Create a Funny Wooden Type Treatment in Photoshop

In this tutorial author’ll show you how to easily create a wooden text effect. We will start from a polygon, then we will play with wood textures and with layer styles to achieve a really funny result. author’ll go in depth with each step so that Photoshop beginners will find the process easy to follow.

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Floral 3D Text Effect

Learn how to create turn a simple 3D text into a beautiful yet simple floral design. This tutorial will show you how to retouch and apply effects to 3D text and use floral Photoshop brushes as a quick way of enhancing the look.

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Create a Cool 3D Graffiti Text Effect using Line Art in Photoshop

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to take a line art sketch of text and turn it into a 3D graffiti style text effect using some simple techniques and stock images.

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Create Awesome Splashing Water Text Effect in Photoshop

In this tutorial, author will show you the steps author took to Create Awesome Splashing Water Text Effect in Photoshop. Along the way, you will learn how you can incorporate water splash brushsets into your text and create great effect from that.

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3D Valentine’s Day Typography

In this tutorial author will walk through the steps author took in creating this illustration. This technique can be used in a variety of ways and also for different themes besides Valentine’s Day.

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Typography Art Design

Here is an inspiring tutorial that combines different secret Photoshop techniques to create a colorful poster.

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Metal Text Under 12 O’clock Spot Light

In this Awesome Photoshop tutorial, you will learn how to create a metal text which is illuminated from above, casting shadow. Basic transformations, some filters and actions will be covered through out this tutorial.

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Create Colorful 3D Text Effect in Photoshop

In this Photoshop tutorial you will learn how to create colorful 3D text effect.

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Design an Abstract Colourful, Artistic Feeling Text Effect in Photoshop

In this tutorial, author will show the processes author took to create this Abstract Colourful, Artistic Feeling Text Effect in Photoshop. The steps are really simple but author think the end result looks good.

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Create an Editable On Screen Text Effect using Smart Objects

In this Awesome Photoshop tutorial, author going to show you how to create an editable screen shot text effect. You can easily edit the text, you don’t need to repeat all steps from scratch, just double click the text layer and change it. This tutorial also has some good applications of Smart Objects.

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Dramatic Text on Fire Effect in Photoshop

Flames are particularly hard to render in Photoshop, but in this tutorial author’ll show you how to use a photograph of fire to set text to the match. We’ll render the look on a nice dark background with a gorgeous text effect to complete the image.

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Create A Nifty Glass Text Effect

Learn to create a nice transparent glass text effect that can be used for banners, logos and for compositions.

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Create Detailed Letters of Gold and Diamond

This tutorial will show how we can create a set of detailed letters with gold and diamond. We will learn how to use the Polygonal tool to make a simple diamond and also introduce a convenient way to duplicate layers with minimal efforts.

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How to Create an Incredible Typographic Illustration

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. In this two-part tutorial, we’re going to learn how to bring a simple proverb into a complex typographic illustration that achieves a level of realism without actually using any photos. Yes, we’re going to build this idea from the bottom up. In the first part, learn how to model your own objects in Cinema 4D and prepare them for isolation in Photoshop.

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3 cool text effects Gold , Metal & plastic in photoshop

Learn how to create 3 cool , easy and attractive text effects . Gold shiny text , Clear plastic text and metallic text.

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Create 3D text using 2D text in Photoshop

In this tutorial, you will learn how to take two dimensional text and turn it into 3D text. You will learn how to rasterize text and then transform your selection using perspective.

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How to Create the Aura Text Effect

In this Awesome Photoshop tutorial, you will learn how to create this colorful Aura text effect. A little practice with the Pen Tool would help you get greater results if you’re not quite familiar with. Some brush settings will also be covered throughout this tutorial.

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Create A Beautiful 3D Text Composition

This tutorial is jam-packed with techniques, tips and tricks to improve your workflow and design skills. Whether you’re a rookie designer looking to learn new techniques to use, or you’re a veteran designer just looking for tips on taking your images to the next level, you’ll find a ton of useful information here.

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Recreate the Epic 80′s Metal Text Effect in Photoshop

Follow this tutorial to recreate the epic metal text effect for yourself, making use of modern day digital design techniques in Photoshop.

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Create Abstract Eye-Catching Typography

This tutorial goes through creating an abstract “inner image” within text. It’s fast to do and the payoff was well worth the time spent on it.

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Awesome Text Effect

In this Awesome Photoshop tutorial, i’m going to show you how to create this cool text effect using a basic distortion filter. This is an 12 step easy to follow tutorial.

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Create a Sweet Chocolate-Coated Text Effect

This Photoshop tutorial is thought for greedy people (like me!). Today we will create a delicious chocolate-covered text effect. We will create some details on paper, then we will work with layer styles to achieve the nice result.

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Photoshopping Bronze Text

The discovery of Bronze was important to humankind, since it helped to create better metal objects, especially weapons, than previously possible. Even though it was more brittle than steel, it was much durable than the copper and stone predecessors.

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Photoshopping Gold Text With Channels

In my first tutorial on Photoshopping sparkling gold text, I used only layer styles to make the text look gold. I promised to churn out another tutorial on the same effect, but twice as realistic and awesome.

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How to make colourful glowing neon text effect

Following this tutorial, you will learn how to draw different shapes, apply gradient, blend different shapes in the background, and more – all to create an abstract glowing background.

