3 Essential Fills for Photoshop : Introduction

Introduction
Scan lines
Bumps
Grids
Using your Fills

Introduction

If you?re ever stuck in trying to give your logo background that final touch? Or perhaps bring in that extra effect that might make your graphic standout? Then hopefully these might be of some use.

Let me start by telling you what a "fill" is.
A fill is a function that allows you to ?fill up? any given selected area in a layer. If you have no area selected with your marquee or lasso tool, then it will fill the entire layer. They?re most often used on a blank ?transparent? layer so you may preserve its functionality and blending options
Also, Fill is a famous musician who has won many awards in the music industry for his talent in song writing and other instrument playing skills.
?Oh right, that?s Phil Collins. Never mind that part then.

To access to this infamous fill menu go to: Edit > Fill
Within your fill menu, you should find the following:

>> Foreground color
>> Background color
>> Pattern
>> History
>> Black
>> Gray 50%
>> White

Reader, Fill. Fill, Reader. Now that you?ve been introduced to each other, let?s move on, and meet some of fill?s friends.

Dustin Diaz
www.polvero.comDustin is an active member of the Christian-web-masters.com Forums. He enjoys building web sites, and doing graphic design work. Please check out his Sacramento InterVarsity website where you can read Christian articles for college students.

3 Essential Fills for Photoshop : Scan lines

Introduction
Scan lines
Bumps
Grids
Using your Fills

Scan lines

Scan lines are, in most cases, a nice addition to any photo. If used correctly, with the right amount of opacity, you can get this fill to achieve that cool digital TV look you?ve been looking for.

So let?s begin.
1) Fire up a new document Win (ctrl + n) Mac (apple + n) with these dimensions: 1px (W) x 2px (H). Also, make sure the background layer is transparent.

2) Now, to make things easier, zoom in 1600%. You can do this by pressing Win (ctrl + ?+?) Mac (apple + ?+?) until you?re all the way zoomed in. It should look like this:

3) Now switch to your pencil tool Win & Mac (B) and be sure that you?re settings look like this:

(Please note the brush diameter is 1px)

4) Go ahead and make the top pixel black. (press D to reset your foreground and background color options, then press X to move black to the foreground). This is what your image should look like now:

5) It's time to define your pattern. To do this, go to Edit > Define Pattern. Pretty simple huh? When prompted, name it ?Scan line?. Hit OK when you?re finished. You can now close this document because you?re done with it. No need to save it.

3 Essential Fills for Photoshop : Bumps

Introduction
Scan lines
Bumps
Grids
Using your Fills

Bumps

1) Ah the Bumps, These are fun. The first thing you need to do is create a 10px x 10px transparent image.

2) Next, zoom in at 1600% (so you can see what you?re doing) and select a 2px x 2px area in the middle of your document using the marquee tool Win&Mac (M). Then fill it up with black.

3) Now, go into your layer blending options...

...and put in the following information for each of the following properties:

4) Now that you?ve finished that, you should have something that looks like this:

5) Go ahead and define this pattern, Edit > Define Pattern and see what you can do with it. Here is an example of how it can be used on a Blue background.

Before:

After:

Note: Play around with the layer opacity as well to achieve diffrent looks.

3 Essential Fills for Photoshop : Grids

Introduction
Scan lines
Bumps
Grids
Using your Fills

Grids

This is probably the most used fill across all logos ?and it still looks great.

1) First fire up a new 10 x 10px transparent document.
2) Zoom in at max (1600%) and go ahead and fill up the bottom and right sides like this:

3) Go ahead and define your pattern now, and you?re set!
4) Here is what your results would look like on our blue background:

You can make bigger (or smaller) grids by changing the size of the image you start with, for instace: If you want a 20px x 20px grid just make a 20px x 20px image to start, insted of the 10px x 10px that is used here. The same goes for smaller grids.

3 Essential Fills for Photoshop : Using your Fills

Introduction
Scan lines
Bumps
Grids
Using your Fills

Using your Fills

To apply your fill(s) to an image(s), you?ll need to fire up a new photoshop document. We?ll use this photo (compliments of supercuts.com) as an example:

What you?ll need to do now is create a new layer Layer > New > Layer. Then choose the new layer and go to: Edit > Fill Choose ?Pattern? From your list, and apply the pattern we just made. You?ll now notice the scan lines across your image. You can adjust them to have a less opacity so that you can achieve something like this:

If we put everything we've learned into one document (with our lovely blue background of course) we get this (or some variation of it):