Classic Photoshop Tutorial: Create ice-cold image effects

Create a frosted, ice-cold effect that’s straight out of a vodka ad.

The arctic freshness of this image is familiar enough from countless drink and toothpaste commercials – and in this tutorial, Photoshop master Fabio Sasso shows you how to reliably fake the effect from the warmth of your studio.

Sasso is a master at making miniscule tweaks to layer styles, and in this tutorial you’ll give the entire Layer Styles palette a good workout to create amazing effects, such as the apparently 3D water droplets that stud the outside of the bottle.

You’ll also develop your own custom brushes and make use of an amazing free smoke brush – both of which will stand you in good stead with your future Photoshop projects.

Step 1
First, set the background colour: in a new Photoshop document, create a fill of a solid jade green (I used #90aea7) or a chilly mid-blue. Then add a new layer and select Filter > Render > Clouds, ensuring you have black and white as the background and foreground colours respectively. Then select Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, setting the radius to 180 pixels, and change the blending mode to Overlay.

Step 2
Now let’s make the background lighter. With the cloudy layer selected, go to Image > Adjustments > Levels. Set the white input levels to 165 – this will increase the white areas of the image, creating a good background effect that’s highly versatile for a range of projects, and a great alternative to more conventional linear or radial gradients.

Step 3
Next, we need to create the icy floor the bottle sits on. Add a new layer and fill it with white. Then go to Filter > Pixelate > Mezzotint, setting the type to Medium Dots. Then go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Set the distance to 80 pixels and the angle to 0º. You might need to resize the layer a little bit after the Motion Blur filter, as the edges won’t be uniform and the same as in the middle of the layer.

Step 4
The idea here is to make the floor fade away as though it’s an infinite background. We’ll be using a quick mask to do that. Hit Q to enter the Quick Mask mode and select the Gradient Tool (E). Create a gradient starting close to the bottom and going to the centre of the document. The red area in the quick mask mode is the part that will be shown; the transparent area will be hidden. When you’re happy with it, hit Q again and the quick mask will be transformed to a marquee selection. Then go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal Selection.

Step 5
For the bottle, we’ll be using an image from iStockphoto.com, which you can buy for a small cost from tinyurl.com/bzs9p7. The image already has a clipping path; import it into the document.

Step 6
To create the frozen-bottle effect, we need to create a brush that will give us a frosted effect. To do that repeat the same filter we used for the floor. Add a new layer and fill it with white, then go to Filter > Pixelate > Mezzotint. Select the Elliptical Marquee tool (M) and change the feather option to 50 pixels, then create an elliptical selection and go to Edit > Define Brush Preset. Rename the brush to ‘Frosted’.

Step 7
Go to Window > Brushes (F5) and select the ‘Frosted’ brush, then enter the following settings to change the brush’s behaviour: in the Brush Tip Shape menu, change the spacing to 10%. In the Shape Dynamics menu, set the size jitter to 100% and the minimum diameter to 20%. In the Scattering menu, change the scatter to 120% and the count to 5. In Other Dynamics, set the opacity jitter to 50% and the flow jitter to 20%.

Step 8
Now create another layer above the bottle layer and start painting using the Frosted Brush. It’s important to paint only over the bottle area, so use the Pen tool (P) to create a path around the bottle, then right-click and choose Make a Selection. Convert this selection a layer mask (Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal Selection) to mask out everything but the bottle, then paint using this mask.

Step 9
Now let’s add a thick ice layer is some areas of the bottle. To do that we’ll need to create another brush. Go to the Brush Engine (F5) and select a regular rounded brush of about 100 pixels. Then enter the following settings: in the Shape Dynamics menu, set the size jitter to 100% and the minimum diameter to 1%. In the Scattering menu, set the scatter to 0% and the count to 3. In the Texture menu, select the Noise pattern and change the scale to 20%. In the Other Dynamics menu, set opacity jitter to 50% and the flow jitter to 40%.

Step 10
Add another layer and mask it as in step 8, to make sure that you will paint only over the bottle area. Select your new brush in white and start painting some areas that will be frozen. Change the sizes of the brush using the keyboard shortcuts [ and ] to create a varied, more realistic effect – paint with a big brush first and then a very small one. Use a very light grey to create details, such as the shadows right below the bottle cap and the bottom of the neck of the bottle. These little details with the grey brush will add a great depth to the ice effect.

Step 11
Add another layer and, using the same brush at a small diameter, carefully paint a border around the bottle: this will create the rough frozen edge. Also paint over the edges of the ice in the middle of the bottle to create a subtle 3D effect.

Step 12
Add another layer, this time right above the frosted-effect layer and, using a normal rounded brush, paint some circles that will become water dots. Vary the size, but make most of them small, with only a couple of larger ones. Then select Layer > Layer Styles > Drop Shadow, setting this to 40% opacity, with the blend mode set to Color Burn, the distance set to 1 pixel and the size set to 2 pixels. Next, select the Inner Shadow menu and use 75% opacity, set the angle to 90º, the distance to 0 pixels and the size to 1 pixel. In the Bevel and Emboss menu, enter the following settings: depth – 730%; size – 4 pixels; soften – 3 pixels; angle – 151º; altitude – 37º; shadow mode – Color Burn with 30% opacity, in a dark red.

