Photoshop CS5.5 Tutorial: Bokeh Brushes and Brush presets

Ok, so what i am going to show you what to do is called "Bokeh Brush". Bokeh is basically a really cool assembly of circles on top of eachother that are transparent. This is a really simple and quick way to do this effect. Follow these steps and you'll master it!

Step 1:
Open a photoshop document and make it 7"x5" with a white background and 300 dpi. Press "D" on your keyboard to reset the colors to default. Press "G" to get to the gradient tool. Click on the Gradient and open up the gradient editor.

Step 2:
 Set the Far left color to #0b0e76 by double clicking the little black tab. Set the Far right color to #0064eb  the same way you did for the first one. Then click in the iddle of the gradient and set that color to #0e01b0. Then click ok and drag the gradient from the bottom to the top of the page.

Step 3:
Press "B" on your keyboard and make sure your brushes are set to normal round brushes, if it isn't open up the brush taby by clicking the little arrow and selecting the other little arrow on that menu and select "RESET Brushes" and click ok. Now select a Large Hard Brush around the size of 150px. Make sure the color is set to white by pressing "X". This switches the background color with the foreground color. *Keep in mind that keyboard shortcuts are VERY important to your speed and skills with photoshop* You should have this so far.

Step 4:
Create a new layer by pressing (Macs: Cmd+Shift+N) (Windows: Ctrl+Shift+N) and make sure you have that new layer selected. Now go to (Window+Brush) and you should have the brush tab opened up.

Under the brush tip shape menu, put your spacing to 150%

Select the Shape Dynamics tab and put your Jitter to 100% and your minimum diameter to 30%

Step 5:
Now select the Scattering tab and set your Scatter to 1000% and press the two right arrows at the top of the pannel to colapse it. You are now ready to start your bokeh brush effects! Now with layer 1 selected, brush on some circles onto the document. Don't make the circles too crazy or the effect will be overloaded. You should have something like this.

Step 6:
Create a new layer by pressing (Macs: Cmd+Shift+N) (Windows: Ctrl+Shift+N) set your brush size to around 60px and start brushing little blots of circles.Create another layer on top of it and set your brush to 20px and repeat the circles. We are creating an overlay effect so it looks really exciting. The Gradient makes it so we can get different colors through our "Bokeh".

Step 7:
 Now is where we get our bokeh! Select your first layer named "Layer 1" and set the blend mode to Overlay.

Set "Layer 2" to Overlay and reduce the opacity to what ever you think looks appealing, i kept my opacity for "Layer 2" around 90%. Set "Layer 3" to Soft Light or Overlay depending on which looks better to you.

Step 8:
 Now you may want to Duplicate some of the layers and alter them a bit more and add in more brush, to give you a better look, but what i am going to show you is how to make some text on it to give it some character. Press "T" to get the type tool. Set your Font to "Tahoma" and the font size to "80" (Depending if you kept the 300 dpi or not). Type your text in either all caps or whichever way you want to design it. This is what i have so far.

Step 9:
 Duplicate the Text layer by pressing "Macs: Cmd + J" "Windows: Ctrl + J" and rename it "Un Blurred". Select the Original text layer and go to "Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur" set the blur to 6 and press ok. Double click the Unblurred Text layer to open up the Layer Style menu. Click Gradient Overlay, Set the first color stop to #3ceaff, And the last one to #FFFFFF. Make sure the angle is at 90 degreese. Then click Ok .

Step 10:
Right click on the NonBlurred text layer and select "Copy Layer Style", then click on the blurred text layer, right click on it and select "Paste Layer Style". Now we have our full effect! You can go on from here with other techniques you have learned from past tutorials to achieve a greater effect!  This is what i have gooten.


FINAL VIEW:

Thanks :)
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