Making Waves

This tutorial was written assuming you know how the tools of Photoshop work.

Materials Needed:

• Template by Me
• Elements of choice.
• Tube by the artist of your choice. I am using Alayna Magnan. Please do not use this image unless you have a license to do so.

Open your template in Photoshop.

Select the Water Animation Folder in your layers pallet. Look up at the top of the pallet and change the Blend Mode from Pass Through to Overlay.

Select the Bottom layer (Layer 11) and open your tube. Place the closeup on the right side of the tag. Change the Blend Mode to Screen.

Duplicate this layer and Change the Blend Mode to Overlay.

Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur: 5

Select the Square layer and place your main tube on the template.

Edit > Free Transform
Drag the corners around to resize it, and then move your cursor outside the bounding box to rotate it.
Make it fit inside the box. Don't worry about parts hanging out of it, we will take care of that in just a minute.

After you get it positioned just where you want it, double click inside the bounding box to apply it.

Right click that layer in the layers pallet and Create Clipping Mask.

Now we want to add some pretty stuff to the tag too.

Get some papers and elements that you wish to use in the tag.

Select your Layer 11 and place a paper on it. Right click and Create Clipping Mask. Right click again and Merge Down.

Select the Bar Frame layer and open another paper. Right click and Create Clipping Mask. Right click again and Merge Down.

Select the Bar Frame Frame. Open another paper but DON'T create a clipping mask. Instead, Drag the layer up between the Tube and Square layers. This will automatically place the clipping mask.

Right click this paper and Merge Down.

Select the Square Frame layer and use the Eyedropper tool to select a color from your tag.

Right click on your brush tool in the tools pallet and choose the Color Replacement tool. Look up at the top and make sure the Mode is set to Color.

Now just paint all over the frame.

Filter > Noise > Add Noise: 10, Gaussian

Repeat the recolor and noise on the Border layer.

Now add any elements to the tag that you want. These can be placed anywhere you like. Be sure to move them up and down in the layers pallet also.

Now we need some layer styles to finish the tag off before animation.

Select your Bar layer and add these layer styles:


Now select the Square Frame layer and add these styles:


Apply the same layer style to the Border layer.

Now just add your favorite drop shadow to the elements using the Blending Options.

Now add all your copyrights and name to the tag. See my tag for an example.

Now for the animation. Fun fun fun

If you only want a static tag without animation, you may stop here. If you would like to add the animation, please proceed.



Make sure your animation window is open. Window > Animation

You will see that your first frame is already there.

Now Create a new frame by clicking on the little icon at the bottom of your animations window.



Open the Water Animation folder by clicking the little arrow beside the icon in the layers pallet:


This will expand the layers that are inside the group.
Hide all the layers EXCEPT the Animation 1 layer. You do this by clicking the eye icon beside the layer thumbnail to make it disappear.

Now at the bottom of the animation window, there is an icon that looks like a piece of paper with the corner folded up. Click it to duplicate the frame.

Now hide the Animation 1 layer and UNhide the Animation 2 layer.

Duplicate the frame again in the animations window.

Hide the Animation 2 layer and UNhide the Animation 3 layer.

Keep repeating this until you have 10 frames.

Now we want to set the delay of the frames higher than 0.

Select all your frames. (click first frame, then shift+click your last frame)

Click the arrow beside the number at the bottom of one of the frames. Set this number to 0.1 (there is an "Other" option) You may also play with this setting to get the effect you want.



To view your animation, simply click the play button.

Now to save your animation:

Go to File > Save for Web

This will bring up a completely different save window than you are probably used to. Simply set everything like so:

Note that these settings are the ones that I use for the background of the posts of THIS forum.





And this is my result:



I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial! I would love to see your results.