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Design Cool Lord-Chrome Text Effect

Let’s make a quick but very useful tutorial, using gradients that will allow you to easily create any metallic effect later.

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What Text Effects Can I Create From A Stencil?

In this tutorial, we will create a a stencil from a simple font, any font, which you can choose yourself. That’s the fun part of this tutorial, it’s flexible and experimental! When you’re done, comment below what you did so we can compare the outcomes. Anyway, we’ll be using the stencil to create many different text effects from brushing, layer styles and blending modes.

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Create Dynamic and Textured 3D Text with Perspective in Photoshop and Illustrator

In this design tutorial you will be taken through an extensive step by step on how to create detailed 3D text that sits in created environment. We will map graphics onto our artwork, add lighting, texture and more utilizing Illustrator, Photoshop and a bit of patience.

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How to create a simple and elegant text effect

In this tutorial I’ll show you how to create an elegant text effect in only 13 steps. We will use Illustrator to realize the outlined text. Then we will play with blending options to create the pressed effect. This style would be perfect for a site tagline or a poster design.

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Create a ‘Written in the Sand’ Text Effect in Photoshop

Now you can get that beach text effect right from the comfort of your chair in Photoshop! In this tutorial we’ll be learning to use the clone tool, masks, layer styles and filters to recreate this cool sandy beach text effect.

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True rusty metal text effect in photoshop

In this tutorial I will show you a technique to make a really cool an realistic rusty text effect in photoshop. The lack of good tutorials about this particular effect is the main reason why I wrote it.

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Learn How To Create Metal Textured Text

Today were going to be creating something a little bit different. Were going to be using a mixture of textures and layer styles to create the perfect looking rough metal style text.

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Create A Retro Typography Design

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a retro typography design, you will learn the basics of typography and shape making in photoshop CS3.

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Create 3D Typography with Advanced Texturing and Lighting Effect in Photoshop

The aim of this tut is to demonstrate how you can texture a 3D text (created in Illustrator) quickly and effectively, using the least amount of steps possible.

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Create 3D type art using Photoshop CS5

The new 3D tools in Photoshop CS5 are more advanced than ever. In this tutorial we will use the new Repoussé tool to extrude some text in a way previously only possible in a full 3D application.

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Give a Medieval Game Logo a Rough Stone Look

Designers are often asked to take a pre-existing one or two-color logo and give it dimension. In today’s tutorial we will take a black and white logo and give it a rough stone look in just a few short steps using textures and layer styles.

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How To Create An Easy Glassy Text

In this step by step Photoshop tutorial we will learn how to create an easy Glassy text effect.

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Ultra Glossy Liquid Metal Text Effect

This tutorial is mostly based on Layer style settings and a combination of a lot of Curves. When combined together, they give a rich, deep and glossy / beveled look to the text.

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Create a Futuristic Glowing Text Effect

Learn how to give your text a futuristic glowing effect by combining various layer styles, overlays and cool lighting effects.

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Create A Slick Gold Text Effect Using Photoshop

This a simply but very good tutorial with a nice outcome showing you how to create a gold text affect using Photoshop, the tutorial is also super easy to follow because of it being a screen cast.

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Create a gel text effect photoshop – Gelatinous Text

This tutorial will teach you how to make a Gel text in photoshop, you can make it within a few steps, using photoshop layer style and character menu, this is a very beautiful and easy tutorial.

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Create a realistic leopard fur typography in Photoshop

In this tutorial, we will learn how to create an animal inspired fur typography.

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3-Step Fluffy Text Effect Tutorial

We are going to create a very cute, fluffy, marshmallow-like text effect. This is an ultra easy tutorial for newbies and of course you can implement the same technique for shapes and elements in your web design.

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Start Text Effect

To commemorate the 30th anniversary of Pac Man, I made a text effect with a type game old but well updated. For those not familiar is a game that had much success in 80 years and is known far and he was a big milestone for the popularity of games.

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Plasma Text Effect

This new lesson we’ll see how is it possible to create a wavy text out of burning liquid using also fractal ornaments.

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How to Create a Stereoscopic Image for Crossed Eye Image Viewing

In this tutorial we will create a stereoscopic image for cross eye viewing, which means you will be able to view the final image in 3D and full color without the use of any special glasses.

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Vibrant Metal Text Effect with Glowing Radiation Circles

This tutorial inspired by all the sci-fi movies where radiation glowing circles are pictured in great details; so we are going to make very vibrant, glossy and realistically curved text effect with extremely beautiful and original glow circles, that no other text effect has. We will be working with a lot of Contour settings.

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3D Layered Text Effect

In this Awesome? Photoshop tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a 3D text effect using actions, basic transform operations and filters. This is an intermediate level, approximately 2 cups of coffee long tutorial.

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Photoshopping The Letterpress Text Effect

Lately LetterPress has become a real trend in web design. For those unfamiliar with the effect, LetterPress gives the impression that words and letters have actually been pressed or bevelled inwards. It’s not hard to see why it’s so popular. LetterPress is stylish, very simple, and it’s third dimension allows it to catch the eye without being overpowering.

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Glossy Emblem Text Effects with Photoshop

In this tutorial, we’ll demonstrate how to create the following nice looking Glossy Emblem Text Effect with Adobe Photoshop in 4 simple steps.

