Today we’re going to carry on from before and customise your overlay! Click here if you missed Part 1 of this tutorial.
On your layered image, double click on the Background layer to bring up the New Layer dialogue box, then click OK.
This is because, as a background, we can’t make any adjustments to it unless we ‘convert’ it to a layer.
Now double click again on the background, now Layer 0, icon and you will see the Layer Style palette.
Click on Pattern Overlay. As a default, the first thing to happen on mine is to have heaps of bubbles!
If you click on the “Pattern” drop-down box, unless you have appended patterns on a previous occasion, you will probably have just a small selection. To add patterns to your list, click the drop-down arrow in “Pattern” and you’ll see a small right hand pointing arrow in a circle.
Click this and you’ll get a fly out list appear. Choose any of these that appeal. In this case, I chose Patterns.
You’ll get a message asking if you want to replace your current patterns with your new choice. In this case I chose “OK” which will just show the patterns from the “Patterns” list, but if I were to choose Append it would have added the new patterns onto the end of the ones currently there.
Now click the Pattern drop-down list again and you’ll see your new patterns. Here I choose Nebula from the new list which is quite a cool pattern, but you can see the colours are quite vivid.
So I now go to the Blend Mode and choose Luminosity which takes out the colour. I can also reduce the opacity slightly which affects the intensity of it.
If you also change the scale, this will affect the size of the pattern itself.
Have a play with the different patterns, blend modes and scales and see what you come up with.
Creating Your Own Patterns
Alternatively, you can create your own patterns. Yes! There’s a really cool feature within Photoshop where you can do this.
Find a photograph with something you would would like to see repeated in a pattern. Here, I’m going to use the bow from the bride-to-be’s dress from another image where it’s a bit closer.
Using the Marquee tool, (shortcut, M) outline the area you would like to use.
Now go to the Edit menu and choose Define Pattern. Give it a name then deselect the area (Cmd or Ctrl D) and go back to your image you have the overlay on.
Bring up the layer styles dialogue box and choose Pattern Overlay as you did before.
Click in the Pattern drop-down box and scroll right to the bottom. You will see your new pattern there. Choose this.
Now you will see your image as a pattern on the overlay.
Again, adjust the
Experiment with the Blend Mode, Opacity and Scale until you get an image you’re happy with!
Centring your Image
If by any chance you have moved your background and you want it to be centred, you can quickly rectify this by doing the following:
Click on the Layer0 (original background) holding down the Cmd or Ctrl key. This will cause marching ants to outline the whole image.
Now ensuring you have the move tool selected (shortcut V) and that you are on Layer 2 (the layer your image is on), use the centring tools on the toolbar (see image).
These will centre horizontally and vertically for you, by taking a reading of the selected area.
Now you have an image that is perfectly centred, with a cool background that you created!
