Beautiful lighting FX effect in Photoshop

This tutorial will show you how to make a beautiful lighting effect on scatters by using Photoshop. Keep in mind that I only provide the basic guidelines to creating this type of effect. There are tons of possibilities if you spend time to play with the settings and keep your creativity wide open.

Step 1 – Create the Head
Open a new document, changed the current layer to “Background” layer and fill “Black.” Next, create a new layer, then you should select some brush you like, in this case I choose a kind of vector brush, which you could find in the attached file at the bottom of this tutorial.


Step 2 – Creating the Tail
Create another new layer (layer > new > layer), called it “Tail”.
Select the “Brush” tool and open the Brushes Panel (Window > Brushes). Now we will play around with its setting to achieve the set best effect. The final purpose is to create a set of randomized dots.
In this scope of article, I choose settings as below:
- Brush Tip Shape: (Hardness: 100%, Roundness: 100%, Spacing: 1%)
- Shape Dynamics: (Size Jitter: 100%, Minimum Diameter: 20%)
- Scatter: (Both Axes, Scatter: 1000%)


Step 3 – Create the colorful effect
Create another new layer, above the background layer, name it “Color Base”. This is just a simple step, you choose a soft brush, then fill like the picture below with any color you like.

Step 4 – Make selection
Now, select the “Head” layer firstly, then go to the menu Select->Load Selection. Then choose New Selection and press Ok.

Next step, you repeat the above step, but choose “Add to Selection” in the “Load Selection” dialog box instead.
Now, you have loaded the selection. With the “Color Base” layer active, you click on the “Add layer mask” button at the bottom of the layer panel. Then you will have the result like the demonstration below.

Step 5 – Add glow effect
You select “Head” layer then go to Layer > Layer Style > Outer Glow. You could play around with those settings such as size, spread, opacity… however remember to set “Blend Mode” to “Overlay,” and the color to “White.” Of course, everything could be changed even you go to the last steps. Next, you should do the exam progress on “Tail” layer.
To end of this step. Right click on the “Color Base” then choose “Apply Layer Mask”. Then, youwill go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. You should set the Radius between 4-6. In this case, I give it the value 5.

Step 6 – Make up the head
Create a new layer above the “Color Base” layer. Then, you choose the “Gradient” tool and use the “Foreground to Transparent” preset. Go into the “Gradient Editor” and click the foreground color slider and change its position to “25%.” Exit the editor, pick a color that pleases you (can be changed later) and make a “Radial Gradient” over the “Head” layer. You could move the layer to match up with the “Head” layer.

Now with that layer still active, go to Layer > Layer Style > Color Overlay. Change the color to “White” and blend mode to “Overlay.” Probably, there are hundreds of ways to customized this effect till this way, so I just remind you the point, keep your creative going, and spend time to try settings. For my case, I want to add some more colorful effect in this step, and I change some setting by press Ctrl + U to open Hue/Saturation dialog and give it the settings like below.

Step 7 – Add more scatters
Now, duplicate the “Head” layer and pick the smudge tool, then select a soft brush at around 50% strength. This step is not easy to do. must be patient to smudge the new copied layer along the picture, try to use another tool such as “Eraser” to have the best result.

Then, you duplicate the current layer. Right click on it, choose Blending Options, and set the “Blend mode” to “Dissolve”. You should notice the opacity during this step to adjust the appearances of the scatters around the main object. Again, the “Eraser” tool need to be used reasonably to get rid of scatters.

Step 9 – Adjust settings
Actually, it is hard to tell you exactly how I come to the final result as below. You should play around with opacity, fill settings, combine with eraser, smudge tools to finalize the art work.

I have included 2 set of vector brushed for you guys to play around with the full PSD version.
Download PSD here

Making of Fiery Planets Collision

This long tutorial will show how we can create a fiery collision between two planets by using some Adjusment Layers and Blending Options.

Visit this tutorial !

GOOGLE SQUARED

Some information is easy to find. If you want to learn the rules of golf, you can search Google for [golf rules] and it will return a list of relevant web sites right at the top. But not all your information needs are that simple. Some questions can be more complex, requiring you to visit ten, perhaps twenty websites to research and collect what you need.

For instance, I'm a big fan of roller coasters. In the past I've used Google to search for information about roller coasters, such as which ones are the tallest, fastest, and have the most loops. Finding this information used to take multiple searches — I'd find roller coaster sizes on one website, heights on another, and speeds on a third. By manually comparing the sites, I could get the information I was looking for, but it took some time. With Google Squared, a new feature just released in Google Labs, I can find my roller coaster facts almost instantly.

