For Beginners

i tried to make it as simple as possible, this is the type of sign you would start off with. its specifically for beginners on photoshop cs2, i understand its not that easy to follow so if you'll need extra help just e-mail me at admin@introtoall.net and i'll be glad to help you.

this tutorial will help you make a preppy sign like this:


open up your picture on photoshop, i'm using this one. unlock your background layer, by double clicking the little lock(background layer should change to layer 0)
now click on the tool and carefully go around her. if you are just a beginner you might want to change the feather to 0.4

that should be the progress so far.
now right click inside the selection and click "select inverse" on the drop down menu

now press delete on your keyboard

those little checker boxes mean that part is now transparent. pretty easy so far right? well now come the trickier parts so make sure to do EXACTLY as i say or i pretty much guarantee you that you'll get lost. so bear wtih me here. dont deselect after you delete the background, now just do the whole "select inverse" process again. now:

the smaller your photo, the less you expand it, mines pretty small so i'm expanding it 13 pixels. now just make a new layer, if your layers palette isn't visible just push F7 on your keyboard
click on the tool and drag it from side to side like this:

let go and this should be the pic so far:

don't worry its funnylooking because of the layer order, to fix it just drag the gradient layer below layer 0, click here to see how your layers palette should look
now double click on the right side of the gradiented layer, a layer style window should pop up match my settings (the hex code for white is ffffff) click here to view my settings
now match these settings(click)
make another new layer (on top of the gradient layer) and add brushes to it (NOTE: make sure the lasso tool is still visible) i added white spats on mine (preview) and changed the layer style setting to this and this and finally this. now you may deselect the lasso tool =]
this is what you should be seeing:

make another new layer and drag it all the way to the bottom of the layers palette.
now click on the tool again. if your foreground and background colors got misplaced, just click on the eyedropper tool and click on the part that has the color you need. use the tool on the whole backgroun and heres what you should get:

here comes all the fun decorating parts! i'm going to make another new layer and add the grid brush to it

hold on tight, not much longer to go!
click on the tool and on the default brushes click on the glowy looking one and change the size to around 400. now be gentle, and try to make the grid a little less visible.

make yet another new layer (on top of the grid layer) and add ordinary brushes to it. i'm going to add jewels to mine =] i changed the layer style of the jewel brushes layer to drop shadow distance 0. as you can see, that makes the sign look a little nicer

all the really difficult parts are out of the wayy, hurray for you!!
all you have to do is add a border and font! i used rockford and claudia fonts, but i forget where i got them from so don't askkk.lol i might post a tutorial on how to add a border later. heres the result =]


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