In this video, I'm going to show you how to create interlocking geometric shape masks
in Photoshop.
This is actually a tutorial based on my template that is found in the new version of Photoshop,
Photoshop CC 2018.
As you may know, the new document window offers templates that you can download for free,
and for this version of Photoshop Adobe asked me to create several templates, and the interlocking
geometric shapes is one of those templates.
So, what I'm going to do in this tutorial is show you three different things.
I'm going to show you how you can download that template using the new document window.
Then I'm going to show you how I made that template, so it's going to be a step-by-step
tutorial on how that template was created.
And finally, at the end of the tutorial, I'm going to show you what to do in case you do
not have the creative cloud and you want to download that template.
You can actually download all the free templates from the Adobe Stock website using a free
Adobe ID.
Okay, let's get started with the tutorial.
Here I am in the new document window.
A lot of you know that if you click on the create a new button or go into file and new,
that brings up the new document window.
You also may know that there's different categories of templates that you can use to start your
projects in Photoshop.
The template that we're going to talk about in this tutorial can be found in the photo
tab.
It's the first template on the left.
Interlocking Geometric Image Masks is the name of the template.
You can see my name here on the right-hand side on top.
I was hired by Adobe to create templates for this new release of Photoshop.
You may find some of my templates in here, and obviously, the ones that I created have
my name on it.
So the way these templates work is you can select a template.
You can click on the preview icon, and this shows you a preview of what the template is.
If you've never downloaded the template before you can just click on download.
And by the way, this is a free template.
This particular template is over 100 megabytes, and Photoshop is telling me that it may take
a little long to download, and that's okay.
I'm going to click on continue, and this is going to download the template into my creative
cloud library, and I will be able to edit it in Photoshop.
And once again, if you're not a member of the creative cloud, at the end of the video
I'm going to show you how to download these templates using a free Adobe ID from the Adobe
Stock website.
Once the template downloads, you can click on the open button.
The template will open up in Photoshop, and the way this template works is by inserting
your image in this section that says, "Insert your image here."
So you can double click on that, press okay.
Then you can add whatever image you want onto that space.
So I have a couple images here that I have in my creative cloud library, some of these
you may have seen in other tutorials.
I'm just going to click and drag one of those in there, and I'm going to hold the Shift
Alt, Shift Option in the Mac, to expand this image.
Hit enter.
Close the libraries panel.
And I'm going to close this tab, save it, and that's what this template does.
It applies that interlocking geometric shape to the photo that you imported.
And this is not the only design.
There are others.
If you click on this drop-down, you'll see that there's several different masks that
you can enable to create that effect.
You can also stack them if you want, but usually stacking maybe one or two together is the
way to go.
Stacking more than two starts getting a little crazy.
And now that you saw how you can download Adobe Stock templates through the libraries
panel and how you can find my template, I'm going to show you how I created my template,
and I hope that those techniques can help you with your creative projects.
So, what I'm going to do first is create a new document, so I'm going to click on the
create new button, which will bring up the new document window.
And I'm going to create a blank document that's 1920 by 1080 with a resolution of 72.
The background really doesn't matter, so just select white.
For color, profile select Adobe RGB (1998) and click on create.
We're going to start out by creating the main shape, but first, we need to set up the document.
Make sure that your rulers are enabled.
You can press Ctrl R, Command R on the Mac, to enable and disable the rulers, or you can
go into view and make sure that rulers have a check mark next to it.
Also, make sure that snap has a check mark next to it because we're going to be using
guides and we're going to need them to snap to the center of the canvas.
Then, on your rulers, make sure that you're working with pixels.
So right click on the ruler and select pixels.
Then you can click and drag on the ruler itself to drag out a guide and notice how it will
snap at the center of the canvas at 540.
And I can also drag out a vertical guide, and it will snap at 960.
So now we have guides going across the center of the document.
We're going to create a shape using the polygon tool.
Make sure that you have three as the number of sides.
Then make sure you're using a shape and don't have a fill, so remove the fill by clicking
on this icon.
And use white for your stroke color.
Use one pixel as the width, and, under align, select the center option.
This is going to make it so that the stroke will align in the center and not in the inside
or outside of the path.
Since we are working with a white stroke, a white background will not be good because
we're not going to be able to see the stroke.
So you can create a solid color, and we'll make that a dark gray that way we can see
the stroke better.
And we're not going to need this background, so we can click and drag it into the trash
icon.
Then we can create our triangles.
So, I'm just going to click and drag from the center and hold Shift, just to get a straight
triangle here.
And even if it's not the right shape or in the right area that you wanted, that's okay.
You can just click on the move tool; you can click and drag it down until it snaps in the
center.
You can then press Ctrl T, Command T, to transform.
Now it is at the pivot point; it's right in the center.
I can hold Shift and Alt, Shift Option on the Mac, and click and drag to make it just
a little bit larger.
So this is roughly the shape that you want to have your triangle.
Now we're going to create a second shape that's going to go inside of this triangle.
So with my triangle layer selected, and I'll call it triangle just so that you know what
that is.
