Layer styles workout

[Doug Nelson]

• Make a new 640x480 72ppi doc, white background
• Add a new layer, and add a black circle, zero feather
• Experiment with layer styles and post what you come up with in this thread (Save for Web, JPG Medium worked well for me)
• Explain what you did

For this demo I just turned them all on with the defaults.

Remember, layer styles ONLY

[Swampy]

This was fun. I don't use styles very often so exploring features was informative. I often have to do layouts for brochures and other printed matter that call for photos to be placed into a page layout application (I use InDesign). In most cases you want uniformity in strokes, drop shadows, bevels, glows etc throughout the piece. I now find that I can build a style and just apply it to any shape (in this case a circle, but it could be rectangle, triangle, freeform, whatever) and apply the style then convert to CMYK, save as TIFF and drop into InD. Could be a real time saver!

I used all the usual style formats, drop shadow, stroke, innner and outer glows etc., but I used a photo that I had saved as a Pattern Stamp for the Style's pattern overlay. You can scale the photo and move it around within the circle for best placement or centering.

[lurch]

How about a (sort of) solar eclipse?

Drop shadow: Dark blue, 100% opaque normal, global light, max size and spread, zero distance, straight-line contour, no noise.

Inner shadow: Dark orange-red, 75% normal, global light, zero distance and choke, max size, straight-line contour, no noise.

Outer glow: orange, 75% normal, no noise, zero spread, 100 px size, straight-line contour, 50% range, zero jitter.

Inner glow: bright yellow, 75% screen, no noise, no choke, size 4 px from edge, straight-line contour, 50% range, zero jitter.

Gradient overlay: dark red to black, 100% overlay, linear, 61 degrees, scale 47%.

Pattern overlay: wrinkles, 28% lighten, scaled to 590%.

Fun!

[Swampy]

Lurch... Are you sure you didn't grab that image from the NASA site? LOL Excellent job.

[lurch]

Thanks, Swampy. Gotta admit the inspiration came from there, in a way. I mean - how many things are there that you can do with a circle?

[bart_hickman]

Just fiddling around. Only used gradients and textures that came installed with CS3. Fun project.

Bart

[lkroll]

Simply created a transparent layer and ran two different styles that you can get for free here.

[lcramer53]

I don't know if I'm allowed to do this, I think this is called "bumping", but before I noticed how old the thread was, I had already played around with my circle and styles and came up with this and wanted to share.

I did my circle, drop shadow, emboss, added a "wood" texture, added some more circles within the circle for button holes and just for the heck of it, put in a background of plaid and a needle and thread.

[lkroll]

Fantastically well done Susie.

[lcramer53]

Thanks lkroll! And thanks for the link to Pencil Pixel's free styles, looking forward to trying some of them out.

[K_GiMiNi_M]

thanks Doug for the idea.
I manly used the "elliptical marquee tool" to make the shape
and you can see what effects used in the attachment.

[Dave.Cox]

As I understand what you posted, you wanted layer styles only. A lot can be done with layer styles, and it is well worth experimenting with.

The Yellow triple circle is a drop shadow, set to yellow and blend mode set to multiply.

The white highlight in the upper left is set with an inner shadow, set to white, and a blend mode of screen.

The double orb shadows are set with the satin mode, set to a deep red, or maroon color, and the color mode set to color dodge.

The red background was achieved by using color overlay, blend mode set to normal.

The pattern was added with the pattern overlay, using the stock metal landscape pattern, and the blend mode set to linear light.

The black circle outline was created by adding the stroke, set to position outside, and the blend to multiply.