Looking Forward to A Great 2013!

Greetings to Everyone!
NBR Design Studio, once known to some of you as Cosmic Creations, is growing. I have enjoyed working on the websites, logos, photo shoots, filming and illustrations over the past few years. Despite all of the national turmoil, I have a feeling that 2013 is going to be a lucky for NBR Design and my clientele. Some of you already contact me to request tweaks. I have decided to start this monthly newsletter to let all of you know what is going on and to see if anyone is in need of any additional services or updates for your own sites, logos, graphics, etc. As I launch new projects and add features and services I would like all of you to be informed. You can also visit the website NBR Design Studio to check out other projects we are involved with.

I want to thank you for choosing NBR Design for your design services,

All of the best to you and your business,
Nancy

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I have recently included a means of sending my posts to my Facebook. Check here. facebook.com/nbrdesignstudio

Cinemagraphography Tutorial

I am a big proponent of animating with Adobe Photoshop. Now, with Flash built-in, it is even more groovy. You can export the animations as .gifs and not even have to have a flash-enabled browser to view the animations.

This awesome tutorial is from Photoshop guru Russell Preston Brown who shares the technique to turn a video clip into an animated cinemagraph image using the extended version of Adobe Photoshop CS5. Although I attempted to make one myself, I found the expert’s tutorial much more concise and easy to follow. Follow Russell on his Russell Brown Show website. He is one of my favorites. Try this technique out!

Here are some cool more highly finished examples from Jamie Beck on his fromme-toyou blog on tumblr. Beck developed the technique along with motion graphic artist,Kevin Burg.

Basic Manipulation

So to start out you want to grab some stock photos(or use your own). I think that DeviantArt is rather easy to use because if you look at the left hand side of the screen it has categories. One category is resources and stock images. Click it. Then in that same catagory bar click stock then search for what you want. I picked out a gorgeous background with some red leaves and I chose a leopard appaloosa horse to combine with my background.

Go into Photoshop and open your photos. Use the Quick Selection Tool to select your object. Its okay if you get some background. Cut your subject from it’s background and go to ‘File,’ ‘New,’ ‘Image from clipboard.’ It should open a new window with just your subject. Feel free to close the window from which you cut your subject from. Erase any extra background. ‘File,” ‘Select all.’ Copy it.

Once you have just your object then you can select it and paste it onto your background. Resize it and move it around to get it where you want it.

So now you’re thinking “I have it how I want it…but it doesn’t look like it FITS. it looks like I pasted it on!” Well you can fix that by changing the lighting and shadows under ‘Enhance.’

That’s a bit better but still not right. Well next you can add shadows! Personally I added in my shadow by duplicating the layer my horse was on and making it totally black, then twisting that layer until it was where I wanted it. Then I just reduced the opacity of the layer. I also added a shadow for the tree next to the horse.

Finally you must give credit where it is due. You have to tell who you got the background from, who you got the object from, and tell the world that YOU created this manipulation! You can add any other text you want while you’re at it.

Create Your Own Photoshop Brushes

Last time we showed you where to go to get all sorts of wonderful pre-made brushes for Photoshop. But what if you still can not find that certain brush or want to personalize your work even further? Well, you can make your own brushes and it is very easy.

1. Start with a photo, vector or design that you would like to use for the foundation of your brush. Try and keep it simple. I chose this photo of a bird on a railing.

2. Simplifiy the photo to suit your design. I chose to remove the background to make sure that I only got the bird shape as my brush. This makes for less tweaking later.
3. Desaturate the picture. The brush presets use only grays, blacks and white to define the brush.

4. Manipulate the Threshold until you get the effect you want.

Lower Threshold

Higher Threshold

5. Define your brush. It will automatically add the brush to the set you have open when you click on the arrow next to the brush size. It will also show the default brush size that you created the brush in below it.

You now have a new brush that you created yourself! Check it out.