In this video, I'm going to show you how to create
a crayon effect in Photoshop.
Hi. Welcome back to the Photoshop Training Channel.com
I'm Jesús Ramirez.
In this video I'm going to show you how to create a crayon effect in Photoshop.
Even if you never need to use a crayon effect in your projects, I still would recommend
watching this video because I'm going to go over the brushes settings panel, which allows
you to modify existing brushes and design new custom brushes.
This is a very powerful feature which you can use on many projects.
I'm also going to show you how to use
actions, in that you can apply brushstrokes to paths and text layers.
Okay, let's get started.
We're going to start from scratch
and the first thing that we need to do is create a new document.
You can click on any of the Create New buttons or you can go into File and New,
and that brings up the New Document window.
If you're on Photoshop CS6 or older, it will look a little different but that's okay,
you can still follow along.
For those of you that are on Photoshop CC, then I have a quick, shameless plug.
If you click on the photo tab and select this template, the first one on the top left, that's
one of the templates that I designed for Adobe and it's inside of Photoshop CC.
So, you can check that out.
By the way, I also created a tutorial on how that template was made so if you're interested,
you can watch it after you finish watching this tutorial.
I'll place a link right below in the description.
But, anyway, you can just click on any one of the blank document presets
and we're going to adjust these settings.
We're going to work with pixels and we're going to change the width to 1280, heighth
of 720, resolution of 72, and we're going to work with a color profile of Adobe RGB 1998.
I'm also going to name the document now, so I'll call it Crayon Effect and then click on Create.
This is going to create our document and the first thing that I'm going to do is create a background.
Something that looks a lot like recycled paper.
And to save ourselves some time, we're going to let Photoshop create it for us.
So, I'm going to go into Window Actions and this is going to open up the Actions panel.
Actions are a set of recorded commands.
You can use them to take care of repetitive tasks; but in this case we're going to use
actions to create an effect.
These are the default actions; but this is not the ones that we need.
You can actually click on this flyout menu and see more actions.
I'm going to select Textures.
The action that I want is this one here, Recycled Paper.
Then I'm going to click on the play button, which means that Photoshop will run through
the set of recorded commands and create something that looks a lot like recycled paper.
The only downside is that the colors on the recycled paper are a little too bright for my taste.
So, what I'm going to do is click on the Eyedropper tool, select this beige color, and then create
a new Solid Color adjustment layer and press OK.
That's going to create this Solid Color right here.
I don't need a layer mask, so I'm going to delete it and even though I don't need to
in this case, I'm going to create a Clipping Mask.
So, I'm going to press Ctrl Alt G.
That's Command Option G on the Mac.
Because I want this layer, the recycled paper, to control the visibility of the layer above.
So, if I decide to add a layer mask or resize this layer in any way, this color effect will
only be applied to this layer.
Then select the color filled layer and reduce the opacity to zero by clicking and dragging
the label to the left.
Then you can increase the opacity accordingly to minimize the effect over those bright colors
and I think that looks much better.
Then I'm going to hold Shift, click on both these layers and press Ctrl G, Command G on
the Mac, to put them into a group and I'll call it "Recycled Paper."
And since I don't need this background layer, I'm just going to select it and press the
delete key to remove it.
Now we're going to work on making the crayon brush, which is what this tutorial is all about.
I'm going to create a new layer and before I show you how to create the crayon text effect,
I'm actually going to show you something else.
I'm going to select the brush tool, then click on this drop-down and what we're looking for
is something called Legacy Brushes.
If you're in Photoshop CS6 then you don't have to worry about this step, because the
Legacy Brushes are on by default.
In Photoshop CC, you may have to go and find them if you haven't enabled them yet.
Click on this gear icon and select Legacy Brushes.
Press OK and you will see this folder here with the Legacy Brushes.
Now the first thing that I'm going to show you is that under Default Brushes, there's
actually crayon brushes that you can use.
Right here.
Crayon and I'm just going to paint with red so that it's noticeable on this black layer
and you can see what that looks like.
And there's actually a second one, this one here.
And they're both crayon effects.
And these are okay; but they don't look the way I want them to.
So, I'm going to customize a different brush and get a better crayon effect.
So, that's what we're going to do in this tutorial.
I'm going to create yet another layer, so that we can separate the default Crayola brushes,
put the one we're going to customize.
So, I'm going to click on this icon again and I'm going to scroll down until I find
a brush titled Splatter 14.
This one here, Splatter 14.
So, when I select it and I paint you'll notice that it really doesn't look like a crayon;
but if I click on this icon to bring up the Brush Settings, I can start changing these
settings and make it look like a crayon.
The Brush Settings panel lets you modify existing brushes and design new custom brushes.
