AHHHHH! Oy! Alien Invasion! A Photoshop Tutorial..
Time again to talk about aliens! No, not the illegal kind. The green kind
! What better way to kickoff the summer spirit than with explosions, death rays, and a little stormy weather - thanks to our friend, Photoshop.
Speaking of stormy weather - recently, in my hometown of Manchester, NH (Southside REPRESENT) , we experienced some major floodwaters. It was nuts - Hectic farm animals everywhere...I must have seen at least 45 cows engaged in what appeared to be a strange game of Twister in a nearby Swamp field. Anyway, being the moron that I am, I defied all weathermen state-wide (damn yooz!) and took a journey down to a nearby troubled river and snapped some crAzy pics.
Oh. Here's one now:
So, I was looking at this photo of horrendous flooding and I though, Hey - let's make it even more horrendous!! SWEET!
OK, here we go! Now is a great time to grab a few beers and set your Victoria's Secret catalog aside. Don't forget the page you were on as it may or may not come into play later. Most likely not. OK...download that low-quality image above and lets get to work!!
To start off, I selected the top half of the sky and copy/pasted it onto a new layer. After that, I adjusted the Shadows/Highlights to darken up the mood a bit. After that, I used my buddy "google" (Seriously - TRY these guys. They're gonna be huge.) and did an image search for stormy clouds. I actually have a bunch of my own in a personal arsenal, but for the means of this tutorial, we'll use all fully accessible items. I then pasted the stormy clouds over the top of my scene, adjusted the values to a more purple tone and blended in the bottom half.
End result went something like this:
Next up, add more clouds! I went a little darker on the lower set of clouds. When all was set in place, I made a new layer (COLOR layer mode) and painted red everywhere I wanted it.
A-Whabbap!
And here comes the fun part! Using everyday items, we're going to create our spaceship in the clouds! Mine was actually made from the front of a corvette (top) and the bottom part was made from a canon camera lens! We'll call that the beam-emitter. Because damn, all aliens have huge beams.
After the ship placement, I added some moody borders to the photo using multiply/overlay layers and brushed in a bit more red.
-(Meep.)
Spaceship is in, now lets add a little light underneath the edge of it. Next, add a little dark shadowing around it with your linear burn layer mode. Use red. Also, I adjusted the shadow/highlights on the ship to give it a darker tone, and burned some of the ships edges for depth.
Something like:
Next up - A little mood lighting! I used a photo of the Capitol Building and completely darkened out any of the negative shading values (see below). I then overlayed the lights onto the ships base (using linear dodge), and added a little extra to the top where the top meets the clouds.
Shooting for:
Hey now! Let's add some BEAMS. take your brush tool and hold SHIFT to make a straight vertical line. Use a very light pink. Now, set the layer mode to linear dodge. You can see the outcome below. Lastly, copy the darkened clouds from the horizon line and add them around the entry point of the spaceship and the sky. This will give some MOOD.
Yeah, mood:
Same technique, but this time use a darker red and overlay it on the other, thinner beam.
Larger beam, please:
OK, it's time to get this thing rolling. We need a darker, more stormy atmosphere. This spaceship needs to be mean, so lets darken the sky, add some contrast to the clouds and darken the water by adding purple softlight and red overlay to the water base.
Ahhhh, getting there:
Darker! apply a multiply layer of the clouds over itself to give that sky some strength over the ship. burn underneath the ship as well so the cloud consistency carries through the horizon. Also, start applying more light rays from underneath the ship using the overlay layer mode. I used yellow to keep it fairly subtle.
Ahhhh:
OK you may have noticed in the last photo I started adding an "electric" look to the BEAM OF DEATH™. This can be done through tiny lines treaks (done in orange or yellow) overlaying the thicker light coming from the base of the ship. I added some more lightning to the sides of the ship as well....
-(Pobles.)
A little more lightning, and some rings outside the ship. this was done using the brush tool and applying the layer mode as "linear dodge" over the other clouds.
Womp!
Add a little more light/shadow toning in the clouds. Next, again using linear dodge and a darker orange, overlay a large brush to the bottom of the beam to add some glow to the tree region. I added another thinner and stronger layer at the tree/beam meeting point to create an explosion effect.
FYAH!!!
Now let's bring in another cloud photo. Adjust the Variations on the clouds to bring in the red tone we want. Next, adjust the levels to emphasize the shadows (bring in the left triangle towards the center). Set the layer mode to Hard light.
Like this:
Almost done! Add a bit more ligtning to the sky and add more shadow burning to the water a edges of the photo. Shoot for this:
Like this:
All done! Nice work, Chief. Post your spaceship photos below or email them to me!
Like this:
Ok that's it! Until next time....
Also,
Meteor Invasion!!!
Make me a dirty old woman! (In 11 Steps)
Make Jessica Alba Hot in 11 Steps!
Create A Freakish Zombie in 11 Steps!
A Quick Tsunami Photoshop Tutorial
Comments
That is completely insane. Nice work.
If you were to take a selection of the churning waters from your image and look at them seperately, it would look like a slightly aged steak.
Check it: http://www.mindofneeko.com/t/steak.jpg
Yes, good work here Craig, possibly your best blog post to date.
