Learn How To Design a translucent 3D Frosted Glass Box based on the Safari Icon in Adobe

Make a new document with these settings:
Setting Up

Next, select the fill tool (G) and fill it with #626262. Now, we need to make a new adjustment layer. Make a brightness/contrast layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast). Put it on these parameters.
Adjustment Layer Parameters

We add this adjustment layer so as everything looks better in the later stages.
Step 2: Making the Circle

Select the circular marquee tool and use these settings:

Make a selection and fill it with #649ad2. Then, grab a soft eraser, on a low opacity, and erase some areas like this:

This is so that it looks more 3D, and later on, it’ll add a nice transparent feel to our icon.

When you’re happy, and you have a similar result to the one above, add these Layer FX to it, to make it look better.

You should now have something resembling this:

Step 3: Making the Circle 3D

In this step, we’re going to make the circle look 3D. The theory of this is simple. You think about where the light is coming from, then add shadows and highlights to fit your light source if you keep this consistent, then you’ll have a much better final result. Below is some light theory that should make it easier for you.

Lighting

Although this is not the best of diagrams, it shows basic lighting. If you stick to this, and have a constantlight source, your piece will turn out far more striking and realistic.

OK, grab your circular marquee tool, set it to 10px Feather and make it 200px by 200px. There are many different ways of getting highlights/gloss and shadows. My favourite, and I think one of the best ways to get gloss is like this.

Change the layer mode to multiply

And then, with white as your foreground colour, add this Layer FX

Vary

You can vary this. When making your highlights, you can vary the opacity, or colour of the gradient you use. You can also vary the layer mode. Try changing some settings now, and see what happens!

Shadows are much easier to make, and in a way, more powerful. You can have more highlights than shadows, because shadows are more obvious. For a shadow, simply make a circle, you can vary this and the feather px. Then, you can set it to soft light, overlay or of course, normal, it really comes down to which one you like best.

With the shadows, you can make them very discreet, yet they still play a very important part in the eventual outcome of the icon. Highlights are less noticeable, so you can add more of them, but with shadows, they play a bigger part; and have more of an impact.

The worst thing you can do when shadowing is zoom in too far. When you do that, you can’t see the whole image, and so you can’t really tell if it looks right. Make sure that when shadowing, you can see the whole image, and you’re thinking about what you’re doing!

By now, you should have a well highlighted and shadowed 3D sphere, resembling this. Don’t worry if it looks a little strange at this point, it’ll all come together later on.

Now, that looks OK. I added some highlights on the right that add a lot; I used the highlight technique described above. In this step, we are going to make those really nice 3D looking lines. The way to do this is simple, which we’ll find out in a bit.

Select your pen tool and get a brush size of 3px wide. You want to use these settings for the pen tool.

Next, we want to start drawing paths like this:

Set your brush size to around 3 – 5pxNow, for PC users, press right click > stroke path, for Mac users;CTRL + click > stroke path. When you stroke paths, there are two types of stroke paths. With simulated pressures and without simulated pressures. Here is an example of both.

If it doesn’t work, you may need to reset your brushes here’s how to do that:

In the next step, we’ll work out how to make these lines aid the 3D look.
Step 5: Detailing the Detail

You probably have some white lines now, looking 3D, but not merging into the icon. Set the layers tosoft light or overlay, you can also lower the opacity and/or the fill of the lines. You can also get a soft eraser to erase some areas to make it look more 3D.

If you look carefully, you will also see not only the very distinct circles, which I’ll tell you how to do later; but also the very faint ones. To make both of them, grab the circular marquee tool with these parameters:

You can then edit the layer styles. For mine, I simply set the opacity to 50%. But you could set it to soft light or overlay.

For the faint ones, but it below every ‘line’ layer, and set it to soft light or overlay and lower the opacity.

In the next step, we’ll make 3D paths, that really add to the image.
Step 6: 3D Paths

This is a really short step, but it adds a lot.

Firstly, get your pen tool open, and then follow these steps.

