30 Useful Abstract Photoshop Design Tutorials
- By Vitaly Friedman
- Posted in PHOTOSHOP, TUTORIAL
- 41 comments
By Janos Racz
Abstract works have many uses in design: they can serve as a vibrant desktop background, a mysterious webdesign header or they can be beautiful art pieces by themselves. What’s more, abstract design has many forms, and not too many limitations. You can always come up with new shapes and compositions with combination of various color schemes. You can create them using computer algorithms, putting it on the canvas from pure imagination, or just following a simple pattern you made up in your spare time.
But once you have an idea, it’s always good to know how to actually implement those to get the desired results. This collection of abstract design tutorials will hopefully able to introduce you to some of the skills and techniques commonly used when creating such pieces of artwork and design elements. Enjoy!
Useful Abstract Photoshop Tutorials
Chroma Wallpapers
The article shows how to make a great abstract composition combining a 3D-looking base with some additional effects.
Create a Wavy Blackberry Style Wallpaper Design
This wavy abstract design is brought to you buy Fabio Sasso, featured on PSDTuts. With only 16 steps to complete, this is a fun, quick and easy tutorial for everyone!
How to Create Brilliant Light Streaks in Photoshop
Various lightning effects are important parts of almost every absract design. This tutorial shows you how to use various filters to achieve a nice circular lightning effect and create this stunning image below!
Windows Vista Aurora Effect Photoshop Tutorial
Tutorials on re-creating certain popular and commonly used effects are always popular. This tutorial takes a good look at creating the Windows Vista aurora effect and walks you through step-by-step.
Leopard Aurora Borealis Photoshop Tutorial
Speaking about popular effects, here’s a nice Mac OSX Leopard-style wallpaper tutorial from DesignNerd.
Luminescent Lines
Luminescent Lines is another quick and fun tutorial on creating abstract lines and coloring them nicely with layer styles and the use of some brushes.
Making of an Abstract Art Piece: “Lonium”
This article is more of a making-of than a tutorial, where the author walks you through the most important phases of creating this amazing abstract artwork. An interesting read nonetheless with lots of ideas for future designs.
Creating Smoke
This tutorial illustrates a quick way to create smoke-like effects with the liquify filter that’ll surely come in handy for many abstract designs.
Lines Tutorial
A quick and simple tutorial for creating a nice colorful effect, brought to you by Giackop Design.
Creating an Abstract 3D Design
A bit longer and more difficult tutorial to create the image below. If you have the time though, certainly give it a shot!
Awesome digital bokeh effect in Photoshop
Bokeh effects are becoming more and more popular nowadays. This tutorial illustrates one way to achieve such an effect in a colorful composition.
Creating a Mac-Type Background in Photoshop
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a mac-style desktop background using custom selections and gradients.
Abstract Tutorial
A stunnig lightning effect merging complex shapes using various brushes.
Really cool Eclipse Effect in Photoshop
This tutorial with the beautiful outcome below is brought to you yet again by Fabio Sasso. It uses multiple techniques from other tutorials to create this piece that was once used as Abduzeedo’s footer.
Swirl Mania in Illustrator & Photoshop
With a little work in Adobe Illustrator, this tutorial guides you through the process of creating this lively abstract piece.
Light Rays
Another cool lightning effect that combines a great number of filters to achive the final effect.
Abstract Background Photoshop Tutorial
Yet another abstract lightning effect for those who still want more!
Signature Backgrounds
This tutorial walks you through creating this abstract image that you can commonly see in forum signatures.
Colorful Tornado
Another great abstract artwork tutorial by 9Tutorials, this time not so chaotic!
Colourful Swirl
This tutorial shows you how to create then combine multiple swirl effects to achieve the result below.
Make Abstract Wallpaper with Brushes
This tutorial featured on 10Steps.sg shows you the steps to create an amazing piece of abstract artwork using various brushes as a base.
Starfield Tileable Twitter Background Tutorial
If you’re in need of a cool new twitter background right now, this tutorial is just for you! And if not, it will still give you some ideas and techniqes that you can use in your future works for tilable abstract patterns.
Abstract Visual Effect
The effect below would look just as great as a desktop background as an artwork by itself, but you’ll find in the tutorial that it’s not as complicated as it looks. Make sure you click “next” to read the rest of the tutorial
Abstract art wallpaper
A great tutorial specifically about abstract wallpaper creation, with a nice result.
Design a Vista Styled Wallpaper
Yet another Vista-style wallpaper tutorial, a different style this time.
Creating a Stunning Digital Smoke Effect
Although the title suggests smoke effect, this tutorial is another great step-by-step guide on abstract design.
