Airbrushed Ball

Introduction

In this tutorial we will attempt to make a signature with an airbrushed ball in the middle, and many lines going in all directions from the ball, on a cool background, so to do this we have to do the most important aspect of the airbrushing, create a ball, and a path for the lines

Section 1 Overview

In this section, we will create the airbrush ball in the middle

Step 1 - Making the ball

Open a new document that is 400x80, RGB, on a white background

First, press [d>x] on your keyboard, and press ctrl+backspace to fill the background layer with Black

Create a new layer and name it "circle"

Grab the "Elipticle marquee"

and create a selection on the "Cricle" Layer in the middle of the document

and fill it with white (alt+backspace)

Step 2

Now, at this point, we want to make this circle look a bit puffier or softer at the edges, so we dublicate the layer, (drag the "circle" layer to the "new layer" button in the Layers pallete. And apply some Gausian Blur (Filters>Blur>Gaussian) and set it to 1px

Now, probably, nothing (or almost nothing) has happened, and that does us no good, so re-apply this filter 5 times (ctrl+f x 5) and duplicate that layer, and reapply the filter again to that layer, so now we have, 4 layers, (background,circle,circle copy, circle copy1) and the filter has been applyed 10 times int total, at this point repeat this process with the circle layers until reached desired result

This is what i got

At this point, you have around a billion layers of circle copies, so we have to merge them, first thing, make the background layer non-visible

and press Ctrl+Shift+E (merge visible), make yout background layer visible, and now you should have 2 layers, background and Circle

and our image should look something like this

Okay thats it for section 1, move on to Path making in

Section 2 Overview

In this section, we will create the paths, for the airbrush lines we want.

Step 3

Grab the pen tool,

and set the mode to Paths

And create a new layer called "lines"

Now, maximaze the coument, within photoshop, and click anywhere in the gray area, and click and hold again in between the ball and the edge of the image, the result should be a straight line with two boxes

Now, while still holding the mousedrage down and to the right a bit, and line should bend.

Lastly click inside the white ball to finish that line path

Now, great, we have one line, now go to the Paths pallete (Windows>Paths) and you will see that you have a new path

Now, you see the funky red line in the pallete?(you shouldnt have one) click on that grey area to deselect the path, and then click on the "Work Path" again, and repeat the line path process elsewhere, make a couple lines on the right, couple on the left, couple in the middle bottom, middle top, and you click on the grey area (funky red line) again, and it should look something like this

looks pretty messed up huh? but dont worry, it will be rocking soon!

Section 3 Overview

In this section, we will create brush the lines, using the same technique we used with the ball

Step 4

Okay, we are almost done! Set your forground color to white and click on brush in the PS toolbar

and go to the Brushes toolbar

Make your setting the same as mine, dont forget to click on smoothing (no special settings) and make the master diameter only 1 px.

Now, head to the paths pallete (make sure you are on the "lines" layer

Step 5

In the paths pallete, you will see a bunch of wacky circles on the bottom of the pallete

Click on the second from the left, "Stroke path, and you should end up with something like this:

Well, guess what we are gonna do now? we are gonna repeat the same proccess as we did with the circle, create new layer, apply gausian blur, repeat. and you should end up with something like this:

And you are pretty much done, now this is a very rough example of the technique, now you can add a background and shadows and such, and come up with something like this:

Well thats it, hope you enjoyed this one and only airbrushing tutorial! Good Luck!