Photoshop - advanced textures (1) See the result

This quite lengthy tutorial is aimed at exploring how to make superbly advanced textures from scratch in Photoshop.

1. Create a new document 250 x 250 px. Create a new layer and call it Shape(at this stage, get in the habit of giving each new layer a meaningful name - "shape", "gradient" etc. - you'll need to identify them later!) and select the Elliptical Marquee Tool and, in the Options Bar, select "Fixed Size" and enter 200 px wide x 200 px high.

2. Click anywhere within the canvas to make a circluar selection appear and then fill with a medium grey (pick one from the Swatches Palette). Then without deselecting, go to SELECT...All and then LAYER...Align to Selection...Vertical Centres and then LAYER...Align to Selection...Horizontal Centres - this will place the circle exactly in the centre of the canvas. Deselect.

At this point, we're ready to start giving our circle it's axe-head shape. We're going with a really simple structure right now, by using equal cuts out of the top and bottom of our circle.

Hold down your Ctrl key and click the circle layer. A circular selection is formed. Select the Marquee Tool now, and click within the selection, dragging it down so that the top of the selection is well below the half way mark of our circle. Select EDIT...Cut to delete the masked area out of our circle. You will probably need the rulers visible (Ctrl + R) and drag in a few guides to make sure the selection is symmetrical.

Repeat this step, dragging the circle upward this time. When we're completed this step, the basic form of the Blade is now our old "circle layer". The image to the right is what we're aiming for:

Before we leave the layers palette, Ctrl + click on the layer with the shape in it to get marching ants going around the shape.

3. Now go the the Channels palette and create a new channel via the icon at the bottom of the palette . Fill this shape with white. Does it look like the image to the right?

4. Now with the marching ants still going, create a new channel, fill it with white and go to FILTER...Blur...Gaussian Blur.

To get a super-smooth "roundness2 to the edge of the shape, we're going to do it in stages, so set the first blur to 13 px, then repeat at 8, then 4, 2 and 2.

This is a Photoshop basic - the creating and blurring of channels which will give us a nice smooth roundness (you'll see in a bit!)

Another basic is that, when you went back to FILTER... for the umpteenth time, it probably didn't escape your beady little eye that Gaussian Blur was right at the top of the list. So why bother to scroll down and across? Easy! If you decide to be lazy, you will simply apply the settings of your previous move. so do a bit of work and it'll be worth it.

5. Once all the blurs are done, and we have a nice gradient, SELECT...Inverse, then EDIT...Cut. This will remove any of the so called "halo effect" of brighter pixels at the edge of the selection.

Now, for this example, we wanted a "raised" section on the side of the blade. To give the blade a thicker feeling in the center. To do this, we go to SELECT...Inverse (to make the shape the only thing selected) and then SELECT...Modify...Contract, and contract our selection by 16 pixels (the max allowable contraction), then repeat the contract step, but this time only contract the selection by 2 pixels.

With the Eyedropper Tool, select one of the very lightest shades of grey within our image and Alt + backspace to fill the contracted area with this pale grey.

6. Go back to our Layers Palette, and select the Shape Layer. Next we go to FILTER...Render...Lighting Effects and the dialogue box comes up, look over all your choices (especially if you're unfamiliar with this filter). This is a very powerful filter, so knowing how to tweak our settings, is essential to getting the effect we want.

Lighting Effects will automatically give us a Spotlight from the upper left, shining down across our graphic toward the lower right. The first thing we'll do, is change the type of light here, by clicking on the "Light Type" box, and selecting Directional. Now shorten the length of the line that's showing as the light source, to give it a wider lighting focus (which will make it seem more intense in how much it "brightens" our layer). Keep this directional light white.

Click on the Light Bulb at the bottom of the dialogue window, and drag into the graphic area. A new spotlight will appear. Click on the colour box in the dialogue window, and select a colour for this Spotlight (a soft yellow/brown colour was used in the example to show a reflectory/secondary light source throwing a bit of yellow haze across the blade). Aim this spotlight from the bottom right of the blade, diagonally toward the top left. Play with the intensity, and width of focus as you want, to get a decent reflecting look. And make surer you're on the correct Texture Channel! (i.e. Alpha 2)

This is important! While you're blowing you're brains out trying to suss out the Lighting Effects dialog box, before you play with the sliders, make sure you're on the right "Texture Channel" (in this case Alpha 2)- this will give you a better preview in the box...

7. Now in the Texture Channel box, select the Gaussian blurred "Lighting Channel" we created.(The image to the right is a rollover which we know you like!) Make sure the White is High radio button is checked, and adjust the height to only a few pixels (3 in the example). Now, for the sake of the tutorial, use 59 as the Gloss setting, 46 as the Metallic setting, 0 for our Exposure setting, and 3 for the Ambience setting.

Click OK, and watch as Lighting Effects gives our Blade Layer some three dimensional depth. Still with us?

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