tutorials : Just Jaimee

Distressing Papers… the realistic way

June 3, 2011 By Jaimee 4 Comments

Another check beside my designer todo list! Finally.. my own self made (from paint in the paint tube or scanned crumpled paper) distressed transparencies .. and plenty of ‘em! I have to admit, I love them and will use them religiously. If you are interested in linking up to them, see the bottom of this post. I first want to give you some pointers on how to use them:)

So.. first and foremost I HIGHLY recommend using my just dis-stressedout transparencies on patterned paper.. they won’t look so great on a solid colour unless to do some erasing with a grungy brush or something. The reason I made these overlays is to make your patterned papers looked like they are sanded or distressed.

If you are looking to distress solid papers, I recommend something like this:

otherwise, for patterned paper I recommend

If the distressed look is the look you want, recolour the transparency to your base or background colour of the paper. That makes sense right?

Want to recolour the transparency fast? I use the ‘lock transparent pixels’ tool.

Select the transparent layer you want to recolour and click the little ‘lock transparent pixels’

Now make sure the colour you want is your foreground colour and hold down your ‘alt’ key and hit your backspace key. That should fill your transparency with your foreground colour. To fill with the background hold down your ‘ctrl’ key and hit backspace.

Here are some examples using the same distressed transparency.

Below – recoloured the transparency with the paper background colour.

Below – for a more dramatic look I recoloured the transparency with the paper background colour then duplicated the transparency 3 times.

Below – it looks a little like the paper has been sanded through, so I recoloured the transparency to an ‘almost’ white (#f9f8f6) .. I NEVER use pure white or black.

Below – I tried recolouring the transparency with yellow .. looks pretty ok .

or .. you could try the standard blending mode option of overlay.. but I’m not so sure I like that.. you be the judge:)

So there are some tips for how to recolour / use my dis-stressed out transparencies! Don’t forget, you can also layer many different transparencies for cool effects as well!

Would you like to try them before you buy them?

CHECK OUT THIS POST FOR A FREE SAMPLE

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Quick Tip – using textureplates with black and white

May 25, 2011 By Jaimee 1 Comment

I would like to post a couple tips when using textured overlays such as textureplates.

You can find them in my shop here:

[box size="large"]Never use pure black and white colours on papers and elements you intend to use textures & overlays on

why?

Because when you use extremely light or dark (white or black) they won’t be able to distinguish the shades in the overlay. Try using a darker shade of black or an off white instead of straight black and white.

[/box]

here are some examples:

Black

You can see on the far left, the original texture.

If you set the blendmode as overlay on pure black hex code #000000, you will not get any result.

On the far right, I set the hex colour to: #343232 and set the texture blend mode to overlay, and to make the texture stand out more, I simply duplicate the texture layer as many times as I need for the desired result. In the example below, I duplicated it only twice.

You can always adjust your levels of the texture to darken it up a little more as seen below. I played with the level sliders until I got it darker to the point where the texture would be still visible but as close to black as possible:

White

You can see on the far left, the original texture.

If you set the blendmode as overlay on pure white hex code #ffffff, you will not get any result.

On the far right, I set the hex colour to: #e8e7e2 and set the texture blend mode to overlay, and to make the texture stand out more, I then duplicated the texture layer as many times as I need for the desired result. In the example below, I duplicated it 5 times.

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A fun way to make your own colour swatch

April 25, 2011 By Jaimee 7 Comments

Hey everyone!

Here is a way to come up with your own colour swatches for your next kit! Feel free to pick up my first series of free colour swatches including 26 aco files for photoshop created by me using the method explained below! Please note I do not claim ownership of this ‘idea’, it is based on a number of tips and pointers I have picked over the years.

The image selected for inspiration in this tutorial is from interior divine .

1. Open your image in photoshop that you want to pull your colours from. Prepare your layers by having the image on the bottom, a white block in the middle (to better see the colours you chose), and a layer above named colours.

2. Make sure your photo layer is selected and go to Filter -> Pixelate -> Mosaic ….

3. Slide the knob of the cell size until you are happy with your colour selection.

4. hit your ‘i’ key or manually select your eyedropper tool to activate it.

5. Click the colour you like so it sets your foreground that colour. Draw a square on the colours layer and align it left.

