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From YourSITE.com *Program Basic 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/
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