How to create Water color effect in Photoshop

Today, we welcome our guest author Himanshu Sharma. Himanshu, an expert in Photoshop here explains all about How to create a Water color effect in Photoshop. So sit back and enjoy this detailed tutorial in Himanshu's words.

In this tutorial on Photoshop, you will understand how to create watercolor effects using Photoshop and how to make a photo look similar to watercolor painting. This watercolor effect is suitable for photos which has rich colors with high contrast rather than minute details, since the effect can eradicate many of the minor details.  

It is very easy to create the water color effect by duplicating certain layers, application of certain filters and making use of certain layer blend modes. The entire thing just takes few minutes for completion and you can save it in different forms (.jpg or .gif) as you wish. This tutorial will explain how to simulate watercolor effect using some brushes in Photoshop.

Step 1 : First create a new document by clicking File-- New and also create new layer. Now fill the layer with white background and rename the layer as texture. Now choose Filter and click Filter-- Texture-- Texturizer. You can use Canvas for texture with eighty percent scaling.

Step 2 : Now open the image from file menu and add it to the document. You should delete the background of the image by using both Polygonal Lasso (L) and Path Tool (P) or with help of magic wand.

Step 3 : Now use the Selection Tool to select the layer in which the girl is there. Now Go to Image-- Adjustments and choose Levels. You should enhance the whites here and choose Image-- Adjustments-- Saturation/Hue and change the level of saturation to -65.

Step 4 : Now use the Water Color Filter present in Filter-- Artistic-- Watercolor. You can make use of below settings, Texture 1, Shadow Intensity 0 and Brush Detail 9.

Step 5 : After selecting the layer of the girl’s image, Chose Layer-- Layer Mask-- Reveal All. You can select black color and mask the girl’s body using the Brush Tool (B).

Step 6 : Now you can use the Watercolor brushes specifically designed for this purpose from Bittboxx website. Now choose a new layer and select the Brush Tool. Now you have to create new layer and use the Water Color brush tool with black color selected. You are designing the hair of the girl in water color style to give a realistic look. You can resize or rotate the layer after you finish the brushing.

Step 7 : Now choose Blending options from Layer Style. Change the Opacity of the Layer to 0 and chose Color Overlay option. You can Use Red color and select the blend mode as Multiply. You can also use the Opacity to be filled as 70 percent. For Blend Mode use Hard Light and fill with Purple Color with Angle set as twenty degrees, Distance as 4 pixels and Size as 12 pixels.

Step 8 : Now create another layer and use the Bittbox brush tool for designing a hair-style which looks creative and beautiful. Try to make certain paint brush strokes in the center of the screen and then rotate or resize the layer to fit it with rest of the picture. You should be able to generate a decent hair style as described in below picture.

Step 9 : Now choose Blending options in Layer Styles and set Fill options as 0. Now select Color Overlay mode and Blend mode with Blue color selected and Opacity set as fifty percent. Now use Satin option for blending.

Step 10 : Now use the same Brush tool again and paint the hair with different color say Green. You can reduce the size and add more hair and rotate it if required. Again Go to Blending options and set Fill Options as 0. Now Choose Color Overly with Blend mode set as Multiply, Green Color chosen and Opacity set as 100 percent. Now use Satin for the image. You can use the settings as Dark green with blend mode as Darken.

Step 11 : Now repeat the process again with another Layer with different color. Then select the layer that has girl’s face and set blend mode as screen. Now you can make certain adjustments like adjusting the neck with regular brush and white color.

Step 12 : Now you can add some Title to the image. Use the same brushes and fill the text with different color. You can also use Filters like Sprayed Strokes form the Filters menu. You can change the appearance to water color by choosing Filter-- Artistic-- Water color. This will give a creative look the image.

Conclusion : Finally you have got the image of a girl which appears as it was painted with water color. This tutorial explains in a simple fashion of how to add watercolor effects to a photo and applying different blend modes. You should also remember that the artwork will appear original as if it was painted with natural water colors.

This is the entire procedure for creating Water Color effect in Photoshop. For knowing more about such graphics /design related information and tips, visit Design Graphica.

Read More

LinkedIn and its 10 year Story

Believe it or not, LinkedIn just turned ten years old on May 5th, i.e. on Sunday. The networking Giant started in 2003 with an aim of connecting professionals all over the world. Let us have a peek at the insides of this two letter word.

