This tutorial was created with and for Photoshop 4.0.

The tutorial will demonstrate the

embossing technique I used to create the site navigational devices located on my other
page.The tutorial is best viewed with a screen resolution of 800 x 600. If your
resolution is set lower you may resize the frames by dragging the borders with your
cursor.

The technique used here is really quite simple. The most time consuming part is the
creation of the original outline. I created the outline in Adobe® Illustrator® 7.0. This
tutorial assumes that you are somewhat familiar with Photoshop layers. If you need
more detail that Photoshop help file is just a click away. If all else fails, stop by the
#Photoshop chat/help channel in the undernet. You may download the outline.zip file
and unzip for use in the tutorial. The emboss and blur settings are specific to this file.
If you are using a different file you may need to experiment with your settings to get
the desired effect.

Hints: Make sure the Preserve Transparency box in the layers palette does NOT have
a check mark in it. If it does, the filters will not work.

Step 1: Open the file in Photoshop. ( bet you figured that one out already!) If you
can't see your layers palatte go to window/show layers

Step 2: Make 2 copies of layer 1 by clicking on layer 1 and dragging it down to the
new layer icon in the layers palette. You should now have 3 layers as shown in fig
1.The new layer icon is the one to the left of the trash can icon at the bottom of the
layers palette.

Step 3:Turn off the top and bottom layer. Make the middle layer active.Click on the
eyeball icon to turn layers on or off. Active layer is shown by paintbrush icon and
blue highlight. See fig 1.

Step 4: Apply gaussian blur with a radius of 2.5 Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur See fig 2.

Step 5: Filter Stylize/Emboss See fig 3 for settings.Your image should now look like
fig 4.

Step 6: Turn on the topmost layer and make it active. Click in the eyeball column to
turn the layer on and on the layer name to make it active Go to Select/Load Selection
and click ok. This will select the image so you can fill it with color.

Step 7: Fill the layer with the color of your choice. Double click the foreground color
square at the bottom of the floating tool palette to change color. Then hit alt delete to
fill with selected color.

Step 8: Hit ctrl D to deselect the image. Use the texturizer filter to apply texture to
image. Filter/Texture/Texturizer See fig 5 for the settings I used. Your image
should now look like fig 6.

Step 9: To allow the embossing to show through change layer mode to hard light.
Click on the drop down box in the layers palette where it says normal and select hard
light. See fig 7. Your image should now look like fig 8.
Thats it! You can make more layers and use the same technique to add to the image.
You may have noticed I did not use layer 1 for anything. I make the extra layer as a
spare. If you decide you don't like your emboss settings you can discard the layer and
start over by making another copy of layer 1.

Fig 1. Make 2 copies of layer 1

Fig 2. Set Gaussion Blur to 2.5

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 Fig 3. Emboss; angle 135, height 6, amount 100

Fig 4. Layer after blur and embossing

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 Fig 5. Texture filter settings.

Fig 6. Image after color and texture have been applied

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 Fig 7. Set layer mode to hard light.

Fig 8. Final Image