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OCTOBER 18, 2002 Weekly Download: Custom Shapes for Photoshop 7
When you are laying out the design, you can keep from having too many Vector Masks by first pressing and holding the Shift Key before clicking on the Canvas window. By doing this, you are adding to the original mask. Don’t be afraid to experiment. A lot of the original 50’s designs had overlapping shapes that caused the colors to blend together. Today, you don’t have to worry about filling in areas with different colors, just use the Layer Modes to create interesting blends. Feel free to experiment with filters for unique twists on the classic designs. [an error occurred while processing this directive]  
Design your own I won’t lie to you; creating your own customs shapes can eat into a great deal of your time. However, there may be times when you can’t wait for us to give you the shapes you need. To create these custom shapes, I first went into Adobe Illustrator and drew out my retro doodles. For many of the solid shapes it was a simple matter of selecting the shape and copying and pasting the shape into a layer in Photoshop and saving it as a custom shape. For some of the more complicated shapes (like the star shapes) lines in Illustrator were too thin. To solve this issue, I selected all of the lines and what not that made up the shape and went to Effect>Path>Outline object. This creates a new path around the original shape that is thick enough for Photoshop to recognize as a custom shape. I could then copy and paste it in Photoshop and save the design.  Got it? I knew you would, you are the best. Okay cats and kittens, here is your weekly freebie in Stuffit format for both Mac and Windows. If you do not already have Aladdin's Stuffit Expander, you can download it free (Macintosh and Windows) from http://www.stuffit.com/expander/index.html. If you are a Windows user, you owe it to yourself to go ahead and download the free Aladdin software, not only will it work on this week’s freebie, but it will also work on many Zip files as well. Download Stephen's Retro Custom Shapes by clicking here (9.28 KB) When not working deep in the labs of the DMN Central Division testing the latest and greatest software/hardware products Stephen Schleicher can be found at the local university teaching a few courses on video and web production. He can be reached at schleicher@mindspring.com. You can also visit him on the web at www.mindspring.com/~schleicher Related sites: • Animation Artist • Animation Supplement • AV Video • Content Mastering • Corporate Media News • Creative Mac • Design Supplement • Digital Animators • Digital Media Designer • Digital Post Production • Digital Producer • Digital Video Editing • DV Format • Film Imaging • Presentation Master • Presentation Supplement • Production Supplement • The WWUG Related forums: [an error occurred while processing this directive] 
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