Embossed Glass Tutorial

This tutorial is based on one by Alli, and is published on the Tazzone so to get her tutorial and instructions, you can visit the page where it is posted.

My tutorial gives slightly different methods (a little simpler for my beginners) and the results are not exactly the same, but the original idea from the tutorial on the Tazzone was the starting point for this one.

Open an image of a glass, or window or bottle. If you don't have one, you can get one from the morguefile to use for this.

Open your image and duplicate the background layer.

Now select a custom shape from the photoshop shapes tools. The custom shape tool can be found in the tool palette and is designated by a little 'blob' shape. If your tool palette doesn't show this shape, you can find it under the rectangle shape; hold down the small black arrow next to the rectangle shape and the tool box with open with other options.

I use white as the shape colour and a filled shape style. On the shape layer, you may have a layer style effect for "stroke" - turn this off, we don't want the outline.

The next step will be to "rasterize" the shape layer. Right click on the shape layer and select "rasterize layer". This turns the shape layer into a normal transparent layer above the background.

Now set the blending method to soft light for this layer. The next step is to add a bevel to the shape. Select a bevel style - here I used outer bevel and set the contour style to "cove deep". I also reduced the white of the highlight mode on the bevel adjustments to 0% and the shadow mode to 58%.

When you are happy with the shape layer, drag the background copy over the shape layer. For the dark blue bottles, I set the blend mode of the shape layer to "darken" and adjusted the opacity to 70%. You can select your own opacity level to suit your image and taste. Once you've got a look that pleases you, flatten the layers and save your image.

The final results don't look too bad!

Here is a lighter glass image created using the same steps listed above - a glass of beer with the opacity of the final blending layer set to an opacity of 80%.

An even simpler method of applying effects to plain glass uses the "glass on glass" overlay. This is pretty simple, but you need a few things to use it. Namely, you'll need a variety of images of frosted glass types, so be on the lookout for windows with different glasses in the them, and photograph the glass when you run across some.

One of my hobbies is stained glass, and I have a crate full of different glass types. Glue-chip is one of the most useful glasses for using as an overlay - basically, it's a frosted textured glass, so it can be used for texture overlays. If you aren't sure what glue-chip is, it looks like the one below. Glue-chip comes with somewhat less design (single) and with more heavily frosted design (double glue-chip) - the sample below is a double glue-chip.

Using a photo of a sheet of glue-chip glass, I laid it over the beer glass above and used the soft light method to blend it with the beer glass layer.

That's it folks - a pretty simple one this time, but it can give your glasses some pretty interesting effects.

Black Photoshop Frames - Simple Elegance

5-Photo Frame, also avail. in Black

I've had a request for a simple black photo frame with multiple spaces in it, so that's what we've got for this week. I've created three different frames with four, five, and six photo spaces for this request. The 5-photo frame has both a black frame and a white frame in the photoshop file, so if you opt to download the .psd file, you'll have a two-in-one file that will allow you to frame your photos with black or white. The remaining two files (the 4-photo and 6-photo) have black frames, with a white matte layer. Again, in the photoshop file you can opt to turn off the white matte layer if you don't want the matte, and in all of the .psd files you can choose to turn off the drop shadow as well. (Links to download pages at end of post)

Although I've created these files for use in photoshop, I realize that not everyone uses photoshop so the files are also available as .png files with transparency for the photo placements. Unfortunately, with the .png files, you won't have as much flexibility for changing the frames as you would with the .psd.

To use the .psd file, open it in photoshop. Each layer is labeled - the black frame, the white matte layer, and empty layers so you know where to place the photos. To place the photos, open your photo into photoshop, use the menu and choose "select", then choose "all" to select the photo. Next, select "edit", and then "copy". Minimize your photo, and maximize the frame template. Click on one of the photo layers, and select "edit" from the menu, and then "paste". To fit your photo to the space you want it in, select "edit", then "free transform" and use the "scale" option to fit your photo under the appropriate spot in the frame. Continue this until your frame is full, then flatten and save and you're ready to print.

Using the .png file is much the same - while you do not need photoshop to use it, you will need an editing program that is capable of handling layers. Open the .png in your program, and duplicate that layer so you have two layers. Move down to the bottom layer (or background), and then begin placing your photos - one on each new layer under the frame.

To download the files for these free photoshop frame templates, please visit the Frames & Templates page on Free-3d-Textures.com. (Please remember that .png files tend to be quite large and can be slow to download)

To download the .png files, you'll need to go to the .png section on Free-3d-Textures.com