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Learn to make a nice text effect neon

One effect that I find most interesting and good results is the effect of neon, so the way I like this effect so I decided to do a tutorial, a tutorial is pretty fast to make and easy to learn and you get a great result.

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Letterpress and Letter Bulge Effect using Photoshop and CSS

Let’s discuss about how to make a letterpress and letterbulge effects using photoshop and css.

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How To Create Floral Theme Typography Using Photoshop and Illustrator

This tutorial is highly inspired from that poster and we will also add some flowers and butterflies into the text. To get the best quality, we combine vector from Illustrator with pixel editing in Photoshop.

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Outline Sketch Text

Very nice technique to make your text as Outline Sketch. Short and impressive tutorial. You will really love to make this. Some Filters involve making this tutorial.

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Create an Awesome Funky Text Effect

In this tutorial, you’ll learn step by step, with a plethora of details and screenshots, how to create an awesome funky text effect.

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Smashing Your Creative Block

The question arises so much nowadays, How do you overcome your Creative Block? I made it simple for everyone today and created a Photoshop Tutorial to smash your creative block. I will use simple and easy techniques to create a smashing composition text tutorial. It won’t take you to long to finish and you will learn that it is pretty easy to create this effect.

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Super Easy Neon Style in Photoshop

Last year I wrote a tutorial showing how to create a neon effect, it was the Super Easy Neon Style in Photoshop and it was inspired by a neon sign I saw outside of a pub.

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Create A 3D Text Effect in Photoshop

In this tutorial we will learn how to create a great 3D text effect in a few simple steps. Follow the steps and see how much fun it is to create a 3D text effect in Photoshop.

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Colorful Plexi Text Effect using Photoshop

In this Awesome Photoshop tutorial, author going to show you how to create a cool looking colorful Plexi text effect. Throughout this tutorial we’ll create letters separately, getting some help from the Actions.

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Create Ultra-Shining Text Effect with Bokeh and Abstract Texture in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this Ultra-Shining Text Effect with Bokeh and Abstract Texture in Photoshop.

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Create a Distressed Vector Typographic Poster Design

Follow this step by step walkthrough of my recent design process for the ‘Spectrum’ poster. Starting with custom made type in Illustrator, we’ll move our vector graphics into Photoshop for some serious distressing with Photoshop brushes, blending modes and more!

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Create a Funky Pouring Liquid Text Effect

Learning how to manipulate and transform text in Photoshop is a great way to learn key skills and concepts. In this tutorial we’ll cover use of filters and masks to create this stunning overflowing liquid text effect.

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Create a light effect in Photoshop

In this tutorial author will show you how to combine some textures, vectors and Photoshop techniques to create a colorful wallpaper with light effects.

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Create Colorful Smoky Text Effect in Photoshop

Here is one really colorful typography effect. To create this effect we will mostly use Photoshop with a bit of help from Illustrator. In this photoshop tutorial you will learn how to create colorful smoky text effect. The process is fun and easy once you get going.

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Create a Funky Retro Wavy Text Effect in Photoshop

We are going to create a retro-colored psychedelic background, which we are then going to apply to some text. The purpose of this tutorial is to learn how to mask out an image so that it just shows through the editable text, making it friendlier to modifications later on. We will also work with layering textures to create a grungy retro background.

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Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow

The popularity of text effects is not going downhills and even if you may think that all the possible and impossible effects have already been tried out, sliced around and milled over — be surprised, every week I get to see new Text Effect Tutorials for Photoshop and they always look great and always impress me over and over, so in the mood of winter we decided to put together another text effect tutorial, this one is extremely easy but has a very nice outcome, which I hope will prove useful.

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Create A Cool Typography Effect In Photoshop

In this tutorial, we’re going to use Photoshop® CS3 or Photoshop® CS4 to create some really cool-looking effects to decorate our Typography. We will be using a combination of layer styles, color blending, lens flare and images. The end effect is quite stunning and hopefully you’ll pick up some tips you didn’t know before.

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Create a Retro Metal Text poster in Photoshop

In this tutorial we are going to create a retro/grunge looking metal text using some basic Photoshop techniques as well as a texture. We are going to then finish off the image using another texture and a few other techniques to bring the whole image together.

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How to create 3D Love text composition

In this tutorial, I will show you how to make a stunning 3D text effect using different textures to give it a unique look with Xsara3D & Photoshop.

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Design a 3D Newspaper Cropped Text Effect

When the older generation were young, and needed to create a school design or anything that involved cropping letters, we often cropped them first from an old newsprint, before proceeding to work with a colored paper.

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How To Create A Realistic 3D Typography In Photoshop

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a really smooth looking 3D text in any version of Photoshop®. This tutorial will create the illusion of 3D without the use of any 3D programs, we will only use the raw power of Photoshop.

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Playing Around with 3D Repoussé in Photoshop CS5

We want to give you an insight into what you can do with text layers, and this very tool. But remember, to create this effect, you must have the latest version of Photoshop.

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Technology is just a quest for one more improvement or just one more modification. All the technological advancements are now measured in terms of better features or performance improvement. They have been numbered as well, for instance, WordPress 2.9.2, then, WordPress 3.0, HTML 4, then HTML 4, Adobe CS4, then CS5 and similarly lots more.

