Tutorial #7 - Advanced Glow Effects: With Color Text

Boy, have I ever been busy these last couple weeks. The semester is almost over and the catchup work has been draggin' me down.

But this week's tutorial was another shot at glow effects. Will Advanced Glow Effects: With Color Text stick out among the many failures of Glow Effect tutorials?!?

Final image:



WOAH.
This actually looks somewhat like the example! Any differences were my own design choices. The instructions were helpful and clear and there were many screenshots... EXCEPT in step 9, instead of giving you the exact specifications of the layer styles, they ask you to DOWNLOAD their original file.
NO NO NO NO NO NO
I worked on this tutorial on a train. When I got to step 9, I couldn't continue until I reached a place with internet. I was not pleased.
My suggestion does not go to you, but to the creator of this tutorial. Next time, supply the .psd file at the beginning of the tutorial and explain that it is needed to finish the tutorial.

That is all!

Length of time: 35 minutes.
Level: Intermediate.
Clarity:
Handiness:
Cool factor:
Source: http://photoshoptunes.blogspot.com/2009/12/advanced-glow-effects-with-color-text.html

Tutorial #6: Na'vi Tutorials.

Everyone and their mother has been doing Na'vi tutorials recently. I've found a lot of good ones, a lot of horrible ones, and many in between. Instead of doing one tutorial, I decided to pick and choose things from several.

The tutorials I used, in order of best to worse, were:
Na'vi Avatar Photomanipulation Tutorial
Create James Cameron's AVATAR Movie Poster in Photoshop
Angelina Jolie as Na'Vi from Avatar Movie

Original image:



Final image:



Not bad. Not bad at all.

Each tutorial had its good and bad sides, but worked fantastically when combined. Really, they each had completely different styles. The success of the tutorial depends on what you'd like to take from each. My only tip is to make a lot of copies of your progress. Save often.

And because I always need to complain about something, this tutorial was undoubtedly the worst thing I have ever seen.

Length of time: 6 hours.
Level: Advanced.
Handiness: (I learned a lot.)
Cool factor:

Tutorial #1 - Magic Lighting Effect in Photoshop

Hello and welcome to A Photoshop A Day!

My name is Stephanie and I hope to teach you a thing or two about the wonderful world of Photoshop by stealing other people's ideas.
I'm going to attempt to take one Photoshop tutorial a day, write about my process and problems, and then rate it on its clarity, ease of use, handiness, and overall coolness.

But enough about me. Let's get down to business!

Today's tutorial is entitled, "Magic Lighting Effect in Photoshop" created by Fabio Sasso.

And for all you shooping noobs, his .psd is available for download at the very end of the tutorial.

His end result is a bit of html, magically streaming out of a magician's top hat, complete with SPARKLES.

My end result is Edward Hill dying of electrified DNA or somethin'.

Before:


After:

At least it's still sparkly.

This tutorial took much longer than I thought it would and didn't turn out nearly as well as I had hoped.
The screen shots of the settings were very small and hard to read, while his written instructions were usually only one sentence (and not much help to many who commented.) He pretty much leaves it up to the reader to figure the details out on their own.
After an hour of trial and error, my result was no where near as eye catching as his example image was.
The best advice I can give? Layering is your friend and when in doubt, use color dodge.

I'm sorry, Mr. Hill.

Length of time: Longer than 35 minutes.
Level: Intermediate.
Clarity:
Handiness:
Cool factor: (If it would have worked.)
Source: http://abduzeedo.com/magic-lighting-effect-photoshop