Google Squared is an experimental search tool that collects facts from the web and presents them in an organized collection, similar to a spreadsheet. If you search for [roller coasters], Google Squared builds a square with rows for each of several specific roller coasters and columns for corresponding facts, such as image, height and maximum speed.

While gathering facts from across the Internet is relatively easy (albeit tedious) for humans to do, it's far more difficult for computers to do automatically. Google Squared is a first step towards solving that challenge. It essentially searches the web to find the types of facts you might be interested in, extracts them and presents them in a meaningful way.

This technology is by no means perfect. That's why we designed Google Squared to be conversational, enabling you to respond to the initial result and get a better answer. If there's another row or column you'd like to see, you can add it and Google Squared will automatically attempt to fetch and fill in the relevant facts for you. As you remove rows and columns you don't like, Google Squared will get a fresh idea of what you're interested in and suggest new rows and columns to add. See it in action in the video below:

If you click on any fact, you'll see the sources Google Squared gathered it from as well as a list of other possible values that you can investigate. So even if your square isn't perfect at the beginning, it's easy to work with Google Squared to get a better answer in no time. Once you've got a square you're happy with, you can save it and come back to it later.

To give Google Squared a whirl, try searching for [planets] or [romantic movies]. You can try out Google Squared now in Google Labs.

Windows 7 To Launch In Time For Christmas

The next generation of Windows will be launched this autumn with a touch sensitive screen which could spell the end of the mouse.

Microsoft announced it will roll out Windows 7, which will take the place of the unpopular Windows Vista, from October 22.
The launch is months ahead of schedule and the operating system will be ready for Christmas buyers.
Nine out of ten of the world's computers run on Windows software.
Last year the software giant made about a third of its £60bn income from selling the operating system.
Windows Vista has been attacked for being too complicated and Microsoft bosses hope the new system will restore public confidence in the product.

Reviews of Windows 7 have praised its consumer-friendly features.
Users with touch-sensitive screens will be able to control their computers with the touch of a finger, rather than with a keyboard and mouse.
The device, as popularised on the iPhone and iPod Touch by Apple, is a direct challenge to Microsoft's arch-rival.
Microsoft is battling against a growing market in netbooks - smaller PCs ideal for surfing online and emailing.
One of the leading manufacturers, Acer, has become the first to announce a line of small PCs to run Google's new Android operating system.
Free upgrades to the new system will be offered to computer buyers shortly ahead of the launch.
Microsoft said: "We’ve produced the best Windows operating system ever, designed according to how people want to use it.
"The primary focus throughout the development of Windows 7 has been quality."

Bing! Microsoft To Take On Google Search

Microsoft has begun the UK roll-out of Bing, the search engine it hopes can rival Google.


It replaces their existing Live Search and aims to offer more "intuitive" answers to questions.
Bing officially launches in the UK on Wednesday but a beta version is already live.
It will remain in beta for six to nine months in the UK as more features are added. The US version launched last week.
Features include a more sophisticated video search, which offers previews of the clips without having to leave the results page.

USB Hacks:Prevent Users From Writing to USB

If you have windows XP with SP2, then you can disable the writing option to USB drives. This trick is very useful if you have virus in your computer and want to copy files from a USB Drive but don’t want to transfer virus to the USB. Follow the given steps to disable the USB writing option:

To edit the computer registry, first you should log onto your computer with administrative rights.

First click on Start button and type “Regedit” in Run option.

Here locate the location to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control

Here in right side panel, click right to create a key with the name “StorageDevicePolicies”.

Now in left side panel, select “StorageDevicePolicies” key, again right click to create new DWORD value then label it “WriteProtect”. Set its value to “1″. But again to enable writing, set its values to “0″.

Now close the registry editor and restart your computer after any changes to go into effect.

Background Image for USB Window

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a background image for the USB window upon connection of your USB storage device? This simple, quick USB hack will show you how to create a background image.




To perform this simply copy the following information in notepad:

[ExtShellFolderViews]
{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}={BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}
[{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}]
Attributes=1
IconArea_Image=your background picture

Change: the IconArea_Image= to the name of your jpeg file…I did: ericbana.jpg

Next, save the code above as desktop.ini

Last: place the ini file and the jpg file in the root of your USB drive.

I used ERIC BANA image for example.you can use your pics too..

Refresh or reconnect your device and …bamb…USB background image done. Tip: The image will repeat so when creating the jpeg be sure to leave plenty of white space in your image file.so customize ur pic pixels..