How to Create Graphic Art in Photoshop

It's our first episode in our brand new studio and boy is it a good one. Learn how to create graphic art in photoshop! Today's episode is for all those artist out there. We show you some basic techniques you can use to create some awesome graphic art. From color fill adjustment layers to layer masks, to transforming selections and saving custom color swatches. This episode has a little something for the whole phamily!

Section 1: Creating a Color Fill Layer (4:27)

We kick things off by using a Color Fill Adjustment layer. Then we use a layer mask to define the visibility of that layer. A key point to remember here is that painting white on a layer mask makes that layer visible. Painting black on the layer mask makes that layer invisible. This concept is constant throughout the episode because it determines what is actually showing on our layer. Using our Fill Dialog box, we choose to fill the layer with white.

Section 2: Creating a Target (6:28)

So now that the basics are out of the way, it's time for us to begin creating our target. We start off by choosing the color of our target. Let's say you come across a color that you really like and want it to be accessible for a while, you can do that by going to Window---Swatches, name the color whatever you want, and then hit enter. Now that color will always show up in your Color Box Dialog. Once we have chosen the red we want for our target, we use our Elliptical Marquee Tool to create a perfect circle. We hold down Shift and click and drag to create a perfect circle. We then inverse our selection a couple times to ensure the red rings of our target only show up where we want them to.

Section 3: Creating the Arrows (11:52)

Now that we've got our target, we need to create some arrows. We use our Marquee Selection Tool to define the shape of our arrow. We then grab our adjustment layer and choose the color we want to fill our selection with. We use the exact same process to create the feathers of the arrow. This time we load our selection into a new Color Fill layer. This time we fill the selection with white. In order to duplicate our arrow we just grab our layers and group them together and drag them to the new group icon and viola! We now have to arrows. We use our Transform tool to rotate one of our arrows to make it look like two arrows have hit the bullseye.

Section 4: Creating the Shadow (14:25)

For the grand finale, we create a shadow for our target to pull it all together. We start off by using the Polygonal Lasso Tool, which is nested right under the regular Lasso Tool. Next, we define the shape for the shadow of our target. Once we close off our selection, we create a solid color adjustment layer right above our background layer. We choose a color we see fit for the shadow of our target and hit enter. We then crop our document a bit to make our graphic a bit more focused and centered.