the allotments from top to bottom:

• Grays
• Browns
• Normal (two colors)
• Gloss
• Dull
• Personal Favorites

Feel free to use these gradients for free or commercial use.

Download .GRD

So you create tutorials or something that requires screen shots on Photoshop and none of your cursors show up in the screen shots! Well I have created a pack of Photoshop cursors for you to use how you like, the backgrounds are all cut out, just open the file and drag the layer of the cursor you want on your tutorial, as simple as that. See the preview below, and below that is the PSD download.

Photoshop Cursor Pack – Preview

Photoshop Cursor Pack – Download

designpear photoshop cursors

In this tutorial you will learn some great techniques to make a navigation bar in Photoshop. This navigation bar will be in blue, but you can easily change the colors to what you like. Here is a preview of how the navigation bar will turn out (you can make it longer or shorter if you like).

The Background of the Navigation Bar:

Ok, lets get started. First off, we want to create a new file to the size of 40px X 400px with a resolution of 72. (change the length to suit the width of your website). Check out the image below:

Next we want to create the background, this involves a few Photoshop layer styles and colors, but it’s quite easy. First we will select the whole canvas area and fill it with a color:

Next is the layer styles, double click the layer to get into this, then input the following settings:

Now the stroke:
Note; Make sure you set the position to the inside, otherwise you will not even see it.

Highlights of the Navigation Bar:

The highlights are a strip of white on the top of the navigation bar and the white to transparent gradient at the bottom.

I will start with the top strip of white. Simply find half way (20px down from the top) and then select all of that. Once selected, just fill it with white like this:

Now lower the opacity to 6%:

Next is the bottom highlight, simple do the same as the top highlight, but this time turn the opacity down to 40% and set the gradient overlay style on that layer to what you see below, to change the opacity on the gradient, click the top box where it has the preview, you will notice below the one with 0% opacity is white and the other with 100% is black:

Now you should have a navigation bar that looks like this:

Dividers and Text:

For the dividers simply draw with the pencil tool, two lines each 1px each. One in white and the other in black like so:

Now set the opacity to 57% and the blending mode to “Soft Light” on that specific layer:

It should now look like this:

Once you have done that, add some text and more dividers. I just used Arial for the font at 20pt. Here is my final work:

I was actually trying out a few ways to make a nice looking button when I realized this button actually looks like a keyboard key. It’s really simple to make, anyone can do it.

First off, select the rounded rectangle tool.

Next we want to set the radius of the corners to 8px (px = pixels). The picture shows the top toolbar on Photoshop, when you select the rounded rectangle tool, this is where you set the radius.

Now we can create a rounded rectangle, for this tutorial, use 83px by 83px, you can see what size your rectangle is by using the info panel (you can activate this info panel by pressing F8). Also you can hold the SHIFT button to make it easier to create a perfect square. You should end up with:

Now you can rasterize your image to get rid of the path lines:

Ok, now for the layer styles. Double click on the layer with the rounded square and go to the ‘gradient overlay’ menu. Change the gradient colors to #CFCFCF on the left and #FFFFFF on the right side. Now input the following details:

Your rounded square should now look like this:

After that you will need to add a simple stoke, this should be 2px wide and on the outside of your rounded square. The color of this stroke is #ABABAB. The stroke, like the gradient overlay is in the layer styles.

Your rounded square should now look like this:

This is the biggest step, but the most important. In your layer styles select the ‘Bevel and Emboss’ menu and do the following settings:

Please note that the ‘highlight mode’ color = #FFFFFF and the ‘Shadow mode’ color = #000000.

Also don’t worry about the ‘Gloss contour’, that’s the next step.