So, first I'm going to select the Brush Tip Shape and I'm going to increase the Spacing,
which controls the distance between the brush marks and the stroke.
And notice the Preview window here.
Any adjustments that you make on this panel will show a preview here of how that brush changes.
If I increase the spacing and paint,
you will see how the brush marks are now further apart from each other.
It looks much different than the original brushstroke that I made.
So, I'm going to change the spacing to 20, then click on Shape Dynamics.
These settings determine the variance of the brush marks in a stroke.
In other words, they change how the marks are placed down on the layer when you paint.
So, with Shape Dynamics the first thing I'm going to do is change the angle to 100.
Notice how that rotates the brush.
See that?
See how it's rotating?
You can see that in the preview window, which means when I paint I get a much better effect
that looks like a crayon.
If I zoom in,
you can already see that I don't have a sharp edge like I did with the other two brushes.
It's a little more jaggy, a little more random, it looks more organic and that's what I like.
I'm going to double click on the Hand tool.
Select the Brush tool again and I'll continue working with the size.
Then I'm going to change the Roundness.
Again, look at the preview window to see how it's changing the brush.
I don't want to take it all the way up to 100% because now it doesn't necessarily look
the way that I want it to.
Instead, I'm going to bring it down to 30% and the Minimum Roundness at 25% is good.
Then I'm going to change the Transfer, which is the opacity of the brush.
At 30% is good.
We just enabled it.
Flow Jitter at 0% works as well, that allows it so that when we paint with a different
color over a previous brushstroke, it gives us that effect there of some transparency.
You can see that there, right?
It's almost looking purple, that's exactly what we want.
So I'm going to fit this to screen and with these adjustments, we have created our crayon effect.
What I'm going to do now is save this brush.
So I'm going to click on the fly out menu and select New Brush Preset and I can call
it Crayon Custom Brush and then press OK.
Now that brush is found here.
Crayon Custom Brush, so I could use that any time that I need to.
Now that I've created that, I can delete these layers because I don't really need them.
I was only using them as an example.
So I'll delete these layers by pressing the Delete key on the keyboard.
I'm going to create a new layer and I'm going to show you a couple more tricks that you can do.
You can actually just simply paint whatever you like and draw any shape to create your design.
I'm going to undo those brushstrokes by pressing Ctrl Alt Z, Command Option Z on the Mac, and
you can use any vectors here that you like.
So, I'm going to select the Custom Shape tool and just select any shape.
So, I can select, for example, the silhouette of a dog.
Make sure that Path is selected in the Options bar and click-and-drag to make your shape.
Then with the Path Selection tool or the Direct Selection tool, I can right-click on the path
and select Stroke Path.
Then from the drop down, I can select brush.
The last brush that I had active was the crayon brush that we created, so when I press OK,
Photoshop is going to trace this path with that brush.
And it will use the currently selected program color, so now I have this crayon drawing of a dog.
And you can do that with any shape, of course.
You could also do the same thing with the pen tool.
You can simply start creating any shape that you like.
Create a new layer.
Right click and select Stroke Path.
Select Brush.
Press OK and now you have that crayon effect.
I'm going to delete that layer.
Create a new one and I'm going to show you another trick that you can do.
You can select the type tool and select any font that you like, it really doesn't matter which one.
In this case, I'll just use this font here and I can type in the words PTCVIDS.Com, which
is my website's URL.
Then I'm going to press Ctrl T, command it to transform, make this bigger and place it
right in the center.
Then I can right click and select Create Work Path, that makes a path around the outline of the text.
If I disable the layer, you can see it there.
Then I can create a new layer with the direct selection tool or the path selection tool.
I can right click on the path and select Stroke Path.
Select Brush, press OK, and now I have that effect you see there.
I'm going to select the brush tool and another thing that becomes really useful when you're
using this technique is the Swatches Panel.
So I'm going to open it up by going into Window and selecting Swatches.
And you can see them here.
You can think of these swatches as a crayon box.
So you can just select the swatch that you want and in any layer, you can start painting
anything that you want.
And in your projects, I would recommend painting your objects in different layers so that you
have the ability to apply Layer Ttyles.
Let me show you what I mean.
I'm going to draw a circle, then I'm going to double click on the layer to bring up the
layer style window and from here I can apply any layer style that I want, such as a gradient overlay.
And you can see how the overlay is applied to the drawing.
And you can apply any of these other gradients if you like.
So, there's so many possibilities with this technique and this is just a simple drawing
that I came up with using all the techniques that you just saw.
I would love to see what you came up with using this technique.
Give it a try and upload you're results to Instagram using the hashtag ptcvids.
Also, if you want to learn about brushes, then check out my tutorial on making a custom
brush from a photo.
I'll place a link right below in the description.
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Thank you so much for watching and I will see you at the next tutorial.