CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

How would I go about making certain things 3D like in this image?

I want to use this effect in an image I'm working on. My computer runs 4.0 and my dad has CS so if anyone could either find a good tutorial (preferably one that doesn't use text as an example) for this kind of thing that'd be greatly appreciated.

Well the image is highlighted at the character, so the lighting effect Filter - render - lightning effects. It may make a feel for it, other than that there are the brushes *black soft ones* that can help you construct it. A nice shade/highlighting can give it a real feel ^^

Well it's more the translucent arms that I'm trying to recreate.

Photoshop is not particularilt well known for it's 3d abilities. There are some ways to achieve certain effects however. Two come to mind. One is the 3D transform filter. This is pretty straight forward and also pretty limited. The second method involves the creation and use of alpha channels with lighting effects.

http://www.photoshopgurus.com/tutorials/t002.html

Looking breifly, I found this tutorial on channels. It's pretty wordy, but it doesn't use text as the example. I might add however, that many examples which use text do use the same principles (I've seen some awesome 3d textures applied to text).

4.0 vs CS? That's quite a leap... As for warping the image to fit the translucent object, it would be interesting to learn that, too... I sorta see what you're saying about the channels, but... That isn't quite the same thing... It is a shortcut and may prove useful for this project, though. The base translucency is easy, just not the refraction. I'd probably just do it on 3ds max, if i could build whatever I was trying to refract, the refraction itself is very easy.

Well it's my dad that has CS so if there is a techneque that can only be done on that particular system I can convince him to help me or let me try it on my own.