Adobe Creative Suite (CS) is constituted by graphic designs, web development and video editing applications made by Adobe Systems. It incorporates applications like Acrobat, Photoshop, Adobe reader, Adobe after effects, Flash player, Flash builder etc. based on technologies like flash, PDF, PostScript and others. Adobe Photoshop, mainly meant for web designers, is a raster graphics editor. The first creative suite(CS) was developed in 2003. Then, the latest version of creative suit(CS5) was officially released on 30th April 2010.

Adobe Photoshop CS5 software redefines digital imaging with a strong focus on photography; breakthrough capabilities for superior image selections, image retouching, and realistic painting; and a wide range of workflow and performance enhancements.

New Features of Adobe Photoshop CS5:

1) Puppet Warp: Photoshop automatically fills space resulting out of a cut space, with surrounding scenery or patterns.
2) Handle advanced digital images: Camera Raw 6 minimizes noise in high ISO images, while automatic lens correction quickly puts right lens aberration wrongs.
3) Space- Filler: Remove any image detail or object and watch as Content-Aware Fill magically fills in the space left behind. When you cut objects out, Photoshop can automatically fill resulting space with surrounding scenery or patterns. (Repeated)
4) Selection Tools: Faster than ever before and refined photoshop’s object selection tools extract the model and her billowing hair without pulling out your own. One can easily easily select intricate image elements, such as hair; eliminate background color around selection edges; and automatically vary selection edges and perfect masks using new refinement tools.
5) Extraordinary Painting Effects: Change your photograph into a painting or create unique artistic effects with the Mixer Brush, which offers on-canvas color blending, and Bristle Tips, which let you create lifelike, textured brush strokes.
6) Automated Lens Correction: Time is saved when with the extended features such as, automatic correction of lens distortions, chromatic aberration, and vignetting. Photoshop CS5 uses an image file’s EXIF data to make precise adjustments based on the type of camera and lens you use.
7) Easy Handling of UI: Make use of the collapsible Workspace Switcher to quickly navigate and choose amongst the favorite UI configurations. Live workspaces automatically record your UI changes so that the panels remain in place even if you switch away for a while.
8) Other Enhancements: Last but not the least, other features like new Web Gallery options and configurable workspaces promise serious productivity boosts.

Enhanced Features of Adobe Photoshop CS5:

Superior HDR Imaging: This features helps you create photo-realistic or surreal HDR images with unprecedented speed, control, and accuracy. Thanks to automatic ghost removal and greater control with tone mapping and adjustments for better than ever results, and gives an enchanting look of HDR to single-exposure photos

Efficient Workflow: Now, get ready to enjoy productivity and creativity boosts. Thanks to the dozens of features and enhancements requested by Photoshop users. Straighten images automatically, pick colors from an onscreen color picker, adjust the opacity of many layers at once, and more.

Better Media Management: It avails you easy management of media with more flexible batch renaming, and access your assets in the context of what you’re working on by using the customizable Adobe Mini Bridge panel in Photoshop.

Faster Performance across platforms: Speed up day-to-day imaging tasks and process very large images up to ten times faster by taking advantage of cross-platform 64-bit support. (Requires a 64-bit-capable computer with a 64-bit version of Mac OS, Microsoft® Windows® 7, or Windows Vista®. Actual performance varies depending on amount of RAM, driver types, and other factors.)

Let’s see what CS5 Extended has got for you!

It can afford to give you superior images selections, image retouching, realistic painting and 3D extrusions. It would definitely save your lot of time and may increase the efficiency of the workflow to a great extent by its 64-bit support.

Dare to think Beyond: Just forget the old traditional digital imaging. Now create 3D logos by easy extruding text and 2D graphics.

It has almost all the features as present in Adobe PS CS5 like complex selections, content aware areas. Let’s explore some more new features of the same:

3D Extrusions with Adobe Repousse—
Now you can easily make 3D logos and artworks from any text layer, selection, path, or layer mask with Adobe Repousse technology. You may twist, rotate, extrude, bevel and inflate your designs.

Enhanced 3D realism and rich materials —
It has become quite easy to enhance 3D objects and designs with easy shadow creation, image-based lights, and materials like glass and chrome. Exploration with different focus points in your 3D scene by adjusting the range for depth of field is also at your footstep.

Bridge CS5

Numerous changes can be experienced to Adobe’s Bridge file management utility with the launch of CS5.
Updates include flexible batch renaming, including find and replace; text- and image-based watermark options when exporting PDF documents; faster navigation between open folders with an improved Path bar; precise adjustment of the size and quality of images, ability to display filenames, and save templates within the Web Gallery; drag and drop to place files into InDesign, Flash, Illustrator, and Photoshop; and more.

Comparison between the old (CS4) and the latest version (CS5):

There are three aspects: Photography tools, Creative Impact and boost to productivity. To the first aspect, the latest version has got many new features like automated lens correction, additive grain in adobe camera raw, straighten image tool, post crop vignetting, whereas many features like HDR imaging, B&W conversions, noise remove in adobe camera raw, adjustment panel have been enhanced in terms of its quality.

To the second aspect, the latest version has got new features like better edge selection technology, color decontamination for selection, selection and mask refinement tools, content aware fill, mixer brush, bristle tips whereas creative content (shapes, styles) has been enhanced.

To the third aspect, Adobe mini bridge, Adobe CS review, paste in place, are the new features in the latest version whereas custom panels, printing options, broad file format support have been enhanced.

