Adobe Tutorial

Here is my first attempt in creating flames :

1. Open a blank document with black background.

2. Create a new blank layer and paint the lower bottom area as white with brush tool as shown below



3. Now rotate it right by 90 from Image>Rotate > 90 Right.

5. Filter> Stylize> Wind . Repeat it thrice using Control+F to achieve the following result

Rotate it back by 90 Left from Image>Rotate > 90 Left.

6. Now create another blank layer and use hard  brush to paint the area with red, orange and yellow as shown in the figure below. Select topmost layer and go to Filter>Gaussian Blur. Set the radius to 8. Here is how it looks like after this step.



7.  And now change the blending mode of this layer to Overlay (from Blending modes dropdown in layer palette). The output looks as shown below :





8. Now select the layer below(with wind effect, 2nd layer from bottom) and select Smudge tool from the left toolbar and start smudging it from bottom through up. It looks like this :



9. Now select the gradient tool and click on Edit button on topbar to define three gradient colors as shown in figure. Move the color stops such that left most is yello, middle stop is at Orange and right most at Red.



10. Now select the topmost layer in the layer palette and strike the gradient from bottom to middle.



11. Now Control+click on  the middle layer(Wind layer) and go to Enhance> Adjust Color> Replace Color. Replace the white color with yellow by selecting respective colors from the color swatches in the dialog.



12. Click Ok and here is the final output which I got.

Its so easy and cool to create reflections using PSE 9. It is one of the new guided edit features which is easy to follow with the instructions laid through the workflow. I am also following the steps described in the workflow to demonstrate the creation of a reflection :

1. Open any image in PSE 9 Editor that you want to create reflections of. I picked this image as when i clicked this one, I felt there was a lake missing the the silhouette.



2. Click on Guided Edit tab>Fun Edits> Reflections.

3. Click on the first button : Add Reflection. Here is the output you see after that :




4. Click on the Eye dropper tool and select one of the colors to be filled as background for the reflection. For this image I chose the mustard color as you can see from the color swatch by clicking on one of the areas with this color on the image. And as I click Fill background, I see an output as follows :


5. In the next step, you get an option to select either Floor, Glass or Water reflection. I chose Water Reflection for this particular image.

It will prompt for adding Ocean Ripple filter, followed by Motion blur to give some realistic effect.
I tried in 768 % of amount for Ocean ripple effect and 7 as distance in Motion blur.

6. Adjust the Reflection intensity as per your needs. I increased it from 80 to 90.



7. Click on Add Distortion. I clicked it twice to make my reflection shorter that the actual image.



Rest of the area after shortening of reflection gets filled by your foreground color in the color swatch(the background you selected for reflection earlier)

8. Now crop this extra area in the next step using the next button Crop.

9. Once cropped you can add gradient to give more realistic look to your image. here is my final output.


If you are not satisfied with the gradient applied with this button, you may go to full edit and select the top most layer, edit the gradient itself choosing gradient tool and selecting Edit button from top bar.

One more example of the reflection created using this feature :

 1. Open the portrait you want to edit in PSE 9 Editor.

5. Create a copy of this layer Overlay by pressing Control+J or by simply dragging it over the new layer icon in the layers palette. Change the blending mode of this new layer to Hard mix.

You can create your own custom themes for the different creations like Greeting card, Photo book, CD/DVD jacket etc and have them placed in your content panel of Photoshop Elements Editor.

Here are the steps with which I created my own theme "Mothers Day" for Mothers day and had it placed in my content panel.

1. Create a blank file from File>New>Blank File. Select default size of the file.

2. Now paint it with the color you like. I painted pink and used gradient tool to give non monotonous effect of the background.



3. Save this as a jpeg on your hard drive. This step is workaround for PSE8 where there is no way of creating a smart object from a leyer as we had in PSE7. Once you have saved the jpeg, click on close widget of the file you were previously working with. It will ask you to save the untitled file. Say No. This will bring back the file you were working till step 2.

4. Now select the background layer from layers pallette and File>Place and select the jpeg saved at step 3. Click on the green checkmark shown shown over the image.

