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The Design Center, DT&G / Photoshop Department / Easy Burned Hole in Photoshop  

Easy burned holes using Photoshop

A number of readers have written to say they don't quite understand the article at Photoshop 911 about creating a "burned hole" effect. While there are a dozen ways to do this -- all of varying difficulty -- we decided to do this in Photoshop Elements 3. First because several readers requested it, and second because it's the most fundamental exercise. If you can do it here, you can do it in any program.

Burned Hole in Photoshop

We're going to move through this pretty quickly, so follow along. Be sure to watch the Layers Palette in the diagrams, because I won't necessarily tell you when to switch layers or make new ones.

You'll need your start up picture -- any picture you want revealed through the hole you'll be burning. We'll start with the picture of our model against the sky. Actually that's a painted backdrop of the sky and she's lighted with studio lights.

Start with a base photograph

Next we'll make the layer we plan to burn the hole through.

This is simply a new layer, filled with a color.
For the sake of the tutorial screens, we went to the
Filters menu, selected "Textures > Texturizer"
and gave it a little texture. This is, of course up to your taste -- this layer could be anything you want, including plain white.

Make a layer

Now, we need to establish the hole to be burned. First, we'll turn the color layer off so we can see the art. (Just click the "eye" icon.)

Draw the hole. Here we simply used the Lasso tool. (Tap "L")
This is probably too ragged for a realistic hole, but we've made it craggy just to show the technique. It actually looks more like a bullet hole.

Create and the hole

Once you have it, you'll want to save the selection because we'll be using it again and again.

In order to generate the burned edges around the hole, we'll need a larger hole.
Choose: Select > Modify > Expand

Once it's expanded, and you've clicked 'Okay' in the dialog, you need to
Fill the hole with BLACK.
(Make sure Black is your foreground color --
Tap "D" -- and then commit an Option/Delete, or Alt/Delete which ever system you happen to be using.)

For the sake of the tutorial in this step, we'll turn our "Color Layer" back on, so we can clearly see the effect as it unfolds.

Drop the selection (if it's still selected -- Tap: Cmd/D, or Ctrl/D) and
Choose: Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur
Experiment with the setting until it looks right -- something like this will be good.

Blur the hole.

Article continues as we Cut the Hole and Finish up...

 

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