Is it worth switching to PS CS5:

“The past two decades have demonstrated an amazing interplay between customers who want to push the limits of their personal creativity and a passionate team of Adobe engineers who make those visions a reality,” said Kevin Connor, vice president of product management for professional digital imaging at Adobe. “We experienced this firsthand information when we posted a ‘sneak peek’ video of the team’s work on the Content Aware Fill feature a few weeks ago. It quickly became the number one viral video online, with close to 2 million views…This version of Photoshop has some of the most innovative and extraordinary technologies to ever come from our labs and clearly customers are already clamoring for it.”

The new version that is, CS5 is far much better for creative professionals. It has been launched with many new features, which is an outbreak in the revolutionary world of web design. Thereby, closely observing and articulating its features, I would be more than satisfied to recommend CS5.

About The Author

This post is shared by PixelCrayons, a creative web design and development agency that specializes in custom web design & development, markup services, CMS & ecommerce solutions.

Getting Started with Photoshop

In this introductory chapter, which has been adapted from The Photoshop Anthology, 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks and Techniques, author will cover some of the basic tools and tasks that we’ll draw on in the later chapters.

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The Ultimate Guide To Cloning In Photoshop

This article introduces the several cloning tools available in Photoshop and goes over the proper usage and best practices of each.

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Photoshop Layers Essential Power Shortcuts

When it comes to getting the most out of Photoshop with the least amount of effort, there’s two things you absolutely need to know – how to use layers and how to get around inside Photoshop using keyboard shortcuts.

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A Comprehensive Introduction to the Type Tool

Who doesn’t know the Type Tool? This is maybe one of the most powerful and useful tools of Photoshop. We’ve all used it at least once, but do you know all its potential?

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The Lasso Tool

If you’re a more advanced Photoshop user, you’ll probably head straight for the Pen Tool, the tool of choice for making professional quality form-based selections.

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A Comprehensive Introduction to Photoshop Selection Techniques

Have you ever had difficulties making selections and thought there was a better way? Let’s review both quick solutions, and on the other side, comprehensive and details techniques for making selections.

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Layer Styles in Photoshop

Effects can be added to individual layers in Photoshop that automatically change as a layer is modified. The combination of effects on any given layer is called its Layer Style. We’ll teach you how to use and make your own layer styles in this tutorial.

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Photoshop’s Painting Tools

In Photoshop, the painting tools are used to paint strokes, and fill areas with color or with colors that blend together. Knowing how to use the paint tools is a must for any artist who wishes to use Photoshop.

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Installing And Managing Brushes And Other Presets

How to install new Photoshop Brushes and also discuss a few techniques that will help you keep your additions organized and safe.

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Photoshop’s Pen Tool: The Comprehensive Guide

The Pen Tool makes appearances across almost the entire Adobe product range. Its function and behavior varies depending on the application, but by mastering it youll find you work quicker, smoother and with better results. This guide will give you a comprehensive basis for working with the Pen Tool in Photoshop.

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Photoshop’s Filters

Filters are used to change the appearance of an image, layer or selection in Photoshop. In this tutorial, author will introduce you to some common filters, and show you how to use them.

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Mastering “Bevel and Emboss” – From Beginner to Pro

How to get the very best out of the “Bevel and Emboss” tool that Photoshop has to offer to make your designs look ultra realistic.

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Layer Masks

Layer Masks are a very powerful part of Photoshop.

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Photoshop Actions

We’ll look at what Photoshop actions are and what the difference is between an action and an action set. We’ll explore some of Photoshop’s Default Actions as well as the additional action sets that install for free with Photoshop.

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Create Your Own Photoshop Custom Shapes

Everything you need to know to create and work with custom shapes in Photoshop.

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Sneak Peek

Just when you thought it would be okay to skip upgrading to the next version of Photoshop they come and post this. I don’t even know where to start besides saying that a lot of people said this was fake until a link popped up showing it on the official Photoshop blog.

10 Simple Steps to Better Photoshop Performance

If you never changed the default performance settings in your Photoshop or you just want to double check them to improve the Photoshop performance, here are 10 important and useful points that you may want to consider.

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How To Correct Banding In Your Gradients Using Photoshop

This simple technique will reduce banding and streaking so your gradients look nice and smooth. Before you think about altering your colors, make you try this first.

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20 Handy Photoshop Tips For a Faster Workflow

It’s tips like these that make the most common of tasks quicker and easier than ever to help speed up your Photoshop workflow.

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5 Advanced Photoshop Techniques for Web Designers

In this step-by-step tutorial, author’s going to show you how to create five killer effects for your site.

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Advanced Photoshop Techniques for Web Designers – Part 2

In this article we look at how to create fold and light Effects as well as 3D elements.

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An Idiot’s Guide To Photoshop

This guide starts right at the very bottom, assuming no knowledge at all, and walks you through all basic aspects of the application. The guide even comes with three full pages of shortcuts, cheat sheets covering all the application’s possibilities!

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20 Time-Saving Tips to Improve Designer’s Workflow

Regardless of your experience level, there are ways to speed up the common design tasks. You should find some of these not-so-well-known tips and strategies listed below very helpful for your workflow.

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A Basic Guide to Photoshop CS4 Adjustment Layers

Adjustments can be used for non-destructive editing, can be masked to edit only a part of an image, it can be applied to several layers on a single document and even you can change the Adjustment Layer’s Blending Mode to create outstanding results.

