Photoshop Tutorials

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Modifying Brushes

Step 1: Getting Started

Create a new document
Select the Paintbrush Tool

Step 2: Modifying the Brush

Go up to the Options Bar and select the brush size button (not the arrow). The brush dialog box opens. It is in here that you adjust the settings of your new brush.

Modifying the Brush

Step 3: Editing the Brush

Adjust the Diameter, Hardness, Spacing, Angle and Roundness to create your new brush.

Diameter: You can drag the slider or you can input the size from 1-999 pixels.

Hardness: Hardness is the amount of hardness or softness of the edge of the brush. Lower values produce a softer, feathered edge while the higher the setting the harder or more defined the edge will be.

Roundness: Here you can modify the roundness of the brush. You can create an oval shape by dragging in one of the two dots on the brush in the preview box.

Spacing: Spacing relates to the degree the brush paints a smooth or staggered line. The greater the spacing the the greater the dashed line effect.

Angle: Determines the angle of the oval. There obviously can't be an angle if it's a perfect circle, so this applies only to any shape other than a circle:-)

SOURCE::http://www.cbtcafe.com/photoshop/modifybrush/modifybrush.html

Creating A Pill Shape

Step 1. Create a new document and on a New Layer, draw out a circle with the Eliptical Marquee Tool. Remember to hold down the Shift Key as you drag out the circle to make it a perfect circle.

Step 2. Create a New Layer and Fill it with a color you like.

Step 3. Next, drag out a Guide by clicking inside the ruler on the left side and dragging out. Position the Guide in the middle of the circle. (if your rulers aren't visible, click Control-R/Command-R or you can go to View>Show Rulers.)

Step 4. With the Rectangular Marquee Tool, drag out a box around the right side of the circle. See image below.

Step 5. Now, holding down Control-Alt/Command-Alt click the arrow key to drag out the shape until you have the pill shape.

Step 6. De-select once you are happy with the shape.

SOURCE::http://www.cbtcafe.com/photoshop/pillshape_1/pill_shape.html

Using Step And Repeat to Create Custom Shapes

This is a great technique to create some advanced shapes and patterns yet it's a very simple technique.

Step 1: Getting Started

Create a new document
Draw out a Shape
Using one of the Shape Tools, click and drag to draw out a shape. In this example, I'm using the Custom Shape Tool.

Step 2: Free Transform and edit center

Click Command-T / Control-T on the keyboard to bring up the Transform handles
Move the cursor over the center point of the selection and clicking and dragging the center point move it outside of the selection. In this example, I'm moving it to the top-right corner of the shape.

Step 3: Rotating the Shape

You can do this one of two ways.

Go up to the Options Bar at the top, enter a value into the Rotate Field. This value will be a percentage. Values accepted are -180° to 180°.
You can also move you cursor over the selection until you get the double sided curved arrows. This is the rotation cursor and you can click and drag to rotate the shape manually. This will also input a value into the Rotate Field.

Click the Enter Key to accept the transformation. This deselects the shape.

Step 4: Duplicating the Shape

Click the Command-Option-Shift and clicking the T Key to duplicate and rotate the shape by the amount of the value in the Rotate Field.

Keep doing this until you've completed your new shape

Step 5: Flattening Layer

In the Layers Palette, click the small black arrow at the top of the palette and select Merge Visible to flatten the layer.

For variety just change the shape and the angle of the rotation for new effects.

SOURCE::http://www.cbtcafe.com/photoshop/stepandrepeat/stepandrepeat.html

Beveled Button

Step 1. Make a 250X250 document or whatever size you like. Just make sure you have plenty of room on your document.

Step 2. Create a New Layer

Step 3. Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool and draw a circle holding down the shift key (holding down the shift key creates a perfect circle)

Step 4. Set the Foreground Color to white and the Background Color to black

Step 5. Select the Gradient Tool and from the options palette up top, select the Radial Gradient Tool and fill by dragging from the upper left to the bottom right

Photoshop: Beveled Button

Step 6. Cntrl-D to deselect

Step 7. Re-select the Elliptical Marquee Tool and make a smaller circle inside the one you just created. You may want to use the arrow keys to help position it if you didn't get it centered the first time.

