Use Illustrator and Photoshop to Create a 3D String of Pills – Screencast
Tutorial Details
- Program: Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Estimated Completion Time: 1 Hour
Download Source Files
Final Product What You'll Be Creating
Designers often use both Illustrator and Photoshop to create a scene or graphic. Today we will combine both of these powerful applications to create a 3-dimensional pill and then create a composite image using these elements. Let’s get started!
Resources Used
The following resources were used during the production of this tutorial.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Tags: Videos
Enjoyed this Post?
Subscribe to our RSS Feed, Follow us on Twitter or simply recommend us to friends and colleagues!
By Tomasz Biskup
My name is Tomasz (Tom) and I am a graphics and motion designer for new media and printing. I work as a full-time designer and I'm a student at University of Arts in Poland. Aside from designing, I just love good, independent music, Jim Jarmusch movies and riding my Vespa scooter. If you want to ask me something or simply say “hi”, visit my blog at tomaszbiskup.com.
Join our newsletter!
Freelance Jobs
Create a Tutorial, Get Paid!
Have something to teach the world? Want to earn money doing it? Tutorials, screencasts, and articles published here on Psdtuts+ are largely contributed by readers just like you! We'll pay you great money for good content. Find Out More
cool stuff bro!!!
cool stuff bro!!!!
WOW, really well explained tutorial !
I understand you very well (I’m not english).
And the result is very impressive.
GOOD JOB ! :)
Awesome dude. alot of dif/ techniques and tips I learned or was reminded of… NICE TUT!
End result looks awesome!!
this is great, I learned a lot of useful shortcuts. good job
Great tutorial Tomasz!! Thanks very much!
Very nice!
wow never knew that this was possible with just photoshop and illustrator very informative
I love your artwork.
Awesome work !!!
this is awesome!
that’s it very good thanks for sharing
Really nice effect !!!
Thx for sharing …
ahh yes! these pills they are the nice! i is love the pills here!
please give me more of all this pills for me to take i love them!
Most Extraordinary.. I’ve never played with the map art feature. Off to the sandbox I go.
Beautiful tutorial! Very well explained and the final product looks very good..
Thank you!
Excelente o tutorial!
This was a splendid tutorial!!! It was well explained and the end result was great, also I can see all the hard work you must have put into making the picture then recording and clipping and editing the whole thing. It was all very well done and I hope to see more of tutorials from you!!!
Nice Job!
Really nice tutorial. My only comment is that some of the blur doesn’t seem right. I don’t know if this was the concept behind the image but if the blurred objects are supposed to be closer to the imaginary camera, then the blurring is totally off as I see smaller pills being out of focus. This wouldn’t happen in real life. Other than that, outstanding job!!! ;)
Hi Trizicklo,
in photography and film, if you use a long lens and large aperture, depth of field is very thin wich means, that only a few centimeters of Z-space will be in focus and everything CLOSER and FURTHER than DOF line will be blurred. So if we use ie. 85mm lens @ f/1.8, then smaller pills far away WILL be blurred as well as those close to the camera.
Thanks for your comment,
Tom
Of course this is true, but if you look closely, some of the OOF (out of focus) pills do not make sense. For example, if you look about an inch to the left of the “B”, there are two pills, the same size, right next to each other. One is OOF and the other isn’t. Because the pills are the same size, it represents that they are the same distance away from the lense, so they should be represented identically in reference to focus.
Otherwise, this is a very good tutorial!
Not to mention, the background is completely in focus, which really doesn’t make sense at all. There is no lens on the planet that would render this image the way the artist has.
:) Ok I agree on this one. Maybe I missed some of them in blurring process, but of course if you get the idea of DOF, fou can do it better and more precise by yourself. Thanks for all nice comments. I’m glad you like it.
@Tom: I really don’t know much about the types of cameras and lenses but sometimes you can tell when an image looks a little odd. I didn’t want to be very specific with my comment, I didn’t want to cause a misunderstanding of any kind. I think Shane’s comment is what I was trying to say in my first post. I really love the whole concept though. ;)
OMG!!! Very Very Nice :O
This tutorial is awesome!!! I only wish I had the patience to duplicate it :) I’d probably just make all those pills with the shadows and blurs in a 3D program, because then they would look just as nice, have no mistakes (with shadow and blurring), and save me a boat load of time.
incredible tutorial!!! One of the very best i’ve seen in quite a long time. So many wonderful tips, unbelievable it was all just in illustrator and photoshop. Thanks so much!