The marketing approach for LinkedIn which includes finding a niche group of consumers and feed off them, is presumably working quite well for them. Lets go beck to its history, Founded in December 2002 by Konstantin Guericke, Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, 

LinkedIn has acquired more than 200 million professionals in more than 200 countries. The company filed for an IPO in the start of 2011 and started trading under NYSE.

Even After 10 successful years, LinkedIn still is fighting for its place in the social media. Its competitors include, Viadeo, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, XING etc and the list still grows. 

Regarding Reid Hoffman, considered as the founder of the social Networking Giant, he grew up in Berkeley and went to high school at the Putney in Vermont.He graduated in Stanford and majored in symbolic systems. It was here when he delved into the human mind and its process of communication. Though he was one of the lucky ones who got a scholarship to Oxford to study philosophy, but he was adamant against academics. 

His First entrepreneurial stint was with Socialnet. In November 1999, he went to work at PayPal where he was a part of external relations. But soon time came when they had to sell PayPal to eBay and when most people thought that it was very bad year for the internet, Reid dreamt of starting LinkedIn in 2002. In 2009, Jeff Weiner joined as the President and just after 2 years the company went public. Reid Hoffman proudly shares his emotions on his blog.

"Inspired by the invaluable role relationships played in our own careers, we launched LinkedIn with the tagline “Relationships matter."

The article was all about

Read More

The Secret to Organisation in Blogging (From the Backrooms of codemakit.com)

How do professional bloggers write such amazing articles every week? Some might even work on 5 to 10 articles at a time. Some work on just 2 to 3 really long articles with a lot of information locked up in a capsule. So the obvious question pops up, how can a blogger, manage to work on 10 blog posts at a time.

A professional blogger can work on up to 10 blog posts at a time. The multitasking allows them time and space to think about ideas both in quantity and in quality.

The average number is 8 however. Organizing is the key to better and efficient content creation. Once you organize everything you can hold large number of articles at a time. This herculean task is obviously difficult for any blogger who doesn't organize. Now organizing your blog posts is just like organizing a research, you need to divide information into chunks so that you can better manage it.

The Root Folder

Let’s have a look at a typical case of a windows blogger (i.e. at the backrooms of codemakit.com). The main blog folder is divided into 3 headers.

1. Blog Idea – It contains reading material, pdfs and pictures to help you understand the topics you’re working on.
2. Blog Pictures – Contains templates for new images, incomplete image projects etc.
3. New Articles – Contains all the new articles, that you’re writing, updating or written.

As is evident from the screenshot in the New Articles folder, the Posts Title is usually thought-of before the article is written and the complete post with images, article snippets, source articles and pages from other websites is then stored in the particular folder.

The Details

The folder system of storing the articles is presumably better and much more organized, so it removes the searching time and avoids the hassle.

Now the complete blog folder (i.e. main folder) is filled with such individual folders containing one article each along with the source media. The folders can then be divided into four parts.

1. Articles under construction – The majority of articles are under construction and most articles are either incomplete as per content or images/video or those which need more research.
2. Completed - The articles which have been completed in every sense in the author’s view. They are touched only on the day of publishing.
3. Articles to be Updated – It contains the articles which has already been posted long time ago but now needs a major remodeling, as with the passing of time, some articles become outdated and Some non-essential.
4. Update – There are pieces of information which is needs to be added to an already posted article. It contains updated media (i.e. an image to spice up the article or a video to make it more interesting). This update will not contain the article as a whole but just the media to be added.

This helped you in

Read More

An Interview with Veerle Pieters of Duoh.com

In this interview, we’ll peek into the design methods and techniques of design whiz Veerle Pieters. With her award winning website Duoh.com and her detailed blog, she is considered as one of the authorities in new age design.

Veerle Pieters was born near Bruges a left-handed who taught herself to be an ambidextrous. She began her career in 1992 in print, focusing mainly on logos, stationery etc and web Design 1995. She founded Duoh! In 2000 with her loving partner Geert Leyseele. Her dream is to be certain that I contribute in small but important ways to making the "interweb" a better place.

On Inspiration

Mohit: Your designs are always dripping with originality and detail, how do you manage to bring out such beautiful yet meaningful designs? What is your inspiration?

Veerle: My inspiration comes from what I see around me and from what I catalog on my Inspiration Stream. I try not worry about trends and just do my thing. When you start a project listening is an important part so you understand what the client needs and you have enough information to translate all that in a design.

