back with another tutorial using a combination of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.
Today I'm going to take you through the process of designing a sticker for print, but more
specifically, how to set up your artwork to create cool sticker effects with a colourful
holographic finish.
Holographic vinyl has a shiny, iridescent finish that reflects the full spectrum of
rainbow colours as it catches the light.
By cleverly setting up a print file to allow the holographic effect to show through in
key areas of the image, you can create some totally awesome sticker designs!
In this tutorial I'll show you how I made a sticker design for my little side-hustle
Odyssey Activewear. This design is a kind of mashup between The Odyssey–as in the
ancient greek epic–and 2001: A Space Odyssey–the classic sci-fi epic.
It combines the sculpture of Odysseus with surreal, futuristic, neon lights, inspired
by the 'star gate' scene from the Space Odyssey movie.
Using a special holographic finish on this sticker design, I allowed the rainbow colours
to shine through the eyes and triangular neon shape to enhance the surreal effect with a
vibrant rainbow sheen.
The artwork starts with a public domain image of a sculpture of Odysseus. Use the Pen tool
to trace the outline of the head. Stay a few pixels from the edge to avoid capturing any
slithers of background.
Once the path is closed back at the starting point, right click and choose Make Selection,
with zero feathering.
Go to Edit > Copy and Edit > Paste to place the clipping on a new layer.
Turn off the original background image, then use the CMD+T (or CTRL+T shortcut on Windows)
for Transform, then rotate the head to straighten it up.
Use the Crop tool to expand the canvas slightly to provide a larger work area. Hold the ALT
key whenever you want to extend multiple sides at once.
Open up the free space image I downloaded from Pexels, which is linked in the description
area.
Select All with CMD+A, Copy with CMD+C, Close with CMD+W, then in the main document, select
the Background layer, and Paste the space image with CMD+V to place it below the clipped
head.
Use the shortcut CMD+T to scale the space image to size to fill the canvas area.
Add a new layer below the space image and fill it with black using the ALT+Backspace
shortcut.
Right click the layer and convert it into a Smart Object, then add a quick Sharpen filter
to bring out the details of the stars.
Reduce the opacity of the layer to reduce the prominence of the space image, so it fades
into the black background below it.
Select the layer containing the head clipping. Convert it to a Smart Object too so it's ready
for some Photoshop filters.
First add an Oil Paint filter from under the Stylize menu. Max out the Stylization option
but set the other options to zero. This will help clean up the original image to give it
a smoother appearance.
Add a sharpen filter to bring out some of the details.
Add a Levels adjustment under Image > Adjustments > Levels.
Boost the contrast by bringing in the shadows and highlights sliders.
Add a Gradient Map adjustment layer to give the design a duotone colour effect.
There are all kinds of colour combinations you could go with, but I'm using a mixture
of blue and pink.
While we are currently designing in RGB, it is keeping in mind how the artwork will print,
so choose hues that aren't made up of too many CMYK colours.
Click the icon to clip the Gradient Map to the layer below to restrict it to just the
head graphic.
Right click the head graphic and make a new copy of the Smart Object.
Go to Filter > Other > High Pass. Choose 1px, then set the blending mode to Linear Light.
Drag the layer above the Gradient Map layer so the colour adjustment isn't being applied
to this layer.
Doing so might break the clipping mask link, so reset it by ALT+clicking between the gradient
map and the head layer.
This High Pass technique is a great way of sharpening an image to bring out the details.
Adjust the opacity if necessary to tone down its impact.
Begin adding the surreal lighting effects by tracing the eyes with the pen tool.
Hold the CMD key, or CTRL key on Windows to toggle back to the selection tool, then drag
across the two paths to select them both.
Right click and choose Make Selection, then add a new layer and fill the selection with
white.
Go to Select > Deselect to clear the selection.
Double click the eyes layer to begin adding some glow effects.
Begin with an Outer Glow. Set the blend mode to Normal with 100% opacity, then find a nice
bright blue colour.
