Photoshop: Fun with Borders, Patterns, and Brushes
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A few minutes experimentation with borders, patters, and brushes can produce some great stylized effects.
Photoshop is an incredible piece of software. Even veteran users of Photoshop find new tricks and techniques often. In this tutorial we'll take a logo original done as vector art (in Adobe Illustrator) and add some style with borders, patterns, and brushes. Instructions are written for PC users--Mac users will just have to substitute a few control keys.
First, start with a logo. You can use anything you like, but something blocky will work best.
Shift+click on the layer thumbnail of the logo to load the layer as a selection. Choose Select --> Modify --> Expand, and enter 6 pixels. This gives us an expanded border.
Make a new adjustment layer (Layer --> New Adjustment Layer --> Pattern, or you can click the half-moon icon in the layers palette). Choose an interesting pattern.
Now move the pattern layer behind your logo.
Create a new solid color adjustment layer (Layer --> New Fill Layer --> Solid Color). You want to "clip" it to the pattern fill layer below. To do this, place the cursor right between the two layers, hold down the ALT key, and when you see a little double circle icon, click. Notice that the red color fill layer has a small downward arrow in it. This means it is clipped to the layer below. Clipping means that it will only affect areas with content. It's like pouring red color on top of the pattern layer, but it only shows red where there is a pattern.
Also, change the blend mode to overlay.
Now we're starting to get something interesting. Next, follow the same steps as we did initially to get the expanded selection: Shift+click on the pattern layer, then Select --> Modify --> Expand, and enter 8 pixels. Now choose Select --> Transform selection. Rotate the selection slightly to make it a bit off-kilter. Hit the enter key to complete the transform.
With the selection still active, make a new layer. Grab an interesting brush and one or more colors, and fill in the new selection. You can get great free brushes and other Photoshop assets from Adobe Exchange.
With a little texture in the background, we have the start of a cool style for this logo.