On Favorites

Mohit: You have designed Web, CMS, Logos, Illustrations, Icons and even print. What is your favorite category for work?

Veerle: Print still has a bit of an edge because there is nothing that beats having what you created in your hands. The smell of print, the tactile feedback of paper etc. All in all I like the diversity in what I do. The fact that I can switch to coding when I hit a wall in a design for example.

On Social Networks

Mohit: I went through your entire website and found it hard to find your twitter link on your homepage, why did you avoid any link even when you had 1500 followers on twitter?

Veerle: There is a Twitter link on my homepage but it’s way down in the footer. For me personally Twitter was never about have a big amount of followers. I never actively promoted my Twitter so that people would follow me. For me this is just a channel to share what I am passionate about and a channel for helping people by sharing great resources. It’s simple really; if you have something interesting to say people will follow you.

On Work

Mohit: You have a string of impressed and satisfied customers, How do you manage this feat, Is it your charges or your work?

Veerle: I always try to do my best for every project. Not always easy but I assume that’s what clients appreciate. If you deliver great work and try to find solutions when problems occur clients will return for more. It’s a two way street and about giving & taking.


Mohit: You have been in design business for long, you must have had hardships. What is it that keeps you going?

Veerle: The first 5 to 6 years I really struggled to earn enough to make a living. Times were really different and the Internet wasn't around. You had to go out and find clients. Not an easy task if you became a freelancer right out of school because nobody would give you a job. There were a few things in my portfolio but I always heard the same excuse ‘lack of experience’.  That’s why I started my own business. Only problem was that I focused on the wrong clients, little shops that demanded a lot for very little money. Things only started to change when I got out of comfort zone and hit the road to visit business parks to introduce my work and myself. The only thing that kept me going was that I love what I do and that I knew this was what I love waking up for.

The Epilogue

Mohit: Last but not the least, what advice would you give to amateur designers?

Veerle: Don’t loose the passion for what you do even if you fail from time to time. Failing is all part of what we do everyday. Another important aspect is that the learning process never stops. That’s why you need to be really passionate. There is always something new to discover and you are never sure if what you learn today will still be around in a few months. The learning process never stops.

Read about her works in different spheres of Design below,

Graphic and Web Design, On CSS, HTML, Web design Concepts

Modern Home Design, where you'll be convinced that design extends beyond the web.

Belgian Graphic Design, filled with Belgian flavored print design

Connect with her on her twitter page

For More Information feel Free to visit The Company Website (Duoh.com)

This was an,

Read More

Google’s Crawling Process De-Mystified

It is interesting to know that the process of crawling is done with the help of a program known as Google-bot. The program is so written that it follows an algorithmic process to determine which sites to crawl, when to crawl, and how often to crawl. 

The crawling process starts from one URL, the bot then encounters an external link or Internal Link. In a particular URL, Google-bot processes metatags, Image sources, Hyperlinks, ALT tags. However, Google confesses that its algorithm cannot process rich media files or dynamic pages.

The frequency of Google’s crawl process is a grey area. Two different types of crawl process happen on a website.

• Fresh Crawl: Maximum 6 days to crawl. Very few URLs crawled at a time.
• Deep Crawl: Extensive amount of crawling done. Might take upto a month for completion.

Similarly for Google's search Process, There are three main parts of Google’s search process.

• Google Bot
• The Indexer
• The Query Processor

Google Bot

Google-Bot or Google’s web crawler is a program which crawls and pulls pages from the web and gives it to the Indexer. Its function in detail is to find a page, download or cache the entire web page and send it to the Indexer. It is interesting to note, that to prevent overloading of servers by Google’s requests, the Google-bot, deliberately crawls through the site slower than its Have a look at the Google Guide.

Google’s Indexer

The indexer is basically a dictionary or directory operative. The pages retrieved by Google-Bot is stored in the Indexer, sorted alphabetically. The indexer ignores words like ‘of’, ‘on’, ‘how’, ‘why’ and punctuation marks in addition to multiple spaces. Read More at Google Truths

Google’s Query Processor

The processor’s main function is to process the commands given by the user and match them to the already documented files in the indexer. The complete process is carried out in accordance with the so called, Google’s PageRank. You can find out more about PageRank in previous articles.
It is interesting to note that a single query made by the user to the search box, 1000 machines in 0.2 seconds as per Amit agrawal from Labnol

This was all about,

Read More

Some funny Comments II

Nearly all webmasters encounter spam on their websites. But a few have the time to properly read the spam before deleting it. On reading spam comments, you find that even spammers have a funny bone. A creative individual would always find new ways to do things. Such is the creativity displayed by spammers while dodging the inbuilt blogger filters. The following are some examples of such comments where spammers tried link building as well as humor creation.