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20 Photoshop Tips & Tricks That You Should Know About

They will help you in getting things done quickly, save you a lot of headache and steps and overall inflate your Photoshop-fu!

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20 Photoshop Tips & Tricks That You Should Know (Part 2)

These follow up Photoshop tips will help you do your work faster and much more easily, let’s begin where we left off and set the ball rolling.

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Mastering Photoshop With Paths

Presented here is a guide to help you build proficiency, increase productivity and demystify the elusive world of Paths.

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Photoshop Cheatsheets & Our Must Know Shortcuts

As long as it gets the job done right? Wrong! Trying to use photoshop without shortcuts is like trying to eat soup with a fork. Not happening!

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Photoshop Pathing: How To Use Photoshop Pen Tool

This concentrate on pathing out a simple object from its background.

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Everything You Need To know About Photoshop Actions

A screen cast on how to use Photoshop actions this screen cast will teach you how to save, load, and create Photoshop actions and go through its main features and functions.

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21 Advanced Photoshop Tips, Tricks and Tutorials Roundup

You can never stop improving your web and graphic design skills, you can always find something new and handy as you’ll see in the following collection.

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We are going to learn how to make a Realistic Moon using Photoshop, in an easy and quick way.

First we are going to create a new file with the following settings:

Remember, Color Mode should be on RGB (Red, Green, Blue) if you want to use your work for web. RGB mode is for screen and for printing there is CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key Black).

Now, we start with the background. Let’s use the Gradient Tool , and then we’re going to make a lineal gradient with black and dark blue. I used #0b1538 for dark blue.

For the gradient (see below picture), first we click over the radial gradient icon (marked with red) and then we click over the gradient editor (marked with blue).

After clicking over the gradient editor icon (don’t click over the arrow), the Gradient Editor window will pop up, and we will see a window like this:

Marked with red, on the first point, we have the first gradient color. Clicking over this icon we could change the color. Marked with blue, on the second point, we have the second gradient color. We can change it too. We will choose dark blue on the first point, and black on the second one.

After that, we paint the gradient from the center of the canvas to the exterior of it. Finally we get something like this:

Now, the moon. For making it we will use the Elipse Tool:

and set the color to white. After that, we’re going to trace the circle for the moon.

For drawing the circle, we will click over point 1 (see picture below) and draw the cursor to the point 2. Keep pressed the left mouse button while drawing and release it on point 2. While doing it, keep pressed Shift for a perfect circle.

Now, let’s center the circle. First, we have to select all (Select -> All, or Ctl + A). Now, we select the layer with the circle we just draw (Shape).

We’re ready to align. For doing this, we use the Move tool (click the move icon on left toolbar, or Shift + V).

After this, we could see the align options (see picture below)

Click over the two buttons for center alignment.

After those steps we should have a perfect circle, perfectly aligned:

Now, we have to add some effects. Let’s starts with the Outer Glow effect.

Having selected the shape layer:

We go to Layer -> Later Style -> Outer Glow

After that, Layer Style window appears on Outer Glow options:

Set color to light blue (#99ccff) and size to 15px. Don’t close that window. Now go to Drop Shadow on that same window:

Following the number on the picture:
1) Set Blend Mode to Normal
2) Change color to white (#ffffff)
3) Set Distance to 0 px
4) Set Size to 46 px
TIP: You could change those colors if you want, like an orange moon for example.

The result should look like this:

Now, we’re going to work with the Moon terrain.

First, we have to rasterize our shape layer

Right click over the circle layer on the layer tab:

And then select on Rasterize on the menu. After that, the image of the circle layer (Shape) should change.

Now we have to select our circle. For selecting it you have to go to Select -> Load Selection…

After that, Load Selection window should appear. Just click OK. Now our circle is selected.

Now we have to add the terrain. For that we have to set black and white for foreground and background colors. You can set them just pressing D. You can check the colors on the left panel:

Now, for adding the terrain we go to Filter -> Render -> Clouds.

After that we should have something like this:

Now let’s make it look like an sphere. Go to Filter -> Distort -> Spherize…

We could see this window:

Leave Amount on 100% and then click over the OK button

Now, our circle should look spherized:

Now we add more contrast to the moon so it could look like it’s shining. For that we got to Layer -> Layer Style -> Color Overlay. After that we change the options showed in the next picture:

1) Blend Color to Linear Dodge (Add)
2) Set color to White (#ffffff)
3) Set Opacity to 40%
4) Finally we click OK button.

Now remove selection (Control + D)

After that…. we have our MOON!

This tutorial is created by our old friend Anthony Altamirano, who is back in to graphics world. He is a graphic / web designer from Costa Rica with more than 8 years of experience.
He is co-founder of ArtkasDesign and manages ArtkasBlog for sharing resources and tutorials to web designers around the world.

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The image below is what we will be making which is entirely done in Photoshop (minus the Emperor Pope image) and will hopefully give you a better understanding of how to recreate an object in PS.

Step 1 – Find Reference Image

Before we get started let’s find a reference photo so we know what we are working toward. I went to Apple’s
site and grabbed one there.

Step 2 – Cutout iPod

In order to get the basic shape easily and accurately I cut the image out and place it on my document.

Step 3 – Create Selection

To select the iPod hold down control and click on the iPod layer.

Step 4 – Fill Selection

Once it is selected, create a new layer and name it base. Now fill (Shift + Backspace) the selection with a
neutral gray on the newly created base layer.