As soon as you do this, you would notice that there is a layer created as a smart object with a tiny icon on the layer thumbnail as shown below. And this layer is exactly as your background layer.



So by now, you would have understood why we saved the background as a separate jpeg in step3. The reason is, in PSE8, we can create smart objects using File>Place. In PSE 7, we do not need the step 3 as we can directly create the background layer as a smart object. This is a workaround in PSE8.

5. Now you can  create a duplicate of this smart object layer by pressing Control+J and delete the original background layer.




6. From Window meniu, select Content. This will result in Content pane appear in right hand panel.

7. Select "By Type" from Category and "Frames" in sub category.



8. Drag a frame from the frames shown in the content bin to the image. Once you do this, you will notice that the blending mode for the frame dropped is "Pass through".

9. Add text layer and put some text to your theme. I am creating a Mothers day greeting card template in this example. So I added the text as shown below.



11. Save this file as a psd. I saved it as "Mothers day.psd"

12. Create a template file with name "<filename>.metadata.xml". I created "Mothers day.metadata.xml"

13. Copy the following into your xml file :

**************************************************************************

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<PSEContent xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/PSEContent/2.0/">

<name value="$$$/content/themes/Mothers Day=Mothers Day" />

<type value="theme" />

<creation value="1x1" />

<creation value="2x3" />

<creation value="3x4" />

<creation value="cddvdlabel" />

<creation value="cdjacket" />

<creation value="dvdjacket" />

<creation value="photobook" />

<creation value="1x1photobook" />

<creation value="3x4photobook" />

<category value="$$$/content/category/Event=Event">

<subcategory value="$$$/content/category/Event/Celebration=Celebration" />

</category>

<category value="$$$/content/category/Color=Color">

<subcategory value="$$$/content/category/Color/Pink=Pink" />

</category>

<category value="$$$/content/category/Style=Style">

<subcategory value="$$$/content/category/Style/Cute=Cute" />

</category>

<category value="$$$/content/category/Object=Object" />

<category value="$$$/content/category/Mood=Mood">

<subcategory value="$$$/content/category/Mood/Fun=Fun" />

</category>

<keyword value="$$$/content/keyword/Toys=Toys" />

</PSEContent>

Replace the text in the tag with your filename : <name value="$$$/content/themes/<filename>=<filename>" />

Also note that you can edit the categories and sub categories as per your needs. For example my above theme will appear under category Event and sub category Celebration. Similarly in category Color and sub category Pink.

You can customize these as per your needs.

14. Now place your jpeg and your metadata xml file at location :

On XP : C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication DataAdobePhotoshop Elements8.0Photo Creations hemes
On Win 7 : C:ProgramDataAdobePhotoshop Elements8.0Photo Creations hemes
Please make sure that your Editor is closed and you relaunch it to see the background created in your content pane.

If you still do not find it in the content pane in Background category, close Editor and rename the file : "C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication DataAdobePhotoshop Elements8.0Localeen_USMediaDatabase.db3" followed by application relaunch. The launch may take sometime as application creates thumbnails for your background at the location where you have created your jpeg.



After relaunch, here is where I see my Mothers day theme in Content Panel from Create Pane>Photo Book or Greeting Card :






I hope you find this tutorial useful!

To give an example of animated gif, i have tried an example of an animation between a cloudy day and a sunny day. You can create anything while you try this out :

1. Take any background as shown in the image :


2. Draw  a boatsman like as shown below in a new layer or same layer :

3. Now draw some clouds in a new layer a shown below:

 4. Now draw a sun in a separate layer a shown below. If you hide the clouds layer created in step above, you would see the following :

5. Now merge the layer background and the boatsman by right clicking them and create a duplicate of merged copy. Now merge one of these duplicates with layer Sun and the other duplicate with layer clouds such that you have your layers palette as shown below :
6. Now go to File menu>Save for Web and select the format as Gif, check the checkbox "animate". Check the "loop" checkbox and specify the delay timing. I have mentioned the delay time as 1 second. So this means, my two layers shown above will appear alternatively after a delay of 1 second.

7. Click Ok and you can check out your animated gif playing in IE or Windows Fax Viewer.