Artistic patterned custom shapes:
This tutorial assumes you understand Photoshop layers and blend modes and is based on the Text & Blending Options tutorial.
Here we will combine a few techniques to create art with patterns, custom shapes and textures.
1. First choose the "custom shape" tool:
2. Draw your shape:
3. Using "blending options" add some style to your shape (just as
explained in the "text and blending options" tutorial here).
I also rotated the shape a bit:
4. Now go wild and just add some more custom shapes as you see fit:
5. Now we need to flatten the image. In the "layers" palette, click
on the tiny top arrow (circled in red) and from the menu choose "flatten
image":
6. Now go to the "image" menu => "adjustments" =>
"threshold". Play with the options until you are happy with the results.
This is what came out for me:
7. Now add a new layer, fill it with a colour (not a very dark colour), and
set it to "linear burn" blend mode:
8. Now we add some texture - this is texture no. 1:
9. I set its blending mode to "overlay":
10. This is texture no.2:
11. I set its blending mode to "hard light":
12. We can finish things here, but I would like to add some more touch, so here is what we'll do: In the "layers" palette make sure you are in the top most visible layer. Now press CTRL+A to select all the image, then go to the "edit" menu and choose "copy merged". Then press CTRL+V to paste a merged version of your image as the top most layer (because I'm obsessed, I always paste two copies of the merged image. It can come handy later on if you want to make lots of duplicates of it).
13. Now go to the "filters" menu => "artistic" =>
"palette knife". These are my settings:
14. And this is what it actually looks like:
15. Next go to the "image" menu => "adjustments" =>
"brightness/contrast" and set it so that the image is much brighter,
and the contrast is low:
16. This is what the image should look like:
17. Set the above layer's blending mode to "darken", and here's the
final result:
I hope you enjoyed this and that it gave you some additional tools.