PhotoShop by Adobe
Sewing in Photoshop
By Lauren Bavin
Jun 1, 2004, 21:12

Did you know you can sew with your computer ? Its a lot easier than you might think and you dont have to deal with pesky needle threading either.

I am going to show you how to apply a stitching effect on your layouts using brushes and the path tool.

Our first job is to create a brush for our stitching.

To do this open a new file 200 px by 200 px and transparent background.

Make sure your foreground colour is black - do this simply by pressing 'D' on your keyboard.

Choose a smallish round brush - I have chosen round brush 9 in the default brushes, and draw a slightly curved line as shown in the next illustration. 

Now select the area around the brush and go edit- define brush.

That brush will be added to the bottom of your current list of brushes

Now we will go to the area of our layout we want to stitch . In this case I want to stitch inside the edges of a tag.

Select the tag - do this by hitting the ctrl key while you have selected the tag layer in the layers pallette.

Now you will need to contract that selection to make your stitching appear inside the tag

Select- Modify- Contract- - I have contracted my selection by 15 pixels

Now go to your paths palette- and use the create path from selection button - as shown in the next illustration

Now go to the brush tool and select your new brush - open the brushes palette and chage the brush settings so that it looks like stitching- to do this you will need to increase the spacing which is in the brush tip shape tab - and then go to the shape dynamics tab and change the angle control to direction

Create a new layer for your stitching - make sure your foreground colour is the colour you want your stitiching to be , and go back to the paths palette and select the stroke path button as shown below

You may like to adjust the diameter of your brush if it is too large or enlarge it, if it is too big- Its trial and error to get the right size stitch ( the blessing of the undo button means you can try over and over till you get it right)

Initially your stitching will be covered by your path - in the paths palette drag your path . Right click on it and delete it or drag it to the bin at the bottom of the palette.

Now apply a bevel and a slight drop shadow to your stitching layer in the layers palette and you are finished.