Summer Silhouette Tutorial

In this tutorial I’ll be making a Summer Silhouette using the many tools Photoshop has to offer. I love making these because there simple and easy. I would make atleast 1 -2 a week and edit them for months after I’m done, constantly adding and changing things.

Step 1

If you would like to make a desktop back ground just find out what resolution you screen is currently you can do this by checking out your Control Panel->Display or for Vista users Control Panel->Appearance and Personalization->Display-> Adjust Screen resolution. I have a 17″ laptop which is at an high resoultion so for this I’ve decided to use a smaller resolution at 1024×768. When creating a new file set the Height and Width to your resolution (ex. Height->1024 Width->768) and make sure its set to pixels and not inches.

Step 2

Like I said in the other tutorial I always make a new layer. The first layer Should e called “Background 1″. For the background I use the Gradient Tool which also shares the same box as the Paint Bucket Tool. The Gradient Tool allows you to mix as many colors as you want, and allow them to fade in and out of each other along with many more options. For this I’m just using two colors a very light yellow (#fef97b) and an orange (#ff6e02) to represent a sun set.

Step 3

Create a new Layer and name it Land.

Now with the Polygonal Lasso Tool where we are going to create land. To make things easier select outside of the actual picture and go across your picture where we want the land to go. Dont be boring and make it all flat, do what I did and add some bumps. When you’ve gone around your picture just make it connect with your starting point.

Step 4

Create a new Layer and name it Land.

Now with the Polygonal Lasso Tool we are going to create land. To make things easier select outside of the actual picture and go across your picture where we want the land to be. Dont be boring and make it all flat do what I did and add some bumps. When you’ve gone around your picture just make it connect with your starting point.

Step 5

Create a new layer again (I know it’s a hassle)

Using the Paint Brush Tool were now going to add grass. Select the Paint Brush tool and select one of the grass brushes  and play around with the slider untill you get  a size your happy with. Make sure you have your colors set black and black (foreground black and black as back ground).  Paint the grass to the land, try to cover up the actual land so the outline of the land isnt visible. Notice how the grass fully covers the line, while the other one the line is still visible. Try to use both grass Brushes and try using different sizes.

Step 6

Once again, create a new layer….

Now that you know everything else I’m going to let you play around with what you’ve learned.  Mess around and try new things thats the only way you can get better at Photoshop, trial and error. Dont forget about the use of filters and brushes, theres a lot that can be done with them.

It’s important to remember how Layers work. Think of it as a cake, the last layer is where you start, and you build on top of that. For example you wouldnt want the Land layer behind the background layer. Kind of like how we went through this tutorial; we started with the background, then land, then grass and so on. For what I did afterwards the sun is behind the grass and the land layer.

Heres what I came up with by adding a few more layers and messing around with a few filters.

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