Step 5 – Use Pen To Trace Outer Edge Of The Top Of iPod

Now that we have our basic outline we can start getting into the fun stuff. Create a new layer above the
base layer and name it top. Now hide (click eye in layers palette) the base layer and zoom in at the top
part of the iPod. Make sure the top layer is still selected and grab the pen tool and go around the outer
portion of the top. Convert the path to a selection and fill with red. If you hide the original layer and
turn the base back on you should have something that looks like this.

Step 6 – Trace Inner Portion Of The Top Of iPod

Ok, now let’s do the inner portion of the top the same way. Hide all layers except original ipod, make new layer at the very top called top-inner, use pen tool, go around the edges, change to selection and fill with a light gray.

Step 7 – Create Left Highlight Layer

Go ahead and make a new folder and place both of the top layers in the new folder and call it top. Much
easier to work when we keep things organized.
Let’s create the two highlight bars that run down the sides of the iPod. Create a new layer above the base
layer (below the top folder) and call it left highlight. Hide all other layers so the original iPod can be
seen. Control click on the base layer so that the shape of the base is now selected. Grab the rectangular
marquee tool, hold down alt (option on mac) and you should see the cross hairs with a minus sign beside it.
Anything you highlight with alt held down will remove part of a selection. Simply drag around the right
half of the base and stop right on the highlight line. If done correctly you should now have you selection
made. Just fill with a light gray and that’s it.

Step 8 – Create Right Highlight Leaving The Left Side To Overhang

Getting the right highlight is almost the same except the line is not a 90 degree angle so we will have to
add an extra step.

Create a new layer above the left highlight and name it right highlight. Hide all layers except the
original iPod layer and load the base layer selection again. Grab the rectangular marquee tool and hold
down the alt (option for mac) and coral from left to right stopping before reaching the highlight edge. Now
fill the selection with gray.

Step 9 – Use Pen Tool To Remove The Excess & Get The Correct Angle Of The Left Side Of Right Highlight

We have all sides perfect except for the left edge. Lower the opacity on the right highlight layer enough
so you can see the actual highlight edge on the original iPod. Now grab the pen tool or magnetic lasso and
click just above the highlight edge and then click just below the edge giving you the exact edge degree for
this side. Complete the path making sure to go around all of the unneeded right highlight fill and delete
it. That’s it for the right highlight.

Step 10 – Use Elliptical Marquee To Trace Menu Interface & Fill Selection

In the spirit of tidiness let’s take the left and right highlight layers along with the base and place in a
new folder called base. Make sure this folder is under the top folder in the layers palette.

Alright, make a new layer above all the others and name it menu. Hide the two folders revealing the
original iPod layer and select your elliptical marquee tool. Make sure you are on your newly created menu
layer and draw a circle around the the main menu on the original and fill with a dark gray.

Step 11 – Hide Menu Layer & Trace The Button With Marquee & Fill

Make a new layer above the menu layer and name it menu button. Hide all layers below except original and
use the elliptical marquee tool again to draw a circle around the menu button and fill with a slightly
lighter gray. Colors are completely irrelevant right now for everything. Our only concern is that they
differ enough so we can tell what is what.

Ok let’s see what we have now when it’s all put together.

Step 12 – Use Rounded Rectangle Tool To Draw Outer Edge Of Screen While Adjusting Radius

Place the menu and menu button layers in a new folder called menu which should be at the very top. Create a
new layer above the others and name it screen. Since the corners of the screen are rounded we are gonna
choose the rounded rectangle tool. Once the tool is selected, adjust your corner radius to match the screen
corners on the iPod. For me, 5px worked perfect. It may be different for you depending on the resolution you
are working in.

Step 13 – Fill Selection and Use Warp to Shape Rectangle To Match Image

As you can see in the pic above, draw around the outer edge of the screen once you have adjusted the radius
settings to your liking. It will not be a perfect match and that’s ok. Just get it as close as possible.
Convert the path to a selection (right click choose make selection) and fill with red. Now go to edit
transform and warp. Now just pull in the corners to align them with the original. The sides of the screen
should also be pulled in just a touch since those are not 90 degrees angles.

Step 14 – Repeat Same Steps To Create Inner Portion Of Screen

Make a new layer above the screen layer and name it screen inner. Follow the exact steps as above but this
time draw around the inner part of the screen. The radius used on the inner section was 2px. Once completed move both of those layers in to a new folder
called screen and you should now have something that looks like this.

Step 15 – Time To Style

Well that’s it for most of the drawing. Time to start styling and bringing the drawing to life. Make a
copy of the original iPod layer and move it above the other layers. Now Slide the layer up just enough
to see the bottom of your iPod. Now go to your base layer and double click it to open the layer styles
window. Check the gradient overlay button and follow the steps below.

• Step 1 – Change the angle from 90 to zero degrees. This will force the gradient to go on a
  horizontal path (left to right) instead of the default vertical axis which is top to bottom.
• Step 2 – Click on the gradient color bar to open the gradient editor
• Step 3 – To change the color of the gradient we need to select the color stops we wish to alter.
  By default there will be two. One on the far left and one on the right.
• Step – 4 – For each stop you can select a color which will gradually blend into the color of the
  next stop. Once you have selected the stop you wish to change the color of (see step 3), click on the
  color swatch to open the color picker menu.
• Step 5 – Once the color picker window is open, hover over the original iPod layer (you should see
  an eyedropper tool) and click on the darkest part of the middle section, just to the right of the left
  highlight.

