The techniques used in this tutorial will help demonstrate some of the useful tools that and blending properties that can be applied to simple 2D graphics to make them look more 3 dimensional. It also demonstrates some of the painting and erasing techniques that will help you in future photoshop projects.
To demonstrate these tools and techniques, we’ll look at how to create two links and intersect them together like the image below:
Step-by-Step Instructions:
1. Open Photoshop.
2. Click File > New from the main menu.
3. Fill in the values below:
4. After the page loads, you should have a 400×550 dimension square canvas to work on.
5. Color the “Background” layer a light blue color (not too bright).
6. Create a layer titled “Link 1″. Make sure this is selected as the active layer.
6. Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool.
7. Draw an oval selection near the bottom of your canvas.
8. Hold down the Alt key and draw another circular selection inside the first circle selection. (Holding the Alt key down will cause any selection you create to subtract from any other existing selections).
Make sure that you draw the inner-circle selection in such a way that it gives more mass to the left side. Your selection should look similar to the image below:
9. Select the Paint Bucket tool and choose a light grey color.
10. Click and fill the ring selection.
11. Right click the “Link 1″ layer and choose “Blending Options”.
12. Check off the “Bevel and Emboss” section and adjust the sliders and properties until “Link 1″ looks like a 3D link.
(Link 1 should look similar to this image:)
15. Now we’re going to duplicate the ring to make the second link in the chain.
Click the “Move Tool”.
16. Hold down the Alt key, click on the link graphic, and drag it upwards.
17. Continue dragging upward until the new “Link 2″ image is at the intersection of the “Link 1″ image. See the image below:
18. A new layer should have automatically been created for your duplicate link. Rename this layer “Link 2″.
19. Make sure that “Link 2″ layer is active, since you will be working on this layer for the remainder of the tutorial.
20. Go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal from the main menu.
21. “Link 2″ should now be flipped and facing the opposite direction than that of “Link 1″.
22. Set the opacity of “Link 2″ to 50% so that you can see through it to “Link 1″ on the layer below.
23. Now select the “Eraser Tool”.
24. Make sure the Brush size for the eraser tool is small (Brush size 3 was used for this tutorial).
25. Using the Eraser Tool, zoom in and begin erasing the part of “Link 2″ that overlaps “Link 1″. See the image below:
26. When you are done erasing, set the “Link 2″ opacity back to 100%. You should now have two intersecting links.
