As you have probably found out, via the title or the nice image we put at the top of each of our posts, in this tutorial, we’ll be making a swirly effect coming out of a shoe. However, I strongly encourage you to try and be as creative as you can. Therefore, if you don’t want to do this effect coming out of a shoe in particular, and instead want it coming out of a cup, perhaps, then do that instead. Anyway, I decided upon the shoe since it was the first thing I saw when I was looking for inspiration (apparently I look for inspiration on the floor). Rather than rambling anymore, here’s the link to the shoe I used, if you wanna follow what I did to the punctuation mark: White Converse

This is pretty straight forward. You’ll notice the shoe in the picture I linked is quite massive, so I made a new document, size 1000×1000 in photoshop, opened the picture of a shoe, pulled it into the the 1000×1000 document and resized it so it was easier to work with (takes deep breath after ridiculously long sentence). Just go to Edit -> Free Transform, and make it a bit smaller, so that it’s down to a size you can work with.

To make the nice swirly effect we’re going to use a combination of the pen tool and the brush tool. Select the pen tool. Look at the bar at the top of your screen and make sure the paths option is selected:

Then go ahead and draw a nice spiraly shape as I have done below:

Now open the brush window. If you don’t know where that is, try going to Windows -> Brushes. Make sure you have the brush tool selected, and select the brush as shown below, which is just a regular size 13pt brush.

Make sure smoothing is ticked, and click on Shape Dynamics, and give it these settings

A word of advice: the number beside “Fade” should be changed depending on the length of what you’ve drawn with the pen tool. What we’re trying to get is a sharp point on the end of the spirals. Therefore if you’re not getting a sharp point when we do the next step, or if the spiral is ending too soon, try altering this number until you get what you’re happy with.

Set your foreground color to a nice bright color like #ed1447. Make a new layer and select the pen tool again. Right click and select Stroke path…. Change the drop down to “Brush” and click OK.

Right click again and select Delete Path (we don’t need it anymore).

Now, grab the pen tool again, and draw a shape around the edge of the shoe like below.

Right click, and select Make Selection…, and click OK. Make sure the swirl layer is selected and press delete. Finally, go to Filter -> Sharpen -> Sharpen. You should have the something like this:

Continue with this technique until you end up with something like this: (I’ve listed the colors on this image)

Next I made another shape like below with the pen tool

Right click on this and click on Make Selection… and click OK. Select the orange swirly layer, and press delete. You should have something like this now:

After that I continued adding spirals using the same technique we used previously, and ended up with what’s below. Remember to alter your brush settings. Change the size of the brush, and change the Shape Dynamics, so that you

First of all, duplicate the shoe layer. Put this duplicated layer above the original, and go to Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur. Set the radius of the blur to about 5px.

Now go to Image -> Adjustments -> Levels. Move the indicators around until the shoe is significantly darkened. Here are the settings I’m using:

Now drop opacity on this blurred shoe layer down to 25%. I then continued to add a few more spirals to the shoe, and ended up with this:

Duplicate all the spiraly layers and merge them together by selecting them all, right clicking, selecting “duplicate layers”, and then right clicking on these duplicated layers and selecting “Merge Layers”. Rename this layer to “All Spirals” and duplicate it. Select one copy of the All Spirals layer and go to Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur. Make sure the radius is set to 5px and click OK. Finally, set this layer to Screen. You may also want to click on the eye icon beside the duplicated All Spirals layer to make it transparent.

Grab the gradient tool, and change the mode to Radial Gradient. Change your foreground to white, and on a new layer, (using the foreground to transparent gradient) and draw a few gradients on a new layer, as
shown below.

Set this layer to Soft Light, and click on the eye icon of the duplicated All Spirals layer. Grab the blur tool and right click on the document, and set hardness to 0%. Start brushing around the bottom of the spirals, until you end up with something like below:

To finish off, set the blend mode on this layer to Overlay.

And that’s it! You’re done. I hope this tutorial taught you something new. Here’s what I got in the end: