Learn Photoshop in 30 days - Part 4 Photoshop Express Prabhas Joshi prabhas@desdevpro.com http://www.desdevpro.com 10 Sept 2009 Photoshop Tutorial This new series will teach you the essential basics of Photoshop CS3 in 30 short, easy to follow tutorials. You require no prior knowledge of the software. Familiarity with Windows is assumed. Using Colors Part-2 Hope that you've been enjoying and learning a lot from this series. Today I'll just continue last day's tutorial on color. The following image shows what we've done so far. 004_img1.gif Now lets add some effects to it. a) Select the lower elliptical curve layer. Now right-click on it and goto Blending options 004_img2.gif Trivia: To directly goto blending options double-click on the layer- at a place where it's label isn't written 004_img3.gif b) Now check the drop-shadow and stroke styles and apply the following setting for them: Drop shadow: Blend-Mode: Multiple [By default] Opacity: 30% Angle: -106 Use Global lights Distance: 4px Spread: 8% Size: 7px Leave all the other options in Drop shadow Stroke: Size: 2px Opacity: 61% Leave all the other options in Stroke Thats it for this layer. We see that it seems a little lifted up. c) Now Time to add a little text. From the toolbox, take up the text-tool [or simply press T/t] 004_img4.gif We can adjust all the text related options through the character palette. So goto window>Character to bring up the character palette 004_img5.gif Now, having the text-tool set, click anywhere and type in anything you want. I typed: "My Background". Now click on the move tool to finalize this text. With the text-layer selected, goto the character palette and set the property of the text as follows: Font:Arial Size: 20 pt And click on the Bold [1st option on the second-last row] and Small-Cap [4th option] Leave the rest of the options You may also try out some other font combos to bring other kinds of effects. d) Now we will rotate this text. Having selected the text-layer, press ctrl+t [shortcut for transform]. Now right-click inside the bounded-box around the text and from the menu that pops up, select "rotate 90* CW" option. 004_img6.gif ********Please remember this trick for rotating text- it's pretty useful********* e) Once the text is rotated, press "Enter" to accept the transform. Now shift the text in such a position that it touches the black-layer. This thing should look something like this now: 004_img7.gif f) Now to add some more element, make a new layer on top. Take up the brush tool [or simply press B/b], and right-click somewhere in this image to get the brush-shape-selection. 004_img8.gif And choose a star-shaped brush [called "flowing stars"] g) In this newly created layer, with this brush tool simply drag around to create a beautiful progression of stars. You can try making a little curvy or rounded path as I did. Now set this layer's opacity to 30%. Take a look at the final picture 004_img9.gif So how are you feeling now, having looked at a whole lot of tools and effects + some awesome colors to create a nice background. Hope it has stimulated you. But this is only the start. You may follow this 2-day tutorial and create some of your own masterpieces and show it to me. If you didn't get some of the things right, or it didn't work out well, Im giving you the original psd of this backgorund, so that you may see each step as it was done. Download PSD File I would be really glad if you share your designs with me- to see how much I've taught you. Mail to me at my address at the top.