The composition is terribly boring. Really not creative. I've seen similar images a zillion times. It looks like one of those Iron Maiden album covers. (Those are nice because they were handmade in the early 80's)
I guess you are a geek. Pathetic work. Terrible.
@L: killjoy. it's for fun. :P
Oh no way you saw my old Iron Maiden covers? Sickest. Guess i haven't lost the touch...Anyways, let me know when your name reaches 2 letters.
C
@L - who cares if you have seen it a zillion times - the boy done good - give him some credit!
M
That is bad ass, just the sort of stuff I need for my site... wish I could use Photoshop - you should try the same thing with a background of a city or a ranch or something
DJ
You continue to amaze me... YOU are a Pheonom.... L you clearly have an inferiority complex
let's see what you can do...
Great work! I haven't the slightest clue of how to do this myself, even though you posted it, since I'm a Photoshop noob but it all looks great!
@L If you've seen it a zillion times, then just don't look at it... (I hope for you) Nobody is forcing you to look at it and nobody is asking you to leave lame comments!
Pretty cool stuff. Ever thought of using 'The Gimp'?, an open sourced package similar to Photoshop.
See what you can pull off in that. Great work.
Hey Craig - I have tried Gimp, and while I find that its certainly a well-developed program with tons of comparable features - I dont think I'm ready to part from my best friend, Photoshop:)
We have Gimp installed in a trunk in the attic.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!! Run for your lives....
Careful with the Gimp; it bytes. Love the IM Craig.
Kick ass creating awsome guru
Picture looks great, but there's something wrong (imho): It seems to me that we're looking at the side of the alien spaceship (no, not an UFO, since we identified it as an alien spaceship ;-), rather than partly the side, partly the bottom. That doesn't correspond with the fact that alien spaceship mostly are up in the sky, and not level with our eyes....
-- Clouds®
me think so too^^
yay
nice work.
clouds: maybe "we're" standing on a hill, :P
Great work, love the page!
Yeah, I dont understand why "L" critisized this as being boring. I thought the image shows both creativity and talent, with coming up with the idea of altering the original image and using daily stuff to create the spaceship.
I do, however, agree with "Clouds", who said the angle of the spaceship doesn't look quite right.
Nevertheless, excellent work and something to strive for in my own mediocre Photoshop work. Mostly I've used Photoshop to alter video using Adobe Premiere. They work excellently together.
Good luck with the aliens!
;)
Just beautiful and outstanding nice work.
good job man.. who cares what the pathetic "never got laid" dudes think
haha thanks everyone.
I know there's alot of confusion about the "perspective on the ship" and i think alot of that come from the photos i used. In my mind the base of the ship was coming down as a cone - but i can see where the "canon lans" screwed that whole perspective understanding for you with the final pic.
Thanks again guys....
I recently got photoshop, and must admit, i am quite the noob, but i am getting the hang of it. There are, however, a few things i cant figure out, such as layer blending. How can you get rid of an outline of an object and blend it in with the backround without actually erasing it pixel by pixel?
Thanks for your help in advanced
:-O HOLY CRAP! Kickass creation
That L guy is a c***. Ignore him, i think it's great. Well done!
Good job! Work the orangutan pic in there somehow and it'd be perfect!
Just awesome!
i cant makink huh :(
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vxdnvkzsjn vkdrjfvcx ujvfgkl;scz op;s.vz xmvbgvnhcdskfrmksixcjsklszizcjfgl vzh jfzjsrsdfhrtgkjfbvudixfgsnr semzbd jhfndjhd nzxj vdmzfjx hbjhc nfgdnf a.kfvzxj this means this is the best web in the world
vxdnvkzsjn vkdrjfvcx ujvfgkl;scz op;s.vz xmvbgvnhcdskfrmksixcjsklszizcjfgl vzh jfzjsrsdfhrtgkjfbvudixfgsnr semzbd jhfndjhd nzxj vdmzfjx hbjhc nfgdnf a.kfvzxj this means this is the best web in the world
How to you blend images together? Please... thanks.
dude you have to much time
i love your work
hilarious lol rofl !!!!!!!! great job
hey... just wondering - how do you set the layer mode to linear dodge??? haha i am a noob. yep.
good job looks awesome!
You do fabulous work. Craig, I have barrowed your photo to illustrate a scene in Meinbendir, CH 13. I would like to keep it there with your permission. Please advise. Here's to Life! Grant Email any time.
You do fabulous work. Craig, I have barrowed your photo to illustrate a scene in Meinbendir, CH 13. I would like to keep it there with your permission. Please advise. Here's to Life! Grant Email any time.
Amazing, loved it
Absolutly amazing work wish I could use photoshop but I will stick to MS Paint for now until I can get it for dirt cheap and learn to use it!
Anyway check http://theconsoleking.deviantart.com/ for some of my work, email me with what you think.
Pretty freaking nifty!~
Really, it isn't horrendous, but it isn't that good. And yeah, I've been laid. At least my six kids think so.
Wow, awesome tutorial. I loved that one.
I will have to try this, as I have the exact same shot, taken from right near the dam. It was funny to stumble the page and see a shot that made me double-take... glad that it did, the tutorial is awesome!
Southside as well!!
~S
Very nice
That is amazing! Man, I might try that later, but I doubt it will come out like that.
wow! superb
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awesome!