For the first part of this tutorial, go here. This is the second part of my blend tutorial for Adobe Photoshop 6.0+.

Beginner's Tutorial 5: Adding Simple Effects

Okay, so you've made your first blend, and now you want to know how to add all those fun, swirly, colorful effects and words to it, right? Awesome. The first thing you need to remember is layers are your friends. Once you get good at making blends, you'll use them all the time. It's not unusual for me to use 10 layers in one blend. But for right now, we're just going to keep it simple and add one new layer.

On the layer menu that we talked about in the last tutorial, make sure you have the topmost layer highlighted, first of all. To create a new layer, look at the picture below for the pop-down menus to use. Select Layer ---> New ---> Layer... and this should make a new layer for you.

We're going to be adding this new layer for brush effects, so go ahead and name it "Brush Layer." (You don't have to do this, but it makes it easier to keep track of your layers). Make sure that the color is "none" or transparent, the mode is "normal," and the opacity is 100%. Then click "OK," and your new layer will be created.

Here's another shot of the layer menu. See how we have the Brush Layer highlighted? Make sure yours looks like this, or you'll be painting on the wrong layer, which is much harder to correct.

Now we're going to do some painting. If you've never used brushes before, your brush gallery is going to be pretty limited. If you'd like to find some fun brushes to use, do a Google search for "Photoshop brushes" or surf around communities on LJ, they have tons. Just remember to credit.

So, first of all, select the Paintbrush tool (circled in red on the toolbar below). On the bar at the top, you'll see a little box with a pop-down arrow next to it (circled in red on the larger picture). Click the little arrow, and you'll be able to view your brush gallery. Pick a brush to use. You can play with the Opacity levels if you'd like. The lower the percentage, the more see-through the brush painting will be, meaning the pictures underneath will show through better.

On the "Color Palettes," select a color that will look good on your blend. I went with a light blue. The weird-looking outline you see on the left-hand side of the picture below is what the brush looks like. The light blue grungy words on the picture are what the brush looks like when I use it. One click is enough to make that effect, but with some brushes, holding them down while you paint creates a better effect. There are also tons of different paint effects that you can play with if you want to.

The really cool thing about using layers is that when you paint on one layer, you can erase some of the paint effects without erasing any of the picture underneath. While I was painting, I painted over part of John's face, which looked really lame. So I selected the Eraser tool (circled in red on the toolbar below) and erased the blue that was over his face, as well as from anywhere else where there was just too much paint and not enough of the picture underneath showing through. Because I was using layers and the paint was on a different layer than the blend underneath, I can erase and redo it as much as I want without ruining the pictures underneath.

Now that we're done painting, let's learn how to add text to our blend. Some people prefer not to have any text on their blends, but if you'd like to add it, this is how. First you need to select the Text tool (circled in red). Click on the blend, and a new text layer will be created automatically. Type whatever you'd like to say, and then you can change the size and font on the menus as shown below. I have links to a number of sites where you can download new fonts on my links page.

I decided to put John's name on the blend... you know, in case there's some weirdo out there who's never heard of him before ^_^ You can move the text to wherever it looks best on the picture by using the Move tool.

As you can see below, every time you use the Text tool, it automatically creates a new text layer. You can leave the text as is, or you can add more effects to the text to make it look more unique and stylish. For this next step, make sure you have the text layer you want to work on highlighted, as below.

Once you have the text layer highlighted, use the pop-down menus as shown below to add effects. You can select any of the effects listed, but I usually start with the "Stroke" effect.

When you select an effect from the pop-down menu, it will open a new window where all the layer effects (styles) you can use are listed. You can also use these effects on paintbrush layers, but I prefer to use them with text layers. Check the box next to the effect to see how it will make your text look. "Stroke" adds a line of color around the letters so that they stand out more vividly from the background. You can play with all the other effects and see how they make the text look. My favorites to use are Stroke, Drop Shadow, Outer Glow, Inner Glow, and Bevel and Emboss. It's best to just toy with these different effects until you find something you like. Then hit "OK."

Here's my blend after resizing, moving, and stylizing the text. See how using layer effects makes the text stand out more against the blend?

After that, you can add as many more text or paintbrush layers as you want. You can add lines of poetry, song lyrics, your name, or whatever else you want. You'll have to individually add effects to every new layer, but the end product will be awesome.

The very last step is to save your blend. Because you've used layers, the program will automatically try to save the file as a .PDD file unless you flatten the image first. Flattening the image just means you're merging all the layers you used into one layer. To do this, go to Layers ---> Flatten Image. Then save. If you're saving your blend for the Internet, save as a .JPG or .GIF file, because those are the two most commonly used image files on the Internet, and they take up less space and have less loading time than .BMP files.

Here's the very last step of saving. Once you save the blend as a .JPG, this window will pop up. All you should do here is make sure you save your graphic as at least High quality (8 or higher) so that it won't look bad when transferred to the Internet.

And here's the finished blend at last:

And that's it for basic blend making. There are tons and tons of other effects to use and play with on Photoshop. You can use filters, blending opacity, transparent letters, and many other tricks. However, these tend to be complicated, so it's best to stick with what I've said here until you get really good with the program. I might make other tutorials in the future for advanced blends, but for now, this is really all you need to know. Good luck!

If you think you're ready to move on to bigger, better methods of blending, proceed to my advanced tutorials page.

All tutorials are written by Stephanie Sinkhorn unless otherwise stated within the tutorial. The blends used within the tutorials are © Stephanie Sinkhorn and not intended for use on other sites.