on the picture:

Now, go to menu Window > Brushes, or just press F5. The Brushes palette must appear. Press the New Brush button:

In the appeared window, choose New pattern brush and press OK:

In the next window that will appear, don’t change anything, just press OK:

Observe that in the Brush Palette a new brush just appeared:

Now, change Fill color to none, and Stroke color to black, take the Ellipse Tool (L) and draw a circle with a 8 cm radius:

Make sure that the circle is selected, and just click on our new brush in a Brush Palette. That is what you must get:

Go to menu Object > Expand Appearance :

Now, take a Direct Selection Tool (A), click anywhere just to take off the selection from the object, and select all of the petals by holding Shift and clicking on them one by one:

After that, take this gradient:

And drug the Gradient tool from the middle of our flower, to the edge of any petal:

There remained an invisible circle. We can see it by clicking Ctrl+Y or go to menu View > Outline:

Select it with a Direct Selection Tool (A), and apply the same gradient by clicking on a small icon in the Tool Palette:

Press once again Ctrl+Y to return to normal view. That is what you must get:

Now, select just this circle, and transform it to the size as on the picture. The flower is ready :)