Paving Your Way in Photoshop

Since I am best known for my Photo realistic Photoshop techniques, I think its time for me to show you how to create something. We are going to create a realistic cobblestone path in Photoshop 6. Adapt these techniques and see what variations you can come up with on your own.

The first thing we are going to do is select the custom shape tool, make the settings like you see here. Choose the fill mode, polygon and set the sides to 6.

This will create a hexagon.



Create a new layer

Draw with the shape tool and a hexagon will appear.



Now to give it a nice fill, select the gradient tool.

Set the gradient for circular and choose the copper setting in the gradients box.

Select the hexagon and fill with the gradient. Don't deselect.



Filter>Noise>add noise

Use the settings shown here to give a nice grainy feel. Do not touch anything until you have read the next step!



Now here is the most important step:

Edit>Fade add noise

This will fade the last step with the previous state.

Change to overlay mode and drop the opacity to 58%.



Lets soften the effect a little. Filter>blur>Gaussian Blur.

Set the radius to 0.7 pixels



Lets add a bevel to the shape. Just use the layers styles and use the inner bevel setting. Choose chisel hard.



Now it's just a matter of duplicating the cobblestones and arranging them.

The easy way is to hold the alt/option key and click and drag a copy.



Keep doing this until your whole workspace is filled with cobblestones.



Merge all the layers together, click on the little arrow on the top right and select merge visible.



Now we want to add some perspective to make the image look more 3D

Press Crtl/Cmd+T to enter free transform mode.

Right click/MAC Ctrl+Click and choose Perspective.



Drag one of the nodes on the bottom corner away from the image to create a perspective.

Press enter to apply.



There you go, your own cobblestone path. I hope you enjoyed this weeks article.