Creating Your Own Styles

Creating Your Own Styles

I'm going to walk through tweaking an existing layer style and resaving. Next week we will create a Layer Style from scratch. To begin with, let's look into the styles that shipped with Photoshop 6.0 again. From the Layer Styles palette, open the Styles menu and scroll down to "Replace Styles". You will find the Styles in the Photoshop 6.0 Directory: Photoshop 6.0>Presets>Styles.

I don't do this very often, but let's work on a photo this time. I know, I know why the diversion from text, Al? Well, we all need a change now and then! Besides, we will work with text soon enough!

Since we are going to work on a photo, load the Image Styles batch into the Layer Styles palette. Here is my starting image:

Now let's go back to the Layer Styles Menu and switch to Small List viewing Mode. This gives us a small thumbnail example as well as a name for the Style - this will help you see what I'm talking about.

To begin with I'm going to make a duplicate of my image and place it in a new layer. Again, and I can't emphasize this enough, NEVER alter your original image. If you were to inadvertently save with the photo looking like a mud pie, well, it will save some tears if you work on a copy.

So now my image is in it's own layer apart from the original. With the duplicate layer selected, just start selecting a few styles to get a handle on what is going on here.
After walking through a few of the styles, I've decided that the circular vignette looks rather nice, so I'll stick with it. With one selection of a style, I went from the original image to this:

Here's a quick peek at the Layers Palette:

Hmmm - well, we can see that a gradient overlay was applied to the photo, but it might be even more helpful to take a closer look at what is being applied. Double click the Gradient Overlay command in the Layers Palette and you should get a pop up similar to this:

I've trimmed this capture down to fit on the webpage, but you can clearly see the original settings for this effect. I'm going to alter the settings a bit, switching the gradient from Radial to Reflected, and apply a tan inner glow set to about 80 px. Here's the result:

I'm going to stick with this - hey, any picture of my kids looks great to me! So suppose I want to save this style and apply it to other images. Simply double click the Effects command in the Layers Palette again to bring the windo back up with your settings. Along the right hand side you will see a 'New Style' button just above the preview thumbnail. Click that, and a pop-up will appear allowing you to name your new style, as well as allow you to include/exclude Layer Blending Effects and Layer Blending Options. I'm just going to name this "My Photo Style" I'm not very creative today!

Now when I bring up the Layer Styles Palette, I can see the style I just created sitting at the bottom of the list!

I have the option of saving this style permanently also from the Layer Styles Menu.