Create Your Own Christmas Balls

Create Your Own Christmas Balls

Here I’ll show you how to make funny colorful Christmas balls using Photoshop techniques.

First of all, you should create a new document about 500×500 pixels and fill it with white color. After that select the Elliptical Marquee Tool to create selection as on my picture below. Fill selected area with color of #580001 on the new layer.

Ok, use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to create another one selection and fill it with the same color.

Remove selection with Ctrl+D. Now, time to bring some ornament to the ball. I used this ornament or you can use another one which you want. Open up this file and copy ornament to the main canvas. After that apply the Color Overlay layer style to the layer with ornament.

You can mix current picture a couple of times. The result should be next:

Select the ball shape (Ctrl + left click the Layer Thumbnail in the Layers Palette) and press Ctrl+Shift+I to invert selection, after that press Delete to clear selected area.

Remove selection with Ctrl+D and continue to create ball’s texture. Create a new layer and fill it with black color. After that apply Filter > Noise > Add Noise with following presets:

Change layer opacity to Screen now and use Ctr+T to reduce the noise texture.

Now, we need to clear area out the ball again. Select the ball shape one more time (Ctrl + left click the Layer Thumbnail in the Layers Palette) and press Ctrl+Shift+I to invert selection, after that press Delete to clear selected area.

Deselect area with Select > Deselect. After that use the Sharpen Tool to sharpen noise layer.

Now, merge all layers except background layer in one. After that use Select > Load Selection to select ball again and apply Filter > Distort > Spherize to make the ball volume:

Remove selection with Ctrl+D and use the Sharpen Tool again to sharpen centre of the ball a little bit more.

Time to add glares. Use the Dodge Tool (Brush: 100px, Range: Highlights: Exposure: 50%) to create bright spot on the ball as on my picture you can see below.

Create another one glare in the same way.

Then select the Burn Tool (Brush: 100px, Range: Shadows: Exposure: 20%) to add the dark glare.

Now, create a new layer and use the Elliptical Marquee Tool to create round selection. Fill it with white color.

Remove selection using Ctrl+D and apply Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

See the result below.

Merge this layer with previous. Use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to create selection like mine and use the Dodge Tool again to make little dodge-work.

Ok, remove selection with Select > Deselect. Time to add the top to our ball. How to do this? In the beginning create new layer above, then select Polygonal Lasso Tool to create selection as mine and fill it with color of #a09c95.

Deselect current layer (Ctrl+D). Now, use the Dodge Tool (Brush: 45px, Range: Highlights: Exposure: 50%) to add a little glare to the top.

Merge current layer with previous and use Ctrl+T to reduce the ball about 20%.

And the last one thing left. Select the Line Tool and set foreground color as #2f1e00. Draw two lines about 1 pixel as on my picture below.

Ok, we are done for now! I added two different colors balls more. Please don’t be afraid to experiment with different colors and techniques.

Preparing Line Art For Colors

Preparing Line Art For Colors (Part 1-Digital Color for coloring comics Tutorial) Welcome to part one of the two part Digital Coloring for coloring comics Series. In this tutorial we will explore how to prepare line art for coloring comics in Adobe Photoshop. This tutorial(s) makes use of the channels palette extensively, so if you are unfimiliar or uncomfortable with them you can use layers with some modifications, but it is recommended that you knuckle down and get into using channels as they are key to using Adobe Photoshop to its full potential. Since we recieved the line art as is (on purpose) we are just going to do a quick fix for our line art for illustration purposes in this tutorial (step 1). It is recommended however that you follow the 'Scanning Line art Tutorial' for best results. Original Scan (below): (Line art by John Rauch Jr. www.pensnpixels.com)
	1. Levels Adjustment. Brings up levels palette Slide the arrow on the right towards the middle until the grey noise (pencil marks in this case) is gone. You may notice some of the black in the line will fade, so you need to slide the left most slider a little ways towards the middle. This will help darken the line again, but don't over do it, as you do not want to lose the integrity of the original line art. Note: You should remove any dark flecks or aberrations first as to get rid of them with levels will degrade the line art too much. You can do this buy either using the eraser (h) or by using the brush (b) tool with the foreground color set to white.
Before After	Before and After Levels Adjustments.
	2. Lets make an alpha channel for our Line Art. Go to the channels palette and create an alpha channel. Click onthe little arrow beside the channels pallette and select New Channel, you must turn the color swatch to black, and make it 100%. Now you can name it whatever you like although I suggest you name it Line Art, as it will become easier to identify if and when you get many channels going. Select ok.
	With the new line art channel selected, fill it with white Alt+backspace (with foreground color selected as white). Your Line art channel should look something like mine to the left.
3. Now we need to make a selection of the Line While pressing the key, click on the little picture window beside the blue channel. This will load it as a selection. You should now have a marquee on white. Now inverse the selection.
	4. Fill the selection with black. Make sure your foreground color is black and then hit . As demonstrated in the figure to the left.
	To the left is what your channels palette should look like at this time.
	6. Remove the original Line art Okay now that we have the Line art stored in an Alpha Channel we can remove the original line art from the RGB channel. This is simple. Select the RGB channel - fill the channel with white (make sure the foreground color is white) and then press alt+backspace. Now you should no longer have anything in the channels R,G,B or RGB. 7. Make the line art visible (left diagram). Now at this point all you will need to do is click on the visibility icon on the Line Art channel and you are ready for the next step and tutorial - Digital Coloring Part II - The Render!
Thank you taking the time to read this tutorial/article, and I hope it helped you in some way.