Ever wanted to ‘wow’ your Facebook friends with an awesome cover photo? Well here’s your chance. I’ve put together a vector tutorial that even ultra-beginners to Photoshop can follow – and your friends will love you for it.
So let’s get started.
I’m using Photoshop CS6 and Windows, but you can do this on any version of Photoshop.
1. Set up your document. As we’re going to be creating it for a Facebook cover photo you need to have the right dimensions (851 pixels wide X 315 pixels high). And make sure ‘RGB’ with 72 dpi is selected as you’re designing for the web.
2. Before we start drawing lets select the 5 colours we want to use. You can use any colour combination you want, have a look at a swatches website if you want inspiration. Otherwise you can use the same colour combination I have: #8f1b88, #72c4c2, #e40e7d, #f7ca29 and #c1d93d. To make it easier let’s create swatches out of these or your chosen colours. Simply click on the colour selector, pick the colour you want and click Add to Swatches.
Your colour will now appear in the Swatch panel.
3. Using File > Place, insert the photo of yourself or your friend that you want to redraw. Resize it using Edit > Transform > Scale to fit it properly into your working space.
4. Now on the left-hand panel select the Brush tool (or press B). We’re going to use the standard brush and make it size 3. We also want to choose the darkest of our 5 chosen colours in the swatch panel, for me it’s the purple.
5. It’s time to start drawing so let’s select the Pen tool (P) and make sure it’s set to ‘path’.
It might help to zoom into your photo (ctrl +) when you start drawing. For the moment we’re only going to outline the basics of the face/hair line. Create a new layer (ctrl shift n), name it ‘line art’ and using the pen tool start to outline. Don’t forget that you can hold down alt and click on the end of the pen path if you need to create a sharp turn in the line. When you’ve outlined a section, right click and select stroke path, make sure brush is chosen from the drop down and simulate pressure is off, then click ok.
For facial features you’ll need sharper lines, there are many ways you can do this but the quickest is to use the fill option on the Pen Tool. Just outline the shape, right click and select fill path.
6. Once you’ve got your basic outline, print the outline directly from Photoshop, scaling it so it takes up most of the paper size you’re printing on.
7. Now here’s the fun part, we’re going to grab a pencil and start drawing random shapes! Make sure you take into consideration the flow of the hair, but other than that go nuts. I’ve made my design very circle-based, but you can do whatever you like, just consider the distribution of colours.
8. Once you’ve got your basic sketch, scan it and place it into your document (you may need to resize using the scale tool). In the Layers Panel, click and drag the sketch layer under the line art layer you created before so you can make sure they measure up.
9. Selecting the line art layer and the pen tool, follow and re-draw your sketch, so you end up with a complete outline. You may want to make some lines thicker by creating an outline of them then right click > fill path. If you’ve used circles like me you can create them by right clicking on the shape tool, selecting Ellipse, setting it to path and holding down the shift key as you draw them. All you need to do then is right click and select stroke path. I made my circles on a new layer so I could erase parts which went through the line art using the eraser tool.
10. Now you’ve got your outline you can start colouring, just make sure you create a new layer for each new colour. So I will have a layer for: green, blue, pink, yellow and purple (with purple below the other layers and the line art layer at the top). You can colour either using the brush tool (if you’ve got a steady hand) or the pen tool (by using the ‘fill’ option). If you’ve got repetitive shapes (like my circles) consider making them all the same colour. Also colour the skin in this step, I used #efc383 (you can use any skin shade you find works for you but).
11. So we’re looking pretty good now, but it’s lacking details. We’re going to add some depth to the colours. I’m going to start with my blue colour (you can start wherever you like). I want each circle to have a semi-circle of shade on it so I select the blue layer in the layers panel and create a new layer by pressing ctrl shift n. But before I hit that ok button I want to change some selections! Firstly, I want to name the layer and check Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask. Then from the drop down menu I want to select Multiply.
Making sure you have the same colour selected as the bottom layer (so blue in my case) so drawing the details on the new layer. For me it turns out something like this:
Now I’m going to do that with the rest of the colours (excluding the purple).
18. Looking good! Now it’s totally up to your design, but I’m feeling I’d like some highlights. So create a new layer above all the other ones, call it white and adjust the opacity to 18%.
Select the colour white and use the ellipse tool to randomly draw circles.
I also create a clipping mask on the purple background colour and draw stripes using the Pen Tool.
13. Time for the facial details, first we’ll do the eyes. Create a new layer above the skin colour, but below the line art layer and draw the white of the eyes and teeth (if teeth are shown in the photo).
Create a new layer and use the ellipse tool to outline the pupils.
Press I or select the eye dropper tool, make the original photo you referenced visible and click the eye to pull the colour from it. Use this colour to create a new layer and colour the eyes. It’s nice to have some sparkle so add white dots using the brush tool.
14. The face is missing some detail, so create a new layer and add eye lashes, dimple marks etc. using the Pen Tool. You can use the eye symbol next to the skin layer to make is disappear temporarily so you can see the original photo underneath for referencing.
15. Create another new layer for the lip background. I use #bf0000. Then create a clipping mask with the multiply effect to add shade (drawn with pen tool) before creating another clipping mask for highlights. You’ll need to create a few different clipping masks set at different opacities for the highlights. Just play around and see how you feel, the brush tool will help when adding dots as ‘sparkles’.
If you have teeth showing use your main colour (purple for me) to outline them on a new layer then make it a low opacity.
16. The skin needs details too so we’re going to add some shade and highlights. Select the skin layer and create a clipping mask. Using the pen tool draw shade in a darker skin colour (I used #d97548 (referencing the original image may help here). This is what I get:
I want to make it a bit softer so I go Layer > Layer Style > Gradient Overlay. Click on the Gradient slide and change the colours to the 2 different skin tones you’ve used. Select Radial in the drop down menu and play with the scale slider to get the shade you want.
We also want to add some highlights to the skin, I do this is 2 layers. Firstly are the large areas of highlighting, use white and the pen tool and play with the opacity. Then I create another layer with a strong opacity to go over the lines that need highlights (think point of the nose etc.)
17. This is pretty much it! On mine I added some more hair detail using a low opacity on the pink colour (you can play around with different things). But you should be done!
How does it look? Are you happy with the end product and did you like this tutorial? Let us know!
Bradley
Interesting article.