Fake Crop Circles Photoshop Tutorial
- February 5th, 2007
- Posted in Photo effects, Photography, Photoshop
Aliens from outer space or fakes created by people with far too much time on their hands ? Who knows, or indeed cares ? Here we present you with an easy way to create fake ones using photoshop.
First off, find an aerial view of a suitable field to create our crop circle, we used one from istock photo for the purpose of this tutorial, just search for “aerial field” if you want to find the one we used :
Next we need to create the crop circle pattern, this can be anything you like - get creative, you could also use a company logo etc, for this tutorial we used the custom shape tool and the elipse tool, make this to start with :
Then build up a bit more detail with more circles etc :
This shape will form the basis of our crop circle, save this psd file with all your circles on separate layers, then hide the background layer and on the menu go to Layer > Merge Visible. This puts the circle design all on one layer, now show the background (field photo) layer again. Now choose Edit > Transform > distort and move the handles in line with the stripes on the field to give the idea of perspective :
Now duplicate this layer, choose Edit > Free Transform, hold down shift and move the handle to make smaller versions of the pattern and position them like so :
Once again, hide the field photo and merge the 3 circles layers together. Hold down ctrl + click on the circles layer to make a selection, hide the circles layer and then create a new layer :
Fill this layer with black, and then right click on it in the layer window and choose “blending options”, set the blending mode to “overlay” and take the opacity down to 55% :
Then click on inner-shadow and use these settings :
Finally, go to Filter > Distort > Ripple and use these settings :
And thats it, your final image should look like this :
You can also download the psd for this tutorial.
Ever think of making a video tutorial on this?
Matt
http://www.thevideosense.com/user/photoshoptutorials
Fabulous tutorial, but the end result photo got cut off. So, guess those crop circles are still a mystery!
Its showing ok for me? Try refreshing the page!
ITs a good tutorial but how bout selcting a channel(blue) as a layer mask instead (or in addition to) of a ripple effect to give it a more realistic looking effect….
This is horrible… too basic… get a sample photo of crop from side and paste those into far edges, or at least some texture if not working high-res. Also the flattened crop will play with light differently, kind of like a cd… where the machine lines are, the crop is already flat or not there, so don’t darken the dark lines… the tone of the dark lines doesn’t match the tone of the crop circle, it’s too dark (too saturated?)…
And finally: go look at cropcircles photos to get a basic idea of what to aim for! The circles are lighter, not darker, than the standing crop.
Don’t mean to be an ass… just criticising…
you are alll GAAAY!!!!!!!!!!
i like crop circles and am obbsessed with the research of such things.How do you know if one is fake?
i guess if we see thepher chop one up, it’ll definitely look fake.
Thepher is right. Not to be an ass, but this is a rather basic tutorial and the results are mediocre at best.
that looks rubbish
I found that using Soft Light instead of Overlay looked much better. Nice tutorial for a beginner like me
Now all we have to do is get this sent to a local newspaper and get them to print it n hey weve got ourselves a story
yer man that looks ace iwant to try wat do i do to download the page