As football season approaches I can't help but be excited. Yea sure I am a Sooner fan sitting right in the middle of Husker country but I'm okay with that. I still sport my Crimson on game days and then some and receive all the flack from my coworkers and friends. Then I have the friends that are die hard husker fans, and they still love and support me by buying me sooner gear for my birthday and putting on that Crimson shirt for at least that one game. You know THE game? The Oklahoma vs Texas game. That's right flip them horns upside down. A rivals a rival. I have been called so many funny names by my bestie a Nebraska and LSU fan and I take it with a grin on my face.

It get's even better that my new roommate and friend is a Texas fan. I taunt her a little bit by placing sooner stickers on her door when she isn't paying attention and screaming boomer sooners at her at random. I am also sure to point out everytime I wear a sooners shirt. You know I love you Allie but that burnt orange in my house has got to go ha!

It's a tough gig to be my father his daughter born in the heart of Sooner country and he born right here in Cornhusker Country. That's right dad paint up for that Nebraska vs Oklahoma game because I will be sitting right beside you sporting that Bradford jersey.

Since I couldn't find an appealing football schedule for the year I created one in Photoshop for all my other fellow Sooner fans. Boomer Sooners!

You can download the schedule here

by Nicole Rutter

I just received a request for a blog entry for creating thick outlined logos in Photoshop CS3. Something that seems so easy doesn't always come out exactly how you want it unfortunately. In this example I am just going to do a real simple logo with a thick black outline. Feel free to play with the thickness of your lines in this example. Every font is going to be a little different.

Create a new Photoshop file with a white background. In this example I set mine to 900 pixels wide by 600 pixels high. I like to have plenty of room when I am designing and then I can just crop it down to size later. We are first going to select a font that would be good for a thick outline. You want to pick something that is a little heavy. In this example I am going to use Blackoak Std. Create a new layer and set your font size to 48 pt and black for the color. Type out the text of your choice. For this example I am just going to use my name.

Now double click on your layer that you just created with your text. This will open up your Layer Styles. First I am going to add a gradient overlay. You can use any colors of your choice. I am going to use greens for this example #1f6a0a -->#bdd75b.

We are also going to add a stroke within our layer styles. Click on stroke and set your stroke size to 13 and change the color to black. You may need to play with the settings a little. The goal here is to not have any white showing between the first line of text and the second.

Now you should have something that looks like this.

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There are times when a photo is just a little to bold for a design I am working on. One of my favorite things to do is make a photo look a little more abstract and soft using a few different tools in Photoshop.

Start out with an image of your choice. I will say that photos with lighter backgrounds will come out a little more clean then darker images. For this example I am going to use a picture of some buildings that I found on sxc.hu(free stock images website). I chose this image mostly because it has really defined edges with the windows etc. Once you have your image go ahead and open your image in Photoshop CS3. One of the important things to remember is that when using effects like these play around with the settings. Don't limit your self to the settings that I am using below

The first thing we are going to do is apply a cutout filter by going to Filter-->Artistic-->Cutout. Apply the following settings and click okay.

Cutout Settings
Number of Levels - 3
Edge Simplicity - 2
Eduge Fidelity - 2

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This morning I came across a very nice collection of web 2.0 gradients for Photoshop CS3 and thought I would share them with the rest of you. These gradients can be downloaded for free from Deziner Folio.
Once you have downloaded the gradient simply unzip the file and place your gradient in a convenient location. I have created a folder in my documents called photoshop tools where I add my brushes, and custom shapes etc. That way I know each time where I have placed my downloaded Photoshop tools. To add the gradient select your gradient tool in Photoshop CS3 and at the top click the down arrow next to the gradient colors. You will see an arrow located on the right of the gradients that you can select from. Click the arrow and select load gradients.

Then simple select your gradients and your ready to go.

One of the things I seem to have people ask me a lot is how to make glossy buttons. There are a lot of different ways to do this but this is usually how I do mine.

First create a new Photoshop file of any size with a white background. Next create a new layer. Set your foreground color to black. Now select your Ellipse tool

 

Hold down your shift key and drag your circle out to your desired size. Now we have our circle. Now lets add some color. Remember you can use any colors you would like but for this tutorial I am going to use shades of blue. Double click on your layer with the circle in it to bring up your layer styles. Check Inner glow and apply the following settings for your inner glow. The blue that I used is #4ebaf8.