The following anonymous comment was left at an article few months back, Though the comment has been deleted, but its still funny to see the situation of the spammer, who gets up at 6 in the morning to spam and tries to sell twitter followers.

The shaving mirrors has been one of the most loyal spammers on codemakit, this was until a message was displayed near the comments section about nofollow attribute and its usage in comments section. The following comment was left at How many Internal Links do I need to be in top 500? Even then it’s comment is usually filled with text followed by an obvious link.

The following comment was left at Include a favicon in your site, However it has been removed for obvious reasons, The guy tries to explain that the article is rife with spelling problems and then attaches a link to help lose weight fast at home.

The anonymous comment spams at 7 in the morning, but the one thing that gives humor to the comment is its flattery flavored semantically incorrect text. Again a link to get followers (what do you think of a guy who wakes you up in the morning to sell twitter followers.

You can also view another article laced with more funny comments at Some Funny Comments I

These were,

Read More

Enslave and Control Search Engines to your wishes

Find out answers to some of the most pressing questions in the mind of all webmasters, like How do you know if your site has just been crawled? or What do you do to keep your site regularly crawled or How to force search engines to crawl your website more often?

Imagine a situation where you do not need to fret in the morning worrying about how your articles fared among the visitors, the search engines treat your website with respect and honor. Wonder how it would feel like. Now imagine another aggressive situation where all the search engines are in your pocket and because of it, the visitors worship your website.

The only way this is going to happen is when your learn how the search engines function. For example, when you know how your car functions, you can always modify it to run faster. SO when you understand how the search engines function you can always modify your site to function better and give better returns.

How do you know if your site has just been crawled? 

There are certain indications to remind you that your site has just been crawled. But the most definitive indication is a sharp increase in the visitor statistics as shown in the graph(from an actual blog). Though your case might not be as aggressive as given here, but you get the point. You must find out this particular peak in your case and find out the frequency. Now time your articles accordingly to get maximum viewership. To change the frequency of crawling, you must have to change the frequency of posting on your blog or the frequency of updation of your website. A previous article explains pretty clearly how you can create a perfect schedule for your blog posts and in a week and also when should you post/update in a day to get the maximum visitors.

What do you do to keep your site crawled regularly? 

The only answer to this question is by updating your website regularly. Post more frequently and you’ll get your site crawled frequently. But you must remember, as omnipresent and omnipotent Google appears to be, Not all pages appear in a Google search results. To phrase it properly, not all pages are indexed in Google’s records. The reasons vary much but you can appeal against Google’s decision by submitting it manually through your Google webmaster account. The only limitation is that you can submit only 500 links through your webmaster account. The above was to have your webpage crawled, but what should you do to save your webpage from being crawled? The answer is a robots.txt file. Since the Google-bots are automated, a robots.txt file is checked first before a bot enters the site for the crawling process. So through a directive in your file you can prevent the Google-bots from entering in the particular webpage thus avoiding any crawl process. 

How to force Google to crawl your website more frequently?

• One of the ways is with the use of internal and external links. Those are also to be used in two different methods, by harboring links or by hosted links on external websites. Internal links on your websites will provide incentives to search engines to crawl the website more frequently so as to index more links. However for the case of frequency of crawling, more preferable than internal links are external links. Google values external links because it considers it (External links) as a source of new links increasing the overall directory strength of the web giant. It also considers external links as another method of value addition to the hyperlinks.
• Another higher priority method is by hosting your link on some other website. When a link of your website is found on another website Google values it as a recommendation for your website to be crawled further. Your link status can be very well found out using your Google websmaster tools. Some web experts claim that your website server must also be fast. For those of you who have hosted their own website on your own hardware, it is better to upgrade and render your site fast enough.
• Another method is sitemaps, A Site-Map is basically a way of telling the search engines how you want your website to be crawled. Personally, I’ve had some bitter experiences with site maps and my views are shared with several others. I would not recommend using site-maps even though it can be called as a possible solution to the web crawl scenario.

Last but not the least, the only sure-shot way of ensuring frequent visits by Google is by frequent updation of your content.

This was a Mumbo-Jumbo about,

Read More