The Jelly Celebration..

Jelly Fish Delight – Photoshop Tutorial

Here is an inspiring tutorial that uses different techniques to create a soft background with glowing jellyfish. It finishes with a nice composition and some useful tips you can use in your design projects. Don’t miss it!

 

Final image preview:

First we’re going to open a document with dimensions:

Creating the background:

We’re first going to create the background.  Click the little black and white circle that’s at the bottom of the layers palette and select “Gradient” like the picture below:

Make sure the dialogue box looks like this:

Then select the rectangle next to the word “Gradient” and insert the following settings:

Rename this new gradient layer “Gradient.”  After you rename it copy it by selecting it in the layers palette and selecting Command + J.  With the new duplicated layer flatten it by adding a new layer above it, selecting them both in the layers palette and pushing Command + E. You should now have 2 layers in the layers palette… the original gradient and the flattened duplicated gradient.

Now, we’re going to add an inner shadow to the duplicated layer.  Select the duplicated layer in the layers palette and click the little “fx” in the bottom of the layers palette and select “inner shadow” and enter the following settings:

This is what we should now have:

Now we’re going to add some glows to make the background look a little more unique than just a gradient.  Grab the brush tool and select a circular brush with a hardness of 0% and a foreground color of #ccffff.  Create a new layer above the duplicatedbackground layer and click once in the middle of the background image.  Set this layers blending mode to “Overlay”  Do the same for another dot but on the left side of the image and with a color of #336666. Here is the result:

It’s a subtle change but enough to add a cool effect.  Now, select all of these layers and push Command + G on your keyboard to group them.   Name the group “background.”

Creating the Text

Now we’re going to add the text.  First go here to download the Star Avenue font that we’ll be using.  Select the text tool (t) and type “king tutz” on the stage (or whatever you want your composition to say).

Find a good floral brush on the web (there are tons out there). Using your floral brush paint a new floral on it’s own separate layer.  Make sure each floral is black so it best blends with the text.  Here is what we came up with:

Group all of these floral layers and the text layer and name the group “text.”  Duplicate this layer as we did before with the background group and flatten the group (command + E) as we also did with the background layer before.  Name this new flattened layer “kingtutz.”  We flatten this so we can add different effects like a drop shadow and a gradient overlay.  Click the “kingtutz” layer in the layers palette and select the little fx in the bottom of the layers palette and click “drop shadow.”  Enter the following settings:

Then select the check box next to “gradient overlay” and add the following settings:

We should now have this:

Background Revisited

We want to add some more cool effects to the background using the brush tool as we did before.  However, this time we’re going to set the layer blending modes to “saturation.”  We only added 2 different layers. We grouped these layers and named the group “random glows”  Here is the effect we got:

Now, we’re going to add some blurred dots to the background so we need to create a custom brush.  To do this, we need to select the brush tool (b) and select a round brush with a hardness of 53% and a size of 102 px.  Then in the Photoshop menu at the top of the screen select window > brushes.  Enter the following settings for the brush:

Use a nice green (00cc99) and create a new layer and start clicking to create random circles.  Click about 4-5 times and then create a new layer, change the brush color and click again.  Repeat this a few times until you get the desired amount of dots.  You can even select a dots layer and select filter > blur > gaussian blur and increase blurring to add perspective.  Set the dot layers to overlay ( you can also experiment here to create your desired effect).  Once you have the effect you like.  Group all of these dot layers and name the group “dots.”  Here is the effect we came up with:

Adding Jellyfish

This is a cool part.  We’re going to add jellyfish but first you need to download this jellyfish Photoshop brush.  After you’ve downloaded and installed the jellyfish brush, create a new layer beneath the “kingtutz” text layer.  Click to add various sizes and shapes of jellyfish on the stage (make sure each jellyfish is on it’s own layer).

After you have the desired jellyfish, we’re going to add gradient overlays to each jellyfish.  Click one of the jellyfish layers you just created and select the little fx at the bottom of the layers palette and select “gradient overlay.”  Enter the following settings:

Add this same gradient overlay to each jellyfish.

We want the jelly fish to pop more so we’re going to duplicate each jellyfish layer and set the layer blending mode to normal.  Here is what the layer palette should look like (after some grouping and organizing of the jellyfish layers). Also, here is the effect we have so far:

Jellyfish Glows

Now we’re going to use the brush tool to click and paint a white dot (on it’s own layer of course) on top of each jellyfish.  We’ll then set the blending mode of these new layers to normal.  Group the layers and name the group “jellyfish glows.”  Make sure this group is above the jellyfish group.  This makes the middle of each jellyfish look like it’s glowing  We should now have this:

Adding Bubbles

To create a more underwater effect we’re going to add some bubbles.  First download the bubbles here.  These are istock photos so if you plan on using these for a publication make sure you have proper rights.  Open the bubbles in our Photoshop document.  With the bubbles selected select image > adjustments > invert.  Then, set the bubbles layer blending mode to “screen.”  Then, grab the eraser tool and erase some of the harsh lines around the image.  After you’ve done this, push command + U on your keyboard and set the saturation to -100.

The bubbles need to pop more so select the bubbles layer and then select image > adjustments > brightness/contrast and enter the following settings:

Now, we’re going to duplicate this layer, and erase pieces of it as we place it around the text.  Here is what we came up with:

That’s it!  If you made it this far… congrats!  You’ve just created a pretty cool composition and learned some advanced moves.

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