Layer Styles are effects that can be
applied to text and shapes. For digital scrapbookers, layer styles are
particularly valuable in quickly and easily creating popular element effects –
especially faux metal appearances.
Photoshop provides a collection of
layer style presets and there are several sources for downloading more free and
commercial layer styles on the internet, simply search for “Photoshop layer
styles”.
Layer styles can be used as is or
further modified. This tutorial will show you how to load, apply and modify a
downloaded layer style.
Download a layer style. This large
collection hosted by about.com created by John Woods has some useful layer
styles.
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshopstyles/
Scroll to find “Weathered Brass” or
click here
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshopstyles/l/bljwls55.htm
You can nominate any folder to store
your actions in. I created a folder simply called “PhotoshopLayerStyles”. The
style file is identified by the extension .asl. The file may be within a zip
file in which case you will need to unzip the file first.
Create a new document at your desired
size. File>New>
Create a new layer
Choose the Shape (Ellipse) Tool
Choose Fill Pixels
Choose a foreground color – a neutral
color like grey is a good choice.
Position your cursor over your
canvas, hold down shift, left click and hold while dragging to create a circle.
Release to create.
Click on the Styles palette or choose
Window> Styles to access it
Click on the small arrow at top right
to access the menu.
From the bottom of the list you can
choose a cateogory to load your new styles into. Choose Textures. If asked
“Replace current styles with styles from textures asl” choose yes.
Click the arrow again to access the
styles menu and choose Load Styles and then browse to find the BrassWeathered
asl file where you had placed it. Select and choose Load.
The styles will be loaded into the
style palette.
Hovering over the images will give
you the name of the style.
Choose “New Copper Pennies”
Your circle will fill with the style.
At it’s default settings the result
would work perfectly as a brad for a layout.
You can easily modify the result
however.
Right click on the layer and choose
Blending Options.
From the palette that opens you can
then make any modifications to the image. As an example I have chosen the Bevel
and Emboss option at left and then changed the technique of the bevel to smooth
and increased the size of the bevel, resulting in the changes to the image
below.
The example below shows the New
Copper Pennies layer style applied to text.
NB Layer styles are sometimes created
using low resolution images. You can scale the effects of a layer style to
improve the image result.
Read this OFFSITE tutorial at
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshop/l/aa_scaleeffects.htm for more
information.
Here are some other elements created
using Layer Styles downloaded from
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshopstyles/
