Before I go into my post, I wanted to mention that Photographer Depot has a huge retirement sale on photographer templates. Check them out if you want to stock up on new templates!
Today I have a really fun Photoshop/PSE tutorial where I show you how to turn a photo or clipart illustration into a "hand-painted" pattern and use that pattern to create you own custom digital papers, logo designs, storyboard decorations, etc.
You can download a shamrock pattern and a beautiful digital paper set I created earlier in this post. A great place to get royalty free images and clip art for creating your own custom designs are Pixabay and Clker.
CoffeeShop "Hand-Painted" Custom Digital Paper Tutorial:
I found this really nice shamrock image and wanted to give it a "painted" effect, turn it into a Photoshop pattern, and create some quick and easy digital paper.
Turn Image into "Hand-Painted Design": I wanted to remove the white background, so I used the Magic Wand (W), clicked on the white area to select it, double-clicked on the Background layer to turn it into "Layer 0", and pressed delete to delete the white background.
You can't delete the white area unless you change the Background layer into a new layer like I did in the screenshot above.
Now the background is transparent.
Painterly Effect: I went to Filter, Topaz Labs, Topaz Impressions. You can also use any artistic filter found in the Photoshop/PSE filter gallery, but I really like using the Impression plug-in filter in my design work.
If you are interested in purchasing Topaz Impression you can use the coupon code: coffeeshop15 for 15% off your purchase (can be used on any Topaz product).
I picked the Oil Painting III filter for this tutorial and pressed "OK".
Making the Pattern: Then I used the lasso tool to individually select all three shamrocks on the background layer and Ctrl-J them to their own layer. I made the canvas a 500px square and make an extra copy of the left and right shamrock and moved all of the shamrocks around to fill the canvas as seen above.
After I had them arrange as I wanted, I merged everything to keep the background translucent (make sure to not flatten the image).
Then I went to Edit, Define Pattern and saved it.
Creating the Digital Paper: Make a new 10 inch square document (240dpi) and fill it with your color of choice. Then add a Pattern adjustment layer.
Select your new shamrock pattern (you can download this one on this post), adjust the size to taste, then flatten and save your new digital paper!
You can add stripes or other designs and textures to create you own custom paper, so don't be afraid to play around. Have fun creating your own custom painted digital designs!
Do you want to download my favorite CoffeeShop PSE/Photoshop Actions and Lightroom Presets or Design Elements in one convenient zipped file AND help support this blog? Just click here for my action pack or here for a download of some of my most popular design elements, storyboards, and textures.