Step 13
To create the frozen text is simple. First type in your text – to keep it simple I used ‘ICE’ – then add another layer and start painting with the Ice brush we created in step 9. The important thing here is to make sure that the edges are not too uniform, you can even use the Eraser Tool (E) with the Ice brush to erase some areas. Next, use the Layer Style menu to create a shadow (Layer > Layer Styles > Drop Shadow). Set the angle to 90º, the opacity to 30%, the distance to 1 pixel and the size to 1 pixel. Finally, go to Edit > Transform > Warp – you can select a predefined setting or create one – and use it to make the text follow the bottle’s cylindrical shape. Make the height bigger in the centre of the text and shorter in the areas close to the edge of the bottle.

Step 14
Go to tinyurl.com/2madgw and download the free brush set; once you’ve installed and activated the smoke brush, create a new layer beneath the bottle layer, and paint some small wisps of smoke around the bottle, as shown here.

Step 15
Group all the layers involved in the bottle (not the floor or background layers) and duplicate the group. Go to Layer > Merge Group and then Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, specifying a radius of 30 pixels. Change the blending mode to Screen and the opacity to 70%. Select the Eraser tool (E) and delete some areas. You’re trying to fake the effect of being in a cold environment. Keep adding details to the composition, such as some clouds in the background and a reflection on the floor.

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Tutorial Colorful Wallpaper

I found this tutorial but the special effects values and color codes mentioned are not same and also it is lengthy tutorial so I played with the settings and colors codes and finally got something that is closer to the original wallpaper.

Note: I will guide you only about the background colors. The text on the wallpaper is not covered in this tutorial.

1. Create a new document (1024×768) and fill the background layer with Black Color (#000000)

2. Create a new layer, Press G to apply Gradient and fill the new layer with White(#FFFFFF) to Transparent (Top to Bottom). Be sure the Transparent Gradient option is selected as shown in the image below;

Now you should have something like this

3. Now go to Filter > Distort > Wave and use this setting

After applying this effect you should have something like this

Now move the gradient layer up a little to hide the white shining space, as shown in the image below;

4. Go to Layers > Layer Style > Gradient Overlay and apply gradient with these colors values

#010101 #1a321d #556e2b #92942a #c5ac40 #dab154 #e48a36
#a03b1e #e25133 #e13e2b #e87372 #7d101f #e53d64 #d2186b #ca6cad #6b1770 #2b215c #0f3058 #0e1d25

After applying gradient you should have result like this

Now the colors we have got so far will be looking a little dull from the original so to give them a shine you can do this.

a) create a new layer
b) apply gradient from white to transparent
c) set the layer blend mode as “Overlay”
d) lower the opacity up to 50% to 60%

And you will see a shine on the colors now.

5. After that you can erase the center area a little with Erase Tool and put text in there.

And you are done

You can see my wallpaper here.

Please try this tutorial and let me know if you are having any problem. I will try to help you.

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Colourful glowing text effect

This is the final result of this tutorial

Step 1

Create a new image canvas, 600x450 is what i used. fill the background layer with solid black using the bucket fill tool.

Step 2

Create a new layer name it "Blue gradient" and then grab the gradient fill tool, now in the tool options select "Deep Blue" gradient and then apply it so that the light cyan blue is in he bottom right corner and the dark blue in the top left corner. see the images below for example.

Step 3

Now Duplicate our "Blue gradient layer" and use the Flip tool to horizontally flip the layer.

Step 5

We wan't to change the color, so go to the menu and click on Colors>colorize and set the values to Hue:293 Saturation:100 Lightness:7.

Step 6

Set the purple gradient layer to addition mode and adjust the opacity of both layers to 30.

This is how it should look.

Step 7

Now we'll add the text bit. select your preferred font i chose Georgia Bold Italic for this.

Step 8

Right click on the text layer and at the bottom of the menu click on "Alpah to selection", once you have the selection around the text delete the text layer while making sure the selection is still active.

Step 9

Now Create a new layer name it "Text", Grab the Gradient fill tool and select the "full saturation spectrum" gradient, now aplly the gradient from left to right while holding down the CTRL key to make it straight.

Step 10

With the selection around the "Text" still active create a new layer name it text2 and fill it with solid white.

Step 11

Agian with the selection still active create a new layer and name it "Text3" and this time fill it with solid black, now you can deselect by going to select>none fromthe menu.

Step 12

Now go to the layers dialog and hide the layers text2 and text3.

Step 13

Select the layer "text" and in the menu go to filters>blur>Gaussian blur and set the blur to 10.

Step 14

Now you can unhide the text2 layer and as we did in step 13 go to filters>blur>garssuian blur but this time set the blur to 5.

Step 15

Unhide our text3 layer and set the mode to overlay.

The steps we did from step 7 till now should be repeated for the heart shape.

Step 16

The heart shape I used is from the windows webdings font, Using the text tool select webdings font and type in a capital Y for itshow, to get the same effect as the inspiration text repeat as we did in step 7 to step 15.

Step 17

For the final wavy lines in the backgrounds I used a free photoshop brush that can be downloaded from Qbrushes, to install these photoshop brush into GIMP simply place the .abr file in GIMP's brush folder, then click on the refresh button found in the brushes dialog, once you have them installed simply select the colour white and apply it as shown in my example on a new layer.

finally set the layer mode of the lines brush layer to Overlay.

Pretty cool aye? its simple and I go into too much details sometimes, but that's because I know there are alot of new gimp users around that would find it helpful or at least I hope it dose :).

Here is something i came up with while playing with the steps abit.

The gimp source file is attached below for download. also please use our forum for help with any steps.

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