In today’s quick tip tutorial, I will show you how to create a nice Christmas card with paper snowflake on green background for your friend using Adobe Photoshop CS6 techniques. Layered PSD file included. Let’s get started!
Final Image Preview
Start working by creating a new document (Ctrl+N) in Adobe Photoshop CS6 with the size 1920px by 1200px (RGB color mode) at a resolution of 72 pixels/inch.
Create a new layer, click on Add a layer style icon from bottom part of the Layers panel and select Gradient Overlay.
Click in the color bar to open the Gradient Editor and set the color stops as shown. Click OK to close the Gradient Editor dialog box.
We’ve got the next green background:
Next we’ll represent a vertical white line, using in this case the Line Tool (U), set line Weight to 1px in Options bar.
Click and drag to draw the vertical line as shown:
We’ve got the next result:
Make many copies of the recently made layer containing the line and select the Free Transform (Ctrl+T) command to place the copies the way shown below.
Combine in a group all the lines’ layers (press CTRL button to select the necessary layers and hold on the left mouse’s button while dragging the selected layers on Create a new group icon from bottom part of the Layers panel).
Set the Blending mode for the made group to Soft Light.
Insert the mask on the same group by choosingAdd layer mask on the bottom part of the Layers panel and choose the Soft Round brush of black color (set Opacity to 15% in Options bar).
Paint in the mask using this brush to hide the lines on the edges the same way demonstrated next picture.
Put the group into a single layer by creating in this case a new layer above the group and hold CTRL button when select the new layer and the group in Layers panel. Finally press CTRL+E to Merge Down. Set the Blending mode for the rasterized layer to Soft Light and apply the next filter: Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur.
We’ve got the next result:
Next we’ll download set of custom shapes named Decorative Snowflakes Shapes. Little tutorial to explain how to load Custom Shapes here.
Select the Custom Shape Tool (U) in the Tools bar, in the Options bar click the Shape to open the selection menu. Find the loaded Decorative Snowflakes Shapes at the bottom of the menu, and then double-click a shape thumbnail to select it. Click and drag to draw the snowflake shape as shown with #95C41E color. Its size may be corrected applying the Free Transform (Ctrl+T) command.
For the snowflake’s layer click on Add a layer style icon from bottom part of the Layers panel and go to Blending Options: Custom, find Advanced Blending and check Layer Mask Hides Effects.
Add Stroke:
Also apply Gradient Overlay:
Click in the color bar to open the Gradient Editor and set the color stops as shown. Click OK to close the Gradient Editor dialog box.
Add Drop Shadow:
We’ve got the next paper snowflake:
