Giving a subject a dispersion or splatter effect can create an incredibly dynamic

image. The best part is, its very quick and easy to do with a few Photoshop brushes,
but the end result can look very complex as if it took you hours to create. In this
tutorial, Im going to walk you through 3 easy steps to create this dispersion effect.
Heres a look at what well be creating.

WeGraphics members will want to grab this brush set for the tutorial:
Splatters Volume 2
For non-WeGraphics members a good free alternative can be found here:
Splatters Brush Set

Step 1
After a little bit of searching I found this photo of a guy jumping in the
air by Camera Eye Photography. This is a great photo for this effect because the
subject is in motion. So our dispersion effect will help to enhance that motion.
Copy and paste the photo into a new PS document. I sized mine down to 2500px
wide. Using the Quick Selection Tool (W), I made a selection of the guy and copied
and pasted him to a new layer. I then loaded the selection again, and with the
background layer selected, I chose (Edit | Fill | Content Aware).

Content Aware did a pretty good job of removing the guy from the background. There
is still a silhouette visible, but thats okay, well be covering most of it up. We just want
some of the background color to show through. If youre extra picky, you can remove
the silhouette with the Clone Stamp Tool (S).

Step 2
Lets go ahead and duplicate the guy layer one time. So you should have two layers
that have our guy jumping. Select the bottom most guy layer and press (Cmd+T) to
transform him. You want to stretch the guy horizontally.

I roughly selected his arm and leg and moved them back to the edge of the nondistorted guy in the layer above. The idea here is that were giving a color area for our
splatters to pick up via a mask.
Lets go ahead and create that mask for the distorted guy layer. Select the distorted
guy layer and click the layer mask icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Fill the
mask with solid black.

Now use the splatter brushes to reveal portions of the layer by clicking the mask using
solid white as the foreground color.
For the top non-distorted guy layer, we also want to create a layer mask. But this time
we want to leave it solid white, and use a black splatter brush to remove portions of
the guy to reveal some of the background.

Pretty easy, huh?

Step 3
For the final touches lets add a bit of vignette and highlight. But before we do that I
took one large dark splatter and placed it on a layer behind the guy. I basically just
wanted to see some light splatters that fell beyond the distorted guys layer mask.

For the vignette, lets switch over to Quick Mask Mode (Q), and choose a very large
soft black brush and click once in the center of the image.

Switching out of QMM youll see that we have a selection that excludes the very center
of the image. The selection is also nicely feathered due to our soft black brush.

Now create a new Levels Adjustment Layer above all other layers, and adjust as
follows.

For the final touch, lets add a highlight. Create a new layer above the guy layer, and
set its blending mode to Opacity. Now with a soft white brush make 1 or two clicks
over the guys head and torso. You may need to reduce the opacity of this layer down
to 50% or 60% depending on how hot the highlight appears.

I hope this quick tutorial has inspired some ideas on how to use PS brushes to create
interesting dispersion effects in your artwork. Experiment and have fun!

Photoshop CS3 Tutorial: The

Erase Background Tool.
Removing complex
backgrounds.
ivanna 20 Jan 08 photoshop, tutorials

The erase background tool is powerful, but good results are only
possible if you understand how it works. In this tute, we will look at all
the options in the tool and use them to extract backgrounds from our
images.
The tool works best if the background is all a similar colour, for
example, someone against a solid colour or a bright sky.
1I have deliberately chosen a difficult image, as the girl has flyaway
hair that i want to keep.

2From the toolbox, select the background eraser tool

3When the tool is selected,

the control palette will display the default settings. Select the 3rd
button, Sampling:Foreground Swatch This will only erase the
foreground colour. Set the tolerance to 25%

Make sure Protect Foreground Colour is ticked.Selecting the

option Sampling:Foreground Swatch allows you to sample the
background colour most prominent in your image, so the eraser will
ignore contrasting colour pixels.

Choosing to Protect Foreground Colour allows you to sample a

foreground colour to protect from the eraser.

4Now we need to sample the background colour to erase. Select the

background swatch in your toolbox, and double click to bring up the
colour panel.

5Select the background colour with the eyedropper, right click to

select a 51X51 average. This will make sure that the area sampled will
be larger than just one pixel, so many shades of light blue will be
included instead of just a singular blue pixel.
Next, select the foreground to protect (we will start with the girls hair)
I will use a 11X11 average for this. Notice the colours on my
background and foreground swatches.

6Choose a nice big size for the brush. Use CTRL (CMD) and the
bracket keys({}) to change the brush size.

7Think of the brush as a sort of magic wand tool, that erases

selections based on the colour it clicks on. The more a colour is
prersent under the radius of the brush, the more photoshop will
think it is the background colour, and erase it.

8You can now get nearer the edge, just remember that you want more
of the colour to be erased, less of the protected colours, under the
brush!

9Notice that to select the more fiddly edges, I am positioning the

centre of the brush on top of the light blue, not the hair.

10These settings will remain true for similar areas, as soon as we get
to areas with different colurs, for example the girls blouse, we need to
select different colours to protect use the eyedropper to select the
new foreground colour, right click to select a 51X51 pixel average.

11 You will need to change foreground and background colours often

as you work through the image.

12Now open another image, perhaps an outdoor image like a beach or

busy street.
Paste the selection of the girl above it, resize to fit and get rid of any
stray white areas with a soft brush eraser.

13To tidy up any stray white edges around the hair, we will darken
some parts of the imageSelect the Burn Tool

14From the Range dropdown options, select highlights and an

exposure of 25% or thereabouts.

15Now go over the edges of the hair to darken (burn) any stray
highlights or white halos on the edges.

16The finishing touches:

Image>adjustments>levels to increase tonal contrast on the
background to match the girl image. This is a quick and dirty fix, As
this tute is about the background eraser tool, not levels
Position the girl so her eyes are aligned with the horizon, to make the

perspective credible.
Youre done!