It’s funny, because I ended up discovering this effect during my trial and error of working out the Rain tutorial.
I didn’t think I’d end up actually making a tutorial for this effect – since I only know of one application for it – but I figured, maybe someone else out there needs to add creepy/broken-down/horror vibes to their project.
So if that’s you: you’re welcome!
Step 1
Get a picture of a television set and add it to your project.
I personally decided to go with an older looking set because I think it will help make the effect look more real, but you can use any television picture you like.
Once you’ve decided on a picture to use, create a New Layer and then fill the layer with the colour black.
Step 2
Next, go up to the top menu bar and find Filter – Noise – Add Noise from the drop down menu.
You can play with these values later, but for now, we’ll want to keep them to:
Amount of Percent 25%
Distribution Mode: Gaussian
Also make sure the Monochromatic box is checked.
Step 3
Now, we’re going to add the static to the television. There’s a couple different ways to do this, but I’ll show you the fastest way first.
Go to the Layer Opacity and change it so you can see the picture under the Noise layer, but are still somewhat able to see the Noise layer. For me, this was 40%.
Once you’ve done that, go up and use the Rectangle Select tool, then outline a rectangle shape that’s a little bigger than the screen on the television set.
Next, we’re going to right-click on the layer and select Inverse Selection from the drop-down menu. Then, you’re going to use the Eraser tool and start erasing everything outside of the box you created.
This is getting rid of the Noise that’s over the rest of the layer, and will leave us with just the Noise over the screen of the television.
Continue erasing until you’ve got everything outside of the box you created.
Step 4
To deselect the box you’ve created, go back to the Select tool, right-click and then choose the Deselect option from the drop-down that comes up.
We’re going to need to zoom in for this next part, so go ahead and zoom in until the television screen is about the only thing we can see in the document.
Now that we have a better view of what we’ll be doing, the first thing we’ll be doing now is erasing the box to fit the screen of our television better.
If yours is already pretty perfectly fit, with minimal overlap, you can skip this step.
If you need to, don’t forget you can change the size of your Eraser to make it smaller and easier to work with while being zoomed in.
Step 5
Right-click on the Noise layer and select Warp from the drop down menu.
Then, very carefully, drag the edges of the Noise layer until it appears to bend slightly into the curves of the television screen. If you chose something closer to a flat screen/modern television set, you may not need to do this step as drastically, but slightly warping the layer will still help give it an air of realism.
Once you’re happy with the Warping of your Noise layer, hit Enter on the keyboard or try to click the Pointer tool, and then in the dialogue box that pops up, select Apply changes.
Step 6
If needed, you can re-erase the edges of the Noise layer so they match up with the edges of the television screen.
If not, go ahead and you change the Opacity of the Noise layer back to 100%.
If you want a subtler static on the television, you can keep the Opacity lower. Depending on why you’re adding the static, you can even keep it semi-see through, and add a picture to the screen, so it looks like it’s a bad connection, instead of just being completely out.
Once you decide you’re happy with whatever you decide, you can go ahead and save this bad boy because we are done!
Like this tutorial? Check out the rest of the series here!