I really like the final image! Bookmarked!
Tomasz,
No need to apologize for your english. It is far better than 50% of the people in the United States.
Very nice tutorial !!
Learned a lot..
keep up the good work..thanks!!
tooo good awesome tut
thanks!!
One of the best tuts here. Did not know you can do this with just the 2 programs. It seems so easy now.
Thank you for this awesome screencast!
Great Tutorial…
just what i was looking for ;D
hey, one of the best screencast tutorial i’ve ever seen. I understood everything you said, so for a German you have a very understandable english.
And your final artwork is absolutely amazing. I learned a lot and want to see more from you.
thanks a lot
greetings from germany
This Tutorial could only be taught by a master. I learned alot about photoshop
Arranging those pills and shadow them was hard, I spent +1h and still I didnt get it right,
here`s my outcome http://twitpic.com/2dzc7b
thanks again you rock!
Hey Maria,
thanks for your feedback. I saw your work, and I think you should:
- compose less number of pills
- skip the blurring part until you have all shaded and shadow-covered properly
- work on proper shadow positions.
If you’re not sure where should the shadow appear, apply the “drop shadow” effect to the pill ON TOP of anothers and set drop shadow values to:
- size 8px
- spread 35%
- distance 0px
Then you will see where should pills below be shadow-covered.
There is also another technique of doing that. After applying drop shadow with these values you go to “Layer->Layer Style->Create Layer” and then you clip created-shadow layer (cmd+alt+G) to appear only on the pill below the one that casts shadow. Maybe my next tutorial will cover this technique.
Regards to you,
Tom
Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to give me some advices. I got excited on the pills, lol. Just kidding, I ain`t got much skills on Photoshop so I feel very glad in receiving your advices, specially on the shadows. using brushes is my BIG PROBLEM in PS CS4, I`m gonna copy these lines and paste them on my notes in my computer FOREVER!!
P.S: you trully ROCK!
P.S2: you gotta a fan in me ^_^
excellent work…
Great Tutorial “thanks” (*_*)
This looks very impressive. I look forward to spending some time working on this one!
awesome tut!!!!! thx a lot
Great work man, photoshop and illustrator is primary tools and this one is something really amazing. Please keep posting with new ideas and tutorials. Will be very thankful to you.
Very nice tut, love the 3D, end result is beautiful!! :)
This is cool!! loved doing it!
very nice designing…
+1
Excellent work!!! Really appreciate this tutorial.
I’m a little late, so you might not see this… However: great! Best tutorial I’ve seen on here for ages. It was clearly and professionally presented. Thank you! And, btw, there’s nothing wrong with your English at all.
I hope we’ll hear more from you.
hey, ive got a problem, when i Effect > 3d > revolve it only colours the top and bottom bit up, im 100% new to ai, this is the first project im trying to complete, could anyone please point out what the problem is?
Hi Elliot,
Send me a jpeg or ai file of what you have, I’ll try to help.
Regards,
Tom
mail@tomaszbiskup.com
Hey, your problem is that you have no stroke color selected.
Just put the stroke color to black and there you go.
Wow… this is an amazing tutorial! I didn’t realize how much in depth the 3d plugin went. Thanks for the great tutorial… Looks as if I won’t be getting any sleep tonight! Hope you create more tuts!
that was great, i learned a lot about 3D, thanks dude!
thanks for sharing
wow, this is just amazing, i love it
Awesome video tut = ++A!! tnx for sharing man.
Example I made – http://bit.ly/90rjXD
Really nice tutorial, nice to be able to see it created as you watch. Was also nice to see some instruction of combining Illustrator and Photoshop. Excellent job, thank you for spending time doing it, and sharing with us.
Awesome!!! the final artwork is really awesome. Thanks 4 sharing.
GO TUTSPLUS.
Probably one of the most professional tutorials i have ever seen on tut-plus. thanks for shareing im so eagur for your next tutorial!