Again it helps to choose colours with an appropriate CMYK value. There is going to be some colour
shift when we convert the artwork from RGB to CMYK, but the difference will be less dramatic
if we plan ahead with our colour choices.
Adjust the Size value to around 50px to add a glow effect to the eyes,
We can only add one Outer Glow effect, but we can configure the Drop Shadow to add more
of an ambient glow around the eyes
Set up a mid-blue and set the blend mode to colour dodge. Reset the Distance value to
zero, then configure the size to produce a subtle glow that brightens the surrounding
area.
Right click this layer and choose Copy Layer Styles.
Select the head layer and Paste the Layer Styles to add the same glow effects. Double
click one to adjust the settings.
Change the blending mode of the Outer Glow to Colour Dodge to allow the colours to generate
a brighter effect against the space background. Increase the size to the max.
Set the Drop Shadow to Soft Light and max out the size too. Reduce the opacity to tone
down the brightness slightly.
Add a new layer right at the top of the layer stack and select the pen tool
In the top toolbar, change the style from Path to Shape. Then set up the styling with
no fill and a white stroke of around 12px.
Place three clicks around the canvas to generate a triangle. Right click the layer and paste
the same layer styles to give it a bright neon glow.
CMD+click some empty space within the canvas area to deselect the path.
To make the triangular shape appear to surround the head, hold the CMD key and make a selection
of the head layer by clicking its layer thumbnail.
Apply a layer mask to the triangle layer while this selection is active.
The clipping has been applied the wrong way round, so use the CMD+I shortcut to Invert
the mask, so the triangular lines appear to go behind the head.
We still want one of the lines in front, so use the brush tool to trace over one of the
lines with white, which will reveal that portion of the mask.
Die cut stickers often follow the outline of the artwork. Hold the CMD key and make
a selection of the head shape, then add the triangle to the selection by clicking its
layer thumbnail with the CMD and Shift keys.
Go to Select > Modify > Expand, then choose around 150px to add a little padding around
the edge.
Photoshop's selections can be a little janky, so go to Select > Modify > Smooth. Enter around
50px to smooth out the selection into flowing lines.
Go to Edit > Copy Merged, then paste this clipping onto a new layer to save a flattened
copy of the artwork.
Hold the ALT key while clicking the eyeball icon to hide all layers except this one to
see the result.
Stickers will either need setting up with bleed or a border. This artwork would be perfectly
suited to bleeding the space image all the way to the edge since there's plenty of extra
background to make use of, but I opted to add a border instead.
Either way, you'll need to set up a cut line to identify what shape the die cut sticker
should be. This should be a vector path, so I'll show you a technique I came up with to
transfer a cut line from Photoshop over to Illustrator.
Double click your Merged layer and add a stroke. Set the alignment to the Outside and configure
the size value to your preferred border thickness. Use a vibrant random colour.
Right click the Stroke effect and choose Create Layer to convert it into its own separate
layer.
CMD+click this layer to load its selection, then go to Image > Crop to trim the canvas
to size so there's no additonal space.
This is a good time to save a copy of your artwork so you don't lose the original, full
size layered version after setting up the print file.
Go to Image > Image Size to set up the artwork at your chosen sticker dimensions.
This odysseus sculpture image has a nice high resolution, so we can easily reduce it down
to 300ppi and set up the appropriate dimensions in MM.
I'm going for 60mm for the longest edge.
Next, convert the document to CMYK by going to Image > Mode > RGB. Choose not to merge
or rasterize the layers.
You will notice a slight colour shift where any vibrant colour or glow effects that were
created in RGB simply can't be reproduced in ink, but those careful colour selections
will ensure the overall design still looks as we intended it to.
Use the colour picker to check the CMYK values of different areas of the artwork. The pink
portions of the head will print nicely using mostly magenta.
Make sure any white areas and pure white with no CMYK values .
The blue glows are being mostly reproduced in cyan, with a touch of magenta.
Then the space background has quite a heavy ink coverage with all kinds of CMYK values,
but this doesn't matter too much since it's just the background. It will just print out
nice and dark.
