Thursday, August 11, 2011

Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year


A very detailed tutorial where i will show you how to create a greeting card for Christmas and New Year Holidays to impress your relatives and friends. This Photoshop tutorial is very simple but the result looks so amazing!
  

Final Image Preview

Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year

Step 1

Create a new document with size of 800 x 600 pixels and fill it with black color.
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 1

Step 2

Now I would like to create abstract snowing on the picture. We can do it by using the Pen Tool. But before we can start, we have to change some presets of the Brush Tool which we will be using in the future. Select the Brush Tool, a soft round brush about 15 pixels and opacity at 61%.
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 2
Then click the button “Toggle the Brushes Palette” on the Options Bar to open brush preset window or go to Windows > Brushes. Here we can see a couple of presets. Update them for current brush:
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 3
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 4

Step 3

Set foreground color as white (#ffffff). Create new layer, after that select Pen Tool (you need to make sure you are working with Paths instead of Shape Layers). Draw out one straight line using paths:
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 5
Click on start point to close path. Then right-click and select Stroke Path:
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 6
A little dialog box will appear as in the screenshot. Choose Brush and make sure there is a tick next to Simulate Pressure. This is important as it will give your line tapered ends which will make it rock!
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 7
The picture will be similar to mine:
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 8

Step 5

Next right click again and select Delete Path. Then add more lines on the same way.
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 9

Step 6

You can change brush size, so the picture will look more interesting:
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 10

Step 7

Duplicate current layer (Ctrl+J) and apply Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur with next parameters:
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 11
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 12

Step 8

We are finished with creating snow; let’s move to the next step.
Create new layer above, then select the Gradient Tool and fill this layer with Spectrum linear gradient (this is one of standard Photoshop gradients).
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 13
After thart change layer mode to Soft Light for this gradient layer and you will see total difference in coloring.
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 14

Step 9

Before we start adding text, we have to make some dark mat to divide text from the background. For this effect, select the Rectangular Marquee Tool to create selection similar to mine on screenshot below and fill this selected area with black to transparent linear gradient on the new layer.
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 15
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 16

Step 10

Remove selection with Ctrl+D. Now is time to add the text. Get out the Horizontal Type Tool and write out some text with white color in two lines. For this Photoshop tutorial I´ve used Arial (30 pt, Normal, Black, Crisp) font which is one of standard Windows fonts.
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 17

Step 11

Then we have to add the year, but I want to put it in a small box. Use the Rounded Rectangle Tool (Mode: Shape layers, Radius: 5px) to create small box above the text with white color also.
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 18

Step 12

After that select the Horizontal Type Tool again and add the year with the same font (Color: Black, Size: 16 pt, Black, Crisp).
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 19

Step 13

Again add one more text line a little bit down. But before you start writing the text, just change some text presets for this text line:
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 20

Step 14

Now you can add one more text line:
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 21

Step 15

Change opacity for this layer to 40%.
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year 22

Final Image

We are almost finished with creating our greeting card. The last one thing that we have to add a little bit visible white circles. Select the Brush Tool (Opacity: 20%) and a hard round brush to add different size circles to the greeting card canvas.
Create a Greeting Card for Christmas and New Year
Looks cool, isn’t it? That is it. Card looks amazing to you as for me? You can send this card to your friends and relatives, hope, they will be happy to get this card from you! :)
Happy holidays to everyone!

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