Photoshop Christmas Ornament

The holiday season is fast approaching and people will soon be using Photoshop to create Christmas greeting cards, banners, and flyers. Most of them will probably want to create some pictures of Christmas decorations on those cards. This is a quick and dirty tutorial to get started with creating ornaments

The Magical Color Changing Christmas Ornament
I don’t enjoy doing something over and over. Repetitive tasks get boring so most of the time we should be reusing our work. The following tutorial shows how to make a Christmas Ornament graphic that you can quickly modify in a few seconds.
This is what the end product will look like:

Best of all, if you want to change the color you will just edit one layer and you’ll end up with a brand new Christmas ornament with out losing any of the cool effects.

There.. that literally took 4 seconds.
Let’s Begin
1) Creating the base layer
Create a new image ( File > New ). Choose what ever settings you like. I chose the 1024×768 preset.
Create a New Layer. Rename this layer and call it “BASE”.
Choose the Layer called BASE by clicking on it in the Layers Palette.
Grab the Elliptical Marquee Selection Tool
If you hold down the SHIFT key and then drag then you will get a perfect circle. Do that now. Shift+click and then drag on your image. Make a nice round selection.
In your color picker,  Choose WHITE as your foreground color. And choose RED as your background color.


Now grab the Gradient Tool ( G ) . When you choose the gradient tool you should notice that the top tool bar changes. You will see a Gradient Picker.

Click on that gradient picker area (in the screen shot above it’s the area with the red to black gradient. After you click on it you should see the Gradient Picker window. Choose Foreground to background. Then inside the circle selection make a diagonal line going from upper left to lower right. Keep trying until your circle looks like the following:

Next, go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. I chose 6% noise, Uniform and Monochromatic.
2) Making it 3D-ish.
Create a new layer. Call it “3D effect”.
Choose the layer called “3D Effect”
CTRL+Click on the layer called “Base”. This will select the circle. Make sure that 3D effect layer is selected. Then go to Edit > Fill > Choose Color in the Use menu > and choose 100% Black as the color.
Now click on the Add Layer Mask button on the bottom of the Layers Palette.
Click on the black colored layer mask next to the 3d effect layer. Choose the gradient tool. Use a Foreground to Transparent gradient. Make another diagonal line inside the selected circle. Keep trying until you get something like this:

You may have to click on delete and try again until you get it looking like the image above.
3) Making the Ring
Create a new layer. Call it “Ring”.
Make a small narrow oval selection on top of the orb and fill it with a color. I chose yellow. It should look like this:


Choose the move tool.
Now press ALT and the up arrow. This will duplicate the selection and nudge it upwards.
Press up until the little ring is high enough.
And the end choose Select > Modify > Contract. Enter in a number like 3 pixels and then fill it with black.
You can also apply a reflected gradient on this ring.
You should end up with something that looks like the following:


4) Making the final Glow
Make a new layer. Call it “Glow”.
Control click on Base. This will select the circle.
Go to Select > Save selection. Name should be Circle 1.
Grab the marquee tool and click and drag the selection slightly to the left.
Now click on Select > Save Selection.
This time in the Channel drop down menu choose Circle 1.
Operation should be Subtract from selection.
Go to the channels palette and click on Circle 1.
You should see something like the following:

Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. I blurred mine 34 pixels. This may be different for you depending on what size you are working with.
Control Click on Circle 1 channel and then go back to the Glow Layer.
Click on Edit > Fill and fill it with WHITE. Finally change the blending mode for this layer to Overlay. Move this layer until it looks good.
5) Changing Colors.
If you want to change the colors of this ornament just click on the BASE layer. Then go to Image > Adjustment > Hue Saturation. Move the Hue slider and the color of the orb will change. All the glow effects will remain.
If you want to download my PSD to check out all the layers then just click the following link:

create Gif89a Animations by photoshop

What is a Gif89a Animation?

You can create Gif89a Animations to decorate your web pages. Gif animations are low-bandwidth, low tech ways to create animations. Currently, the only browsers that support Gif89a animations are Netscape 2.0 and higher, and Internet Explorer 3.0 and higher). The good news is that even if visitors to your web site aren't using Netscape 2.0 they will see either the first or last frame of the animation (depending on the browser), so there's no need to place an alternate image for other browsers.

Read Our Tutorials

• Learn how to create simple animation effects called transitions without having any artistic talent!
• If you can type, you can create scrolling text.. Learn how!
• Learn how to create an animation frame by frame.
• General tips and tricks for creating Gif animations.

Download and View Animations

• View the Lava Lamp Animation, animation by Laurie McCanna, original Lava Lamp image courtesy of Dave Moon.
• View the snowflake animation described in the rotation tutorial.
• Royal Frazier has a great site about using Gif89, with links to other sites using Gif89a animations.

Create a Dramatic Text Effect

Create a Dramatic Text Effect
This tutorial will teach you how to create a bold, dramatic text effect for your web site. You have probably seen this effect used for movie titles. Step by step instructions are given for Photoshop versions 3, 4 and 5, but you could also create this image using the gradient tools within Corel PhotoPaint or Paint Shop Pro.
1. In Photoshop, select File/New, and fill with black. Create your text using the Type tool.
In Photoshop 3, you'll want to select only the text by using Control+Alt+T on Windows, or Command+Alt+T on the Mac.
In Photoshop 4, you won't need to select the text.
In Photoshop 5, you'll want to select Layer/Type/Render Type, or right mouse click on the "T" icon in the layers palette and select Render Type. Then select the Transparency Checkbox on the Layers palette before you apply the gradient.
Next, use the Gradient tool. You can change the setting of the Gradient tool by double-clicking on the Gradient tool icon, which will open the Option palette for the Gradient tool. Set your background color to black, and the foreground color to very pale gray as shown in the example. Double click on the Gradient icon to open the Options Palette. In the Options Palette, set the type of gradient to Linear, and the Gradient to Foreground to Background.
You can use any two colors, as long as one of the colors matches the background (black was used in this example).
Apply the gradient from top to bottom of the text selection while holding down the Shift key. Using the Shift key with the Gradient tool constrains the gradient to a smooth vertical blend.

2. With the type layer selected, from the Layers Palette, select Duplicate Layer. Drag the duplicated type down vertically by 3 or 4 pixels by using the arrow keys on your keypad. In Photoshop 4 and Photoshop 5, make sure that the Transparency Checkbox is selected on the Layers palette for the type layer. Then apply the same gradient in the opposite direction. Voila! Dramatic text for your web site! 3. Select Mode/Indexed, or Image/Mode/Indexed in Photoshop 4 and Photoshop 5 and save this as a gif file.
Remember, even though this technique is demonstrated with type, you could also use this effect on clipart, line art, or a logo, as shown below:

What is the typeface used for the title graphic on this page? It's called ITC Anna, and it's available from ITC or ImageClub.
The fish, above, is from a dingbat font called Diversities, also available from ImageClub and included with CorelDraw.