Really being creative Designer.

Pixel Stretch Effect is an awesome effect you may have seen everywhere these days. But did you knew that it is really easy to make it in Photoshop?


Yes, you heard me right. It is really easy to make this effect in photoshop in a matter of few steps.
so, let's get started.

 Firstly you need an interesting photo. I have chosen this image.


This effect looks good on photos that have dynamic pose, for example, a ballerina, a dancer, sportsperson in action and many more.

Next, if your image has a background isolate the subject to a transparent background. You can easily isolate your subject using magic wand or pen tool.

Now comes the main part. You will find a number of ways to this but I have come with a new method that I have developed. follow these steps:

1) Duplicate the image 2 times. Let's name the top layer Main and bottom layer right. Hide the original image.

2) Now move the right layer to the right by holding Shift + right arrow 4 times. This will change according to your image but for my image 4 works just fine.

3) Select the Marquee tool and select the right image layer by Ctrl-clicking on the thumbnail of the right layer on the layer panel.

4) Press Ctrl + Alt-click on the thumbnail of the main layer. This will result in only the intersecting part of the image being selected. Now press Ctrl + Shift + C Followed by Ctrl + Shift + V. this will copy and paste it onto the new layer. Hide the Main and right layer.

 

5) Alt Click and drag it to right keep it overlapped. Make many such copies. I made 20 such copies! The point is to make a complete image from top to bottom. You may need more or fewer copies depending on your image.

6) Select the single column marquee tool and click on the image where it full from top to bottom. Now press Ctrl + Shift + C Followed by Ctrl + Shift + V. this will copy and paste it onto the new layer. Hide all the other copies.

7) You may not be able to see anything but there is :) Press  Ctrl + T and stretch it to the right and there you have it pixel stretch effect.

 

 8) Turn on the original layer ie unhide it. Move the pixel stretch behind it. Apply a layer mask and mask out the areas on the left of the image as well as the parts not required. Finally, you have the Final result.

There are many variations to this effect. It all is about your creativity. This is how simple it is to create Pixel stretch effect in photoshop.

Graphics and web designers always need the best image and photos for their design project. The web is full of awesome photos.


That being said you can not use any image of the web as they are copyright. They cannot be used unless you buy them. However, freelance designers have a budget. They cannot afford to buy high pice images if the project is of a low budget. Therefore there is always a need for sites that offer free image for commercial use. Luckily there are some good sites that offer good image free for commercial use.


People get attracted to images. We need images in our day to day life for our blog, social media, website and print projects. So we need images we can use without any legal issues of copyright. Images have licenses. There are various types of licenses. Images with a creative common license are the ones you should use in your projects. You can copy, distribute, and display the photo or image placed under a Creative Commons license providing the photo or image is correctly attributed to the owner. Please check the license of the image before you use it. There are some images which require a link back while others don't.

Here is the list,

1) Pixabay: Pixabay is one of the best sites to get copyright free stock images. There are many images which are of high quality.

The best part is you can get images of all quality ie high, medium or low. Vector images are however not so good. The site also provides free videos as well.


2) Pexels: This site has good quality images that you can use. There are tonnes of hi-quality images you can use.

3) Unsplash: This is the best site for free photos and images. They have images for all categories. Wide range of artists upload images every single day.

Sliced text effect is a popular text effect. It really easy to create the effect in a matter of few steps in illustrator.



So let's see how its done,

1) Type in your text. Here for now I here using one letter to keep it simple and easy.



2) Select the text right click and select create outlines.

3) Now select the line tool and create a line as shown in the image. You have to place this line where you want to cut the text. So think and decide where you want to slice the text and accordingly place the line.


4) Open the pathfinder pallet from the windows menu or simply press ctr+Shift+F9. Select both text and line and click on Divide in the pathfinders pallet. Now again right click and select Ungroup.


5) Select direct selection tool and select lower part of R and change the Color.



6) Now select lower part to text and move it down a bit.


That's it Simple and easily done in few steps. You can achieve the same result with words.

Here are some examples,




So go ahead and create your own versions and Don't forget to share your art with me and follow me on twitter and pintrest.