Next we are going to add a gradient overlay. Make sure to set your style to radial. The colors I used are #d1d1d1 for the gray and #2a6485 for the blue

And for the stroke I used #1181c8 for the blue outline

Now you should have something that looks like this

Now we need to apply the glow. Add a new layer and call it glow. Now select your Elliptical Marquee Tool. Now drag your Marquee tool over the top portion of your circle going outside of your circle at the top and sides.

 

Now make sure you are in your new layer called glow. Now select your fill tool and fill your marquee with white. Now it should look like the top portion of your circle is cut off. Don't worry this is what we want. Now change your opacity of the glow layer to 17%. You can now see the glow on the top of your circle. You can set your opacity to any setting you want depending on the look you are trying to get.




Now all you have to do is apply your image to your button. For this example I am just going to use a shape in my custom shapes tool. Create a new layer under your glow layer. This will allow the glow to appear over your image as well. Now your final glow button should look something like this.

Photoshop - Creating curved lines using the rounded rectangle tool.

I recently created a new layout where I chose to use a curved rectangle. In this tutorial I am going to show you how to get the effect. Create a blank Photoshop file and make your background white. Save the file as curved rectangle. Now that we have a new file created lets go ahead and add a new layer (Shift+Ctrl+N) and name it rectangle.
On your new layer create a rounded rectangle of any size using your rounded rectangle tool I made my rounded rectangle white.

Now lets add a stroke to that layer to define our edges. Double click on your layer this will bring up your layer styles. Check stroke. I set my stroke to 2px and black.


You should now have something that looks like this.


Now we are going to transform the layer. click on Edit-->transform path Wrap (Ctrl+T then right click and select Wrap).


Now we are going to start transforming our image. You are going to click on one of the gray circles and start dragging it in. I like to start on the left side with the top circle. When I drag these
areas I usually drag it toward the center of the circle and down to give it a more rounded effect.


When you continue to do this to all the sides until you get your desired shape. Once you have go ahead and hit enter this will apply your new shape.

If you would like to view an example of how this can be used. Check this out.

Click image for full size

Photoshop brushes can be a very helpful and powerful thing if you practice a little bit. It's all about combining different elements to create just about anything. Before I started using Photoshop brushes I used to draw everything out as you know this can be very time consuming. For things like clouds, splatters of paint, grass, etc... Photoshop brushes are the way to go. There will of course be times when it is just easier to draw out your own graphics.

To load Photoshop brushes I created a folder in My Documents called Photoshop Brushes. I do this because if I load a brush at work and want to take it home its easier for me to access.
Open Photoshop and click on your brush tool. Open up your brushes and click on the arrow located on the right hand side. From there you will click on Load brushes. Find the location and your ready to go.



The above image was created with Photoshop brushes. I go through brusheezy's site about once a month to check out the new Photoshop brushes. When your starting out using brushes it is best to just start playing around with them. I use a lot of opacity settings, shadows and things like that when I am using brushes.

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I have been wondering for some time now how to create a good looking carbon fiber background. Last night I was playing around with some color combinations to get the carbon fiber to look right. So lets get started.

Open a new photoshop file and make the file 8x8. I like my carbon fiber a little loose so you can tell its carbon fiber. Some people like it to look a little tighter so if this is you make yours 4x4. Your going to zoom in all the way so you can see what your doing(Ctl +). Using your select tool fill in the following colors.

#242424	#1C1C1C
#1D1D1D	#151515
#1A1A1A	#222222
#131313	#1B1B1B

Its hard to see right now but your carbon fiber pattern is now in place. You should have something like the image below.


Now lets set our pattern. Go to edit-->define pattern. Name your pattern anything of your choice. I named my pattern Carbon. Now that we have our pattern lets open up a new Photoshop file. Go to file--> new. Set your width to 600 and your height to 500 (or any size of your choice).

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I have had a few friends ask me how to change the shirt color or a persons eyes in pictures using Photoshop. This is something I do all the time! If I find a image on stock.xchng (free stock photo site) and I don't like the shirt color someone is wearing I simply modify it in Photoshop to my liking.

Today I am going to use an example of a Tree frog to adjust its hue and saturation. The reason I wanted to use a tree frog is because it has very bright vibrant colors but you can use this tutorial on any image!

The first thing we are going to do is create a new Photoshop file by going to File-->new and select your size and background color. For my image I am using a white background 510 wide by 373 high. Now that we have a blank Photoshop file lets create a new layer. Open up your layers panel (F7 or go to Window-->Layers) and create a new layer. I called my layer Tree Frog. Now paste in your image that you wish to change.

Click Image to Enlarge

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