6. Now duplicate the colours layer (see Duplicate Layer Quickly in the image below)

7. Now lock the transparent pixels on this duplicated layer (see Colour fill and locking transparent pixels below). and nudge that square to the right until it is where you want it. Grab another colour with your eyedropper tool and hit alt + backspace to fill the square in the new duplicated layer with your new colour. Repeat this process until you are happy with your palette.

8. I am now ready to create and save a swatch.

9. hit your letter ‘i’ or manually select your eyedropper tool. Click on your first colour to make it your foreground colour, then go to your swatch panel and click ‘create new swatch from foreground color’ (see 3 below). If you cannot see your swatches panel, go to Windows -> Swatches. Repeat this until all of your new colours are in the swatch panel.

10. To save your new swatch, click the down pointing arrow in the swatches panel panel to bring up the menu. Then select ‘Preset Manager… .‘ (see 1 below)

11. ctrl + click all the colours of your new palette to activate them then click save set (you could also rename your colours if you like here in this window). Save your swatch in the default directory or somewhere you can easily find it later when you need to load it again. (To load a swatch simply select ‘Load Swatches… .’ from the same menu you selected the ‘Preset Manager… .’ option). Then click done when you are finished.

I hope this was easy to follow. I really appreciate feedback or suggestions so leave some comment love.

Jaimee

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Re-colouring a Flower in Photoshop

April 24, 2011 By Jaimee 16 Comments

Hello everyone!

I am happy to [ try ] to show you a couple of techniques on how to re-colour your flower stash!

So, let’s not waste anytime! Here we go…

Now I did this tutorial in PS CS5. It should be similar in your PS / PSE.

1. Open the flower you would like to re-colour in Photoshop

2. Create a layer above the flower. Right click on this new layer and select ‘create clipping mask’. See below

3. On this new layer we are going to take a grungy brush .. if you don’t have , click here to get a little brush sample of mine.

To activate your brush tool, type the letter ‘b’. You can then go to the brush menu to select your brush.

– note, if you don’t know how to load a brush file, click on the down arrow to make the brush menu popup. Then click on the right pointing arrow to show the menu. Select Load Brushes… . Then browse to where the abr file is, and click load. If it asks you if you want to replace, you can do that, but any other brushes (including ones you made that are not yet saved) will be gone from the menu. If you append the brush set, it will add them to the existing brushes in your loaded library.

4. Go ahead and make your foreground colour what you like.. I made mine a blueish colour. Go ahead and paint around the edges of the flower. Notice since we are painting on the clipped layer, that the paint strokes are only applied within (or technically clipped to) the flower. See the image below.

5. Now for the fun part. Photoshop is really a playground for experimentation. So this is the time to play with your layer blending options. With the clipped layer selected, go to the blending mode drop down and start playing with it until you get a result you like. Here are some of my examples:

MULTIPLY | FILL 70%

SCREEN | OPACITY 50%

OVERLAY | FILL 100%

I’m going to use this last setting of overlay at 100% opacity.

The grungy brush layer on the edge of the flower makes for a pretty cool look!

6. Now let’s play with the center of this flower a little. I will show you a technique of making a selection and feathering it. Then we will create an adjustment layer to play with the colour:)

Type the letter ‘l’ to make your lasso tool active (polygonal lasso tool works fine too). Make a rough selection around the center lighter part of the flower. When you see those marching ants you are on the right track.

7. Now if you look at the top near the menu bar you should see a button that says ‘Refine Edge’. Click that button while the marching ants are still dancing . If you don’t see that button, do an alt + ctrl + r or Select -> Refine Edge

8. This Refine Edge box may look different if you are not using CS5. No worries.. the setting we need to change is something you have too.

Slide your feather knob to the right until it’s blurry like it is below. As to how blurry you want it is up to you

, we just don’t want a hard edge or the colour difference in the flower won’t look very natural. Click ok, so you still see your marching ants.

9. Make sure your layer with the flower on it is the active layer (it will likely be highlighted blue) . Now go to the menu Layer – > New Adjustment Layers – > Selective Color. Since the center of the flower is closer to a yellowish colour, I will select ‘Yellows’ from the colors menu as seen below.

Now experimentation time! play with the sliders until you find something you like. Relative or Absolute adjustments are really just an issue of taste. My example below is a rather muted colour as you see from my sliding levels.

And there you have it, my finished colour adjusted flower. There are SO many ways to adjust and re-colour elements.. this is simply 1 technique I am showing you:)