Alison Johnston

Okay, so as I mentioned before I have the attention span of a gnat and this is how this little tutorial came about. Whilst trying out the custom shape tool in helping with the rule of thirds, I began to see something else that I could use it for. The image I’ve used to show this, has had no adjustments to it and I had no intention of posting it, but I think you will agree that the image itself probably isn’t the correct one to use in this case. I see a more distance scene or street scene giving the impression of being inside, behind bars, looking out. You could also use a wood effect with this, I chose to attempt to make it look like rusty bars.

Or view the larger image HERE

So basically do exactly the same as the first tutorial but don’t crop. Also, make sure that your foreground colour is set to something that you want to use. I chose a burgundy type colour, but black would have worked well in this case.

When you have the shape over your image, press the enter key. I went to the filter menu and used the ‘craquelure’ filter. Went to the filter menu again and used the Chalk and Charcoal stetch filter. Then I went to the Layer menu and used the Layer Styles – Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow and Bevel & Emboss – in that order. You could also try a pattern overlay if you wanted a wood type effect, lots of things to try out with this one. Place your new ‘window’ on to a b/ground with bricks for example.

hope you enjoyed this.

Custom Sahpe Tool Part 1