Trendy galactic poster design
A trendy poster nonetheless, a nice colorful background with some typography, though the first part is what you shold be more interested in abstract-design-wise.
Create a Rather Interesting, Wavy and Curving Abstract Shape Effect in Photoshop
This tutorial walks you through the creation of this rather interesting and colorful shape. Very detailed, with lots of screenshots.
Design Eye-catching Laser Particle Abstract Effect in Photoshop
These kind of images are what you can usually see in online galleries at the abstract 3D section, but this tutorial shows you how to create a nice laser particle effect right in Photoshop, without the use of any 3D applications!
How to Create an Interplay of Abstract Light Streaks
Lastly, a tutorial about this interesting and quite complex abstract image from PSDTuts with a few more new techniques to learn!
About the Author
Jordan Walker, 11 June 2010
Great list of resources for photoshop tutorials to create abstract designs.
John Browning, 11 June 2010
Great list, have always wanted to create my own abstract backgrounds of this type.
Axelrod, 11 June 2010
Thanks for these tutorials. These would be useful for great website and poster backgrounds.
Mike Nguyen, 11 June 2010
Thanks, this post is very useful to me
hubeRsen, 11 June 2010
excellent ressource.
CrazyOrange, 11 June 2010
How beautiful it is
kathir, 17 February 2012
very nice
Alex Flueras, 11 June 2010
Simply superb. Thanks for sharing.
Hilde, 12 June 2010
THis is a great collection, and very inspiring too. will help me on my skills for sure.
Thanks for sharing! :)
Laira, 12 June 2010
Great Tutorial. nice list of application Thanks a lot for the posting
Johan, 26 August 2010
Hello Laira. You look very beautiful. How are you?
selvakumar, 01 December 2012
very very super
Tanya Gill, 12 June 2010
Great Compilation of Useful Designs. Great Work :)
tipu, 09 November 2010
THis is a great collection, and very inspiring too. would you like to help me on my skills for sure.
Thanks for lots! :)
inspirationfeed, 13 June 2010
Great collection, thank you!
Benjie Maglente, 13 June 2010
Wow… Very Creative ideas and design. It’s helps a lot for me as a beginner in photoshop to make a professional design like this. Thanks a lot to all of you guys who shared this very useful tutorial collection. Love you all.
BORA, 14 June 2010
Thanks for this great list!
Best wishes
BORA
Software Development India, 15 June 2010
1. Upload your pic.
2. Go to Edit > Crop Image, select “Polygon/Freeform” and trace around yourself and click on “Crop Image”. Then, go to Edit > Copy Image To Clipboard.
3. Then, go to the main page and upload your picture again. Then, go to Adjust > Blur.
4. Then, go to Edit > Paste Image From Clipboard and paste yourself right over the blurry self.
prathap, 16 June 2010
simply & superb/…
jamal, 19 June 2010
very useful to me?Thanks for sharing.
Hair Care Beauty, 30 June 2010
great effect, they all look Precious
DANIEL, 13 July 2010
QUE PLENO, SON FANTASTICOS, UTILES Y MUY CREATIVOS
MIL GRACIAS.
Mondo Print, 16 July 2010
Great collection. Thanks!
Kimi, 23 July 2010
Great list………………………
i am glad to find that i was really need it………
Thankx
yathunandan, 16 August 2010
thank you so much for this tutorials, this tutorials are very much useful to me.
Jurrell, 01 October 2010
I love the way you put this website together great tutorials I’m as good one day.
Victor Ray, 01 October 2010
Great collection, I love Noupe so much.
Anandan, 08 November 2010
Ultimate collection. I love all the Tutorials
ham, 20 November 2010
tanks.great post.
Hussein Al Gburi, 02 February 2011
Nice collection = )
Burning Bridges, 24 February 2011
Love these designs. Always fun to just mess around with these and see what you can come up with
ArenaCreative, 25 April 2011
Really cool tuts – I’ve got to try at least a couple of these :) thanks
Daisy Soni, 28 August 2011
Excellent. it’s very useful to me…Thnxs a lot….
Murdoc, 05 September 2011
Thanks for the list, awesome stuff!
Adeel, 23 September 2011
Thanks for Sharing, Very Nice!
Bravo, 27 October 2011
Excellent tutorials. I will give them a try! Thanks for sharing
maklon, 12 January 2012
great tutorial!
haley, 18 February 2012
great tutorials, they are very clear and easy to understand
anamul haque, 02 September 2012
Excellent tutorials. I will give them a try! Thanks
Talharoomy, 26 January 2013
Fine collection, thank you for best images!
ozibite, 21 February 2013
Great collections of tutorials. Thanks soooo much.