Turn off the visibility of the stroke layer and go to File > Save As.
Give the file a name to identify that it's the main CMYK sticker art and choose JPG.
Keep the file size to max to retain its quality.
Swap the visibility of the layers over so just the bright stroke shape is visible. Export
this as a JPEG too.
Let's move over to Illustrator to set up the final print file. While it is possible to
use Photoshop alone, Illustrator is slightly better suited to creating print files.
Create a new document at the dimensions of your sticker in millimeters, and make sure
the Color Mode is set to CMYK.
Go to File > Place and choose the main artwork JPG file. Align it centrally within the artboard
using the Align panel.
Paste in the stroke graphic next and position it in some empty space.
Under the Window menu, choose Image Trace.
Make sure just the stroke shape is selected, then configure the values to Colour, with
the minumum colors value. Check Ignore white to generate a vector outline out of the raster
stroke image.
Go to Object > Expand to permanently convert this traced image into vector paths.
Swap the fill for a stroke, then align the outline centrally on the artboard.
If you look carefully, the outline has some unwanted straight edges where the tracing
snapped to the edge of the image. Sort this by going to Object > Path > Simplify.
Open the more advanced options and set the curve value to 100%. Reduce it by 1% at a
time until you see the path smooth out in the preview.
Replace the stroke colour with 100% magenta, which is traditionally what is used to identify
a cut line. Set the stroke weight to 0.25pt.
Under the Color Panel's menu, choose Create New Swatch. Give it the name Cut Line, then
make sure it set as a Spot colour.
A spot colour will be flagged in the printer software so it's clear that this pink cut
line isn't part of the sticker design.
To tidy up the Swatches panel, it's handy to delete any unused swatches, leaving just
this custom spot colour.
The white portion of the artwork is where the nothing is printed so the sticker material
shows through. For a regular sticker that would be white, but for holographic vinyl
that's where the shimmery rainbow appears.
It's not quite as simple as that though. Certain colours like the magenta head area would see
semi-translucent with a pinkish, shimmery appearance.
This is a print effect you can purposely make use of within your sticker designs, but for
this artwork a white backfill is required to make the non-holographic areas opaque.
Sometimes the printer will want to do this themselves, so it's worth asking first, but
here's how to set up an additional layer to identify which areas need to be first printed
with white ink.
Back in Photoshop, make the final design visible again, along with the two layers that contain
the white areas that will show the holographic effect.
To make an accurate selection of these areas, first disable the effects, then merge the
layers together under Layer > Merge Layers.
CMD+Click the merged layer's thumbnail to make a selection of the overall design.
Then hold ALT+CMD while clicking the merged white areas layer to remove those portions
from the selection.
Add a new layer and fill this selection with a bright colour so it's easily visible (white
won't show up against a white JPG background)
Save this artwork as a JPEG and place it into the Illustrator document.
Use the Image Trace window to vectorize it.
In order to make an accurate reproduction of the finer details, set the Noise to 1px,
check Ignore White, then find the lowest Threshold value that accurately replicates the outline
without it disappearing altogether.
Go to Object > Expand to permanently convert this tracing into vector paths, then give
it a white fill.
Save a new spot colour to identify this shape as the white fill layer, then line it up centrally
on the artboard.
This white layer now totally obscures the artwork, so it could potentially cause confusion
with whoever opens your print file at the other end. It's worth separating it onto a
new layer, or sending two artwork files, one with, and one without the white fill layer.
Or better yet, ask the printer how they want the artwork to be supplied.
Before saving your print file, make sure the JPEG image is embedded directly in the document
by checking for the icon in the Links panel.
The specific print file requirements is another area that should be instructed by your chosen
printing company, but a PDF with Press Quality settings is a commonly used filetype.
After a short period of time, you will then receive your sticker design as a tangible
piece of shiny vinyl for you to admire as the beams of colourful rainbow lights refract
into your eyeballs.
Using special finishes such as holographic, gold, chrome, glittery, or prizmatic to enhance
your design really helps to produce a stunning sticker
design that stands out!