personal design blog of christine kistner

I found this Steampunk style tutorial on PSDTuts a few weeks back and I really liked the different photoshop techniques it had to offer.

This is what the original design looks like.

Here’s is how I created mine.

Here are a few things I’ve learned:

• When using the pen tool hold ALT while clicking the last point to get a straight edged and more control.
• When masking out an image, go to Select> Color Range> Select the white area> Use the lasso tool WHILE holding ALT to add/subtract from the selection. Select> Modify> Expand pixels inward about 2-3> feather about 2 pixels.
• To give something a little more depth Select the layer> select the move tool> hold Command ALT & press down to duplicate layers stacked one on top each other. Reorganize the layers in the direction of your 3D and Shift Command D to Merge .
• When you have images stacked and you want to select one without selecting the other, Command Click on the layer you want the selection from, Command ALT click on the overlapping layer to get rid of that unwanted selection.
• To Rasterize an image or shape created using the pen tool, Create a new layer under the shape layer, Select the image layer and the new layer, Command + E will Merge them together. This will rasterize the image/shape for you.

Well, that’s it. I had a lot of fun compositing this piece. Thanks to James Davies and PSDTuts for the opportunity to learn something new.