Overlay Painting Tutorial

 

Okay..before I start...if you hear a loud snuffling and snorting..it's me. I sound like a pig searching for truffles, sniff, snort, sniff. I have a cold and sore throat, plus it doesn't help that my nose is glowing a very luminous red!! Too many tissues!! So imagine a pig with a clowns nose and you've got me in one!!

I nearly forgot to mention the cough..a sort of raw hacking noise.....that will not be suppressed..as my DH has found out. Other details I won't describe, I don't want to put you off completely!!

 

Anyway, on to business. Paint!!!!

I thought I'd share a little a tip about using overlays in a short tutorial. Not only can you stack overlays to make your background papers, you can also add extra layers and stick a little paint on them. If you play with the blending modes, then you can have some real fun. I use Photoshop CS2 but you can apply the principle in most software packages.

In the tutorial I will keep things simple but you'll get the basic idea and then it's up to you to experiment!! I haven't tried to be subtle with the blending modes, I've just tried to make it simple...the finer points are up to you!!

The overlay that I used  is included in the download with a PDF of the tutorial. You can use the overlay for Commercial or Personal use. If you already use this technic...I apologise....ignore me!! Lol!

Right let's get going.

1. Open up a new file 12x12, 300dpi, transparent and fill it with the colour of your choice.

I used a brown colour for my base layer bc7d5c, but feel free to use any you want. (I renamed this layer colour)

2. Now open the overlay file that came with the tutorial, jsch_pattern_example.png

3. With the overlay file as the active one, hold down the Shift Key and drag it into your new file with the colour.

(Holding down the Shift key will make sure that the overlay is central when it has been moved.)

4. When you've done this, change the blending mode of the overlay layer to: Overlay, 78%.

5. Now for the start of the fun part. Make new layer above the overlay.

(You can do this by Layer>New or by clicking the small icon, second from the right at the bottom of the Layers palette).

Rename the new layer to Paint 1

6. With the Paint 1 as the active one, select the paint brush you want to use. I choose a soft round brush, size 800. This size just covers the flower like centre of the pattern on the overlay.

The quick way to get the brush ready is select the brush icon in the left tool bar. Then change the size in the top tool bar by click the down arrow next to the brush shape.

 

Choose a soft brush from the drop down list and then at the top change the px size to 800.

This is what your top tool bar should look like when you've done.

7. We need to pick the colour we want the brush to paint with. I choose a bright turquoise blue, 5accd6. Again it's a matter of choice.

Make sure that the new layer is still your active on and then we can start to paint.

Hold the brush over the middle of the flower like shape and click once.

Continue doing this until you have all the shapes you want covered. (You can use different colours over each shape, but for now I'm just using this one to keep it simple.)

 

When you have finished painting the shapes and your happy with it, turn of the Paint 1 layer by clicking the little eye on the left of the layer. We can turn it on later when we've done the next stage.

8. Make an other new layer above Paint 1, exactly as we did before and rename it Paint 2.

We'll use the same soft round brush but we need to change the size of the brush so that it just covers the centre of the flower shape.

To change the size make sure you still have the paintbrush icon selected and then in the top tool bar click the down arrow next to the brush shape and change the brush size to 150px. (You can also change the brush size by pressing the ] key to make it larger or the [ key to make it smaller.)

We also need to change the colour. I have used a green, 3ed895.

We're ready to paint . So line up your brush and click once on centre of the first flower shape.

Continue doing this until you have covered all the centres of the shapes. Again you can change colour for each one if you want. If stuck to this one colour.

9. When you have complete all click on the Paint 1 layer to make it active again. Change the blending mode to Overlay, 90%.

10. Click on the Paint 2 layer and change the blending layer to Colour Burn, 64%.

(Okay, this is not very subtle but the subtle bit is for you to do later!Lol.)

This is what you should have.

I have kept the tutorial to the basics, but you can add texture to the painted layers via the Layers Style Palette, change the blending modes, use different shaped brushes...the list is endless!! Just play and experiment!! But most of all have fun.

You can download the tutorial in PDF format with the overlay here

Have a great weekend!!

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Photoshop Tutorial

I thought it was about time that I did an other tutorial as it's been a while since the last one. Layouts can look really good with the text wrapping partly around your photograph or an object and it’s actually not so hard to do. This tutorial will walk you through it hopefully in an easy to understand way.

My text in the tutorial was done really quickly ...and yes...it could have done with a tidy up!! But the principle on how to do it is here and I know you will all be a lot more tidy than I was, lol!!

So let's get started.I'm going to show you on a basic background with a photo. It makes it simpler for you to see what I'm doing.

 

1. Open the background and photo you want to use on your layout. Position the photo where you want it and then we are ready to start the tutorial.

2. Select the Rectangle Tool from your side tool bar.

 

Make sure that you have the Paths icon selected in the top tool bar and the Add to Path icon too.

3. With the photo layer as the active layer drag out a rectangle to include all or  part of the photo plus the area that you want the text to appear in. Have a look at mine below to understand what I mean. The rectangle I have drawn covers part of the photo and part of the background.

4. With the rectangle tool still selected we need to make a change in the top tool bar. Click the Subtract from Path icon, this means that we can now take the photo part out of the selection we just made.

Now drag out a rectangle to cover the area of the photo that is inside the rectangle. I always include a little of the background too as I like a small border around the photo with no text.

5. Select the Type Tool from the side tool bar.

Pick the font, size and colour you want to use for your journaling  then click in the top left of the rectangle, where you want the text to start. Type in your text and it will fit around your photo.

