Digital bokeh effect

Step 1

Create a new document in Photoshop. As usual I will use a nice scree resolution, 1920x1200 pixels. Fill the background layer with a very dark grey, not black. If you fill it with black the effect won't work. The color I used was #262626.

Step 2

Select the Ellipse Tool (U), and create a circle. Use black for the color, and go to Layer>Layer Style>Blending Options. Change the Fill Opacity to 50%. After that select Stroke. Use 10 pixels for the size, Inside for the Position and Black for the color.

Step 3

Select the ellipse and go to Edit>Define Brush. Name your brush and that's done. Now we have a new brush ;)

Step 4

Go to Window>Brushes (F5). The first thing to do in the Brush Engine is to select our new Brush. The size won't matter because you will change that when you use it. The Spacing, however, is very important. Chage the value to 100%. After that, select the Shape Dynamics, then Scattering and Other dynamics. For the values use the image below.

Step 5

Before we start painting our bokehs let's create a new layer and fill it with a colorful gradient. I created a new layer and used the layer styles to do that but feel free to do the way you are used to. My gradient settings are as follows: Blend Mode is Overlay, Opacity is 100%, Style is Linear, and the Angle is 45º. The colors I used are: Yellow (#00085), Cyan (#1bdaeb), Purple (#9b3b81), Orange (#d27e34).

Step 6

Let's create a new Folder in our Layer Palette. Rename the folder to Bokehs and change the Blend Mode to Color Dodge. Then create a new layer, choose white for the color and select the Brush Tool (B). Now just paint some ellipses with our custom brush. For this first layer use a big size, like 500-600px.

Step 7

Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. For this first layer use 20 pixels for the Radius.

Step 8

Create another layer and paint more brushes. This time however use a smaller size for the brush. After that go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 4 pixels for the Radius.

Step 9

Create another layer and repeat the previous step, this time however use a much smaller brush. Apply theGaussian Blur to this layer as well, but use only 1 pixel for the Radius.

Conclusion

Now just add your logo and that's it. We have a nice wallpaper. The idea of this tutorial was once again to show the power of the Brush Engine. You can try different shapes for this same effect, like hexagons for example. Also you can play a bit with the blurs to add more depth to the final design. Now it's up to you.

Special thanks to abduzeedo

Metallic Styles

In this tutorial, we’re going to create a metallic effect using layer styles and gradients that you can apply to different objects. We’ll put it on a nice background and create a style for lettering that makes it look like it’s embedded into the metal. You can download the sample PSD file from the link at the bottom of the tutorial if you’d like to simply copy+paste the layer styles.

Step 1:

BACKGROUND LAYER

We start as always with a background gradient. I’ve used a Radial Gradient with two shades of a lovely light green. The exact color codes are:

Foreground color – #93cc1a
Background color – #7eb704

Step 2:

To give our background a bit more oomph we will next fade it off at the edges. So using a big soft brush and a foreground color of black, create a new layer and just go around the edges as shown.

Then switch the layer to opacity 30%.

Step 3:

Now duplicate that last layer of black edge and go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur and use a setting of 20px to blur out the layer and give it a softer effect.

You may be wondering why we didn’t just use a different radial gradient in the first place, and indeed you probably could do that. I like to use this method on the edges as it’s more precise.

Step 4:

Now to get a bit of background effect, I grabbed a font called "TW Cen MT (T1)," which I think might be a default font, and just made two "S" letters. I used the color #cecfd0 and then made them gigantic and set the layers to Multiply. This created some nice curvy shapes in the background.

Step 5:

Now I need a shape to use my metallic effects on so using the Custom Shape Tool (U) I select this Fleur De Lis shape to use because it’s a reasonably complex and nice shape. Again, I used the color – #cecfd0 – because it’s a nice light grey to base our metallic effect on.

Step 6:

To start the metallic effect, right click on the layer and choose Blending Options.

First add a Drop Shadow to lift the shape off the background. The key to drop shadows is to NOT make them too full on. A good drop shadow should be subtle. I often don’t use black, but rather a variation of the background color–so in this case a dark green.

Next we add a Stroke. I’ve used an Inside stroke of 4px. But the key here is to switch Fill Type to Gradient and then use a nice gradient of grey and white.

The reason we do this is that if you look at metal in real life, you’ll see that it tends to go from light grey to darker grey to light grey and there are a lot of different shades. It isn’t one single flat color. Actually nothing in real life is a single flat color, but that’s another story.

So to get some realism, we need these gradients. But also you don’t want a full on gradient. Subtlety is the name of the game when it comes to gradients. Make soft changes. So here I’ve gone from white to that same light grey we used for the shape itself and back to white and back to grey and back to white.

Step 7:

Next to counter the stroke gradient, we add a Gradient Overlay using the same gradient. This appears on the main body of the shape and you can see how it contrasts really well with the stroke on the edge to make a metallic shine effect.

Step 8:

Finally to get a chromy effect, we’ll use the Bevel and Emboss Tool set to an Inner Bevel with a huge size and an odd Gloss Contour. I must admit I made this just by experimenting, so there’s no special reasoning behind it. Just move the sliders around until you get some nice reflections happening in the middle of the shape.

And now we have our metallic style! You can copy and paste the style by right clicking on the layer and selecting Copy Layer Style.

Step 9:

To finish off, I added a black band up the top and then drew a rounded rectangle over it with the usual grey, applied my metallic style by pasting the style on to that layer.

Then I added some text saying Metallic Style and created a new style for the text. With the new style I used a different bunch of settings as follows:

Inner Shadow – Because I want the letters to look like they are punched into the metal, I added an inner shadow. Make it nice and subtle though, not too full on!

Gradient Overlay – Because gradients make things look more natural, but again subtle color changes only!

Stroke – Again I use a gradient stroke, however this time it is an Outer Stroke and it is a gradient going from dark at the top to light at the bottom. The reason for this is that it makes it look like the letters have an edge where they were punched into the metal. And it looks like there is light coming from the top and landing on that edge so that one side is lit up and the other is in a bit of shadow. This gives it a much more metallic effect.

Step 10:

And there you have it: a nice pair of metallic styles!

SAMPLE PSD: Download the PSD for this tutorial

Special thanks to psdtuts+