FileFront Forums - NCOL's Newbie Friendly Tutorials

Hey, there's been an influx of new Photoshop users around here so I decided to make a compilation of newbie-friendly tutorials that will improve your first few steps with the Photoshop program.

Also, if you'd like me to make a tutorial on anything else or have any questions feel free to post them here and I'll try and answer them.

1. Basic Border Tutorial

Borders are the simplest of steps forward to making your work look more professional. Whilst they arent complex looking, or anywhere near as time-consuming as some other tricks, they greatly improve the overall look of your work.

In order to create a border, follow these steps:

1. Borders can be put onto existing layers, or they can be a layer themselves. However, for a border to work, they must be the top layer.

To create a border. Go to Layer > New Layer, call it whatever you want, and click ok.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...utorials/1.jpg

2. With that new layer selected, press CTRL + A and you will see that the edges have a white and black flickering border.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...utorials/2.jpg

3. Go to Edit > Stroke and you will see a box appear. The Width can be anything you want, but for a basic, popular and professional looking border, keep it set to 1 pixel.

4. Press CTRL + D and the flickering black and white border will dissapear. Done! There's your new border.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...utorials/3.jpg

TIP: I usually do borders as the last stage of every piece of work, this is to make sure I dont get any blending errors. If you cannot see your border layer, it's probably under one of your other layers, so go to the layers box on the right hand side of the Photoshop window and drag the border layer upwards and over the other layers.

You're done. A very simple border which improves your signature ten-fold!

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2. Basic Grunge Tutorial

This is your very basic grunge tutorial. Never-the-less, it's very effective and improves your work greatly.

1. Make a new document using the below dimensions and settings. I will use 400 Pixel X 150 Pixel which is my standard signature making size, but you can do it any size you want.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...utorials/4.jpg

2. Go to Filter > Render > Clouds.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...utorials/5.jpg

Now, using the Burn Tool, set Range to Shadows and Exposure to 70%. Now, select any brush you want, and tap away at your new layer. Keep changing the Brush shapes and Brush sizes so that you get something like what is shown below, with different densities and depth of black:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...utorials/6.jpg

TIP: More advanced users may want to change the Exposure levels and also the Range to other settings. This adds variety, which is always good. Also, more advanced users familiar with Photoshop will use custom Brushes downloaded off the internet. I am currently using custom brushes, but they are very easy to install (usually the Brushes' .Zip or .RaR files come with the install instructions) and find using Google.

3. Now, with this layer selected, press CTRL + J to make a copy of this layer.

4. With this new layer selected, press CRTL + U to bring up the Hue/Saturation table. Make sure Colourize is selected so that you can see the colour change, and mess about with the settings until you get a colour that you like. For mine, I chose to do a thick, vibrant crimson/red colour.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...utorials/7.jpg

5. Now, remember our first layer? Click on that, but make sure layer 2 is Hidden (as indicated by the eye symbol). Now, select layer 1 and again press CTRL + U. Make sure Colourize is selected again, and pic a complementary colour to your first chosen colour. As an example I chose a bronzed out yellow.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...utorials/8.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...utorials/9.jpg

6. Now, make sure you have your layer 2 selected and visible. Go to your Eraser tool, make sure it is set to Opacity 50% and similar to stage 2, keep changing brushes and tapping away at your layer 2, so that parts of layer 1 become visible.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...torials/10.jpg

7. Press CTRL + A to select all, and go to Layer > Fatten Image.

8. Okay. That's the hard part done. All you have to do now is grab your render (see my Transparency tutorial on how to cut out renders as well as how to use pre-made renders), create a new layer over the other two, and place your render onto this layer.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...torials/12.jpg

9. Now go to the your Render Layer, and go to Blending Options > Drop Shadow and set Opacity to 80%. You can set the Opacity to any blend mode you see fit, but I chose a high value because I wanted to get a decent shadow on my render.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...torials/14.jpg

10. With your background layer selected, go to Eliptical Marquee Tool, make sure feather is set to 10 px and make a circle shape on your piece. Now press CTRL C and then CTRL V. This circular piece will now become a new layer, drag it above your render layer and you will notice that it creates a mist-type haze over the render. Repeat this process but make sure that you have your background layer selected before make a circle or it will not work.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...torials/15.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...torials/16.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...torials/17.jpg

TIP: If the haze is too strong you can always lower its Opacity in Blending Options or delete it and try again.

This is what I've come up with so far:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...ExampleSig.jpg

11. Now to do a border. To do this, follow my Simple Border Tutorial.

Add some text if you want and done! Your Basic Grunge Signature is finished!

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I'll keep adding tutorials as I get new ideas, they may get more complex, but I'll see what the requests are like. For now though, try them out!