heres a screencast i made for a technique yall might wanna play with.... how to make a glassy effect with color highlights

http://gradez28.com/photoshop/glassy/ps tut.html

#ad


For some reason the recorder wouldn't pick up the panels on the right so towards the end when im switching panels, dont get confused why im clicking on the middle of nowhere lol.. also i used keyboard shortcuts for a few things so if your unsure how to do something i did let me know and ill explain.

if you want to see how to do anything specific let me know and ill make a screencast for ya

 

You've got way more gradients then me

 

thats very odd.. in every version of photoshop ive used since v6 has had all the ones i have, stock... somehow they got reset on you or something

dont mtter to me though, i never use stock ones except for quicklly switching to a foreground color-to-alpha gradient like i did in that screencast

 

if you want quick and easy premade gradients, check these links out

http://socialcmsbuzz.com/130-free-photoshop-gradients-for-web-designers-26122007/
http://www.freephotoshop.com/html/free_gradients.html

 

Here is one I made for the guy that is doing some custom motor work for me.

#ad

 

Well, i dunno. I might download those. Every since I got the program thats all I've ever had .

Thats a cool effect though. You're a layer person aren't you lol, because I'm defiantly not.

 

yeah the layers are a godsend.. it would be near impossible to do any complex designs without layers

 

I make a layer, perfect it then save, make a layer perfect it, then save lol. I really need to mess with the layer thing, but it always frustrates me.

 

Lol I'm sorry I'm a ps noob! noob! I'm on my phone and not at my house so I will have to try it tonight.

 

Ok, but your not allowed to post unless its colorful

 

kinda took my own route and came up with something...whadya think?
#ad

 

ok honestly...the one above completely sucks and is totally boring. did that one by myself. this one altho my gf and i worked on together and is pretty B/A IMO!
#ad

 

forgot to bevel and emboss ...dang photoshop is crazy.

#ad

 

Imagine spending hours working on something, then when you finish another part it doesn't match or isn't even or needs to be moved, it would suck to redo it. Instead click on your layer and move it etc. The little eye next to the layer allows you to show and hide different layers to make it easier to work on the single piece. I really wouldn't be able to do anything with out layers.

However I don't like more then 10 layers (Not including text and normal transparent effects), I normally combined common things into the same layer to help.

Heres a shot of how complex layers can get. This is for a game.
#ad

#ad

 

looks better without the bevel IMO
I would also ditch the faux "reflection" because it throws the whole thing off as it doesn't look like an actual reflection due to the angle

exactly.. i spend most my time in PS designing website layouts and there is a lot of "playing around", undoing, redoing, moving, hiding, tweaking, etc to get the final mockup

 

I prefer the emboss, and that is awesome work! Looks great .

How long did it take you lol?



As for the layers, I know I should play around more with them and I know how it works, I just don't like it. When you posted the pic showing how complex it can get, thats exactly what throws me. I base my steps on what I did last. If I have to change something It would throw my whole design off. But hey I'm not going to be doing this for a living, and for basically teaching myself Ill say I'm pretty darn good.

 

thats why you group things in folders and you can also label groups/layers

also in CS3 (or they might have introduced it in CS2, cant remember), you can create "smart groups" where you can treat a group of layers as a single layer.. lets say if your sig has 10 layers, and you want the bevel the whole thing, before all you could do is merge them together to do the emboss, but now you just create a smart group and apply the layer effects non-destructively

 

I didn't show you that pic to throw you off. I said thats how complex it can get. However most designs I do have about half that amount. But if you look at the pic with all the little lines, instead of having to redraw them, i can move each one to make it perfect.

Never used it, normally what I do is just select the layers, by either shift clicking or control click, (shift selects in a line) control selects indiv layers.

 

No, I mean when I look at all the layers and stuff on my ps, I get a brain fart.

 

I havn't used the smart grouping a whole lot either, but here is a demonstration of how it can be useful where simply selecting multiple layers fall short

http://gradez28.com/photoshop/smart object/smart object.html

as you know, you cant apply a single blending options style or filter to multiple layers as one without merging them first.. and of course once you merge them, they are not editable (as with placing a filter on a single layer - once you add that filter, it destrucively modifies that layer's contents)

but with a smart object you can not only apply a filter/blending options to a group of layers, but you also still have the ability to edit those layers (or add more like i show) in the state they were in before the filter

unfortunately i dont use this great feature because i never really need to with what i do (i very rarely mess with filters), but its nice to know its there in case you do need it!

lol i took that image i made real quick for that screencast and whipped it into a fake logo
#ad