Jeff St John 
ePhotoPros Staff
The OC
Forum Fanatic
Posts:532
 | | 09/29/2008 5:51 PM |
| Sometimes we see cool patterns in our surroundings or in photos. Sometimes we may even think, how could I use that pattern somehow? This week I decided to "borrow" a pattern from a photo and incorporate it in a design.
- To trace the pattern I would use later as a custom shape, I used the trusty pen tool set to Shape Layers. I began by tracing the main flower shape (I strongly urge you to check out our pen tool vids)
- With the main petals done, I lowered the opacity temporarily and set the pen tool to Exclude Overlapping Shape Areas. I then traced the white part of the pattern which in turn became an opening in the petals.
- I then set the pen too to Add To Shape Area and traced the center of the flower and the stem.
- With the flower done, I upped the opacity to 100 again and selected Edit > Define Custom Shape. I gave the shape the imaginative name of Flower1.
- On my blank canvas I selected the custom shape tool and picked my new shape appearing at the end of the list.
- I then dragged out a good sized vector flower which I changed the color of by double clicking the color thumbnail on the shape layer in the layers palette.
- With the move tool selected (keyboard shortcut: V) I held Shift and ALT (Mac: Option) and dragged out two more copies in a nice straight line. You might notice my magenta smart guides (View > Show > Smart Guides).
- With the flower shapes positioned I added a new layer and drew out a thin rectangular selection using the rectangular selection tool. With the eyedropper I sampled the color of the flowers and hit ALT Backspace to fill the selection with my foreground color. I then hit V to select the move tool and selected the new thin line and background layers. To select multiple layers hold CTRL (Mac: Command) and click all the desired layers. I then used the align options to align the thin line with the background layer (align horizontal centers).
- Next, I added some text using the Bradley Handwriting font and the same orange color.
- After placing my text, I dropped in three flower images. With all three flower images selected, I hit CTRL T to free transform them, and holding Shift, shrank them all to a more manageable size (I would have converted them all to smart objects first, but I was in a hurry). I then added a 3 pixel orange stroke to all the flower images. Actually, I added the stroke to one image, then ALT dragged the layer style to the remaining two flower images.
- After positioning all my elements, I added a new layer and filled it with the same orange color. I then lowered the opacity temporarily and drew out a selection surrounding the top elements and bisecting the bottom images. Next, I hit Backspace to punch out the opening of my new orange border. I then hit a series of keyboard shortcuts: first I hit 0 (that's the zero key) to bring the opacity back to 100, then I hit CTRL [ a few times to move the border layer under the three flower layers.
All that from just seeing a cool pattern that I wanted to "borrow". Incidentally, if you find some cool swirls (that are all the rage today), you can use the pen tool to trace them and save them as a new custom shape. You can pretty much trace everything under the sun and use it as a custom shape. And since the custom shapes are vector, you can size the shapes to as big or small as you need. Happy hunting!
jefe
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