Photoshop Effects Tutorials
Best Photoshop tutorials online
Create original art using Photoshop shapes
Thursday ~ April 04, 2007 by Pixelseed Posted in All free Photoshop tutorials
Photoshop offers a great number of preset paths which can be put to good use for creating your own art. This tutorial will show you how to create great looking art using the simplest of shapes. Here’s a result we will try to get: Create a new Photoshop document of about 1000×1000 pixels. A large work area is ideal since you will also be delving into details later on. If you have the memory, it is also advisable to set the resolution to 300 dpi, in case you are considering printing the document later on. Click the Custom Shape Tool and pick a shape from the menu appearing at the top of the screen. For the purpose of this tutorial a simple outline of a bird will be a our starting point. Select a mid range blue and stretch the shape out on your canvas while holding down the shift key to maintain the aspect ratio. Right-click the shape layer which will have been automatically created in the layers palette and select Rasterize Layer from the menu. This will transform the path into an editable image. Activate the checkered layer lock on top of the layers palette, locking all transparent pixels. This will enable you to edit only the contents of the layer while the transparent areas remain untouched. Pick a soft brush from the brush palette. About 20 % will do for hardness. As we will be adding shadows and highlights, this will be very useful for smooth transitions between the different tones. If you have a graphics tablet, you can set your brush’s opacity to pressure sensitivity. However, if you don’t have one handy, try lowering both the opacity and flow of the brush to around 30 %. This will allow you to subtly apply the tone and gradually work in the shades and highlights and any other additions you might be making to the image.
2