I'll call it main triangle.
Main triangle.
So with this main triangle layer selected, I can go back into the polygon tool, and I
can change the sides to six.
All the other setting will remain the same, and I can click and drag in the center.
Once again, I'm just not going to really worry about where my shape is going to go or how
big it's going to be; I'm just going to make it.
Then I'm going to press Ctrl T, Command T, to transform.
And I'm going to hold Shift, click and drag to rotate, so that we have this point here
on the center line, and this second point here going down the center line as well.
Then I'm going to click and drag it till it snaps to the bottom of the triangle, and I'm
going to create a guide just, so we can see that.
That guide right there.
And I'm going to click and drag the pivot point down to the center, and I'll zoom in
so that you can see what I'm doing.
I'm going to click and drag this point until it snaps here on the bottom.
Then I can hold Shift and Alt, click, and drag, and now it scales in and out of that
point.
And I'm going to go as high up as I can until those points meet the line, which is right
in the center, you see that there.
Then I'm going to hit enter.
Now I can click and drag guides that are going to snap to those points, and we're going to
use them later.
And I'm also going to click and drag guides that snap here, and another one that snaps
right over here.
Then I'm going to zoom out.
Then I'll add a couple guides here, and I'll zoom in to make sure that the guide is where
it needs to be.
And notice that it's not in the right spot, so I can click on the move tool again, hover
over the guide, and then click and drag to move it out right about there.
And I'll do the same thing on the other side.
I'm using the space bar to pan, so I'm holding the space bar, clicking, and dragging.
And there's the other guide.
I'm going to double tap on the hand tool, and I'm going to click and drag one guide
here on the top, and I need to add a guide at the very bottom.
I thought I added it earlier, but I must have deleted it somehow.
And when you're watching the video, maybe leave me a comment letting me know what happened
to that guide, because I could have sworn I made one.
But anyway, let's just make a new one.
I'm going to click and drag a guide down to the bottom of the triangle.
And I know that having all these guides and all these lines can be a little confusing,
but you're going to see how easy it's going to be for us to now create the rest of the
shapes by having these guides.
So, what I'm going to do now is select the pen tool, the regular pen tool, not the curvature
pen tool.
You can use that one as well if you'd like, but I think that for this particular task
the pen tool works best.
So, with the pen tool selected we still have the same settings, shape, no fill, a stroke
of one pixel, and now we can start creating the rest of the shapes that are going to make
up our design.
So we need a triangle that goes from this point to this point here.
Here, and it's snapping to those corners.
There it is, so now I have that new shape.
I need another triangle that goes from here to here, and that's another shape.
And there's one more shape that we need to create, and that's down here, so I'm going
to start in this corner.
Make sure that the line goes over this intersection here and it ends up right in the center, and
then do the same thing for the other side, so it comes off here.
Now I don't want to complete the triangle because I already have a line there.
The original triangle has that line going across.
So what you can do is you can simply press the escape key on the keyboard, and then you
end that path.
Now to see your result you can press Ctrl H, Command H on the Mac, to hide the guides.
And it looks like I missed one line, one line that goes from the top all the way down to
the center, so I can press Ctrl H, Command H on the Mac, and click and drag down.
And once again, when you're done just press the escape key.
So once again, Ctrl H, Command H, to hide, and now we have the completed design.
What we need to do now is put all these layers into a group.
So, I'm going to select the bottom shape, then hold Shift, click on the top one, and
press Ctrl G, Command G, and they're all now inside of a group.
I can then select the top shape, hold Shift, and select the bottom shape so now they're
all selected, and I can go into the options bar, and I can change their thickness.
So, I'm going to change the thickness up to about 10 pixels, and I was using the up-arrow
key on the keyboard.
Then I can press enter on the keyboard, and there it is.
That looks like a really good thickness for this particular design.
And you can see some corners popping out here.
So to fix that you can go into the stroke options, and on corners select the bevel option,
which is that one there.
And notice now that we don't have any more of those points sticking out.
However, the original triangle I want to have the original corners.
I want to have the spiky ends.
To do that I can click on the main triangle shape, go back into the options and change
the corners back to a regular corner, and now we have these pointy ends, which is what
I want.
I can rename this group one, and I'll just call it shape.
Now it's time to work with the smart objects that are going to help us create the effect,
and we're going to need two.
So, I'm going to create one layer, and I'll just call this layer image.
Then I'm going to right click on it and convert it into a smart object.
Then I'm going to duplicate it by pressing Ctrl J, Command J on the Mac, and I'm going
to rename these layers.
So the original one is image-background, and the second one will be image-foreground.
And I'm going to drag the background right here and the foreground right above the background.
So, if I double-click on any one of these smart objects it's going to open up a new
tab, and we can click and drag any image that we want on there.
So let's drag an image, and the image is not important, so use whatever image you would
like for this.
Again, it's not that important.
And I'm going to close it and save it, and notice now that both of these smart objects
have the same image.
So what we could do now is we can apply an effect to one smart object and not the other,
and then if we replace the image from either of the smart objects, they will both update.
So let me show you how that works.