When you’ve finished and have the text how you want it, press the Move Tool to get rid of the Type Tool and then press CTRL+H. This will hide the path and you will see the finished result.

Have fun!!

If you want to download the tutorial as a PDF File you can find it here.

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Making Blinkies

Last week Mira of Scrappy Mom asked me how you made blinkies so I have done this tutorial to explain how I make mine. We all love blinkies and making them is not so hard as you think. For ages I thought they must be so hard to do.....but they're not. If you can do a layout then you can make one of these!!!

Later next week I'll do tut on how to put your blinkies in Blogger with a link.

Basically you are working with layers as you do on a payout but on a smaller scale. How many layers you work with depends on how you want your blinkie to look. I'm sure that my way is not the only way but it works for me.

Basically you need your normal graphics package to make the layout of the layers that make up the blinkie and also an animation software package to bring it to life. If you don't have animation software in your package there are some great free ones out there that you could use. Or try a trial from people like Ulead Gif Animator they offer a 15 free trial...plenty of time to practice your blinkie skills, lol!! (No, this is not an advert!!!)...or Google "Free Animation Software" and see what it comes up with.

I have written the tutorial using CS2 but you can use the same principles in the software you use.

There is a a download link at the end in case you prefer printing the tut instead of reading it from here. So lets get started.

1. Blinkies can be any size, but they do need to be small and the resolution should be 71 dpi for the Internet.

I want a finished blinkie that will be 150 pixels x 50 pixels, 72 dpi.

This is a very small size to work on screen with so I am going to start with it a bit bigger and reduce it down to 150 pixels x 50 pixels at the end.

 

2. So that we can see what were doing lets make it "Fit on Screen".

Now we are ready to play!!

I'm going to keep mine simple but once you get the idea you can make yours as fancy as you want with loads of layers.

3. For the first layer pick the colour you would like as the background and using the paint bucket fill the layer.

Next I opened the file with one of the trees from the freebie Springtime Blog Train Kit. (If your going to use elements that you have always, remember to reduce the dpi to 72 and make sure that the size is reduced to scale with the blinkie size.) Plus check the TOU of the designer to make sure it's OK to use.

I reduced the tree to 71dpi and then the size to 216x199 as my starting point. (Don't panic because it looks blurry at this stage.)

 

Now drag the tree/element to the blinkie file, don't forget to hold down the shift key. The tree will be in it's own new layer above the colour layer.

As you can see the tree is still too big so using Edit>Transform>Scale I have resized it down till I get it to the size I want.

Like this.

4. Every layer of the blinkie needs to have a solid background colour or paper. These are normally the same for each layer, but you can make them different if you want...it's up to you. I am using the same colour through out.

So we need to merge the solid colour and the tree to make our first blinkie layer. To do this click on the colour layer and hold down the CTR key, then click on the tree layer. this will make them both active.

Now press CTRL + E, to merge the two layers. Nnow have one layer with the tree and the colour.

5. Text layers work well in blinkies, so I added a new layer of the solid colour and then a text layer. When I had the text how I wanted it I merged the colour and the type layers.

For my next layer I did exactly the same as for the first layer but moved the position of the tree and changed the colour of it to pink.

Okay I only have three layers...rather a sorry little blinkie!! But you can add as many layers as you want to your, but by now you have the basic idea.

Here's what my Layers Palette looks like, I have named the layers so that I know what each one is. It helps when everything is so small and we do need them in the right order or the blinkie will "blink" in the wrong sequence.

6. When you have finished adding layers the image size needs reducing down before we continue.

Go to Image>Image Size

Reduce the size to 150 pixels x 50 pixels, keep at 72dpi and we're ready to animate!!

A word of warning!!! Make sure you save your blinkie at this stage as PSD file. If you decide that you want to make changes later it would be awful to have to start from scratch!!

7. Now click on the icon to edit in image Ready or Ctrl+Shft+M.

Your screen in Image Ready should look something like this.

 

 

8. Make sure the first layer of your blinkie is the active one and then click the little eye next to the other layers to hide them.

9. Move to the Animation Palette where you will see you have your first frame (layer) showing. Now we need to add the next frame. Click on the small arrow in the top right of the Animation Palette and pick New Layer.

 

Next make the second layer in your Layers Palette active by clicking on the layer and then on the little eye to reveal it again. The will add the layer as a frame in the Animation Palette and so you have two!!

 

10. Repeat this process until you have added all of your layers as frames into the Animation palette .

11. We need to set the time that each frame will show for before the next frame appears. I am going to set mine to 0.5 second. To do this move to the first frame and click the arrow in the bottom left corner and pick the delay time you want.

Do this for all the frames. Normally I set them for the same amount of delay but again that's up to you.

To see what you blinkie will look like working, press the play button and it will run through the sequence for you.

Assuming your happy with it we need to save it. It's important that the file is saved as a GIF. So make sure that you change it if it's on JPG.

Click on GIF and use the following settings to optimise it.

Save it as File>Save Optimised As and name your blinkie and click OK.

Now you have a blinkie.... but to use it you need to upload it to the place Internet where you store your images, somewhere like Photobucket.

When you have it upload you can copy the URL and past it into your signature in Forums etc.

 

 

Boy that was a LONG post!!!

I hope you could follow it and please feel free to download the PDF to use as you do make it. Any questions email me and just ask.

***If you want to know how to add a blinkie to Blogger then check back next week for a tut on how to do it.

 

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