By clicking on the iPod layer, we are selecting the exact color from the image and making it the color
of our left color stop. Click ok to close the window.

Step 16 – Complete The Gradient For The Base Layer

Now that we know how to adjust the gradient, all we need to do now is finish picking the colors.
For the left color stop my color is #787879 and then I grab the far right stop which is #e8e8e9. Now
even though you selected colors straight from the iPod image they may not look quite. That’s because
your base layer spans the entire width of the iPod but what you are actually styling is just the middle
section of the base layer. The left and right sides are covered by the highlight layers.
So to adjust for this, once you have the left and right color stops color selected, hit ok to close the
gradient editor and start sliding the scale bar down until you get your left and right colors matching
the image. For me it was 57. Once that is fixed, go back in the gradient editor and make the tweaks
needed to get your gradient to match. For me, I added a third stop in the middle which is #adadae and I
moved the middle and right stops down just a bit until I got what I was looking for. This is where you
just play around for a while until you get the result you want.

Step 17 – Setup Left Highlight Gradient

For the left highlight layer, I used 4 color stops and the colors used are (from left to right):

• 1. #4b4b4c
• 2. #737374
• 3. #555556
• 4. #929293

I adjusted the scale to 95% and moved the far right color down a bit.

Step 18 – Setup Right Highlight Layer

To get started on the right highlight I copy the layer style from the left layer and paste on the
right. Then open the layer styles and reverse the gradient. I unchecked the align with layer so that I
have a little more control over the angle and the change it to -2. The scale has also been changed to
37. The colors used are:

• 1. #191919
• 2. #b8b8b8
• 3. #fefefe

Once that is completed I created two more layers, one called black and the other white. I loaded the
right highlight selection and just gave it a little more of a darker edge on the bottom using a soft
black brush and lowering the opacity of the layer just a touch. For the white layer I loaded the right
highlight layer again (control click to load selection) and used a soft white brush to bring out the
left edge a little and also lighten the bottom part of the gradient.

Step 19 – Style The Top Layers

Styling the top is pretty simple. Just fill the top-inner layer with a solid black. For the top layer I just do a gradient overlay going from a dark gray to a light in the front. I also added two extra highlight layers. I gave the right side of the top a little black shading with a soft brush. On the other layer I added a little white soft brush hightlight on the front left portion of the top layer.

Step 20 – The Outer Menu

Not a lot going on here. The layer styles settings used are posted below. Note that I used a gradient overlay but as you can see with the color settings that a color overlay would have worked as well.

Step 21 – The Menu Button

The layer styles settings for the menu button are:

Step 22 – The Menu Text

I used Verdana Bold 9pt for the menu text. I’m not sure what is used on the iPod and to be honest it is not a major concern. As long as it’s close then that’s all I need for text that is so small. The triangles are wingdings3 8pt letter “t”. You can also use a pen tool to create you own triangle and fill with white. The pause button was created by drawing a rectangle and filling with white. For all of my characters I dropped the opacity down just a touch for a slight off white look. I also used the free transform tool on all of the pieces and gave them a slight rotation.

Step 23 – The Outer Screen

Ok time to style the outer screen so you have something that will look like the image below. Copy the styles settings to achieve this look.

Step 24 – The Inner Screen

Again, I’m just using layer styles for the inner portion of the screen.

Step 25 – Draw & Style The Top Button

Use the pen tool to draw the shape of the bottom part of the button, convert path to selection and fill with any color on a new layer. Now follow the style settings below.

For the top part I used the elliptical marquee to draw the top of the button, made a new layer, and filled with any color. Now use the style setting below.

Step 26 – Create Screen Highlights

Since the screen highlight is the same as the one for the base, there is no need to draw it. Simply load the selection of the right highlight in the base folder. Once it is selected, create a new layer in the screen folder making sure it is sitting above the layers in the folder and fill with #b8b8b9. Now load (ctrl click layer) the outer screen layer, select inverse, and delete. Now we have a copy of our base highlight except it only sits on top of the screen portion of our iPod.

Click the add layer mask on your new right screen highlight layer, make your foreground color black, and select the gradient tool. Make sure you have transparency checked and open your gradient menu and select the foreground to transparency gradient.

Make sure your layer mask is selected and not the actual layer and drag the gradient line from just outside the right edge to about halfway through the highlight bar. Using black on the layer mask will hide anything that is painted on. By using the gradient tool, we can achieve a nice & slow gradual fade. Once I’m happy, I lower the opacity to 28 and yours should now look like this:

Follow the same steps to create you left highlight bar. I did not use a layer mask on this one and simply filled with the same color as right and lowered the opacity to 6.

Step 27 – Final Image

Now simply find an image to place on the screen, size it correctly, and place under the two screen highlight layers and we are done. I hope this was a helpful tut and if you have questions please post in the comment. Oh and good luck finding a cooler image than my Emperor Pope pic.

Mike Dirnt

Katie Holmes

Naughty, naughty Ashton

Winslet, Kate

Mr. Bean..arrested

Hilary booked

Naughty Witch

Party Animal

Uma Thurman Assaulted

The Thief of the Ring

Madonna Mugshot

Mini-Me

Charlize Theron

Wrong side of the Law

Royal Mistake