Step 8. Rotate 180 degrees. Edit>Transform> Rotate 180

Step 9. Contract. Select>Modify>Contract and select 3 pixels

Step 10. Rotate by 180 again. Edit>Transform>Rotate 180

Step 11. Now color your button. Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation...

Make sure to check the Colorize button. Now, just adjust the 3 sliders to your liking and you have a great button effect!

SOURCE::http://www.cbtcafe.com/photoshop/beveledbutton/beveledbutton.html

Slicing Images

Step 1: Begin with an image you'd like to slice

Step 2: Show the Rulers

View>Show Rulers or Control-R/Command-R

Step 3: Drag out some guides

Move your cursor into the rulers. You can now click and drag out a guide from the rulers.
You can also drag guides out vertically. Just start from the top ruler and drag down. I'll drag one more guide out from the top.

Step 4: Draw out the slices

Select the Slice Tool
From the top left corner, drag out a selection to the center of the image. The slice should snap to the guides.
Go ahead and repeat for the remaining sections of your image.

Step 5: Edit the slice

Select the Slice Select Tool and right click in an area containing a slice.

Step 6: Editing the Slice Options

In here, you can change the name of the slice to something more identifiable as well as give the sliced image a URL, target, text and alt tag.

In this example I only added a name for the slice

Step 7: Saving for Web

Now, you only need to go to File>Save for Web. This exports the images and the HTML code.

The Save For Web Dialog window comes up

Step 8: Finishing Up

Click OK and save to a new folder
In the folder you'll see that Photoshop created an html file and a folder called images

Step 9: Testing the Page

Double click the slicing.html file and you'll see the image placed in it's own table.

You can also view the code by right-clicking in the web page (not on an image) and selecting View Source from the menu to see the code generated by Photoshop.

You can see the names of the image slices we renamed: topleft.jpg, topright.jpg, bottom.jpg, and bottomright.jpg. Photoshop wrote the html and put these into a table for us:)

SOURCE::http://www.cbtcafe.com/photoshop/slicingimages/part2.html

Text Swoosh Logo

This is a popular logo technique. It's almost too popular! For some humorous and well-written articles on the use of the "swoosh" and the "spiral" effect on logo design,

Step 1: Getting Started

Type out a letter A

Step 2: Creating the Swoosh Selection

Create a New Layer
Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool, and drag out a selection around the letter

Step 3: Fillng the Selection

Select a Fill Color for the Fill. This will be the color for your swoosh

Step 4: Creating the Swoosh

Duplicate the filled layer by dragging it down to the Create New Layer button.
Scale the copied layer down a bit so that it looks like the image below. (Command-T/Control-T to access the Free Transform Tool).
Click Return/Enter once you're satisfied with the shape.

Step 5: Deleting the Elipse Selection

Click the first layer with the ellipse and click Delete Key. Next, Delete the Ellipse copy layer by dragging it down to the Delete Layer Button.

Step 6: Rotating the Swoosh

Drag the swoosh layer beneath the Text Layer
With the swoosh layer still selected, click Command-T/Control-T to Rotate the swoosh.

Step 7: Loading the Selection

Command-Click/Control-Click on the Swoosh Layer to load the selection.

Step 8: Positioning the Swoosh

With the swoosh selected, hold down the Alt Key and use one of the selection tools to select the part of the area you want the ring to go behind. In my example, I used the Polygon Lasso tool to go around the bottom right hand part of the Letter but you could use the rectangular, elliptical, or any of the others. Just make sure to go around the part of the letter that you want the swoosh to go behind.

Step 9: Rasterizing the Layer

Right click on the Text layer and choose Rasterize Layer.
Click Delete and you're finished.

For added effects, apply some Layer Effects to your final image.

SOURCE::http://www.cbtcafe.com/photoshop/textswoosh/textswoosh.html

Vignette Effect / Feathered Edges

Step 1: Getting Started

Begin by opening an image

Step 2: Creating the Selection

Using either the Rectangular or Elliptical Marquee Tools, draw out a selection over your image. This selection will be the part you want to keep. We will be discarding the parts of the image outside the selection.