Experiment

Try out different paths and set some layers to soft light or overlay and lower the opacity.
Step 7: Making the Basic Box

If you want to have something to trace around, you can do so around here. But of course, if you want to make your own, go for it! When you’re tracing, use the pen tool, and make each side on a new layer. Then, fill the paths with white (#ffffff). Then add these layer FX to every side.

On the ‘front’ sides, set the fill to 15% and the ‘back’ sides to 10%. This’ll get it looking transparent.

Remember that highlight technique earlier? Well, use that technique on paths like this. Make a new layerabove each box ’side’ and then make a path accordingly. To make ’swirly’ paths, make two points, then; click in the middle of the path and drag it up/down left/right and it’ll make a nice path. Have a look at this example.

Then, select the right ’side’ layer and press CTRL + SHIFT + I or for Mac users CMND + SHIFT + I, then press delete. In the next step we will look at adding more detail into the box.
Step 9: Adding Details to the Box

In this step, there’s not going to be much writing, more annotated pictures. I am using the techniques for stroking paths, highlights and shadows that we looked at earlier to make the box, and anything you seen in these pictures.

Making Softer Shadows

If you want to make those soft shadows, get a soft brush (airbrush) around the size of 9-12px, stroke the paths and then lower the opacitysoft light.
Step 10: Making Everything Glow

That looks good, but… Not full of that striking glow. To get something to glow, it’s really easy. Simply get an airbrush, 100-300px and just paint on white. For background highlights, make new layers at the bottom and highlight there. For more centralised ones, do it on top, and maybe in a smaller brush.

To get a better glow-type look, adding lots of layers on 5-10% opacity will look much better than two or three on 40%. You can also add blue highlights to give it more of a glow.

The icon looks good, but it’d be nice to add a bit more shadow. Make a new layer at the top (behind your contrast one) and fill it with black (#000000) and set the fill to 0%. Then add these layer styles and you have a nice shadowed look.

And you’ll have a nice shadowed look to your image.
Conclusion

In this tutorial, we’ve learnt about strokes, layering, shadowing, highlighting, layer FX, layer modes,opacity and fill. Put together you can make so many amazing things in Photoshop, so good luck; and make sure you check Tutorial9 frequently for tutorials!

I hope you enjoyed creating your own internet icon!

In this tutorial we will take a look at HDR photography. HDRI (High Dynamic Range Imaging) was originally used in 3D and is now in full force in photography. Basically it's the process of taking multiple exposures and merging them together into a single 32 bit image. Let me explain: A camera is capable of capturing a limited amount of tones in a single photo. Typically we sacrifice elements in a photo when we press the shutter. For example there is a powerful cloudscape and some cliffs. If we expose for the clouds the cliffs become dark. If we set the camera's exposure to capture detail in the cliffs, the brighter sky is blown out and detail is lost. This is because the human eye can see a larger range of tones than the camera can capture on the chip or film in a single photograph.

The solution is to take more than one photograph and bracket the photos. Shoot normal exposure, then under-expose a shot to capture highlights and over-expose a shot to capture shadow detail. Finally, merge these photos together to produce a single image with a larger range of tones that can now show all the details in the shadows and highlights. This tutorial will show you how to complete this process with the minimum fuss.

First we need to get our source images. (You could begin with a 32 bit 3D image and then skip to step 6). Typically we will capture these with our camera. You will need to shoot a minimum of 2 photos with different exposure settings.

Its been recommended by Adobe to limit the bracketing by 1 stop and this will help reduce banding. You may also take 5 or more shots with a smaller gap in the bracketing. I personally get good results from 3 shots. I like to over expose and under expose by 2 stops. I know this is a bigger bracket than most people are comfortable with, but for the type of HDR images I like to create (cityscapes), this works great. If your shooting people, you may want to reduce this to even 3rd stops.

(Note: You can't use a single raw image and exposure it several times as some people suggest, for a true HDR photo. This is known as pseudo-HDR. Photoshop will not allow you to merge these because there isn't sufficient tone detail captured).

For more details see the new video HDR and Photoshop

Start with 3 images. One normal exposure, the second underexposed and the third overexposed. In this case I used 2 stop bracketing. As I shoot a lot of city scapes I can get away with 2 stops, because I'm mainly shooting flat surfaces and banding and posterization isn't such a problem. If your shooting rounded and curved surfaces you will want to lower your bracketing to get smoother gradients.

