The cover

The front and the back cover are now completed. I'm not sure if you can read it...

The title is "Dynamism of Light"

This is just dark blue background with various white grudge brush effects which the opacity reduced to 50%.

The cover (in the making)

With open hearted I volunteered myself to do the cover. I actually enjoy doing this and I followed a tutorial to make this glowing text effect. Right here.
But I did modify a bit since some of them does not resemble my desired glowing.

I used Helvetica bold for the font,

 Perspective tool was used shown in this image.

I add blue lit at the background instead of white to let the light blend with the dark blue background.

Since the colour of the text seems a bit odd, I remove the layer containing the coloured glowing effect and end up like this, and move the text lower down to the left.

I also added white light strands to fill the space. The light strands were duplicated and Gaussian blur about 30 pixel. The coloured was by blending option, spectrum gradient. 

Finally, some grudge! Grudge brush effect that is :D

That way, it does not look so empty. The 

opacity of the white grudge was reduced to 60%

Final product

 Here are the final products of the calendar. Due to some minor glitches, I remove the 'outer glow' and enhance the 'inner glow'.
The numbering, the day and the month is the template done by our leader. We just change the holidays and the day of the month.

I did the same method with November.

Photo editing part2

Now for some real photo editing!

We were required to use A4 size canvas for this project.
But I did the project first without even print screen the steps.
Let see if I can still recall the steps.

I did start by creating a new layer and painted it black. This is for the main background so that it would be easy to see the glowing effect.
If you notice the many gaps in the small window of the layer, I opened the previous file I did without print screen and had to hide the layers. Don't worry, you'll see them as you go through this steps.

To start editing, go to file and click place to insert the image. I will use the image that I already removed the background.

I will be using the smoke brush. Click the arrow beside the brush at the top bar. From there, click the smaller arrow and it will open a window with various option to choose from. Click 'Replace brush' and select your prefered brush sets(make sure the brushes are photoshop capable or are in .abr format)

Once you selected the brush, create new layer and rename the layer. Renaming the layers will help you so that you won't get confused which layer is which. After you done that, click on the canvas to create a brush stroke with white colour pallet.

Now to add effects to the stroke. Simply by right click the layer and choose blending option. From the window, click the outer glow effect. There are various ways to make it glow. I to glow it by gradient, this will open another window that show different kinds of gradients - the rainbow one seems interesting :D
After you choose the desired colour of gradient, set the opacity of the blend mode, increase the size in the element, and increase the range of the quality.

After that click inner glow to add some more glowing effect. Just click on the colour pallet and in another window, drag the circle to the white part(top right corner). Or you can just change the colour code to # ffffff.

The final effect for this smoke is the Gradient Overlay. Click the black and white gradient to select another colour of the gradient. I did not make any adjustment to the angle so that it will not effect the upcoming brush strokes.

The colour of the smoke is no longer white but a combination of colours.

Right click on the layer and click 'copy layer style'. Now use another brush to stroke another path. The new white smoke will automatically change colour because of the kept layer effect.
Repeat the process to add more smoke.

I thought of leaving it here. The days and numbers will be at the top and the side, and as for the month, it will be at the bottom left corner. It looks simple yet filled with colour. However it seems a little off balance doesn't it.

To balance up the picture, I added some glitter here and there. It does not matter, let them scatter.
Repeat the previous by copying the layer style.

After that, I put a few grudge brush at three of the corners. I did made some room for the month to go on, about the size of the red oval I marked.

Since the grudge brush is looks different from the rest of the smoke, let's make it as a background. Just drag the layer down just above the blackground.

Reduce the opacity of the layer to 40%

Add one more brush to the circle of the smoke. This time I use light effect brush instead of smoke brush. Create new layer to create new effect and rename layer.

Click on 'Outer Glow', choose white and adjust the size.

We're almost done. Since the man is rather bright, reduce the brightness by clicking the 'Adjustment' and go to 'Brightness/Contrast' and increase both brightness and contrast. Make sure you are on the layer of the man (layer subject)

Finally, to make everything equally bright, select the most top layer. Again adjust the brightness and the contrast. Be sure to increase more on the brightness.









I'm still waiting for the template of the day and month together with the holiday.

Photo editing part1

Each of us were given two months each and I have to work on month November and December, the last couple of months for me <:|

Well enough about that, let start working!

I started by using this picture. He is a friend of a friend of mine. Thanks to him, he is willing to be a model for a day just for this assignments. We owe ya big time!

First of all I used the selection tool to select the desired part.

After that, turn the whole selection into quick mask by clicking the button below the colour pallete. This will turn the unselected part into transparent red like the image on the right. Automatically the colour pallet will turn to black and white.

Unfortunately the quick selection included the hand and the background which will be removed later on

So, by using the brush tool, you can adjust by adding or subtracting the selection.

- the black pallet allows you to add more of the selection

- the white pallet will minus the unwanted selection

In this case, I use the black pallet to include the hand into the selection.

I forgot to duplicate the background(I usually duplicate the background before start editing...)

and now there will be two layers, one is the background and the other is background copy.

Delete the selection together with the background, leaving the background copy only. Now the background of the image is transparent.