Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to show you how to add
a sticker outline to a transparent PNG file in Adobe Photoshop.
Alright, let's get started.
Alright, first, you'll need a transparent PNG.
So I've got one right here that I'm going to add a sticker outline to.
And you can see this doesn't have a background at all.
And that is really important.
If you have a background, this just isn't really going to work right for you.
Okay, so I'll take this file, and I'm just going to drag it onto my Photoshop icon.
And that'll open it up in Photoshop.
I chose this sticker just because it's a little more spaced out.
We've got some space in between these two parts of the sticker.
And I want to show you something at the end of the tutorial...iIf yours is like this,
I can show you what to do for that.
Okay, the next step will be to open our layers.
So I'll come up here to Window and Layers.
Mine's already open, but yours will be right here.
So we can see the layer here.
First, I want to make a copy of this.
So I'm just going to click on it and drag it right down here onto the little plus icon.
And I think I'll just pull my layers out and make it a little bit bigger so we can see
what's going on here.
Okay, so I've got two layers right on top of each other, they're exactly the same.
And now I'm going to add another layer, just kind of as a background layer, we'll get rid
of it later.
So I'll click the plus button down here.
I'm going to drag this layer underneath all the other layers because it's going to be
a background.
I'm going to double click on my fill color over here, and we'll just choose kind of a
light green, maybe something like this.
We'll say OK, now we'll have to fill that.
And to do that, I'll hit OPTION Delete.
If you're on a PC, you'll want to hit ALT Delete, and that'll fill the whole layer with
the fill color here.
Okay, this is looking good.
I'm going to click on the second layer that we copied.
So this one right here.
And then I'll come down here to the little Fx and choose blending options.
And this will bring up this dialog box.
Next, we'll want to come over here to stroke.
And you can see it's added a stroke already.
Yours might not be the right color, though.
So let's click on stroke.
And we can change the color here, you'll want to make sure you're all the way up here to
white, we'll say OK.
And then my size, I'm really liking it right there at 44.
Maybe we'll bump it up to 45.
Yours might be different just based on how big your PNG file is.
So you might need a much smaller one.
But when I look at this, I'm seeing that this part is touching this other white area, which
is what I want.
This part isn't, but that's okay, I don't want to get a whole lot thicker than this.
Alright, so we'll say OK.
Next, I'm going to hide this top layer, we want the bottom layer to be all white.
So what I'll do now is come down here to the FX again, and choose Color Overlay.
We can change our color here by just clicking and making this white.
So we'll say OK.
So now the layer you're on should be all white like this.
Now we'll need to rasterize this.
So what I'm going to do is just make a copy of this one with the effects - the stroke
and the Color Overlay - and put it underneath the background.
So I'm going to hold OPTION or ALT on a PC, just click and drag this one under here.
That way if we want to make changes in the future, and we don't like the way the outline
turned out, we'll still have this one.
So we can just come in here, double click on stroke and make changes if we want to.
Okay, so let's get back on the one we were working on.
And we'll right click and choose Rasterize layer style.
Now this is just white, it doesn't have those effects anymore.
So we can't go in and edit those anymore.
If you need to do that, that's why we made this copy down here.
Let's get on our brush tool by hitting B on our keyboard.
That'll bring us to our brush right over here.
I'm going to click on my brush up here.
And this is looking pretty nice.
This one is fine.
Now I'll hit D on my keyboard.
And that will change my fill colors to black and white.
I want the white in front.
So I'll just click this little arrow, and now I can paint with white.
I'm just going to fill in all these areas.
This part right here, I'm just going to kind of smooth it out here.
And this is really close, so I'm just going to fill that in.
I'll go ahead and fill in all the other areas too.
Okay, and this is looking really nice.
Let's go ahead and turn on our top layer again.
All right, so now we can double check to make sure everything looks the way we want.
For example, we might want to fill in all this area.
So I'll click right here and just kind of drag down and fill that in.
And by the way, I'm still on my white layer, you'll want to make sure that you haven't
clicked onto another layer when you do that.
All right, let's save this as a transparent PNG.
So I'm going to hide my background and also hide the other layer that we made.
And then I'll come up here to File > Export, and we can do Quick Export as PNG or Export
As and then choose PNG here and make sure that transparency is checked here.
And then we'll export.
And that will give us a nice sticker shape that can be used in Cricut Design Space to
kind of define the cut lines.
Now since you may be selling these stickers, you might want to make a marketing image with
it.
So I'm going to turn my background back on.
And I'll come up here to the white layer, the layer with the outline.
I'm just going to come down here to FX one more time.
And we'll go to Drop Shadow.
And I'll put this right up here like this.