I'm going to select the image-background, then go into filter, blur, gaussian blur,
and we're going to use 16.6, that seems to work fine, and press okay.
Then I can add another filter.
So filter, camera raw filter, and we can just make any adjustments that we want.
So we can make the shadows darker, maybe reduce the brightness of the highlights, and go into
the FX icon and add film green, and maybe a little bit of a vignette.
Then press okay, and the changes are made, but the second smart object is still there.
No changes have been applied to it.
So, with that layer selected, with the image-foreground, I can hold Alt, Option on the Mac, and click
on the layer mask icon, and that creates a black layer mask, which hides everything in
that layer.
So I can selectively choose areas to reveal by painting with white.
To do so I'm going to use the shapes that we created, but I'm going to hide these layers
just so that it's easier to see.
So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to select the magic wand tool and make sure that sample
all layers is checked, then I'm just going to click on every other triangle.
So, I'm going to click on this one, skip that one, go to this one, skip this one, go to
the next, and I'll do the same thing on all of the other triangles remaining in this design.
Now that I have the triangles selected, I need to expand the selection so that the selection's
not on the edge of that white line.
I want it to be inside of the line that way there's no visible edge.
So I can go into select, modify, expand, and you can expand it by three or so pixels.
It all really depends on the document that you're working with.
Press okay, and three pixels works great.
Now I can enable my layers.
And if I fill with white inside of this layer mask, we're going to reveal the contents of
that layer.
Currently, my background is set to white, so I can press Ctrl Backspace, that's Command
Delete on the Mac, and that brings up those pixels.
I'm going to press Ctrl D, Command D, to deselect.
And that is basically how my template was created.
So now I can open up either of these smart objects, like this one here, and drag in another
image.
So, I'm just going to scroll down and drag in this image here, drop it, and I'm going
to scale that out by holding Shift and Alt, Shift Option, and click in on that corner
handle.
Then I can close this document, and notice how the template was updated because we're
using smart objects.
So now that you have the template set up, you can start adjusting it.
So maybe you can go into image, adjustments, and use selective color under colors, select
blacks, and maybe add a little bit of cyan to the shadows, and reduce the yellows to
add blue, and maybe make it darker.
So something like that, and press okay.
And you can keep fine-tuning it as much as you want.
But my template that is found in the new document window obviously has different masks and more
ways of adjusting it, but this is more or less how the template was created.
I hope that you enjoy that step-by-step demonstration, and that the techniques were useful to you
and that you can apply them to your projects.
What I'm going to do now is show you how to download these templates for free, even if
you do not have the creative cloud.
So, if you're in an older version of Photoshop, you are going to have to go into the Adobe
Stock website and download the templates from there.
So in the next few minutes, I'll explain to you how that process works.
Now if you're not a member of the creative cloud, you should still be able to download
these templates by using your Adobe ID in the Adobe Stock website.
And let me show you how that works.
I'm going to bring up the Adobe Stock website.
And what you need to do is go into sign in and create a free Adobe ID, or you could use
the Facebook, Google buttons to log in and create your account.
Now, I have an Adobe ID, so I don't need to do that.
And here I am, I'm already logged in.
And the first thing that you need to do is click on templates, and you're going to see
templates for Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, and InDesign.
Obviously, we're going to be working with Photoshop templates in this video, so I'm
going to click on search, PS, templates.
And my template is found under the photo category, so I'm going to check photo, and you will
see it on the top left.
Now, I'm not sure when you're going to be watching this video of course, but currently,
it's on the top left.
When you watch this, it might be somewhere else.
You might have to scroll and find it, but I will post the link directly to the template
page so that you don't have to search for it.
But here it is, and actually, if I click on this box with this file number, it will take
me directly to the page for this template.
And you can see that it's a PSDT, that is template file in Photoshop, the file size,
and the information regarding this template.
What you want to do is save it to your computer.
In this part of the video, we're not talking about people who have the creative cloud because
if you did, you could easily download it to the creative cloud.
But if you don't, you can click on this drop-down and click on the download button, which will
download it to your computer.
I'm just going to save it onto my desktop.
And once the template's saved you should be able to open it from your desktop, so here
it is.
Here's the template on my desktop.
One thing I do want to point out is that if you're on a version of Photoshop that is older
than CC 2018, you will have to change the file format.
To do that you can right click on the file and select rename, and I'm going to delete
a couple of these numbers on the file name so that we can see the file extension better.
Notice that this is a PSDT, that is Photoshop template file, but those Photoshop template
files cannot be read by older versions of Photoshop.
So what you need to do is remove the T, so that you now have a PSD.
Your operating system is going to ask you if you want to make the change.
Click yes, and now this will be a normal Photoshop file.
A normal PSD.
When you double-click on it, it will, of course, open in Photoshop, and you can work with the
template.
So that is how you can download and open Adobe Stock template files in older versions of
Instagram with the #ptcvids.
And please let me know in the comments below if you enjoy the techniques that I showed
in this tutorial and your ideas for future tutorials.
Thank you so much for watching, and I will talk to you again soon.