Jeff St John 
ePhotoPros Staff
The OC
Forum Fanatic
Posts:532
 | | 11/03/2008 9:50 PM |
| Pop up books were supremely cool when I was a kid. So I took the idea from that style of book and made an announcement out of it using a Shutterstock image.
- First, I selected the baby using the quick select tool (gotta love that tool sometimes). I then used refine edge to do exactly what the dialog name implies. After refining and smoothing out my selection, I popped the baby out onto another layer with CTRL/Command J.
- Back on the original layer, I drew out a rectangular selection around the part of the background that I was going to pop out as well. Once again I hit CTRL/Command J to copy the selection to a new layer.
- I then created a new layer, filled with white for now, under the background pop out.
- I CTRL/Command clicked the background pop out thumbnail to load it as a selection, selected the baby pop out layer and clicked the add layer mask button. Since I had an active selection at the time I added the mask, the mask automatically hid the areas outside the selection. Using the brush tool with white, I painted back in the baby's head and arm (operating on the layer mask of course).
- On the background pop out layer I added a 3 pixel stroke (with a darker blue than the background) and a drop shadow.
- With the eyedropper tool I sampled a blue from the background as a starting point, then clicked on the foreground color swatch and selected a lighter shade. I then hit ALT/Option Backspace/Delete to fill the white layer with the light blue. I added a pattern overlay style to the light blue layer using Kraft Waffle as the texture and soft light as the style's blend mode.
- Next, I dropped in the image of the gift box, resized down using free transform, and set the blend mode to Soft Light.
- Above the background pop out and behind the baby pop out layer I added a custom shape that I created out of a bunch of swirls. I then added two new layers undneath it. On the lowest layer I CTRL/Command clicked the shape's vector mask to load it as a selection, then chose Edit > Stroke and applied a 3 pixel stroke to the selection. This new outline shape I dragged under the solid shape just to add another element. I did the same thing on the remaining blank layer, but this time I chose Select > Modify > Expand and expanded the selection by 5 pixels. I added another stroke to this selection (2 pixels this time) and left it positioned where it was so it served as an outline of the main shape. In an effort to simplify things, I merged all the shapes together with CTRL/Command E.
- I then added another custom shape that I had created long ago by combining some spirals together. I then merged this new shape with the previous swirl shape and added a slight drop shadow.
- I then added a layer mask to the new shape and using the gradient tool set to black to transparent, obscured the left side of the shape to make it appear that that part was further away from the baby than the right side. I also added a few butterfly custom shapes to round out the shape behind the baby. I ALT/Option dragged the drop shadow layer style from the swirl shape to the butterfly layers.
- The last thing I did was add some text to finish off the announcement. To make the white text stand out more I added a blue stroke and a subtle drop shadow. The "Born Nov..." text simply had a slight drop shadow.
And there you have it. Incorporating the ever-popular swirls into my design, I think I succeeded in creating a pop out book inspired birth announcement. Until next week, this is Jefe signing off.
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