Ok, now for the ‘Gloss Contour’, click the little image (shown in red below) and then simply input the following settings and click ok:

Your rounded square should now look like this:

Now customize it how you like, maybe add a letter or number, or create a keyboard from it haha. Here is my final work:

Cutting out an image in Photoshop is a common thing to do, especially when working with photos. There are a few ways to cut out a photo but by far the best for precisely cutting out your image is the polygon lasso tool, check out the image below to see where you can find this tool:

Next we need to get our photo that needs cutting out, I just got a photo of a sign:

Now you just simply use the polygon lasso tool, by just clicking the next spot you want the selection to go around. In the image below, it shows how I started cutting out using the polygon lasso tool. The red circles show where I clicked:

If you need to zoom right in on your photo to do your cutting out, this next tip is something you will want to know. When you want to move across or down/up to continue your selection, you can temporarily use the hand tool to move around and then continue your selecting. To do this, all you have to do is hold down your SPACEBAR and after you have moved to the next part you want to select, let go of the SPACEBAR and continue your selection. See below:

After you have selected everything you will have a selection that looks something like this:

If you press delete now, you will delete the part you want, so you will need to inverse your selection, you can do this under the select menu(shown below) or you can use the keyboard shortcut, CTRL + SHIFT + I:

The selection should turn out like this (notice the selection around the outside):

Now press delete and you will have a cut out image that you can add a background to or what ever you like.

I use so many shortcuts while working on Photoshop to save time and the frustration of trying to find the right function in a menu and then ending up clicking the wrong one. With keyboard shortcuts it’s usually a combination of three keys that you press at any one time and it will carry out a specific function, such as ‘undo’, but you can get more advanced then that.

Okay, here are the all time must-know Photoshop keyboard shortcuts:

1. To hide or show all toolbars and panels press TAB
2. To undo one or more steps press CTRL + ALT + Z
3. To redo one or more steps press CTRL + SHIFT + Z
4. To transform an image or selection press CTRL + T
5. To scale an image or selection proportionally from the center (while in transform mode) press ALT + SHIFT while dragging it. Also, you can just use SHIFT while dragging, but it will not be from the center.
6. To temporary use the hand tool press and hold the SPACEBAR, when you let go of it, your tool will change back to the previous tool you were using.
7. To save your work, press CTRL + S
8. To zoom press CTRL + = to zoom in, OR CTRL + – (hyphen) to zoom out.
9. To inverse a selection press CTRL + SHIFT + I
10. To deselect a selection press CTRL + D and to reselect press CTRL + SHIFT + D

Well there it is, the 10 best must know Photoshop keyboard shortcuts. Practice them every time you use photoshop and you will be much more efficient and you will impress anyone watching you design so efficiently.

I noticed there are way more then 10 useful keyboard shortcuts especially for selections, fonts (type) and zooming/view, so you may see 3 more posts about them in the future.

In my last post How to define patterns in photoshop i outlined how to define patterns, but of course we want to know how to make good looking ones. This involves a couple of different line patterns and styling them.

Download My pack of pattens

Download my pack of line patterns here: Pack of line patterns
This download just saves you a bit of your time =]

Loading the patterns

To load the patterns, just go Layer Style (double click a layer) >> Pattern OverLay >> Click the pattern drop down >> click the arrow(pointing right) >> Load Patterns

Now choose the pattern you want.

Styling the patterns

There are some great ways of styling patterns just by using the layer styles and the paint bucket tool.

When you load the pattern pack, you will notice the backgrounds are transparent, this is so you can easily change the background color, simply use the paint bucket tool in the floating menu on your layer. This makes the background color change, with your pattern on top of it.

Changing pattern opacity for a better looking pattern, this is got to be the easiest bit of all. Just change the opacity in the Pattern OverLay style menu, low opacity here is usauly best but just play around with it.

Adding a gradient using layer styles is easy but the gradient will overlay your pattern so just turn down the opacity on your gradient style, and your done.

Easy as.

Defining pattens in Photoshop can be very useful, if you want to use patterns of your own. Defining patterns is actually quite easy and doesn’t take long. I have found patterns to be great space fillers mainly for website backgrounds, banners or even buttons..

