Explosion Disintegration Effect Photoshop Tutorial

CREATE THIS DISPERSION EFFECT IN PHOTOSHOP!

In this Photoshop tutorial, we’ll create our own custom watercolor texture using a mix of Photoshop brushes, dodging and burning, textures, and a photo to establish a base color scheme. After we’ve created a watercolor texture, we’ll mask it to a popular logo and use more Photoshop brushes to create an exploding disintegrating effect that will make our logo look like it’s bursting from the surface on which it is placed for this really cool effect!

Tags: photoshop tutorial, photoshop tutorials, how to, graphic design, graphic designer, graphic design Photoshop, splatter effect photoshop, watercolor photoshop, disintegration photoshop, explosion photoshop, exploding photoshop, special effects photoshop, Photoshop Dispersion Effect, Photoshop Online, Dispersion Effect, FEAT

Site Exclusive Tutorial Recording Notes:

Disclaimer: these are the actual notes I used to record this video and are written in a language you may or may not understand. Hopefully, you find them useful or cool.

1. Create new doc 2560×1440 and drag in painted wall w/ railings photo to begin
2. Use Free Transform to rotate and scale photo to cover (extend past the edges of the doc to prevent “see-through” when it gets blurred)
3. Add a 100-200px Gaussian blur (all depends on the detail level and how quickly one color fades to another in the photo)
4. Add Vibrance Adjustment Layer V:+100
5. Brightness/Contrast: B: +60 C: -25
6. Create new layer just below the Adjustment Layers and fill it with 50% gray and set to Overlay
7. Grab the Burn tool and set to 35% exposure in the Midtones Range
8. Load in the Watercolor brushes that you downloaded
9. Click with various different brushes to begin creating a randomized watercolor texture on top of the color
10. Hold down Alt/Opt while using the Burn tool to use different watercolor brushes to Dodge this 50% gray layer
11. Duplicate the 50% gray layer to boost the contrast of the effect
12. Add a Color Balance Layer above all layers to boost colors in tones as you wish to add both color and contrast to the effect
13. Add a Selective Color layer and boost the blacks in the darkest areas of the effect
14. Open the Vintage Concrete texture file, desaturate, and use Levels to set the midtone around 50% gray so we can knock it out with ease later on
15. Convert to a pattern for use later
16. Go back to the watercolor image and add a Pattern Layer and choose the pattern we just made, set the scale to 165%, and drag the pattern around to get it how you want
17. Set the blend mode to Soft Light and reduce the layer opacity to 70%
18. Duplicate this Pattern layer and double click to change the settings and change the scale to 100% and drag the pattern around a little more.
19. MERGE ALL LAYERS TO A NEW LAYER
20. Create new 2560×1440 doc in Photoshop
21. Go to https://worldvectorlogo.com/search/Youtube and grab a YouTube play button graphic (or any other icon you prefer)
22. Drag that EPS file into the Photoshop and rescale to get it into place
23. Use the Poly Lasso to create a selection around the center triangle shape and go Layer>Layer Mask>Hide Selection to knock a hole in the center of the play button
24. Drag the watercolor that we created over into this document and clip to this play button
25. Duplicate the clipped watercolor layer and hide it
26. Use free transform to size down the watercolor that you clipped to the logo
27. Add a black filled Layer Mask to the watercolor layer
28. Import the Powder Brushes and set size to 1000px and jitter the size and angle
29. Paint white on the black mask to start creating the explosion
30. Import the Dust brushes and repeat the process
31. Import the Explosion brushes and repeat the process
32. Import Disintegration brushes and repeat the process AGAIN
33. Import the Dust brushes and set size to 500px with size and angle jitter and paint black on the playbutton’s mask to start breaking up the hard edge
34. Import and try other brushes and play with both masks to erase or add particles to create the effect
35. Add a Hue/Sat layer and boost the saturation or shift the hue if needed
36. Try adding a gradient map layer and add brightly colored gradients to convert to an epic looking duotone image (shift color stops to boost the color attacking different areas of the graphic to get the perfect look)