Supplies:
Tube: margaretmorales-12-1
Scrap: scrapccd_brokenpromises
Font: the-brandals and led-family
Mask: 5, 8, and 20 from Package 1
Animation: rebeldezignsanimation-112
Player: AoRK-player
Remove Black Action
Please do not use any of the licensed supplies without purchasing them first.
This particular tutorial is meant for advanced users… if you need a more beginner tut, please scroll back a couple of pages on the home.
First off, unzip all supplies.
Open Photoshop.
Open a new 800 x 800 pixel canvas. Be sure it is set to 72ppi resolution.
You can always resize later.
Thanks to Gail Wilson for this little trick, we can eliminate a step later in the tut.
Layer > New Layer…
You will now have TWO blank layers on your tag. The bottom layer should stay blank for the entirety of the tag creation.
Edit > Fill… this layer with white. You can change this to whatever color you like to match the website you will display it on, though.
Place the mask on the canvas that you would like to use.
You can either drag and drop it onto the canvas from your file browser, or you can use the File > Place… method.
Make sure your mask layer is highlighted in the layers panel.
Now go to the actions panel. Highlight the AoRK_Remove Black action and hit the play button at the bottom of the panel.
Your mask should now be isolated. Don’t worry about the dark areas you still see. You won’t see them in just a minute.
Place your paper on your canvas.Right click the paper layer in the layers panel and choose Create Clipping Mask.
Viola! Perfect masking.
Repeat this process with the other mask and paper.
Now, time for the elements! This is where the real magic begins.
You can drag and drop items straight from your file browser into the canvas. This makes it faster to place items.
Instead of telling you exactly where to put what and what size to use, I am just going to show you a animated image of what I did. This way, you can create your own version of the tag without doing exactly what I have done.
When placing your elements, you can transform them again by going to Edit > Free Transform. Just be sure you hold the shift key to constrain the proportions.
As you can see, it is pretty random. I just place the items where I think they might work.
We definitely want to add some shadows to our elements. Without shadowing, the tag will just look flat. The secret to a good tag, is a good shadow effect.
Right click (or ctrl+click) a layer and choose “Blending Options.”
I add a drop shadow and an outer glow. The glow enhances the effect a bit.
Now after you have hit OK, right click the layer again and choose “Copy Layer Style.”
Highlight all of your element layers (click the top one, then shift + click the bottom one) and right click again. This time, choose “Paste Layer Style.”
It makes a HUGE difference to add shadows:
Now that we have all of that done, time to add the next details. Tube and text. Fun!
Choose where you want your main tube to be placed.
Now drag and drop your tube onto the canvas. Resize and adjust it to your liking. Always make sure you constrain your proportions while resizing. Hold the Shift key while you drag the corners.
Add the same drop shadow you did before.
If you would like to remove the excess shadows from around your tag, I have explained how to do that HERE.
Resize before adding copyrights!
Highlight the top layer of the layers panel.
Grab your text tool and add the name you would like. Position it just where you want it and add a layer style. This is mine:
That leave us with the non-animated version of the tag! However, because of the whole point of this tag, we aren’t going to save the non-animated version… It just doesn’t seem like it makes sense that way.
Here’s where it starts getting complicated. We want to add animation!
Make sure your Animation Panel is open. Window > Timeline (or Animation, if you are on earlier versios)
You will need to click the “Create Frame Animation” button. If you do not see this button, please refer to THIS page for more information about the timeline.
You will see that your first frame is already there. But… ignore it! We don’t need it.
File > Open… choose an animation that you’d like to use. I am going to show you how to use the 25 frame animations that I have at CDO. However, THIS time, there are only 16 layers to our animation.
You will see that all 16 layers are open and unhidden in the layers panel.
In the menu, choose Select > All Layers.
Layer > Group Layers
Now right click on your group in the layers panel and duplicate. BUT DON’T HIT OK, YET!
In the duplicate dialog, choose your tag from the dropdown box. If you haven’t saved by this point, you should see an “Untitled-1” option. (but you definitely should have saved before now. Remember, always save often.)
After you have chosen your tag, hit ok. You can close the animation file without saving.
Back to your tag.
You can resize and rotate the group using the Edit > Free Transform option. Be sure you are resizing the whole group, not just one layer. Don’t forget to hit the check mark at the top of the window to apply the transformation.
On the right side of your animation panel, click the 4 horizontal lines. Choose the option that says “Make Frames from Layers.”
Unfortunately, this makes your animation frames kind of seem to disappear. To fix this, unhide any groups you have in the layers panel. NOT the layers, just the groups.
Now, this made a mess of things, didn’t it?? LOL! But no, not really. You will see that it created a frame for every layer in your tag. And that’s ok!
Click on the first frame in the animation panel. At the bottom of the window, there is a trashcan icon. That deletes the frame. Delete all of the frames that aren’t part of the animation. You should be left with 16 frames that contain only the animation layers.
You will see that your tag only has one animation layer visible in each frame. You want this!
You can collapse the group again now, so you don’t mistakenly unhide layers in there. Click on the little arrow icon beside the group icon in the layers panel.
In the animations panel, click on the first frame. You MUST BE ON THE FIRST FRAME to do any kind of editing from here on out. ALWAYS make sure you are on the first frame. ALWAYS! I can’t stress that enough.
Are you on the first frame of the animation yet? Good. Now we can continue.
In the Layers panel, unhide the color fill layer from the beginning of the tut by clicking the little square box beside the layer thumbnail. An eye should appear…
But, for any of you who have followed other tutorials of mine, you notice that you don’t need to click 3 times anymore!! Thank you Gail!
Now, one by one, unhide all of the layers to your tag. DON’T touch the animation layers, though! Those are already spaced out the way they should be. Leave those alone.
After you have unhidden all of your tag layers, you can click play at the bottom of the animation panel to check out your creation!
In your layers panel, highlight the first frame, then hold shift and highlight the last frame. This will select all frames. Hit the [+] at the bottom of the panel to duplicate all of the selected frames. You should now have 32 frames.
Back to the first frame.
This part is going to be extremely complicated… so pay close attention.
In the layers panel, create a new layer. Then go to Layer > Group Layers. This will create a group with just your blank layer inside. Name the layer “Player Text”
Using the rectangle selection tool, select the black portion of the player.
With this new group (player text) highlighted in the layers panel, go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal Selected. This will add a layer mask on the group.
Highlight the layer that you put inside that group.
Now grab your font tool and type out “Broken Promises” in the LED font listed in the materials.
Center this text in the black box of the player. You don’t need to add any kind of layer style to this text layer.
Using your move tool, hold the shift key and hit the arrow key to move the text all the way to the right side until it is just outside of your vision.
Now highlight the last frame of the animation panel. I know I said to work on only the first frame, but this is an exception.
Use your move tool to move the text (Shift and arrow key) all the way to the left side until you just don’t see it anymore.
Highlight the first frame again. Shift + highlight the last frame to select all of the animation frames. Make sure the text you just created is still highlighted in the layers panel.
Click on the 4 horizontal lines at the top right side of the animation panel. Choose Tween…
Set it like this:
Now hit play at the bottom of your animation panel. Does it look good? Great!!
Oh, right! Don’t forget to set your frame delay.
Highlight all of your frames in the animation panel. Highlight the first frame and then hold shift. Click on the last frame. Now all frames are highlighted.
Click on the little arrow beside the time of the last frame. This will bring up a popup for more “delay” options.
Now you will need to save your animation as a gif file.
In your animation dialog, use these settings:
My “Forever List” can find their tags in their Fotki Folders.