Here’s a list of steps to define a pattern:

1. Make a new canvas by going File >> New
2.  
3. Make the canvas size 6×6, it can be any height, depending on the pattern you want to make
4.  
5. Now zoom in as far as possible
   
6.  
7. Time to do some pixel art, remember the pattern needs to be able to repeat, so make it semetrical
8.  
9. Here is my pattern, simple, but effective
   
10.  
11. Now to define it. Simply goto the top menu >> Edit >> Define Pattern then in the popup box give it a name:
    
12.  
13. Thats it! Now you can access and use your pattern in the layer styles (double click a layer) layer style:
    

Here is an example of my pattern, with a background color and the opacity changed etc..

And that’s it!

This is probably one of the easiest ways to make any 3d object using photoshop. The trick is to use SketchUp to make the basic object that you want, then using photoshop you can style it with some gradients, or what ever you want. This way of making 3d objects with photoshop allows you to customize the object’s faces and make complex shapes easily (using sketchup).

How my 3d object turned out:

An overview of what we will be doing:

• Use SketchUp to make the basic shape of the 3d object
• Get the 3d object into photoshop
• Use photoshop to add some colouring and highlights/shadows

SketchUp

(if you have SketchUp and know how to use it, skip this part)
If you don’t already have Google SketchUp, you can download it here: Google SketchUp.

Get Google SketchUp 6 as this version is free, and is all you will need.

Making a 3d object in SketchUp

SketchUp is a really easy 3d modeling program to use, for the purpose of this tutorial i’ll do some boxes, but of course you can make whatever you like.

To make a box, all you need to know about is the rectangle tool, the push/pull tool, the move tool and the view adjusting tools. Most things with SketchUp are easy to figure out by using the old trial and error method, just play around with it.

The rectangle tool looks like this:
To use it, just press and hold your mouse button down then drag it to the width you want.

The push/pull tool looks like this:
To use it, hover it over the face (top/bottom side of the rectangle) then press and hold ur mouse then drag it straight up/down.

The move tool looks like this:
To use it, just select the object you want to move and then drag it to where you want it.

Finally, the view tools look like this:
The hand is used to pan from side to side/top to bottom and the orbit tool is used to rotate(orbit) around your object. (hold shift to easily switch between these two, when using one of them).

Now once you get a good looking box, move onto the next part. Here is a preview of the boxes i made:

Importing the 3D object into Photoshop

Importing? What i really mean is just take a screen shot of your 3d object then create a new canvas in photoshop and paste your screenshot there. Follow these steps and you can’t go wrong:

• In sketchUp: get your boxes in a good looking perspective/view
• Take a screenshot, press “Print Screen” on your keyboard, or on a mac press Command+Control+Shift+3
• Fire up photoshop and create a new canvas to the size of your screen resolution
• Paste it, Ctrl+v or apple+v

Styling your 3D object

This is the really easy part, just get rid of the background using the wand tool (make sure the tolerance is down low). Now delete the axis lines that are left behind.

Adding a gradient/colors to individual sides is so easy, though it does take a little bit of time to get the right colours for the direction of light. Just use the wand again for each face of the box and fill the selection with whatever gradient/colour you like, i like to make a layer for each face i change colour of, it just makes it easier to update (using layer styles).

Download my PSD file to see first hand

After doing that i merged all the layers together (ctrl+e for each layer) and then did a Gaussian blur (filters >> blur >> Gaussian blur). I will have to admit, the lines do look a lot better when the image is smaller, so if you want a big image as your final work, make the sketchup image big to start with, then scale it.

Here is my final work, in 6 different colours:

Overview

This method can be used for pretty much any shape that you can make in SketchUp, just be creative. If you have Photoshop CS3 extended(and the required plugin), you can import your Google SketchUp models and rotate them and edit the faces far easier. For more information on this plugin visit: Adobe plugin download page and a news review of it. I have never used this plugin, so i won’t be much help if you ask me about it.

A few glossy styles which you are free to use wherever and however you please.

Download : noise-styles