I set the bracketing on my camera to 2 stops. Then I set the shooting mode to burst. When I hold the shutter down, 3 photos will be captured. I shoot in RAW mode for the widest possible dynamic range. You can still create HDR if your camera doesn't support RAW. Make sure you shoot in Aperture Priority or in Manual. You want to bracket the exposure time, not the Aperture. If you change the aperture, the depth of field won't be consistent and you'll get blurring. Also avoid any moving subjects in the photo or you'll get ghosting.

Time to merge the photos together into a single 32 bit image.

Choose File>Automate >Merge to HDR. This works on Photoshop CS2 and CS3. (CS2 Doesn't have auto align). Choose either images or folder. I organize each set of photos in its own folder so I used the folder option. Select your photos to merge. Turn on Auto Align in Photoshop CS3. Click OK. (Photoshop CS3 uses new Auto-align technology that even allows you to create HDR without the use of a tripod!)

Your images will now be merged into a single photo. You can turn off individual photos by un checking their boxes on the left filmstrip. If you get some blurring caused by camera shake in the longest exposure, you may want to turn off that photo.

The merged result is a floating-point 32 bit image. You can adjust the overall tones by sliding the White Point slider. Easy with it, a little movement goes a long way!

Click OK to merge the photos into a 32 bit image. Now is a good time to save your file.

In order to use the photos, you'll need to convert them t 16 or 8 bit images. When we convert them we will create what I call interpretations of the photo. The reason I say this is because we have unlimited ways we can make the photo look. While we have this huge dynamic range available in 32 bit, we will no longer have those options after conversion. Always work from the saved 32 bit version, and then convert and save versions (personal interpretations). Avoid overwriting the 32 bit image, it's our master and we may want to go back to it many times.

Choose Image>Mode>16 bit (or 8 bit). Now we get to play with some fun options. You're now at the tone mapping part of the process. This is were all the creativity can ooze.

(If you want to make the adjustments without converting, choose view>32 Bit Preview Options. You can use several of Photoshop's tools in the Image>Adjustments menu. The most important of these is the Exposure control)

You'll see an HDR Conversion Dialog box. Exposure and Gamma is the default option. Best way to approach this? Set the gamma first, then adjust the exposure to suit. If you want an image with lots of contrast, lower the gamma. For less contrast raise the gamma. Finally, adjust the exposure to get the desired brightness. If you want more control, read on... otherwise press OK to convert.

Change the Method to Local Adaption. (There are 4 available methods, but these are the only 2 with user input).

With local Adaption, you can adjust the curves. Set these like you would normally work in curves, but don't be afraid to clip the histogram a little. You can clip because your working with a larger dynamic range than you're used to. Bring out the detail in the image, but don't forget to put some shadow in there or it will look washed out and fake. Once your happy with the curve, adjust the radius and Threshold sliders to make sure there are no halos in the photo. (Badly converted HDR images have a glow around the areas of contrast.) The radius controls the mask blur while the threshold decides what gets blurred and what doesn't.

Click ok to convert.

Here we have a merged image from HDR. The second image is a variation. In the second variation, I applied exposure, curves and sharpening settings while in 32-bit mode (Highlight Compression Method). Photoshop is great for producing very realistic HDR images.

If your desiring a more surreal result there are different plug-ins that you can use. My favorite is Photomatix pro from HDRsoft. You can just get the tone mapping plug in for Photoshop which works great. Use the coupon code photoshopcafe to save 15%.

Using photomatix tone mapping plugin allows you to get highly detailed textures in your photographs. You merge in Photoshop as shown in this tutorial. Then choose Filter>Photomatix to apply tone mapping. Convert and save as normal.

This image shows an image after tone mapping using Photomatix pro.

Here you can see comparisons between a single image, subtle Photoshop HDR and a radical Photomatix effect (Click for larger image). Whatever result your after, hopefully this tutorial has helped demystify the HDR process.

Here is another HDR shot of mine. This is a night scene converted to grayscale.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

Colin