Not What You're Looking For? Check Out Our Other Photo Effects Tutorials!
Not What You're Looking For? Check Out Our Other Photo Effects Tutorials!
Not What You're Looking For? Check Out Our Other Photo Effects Tutorials!
Photoshop effects tutorial, we'll learn how to create a colorized grid design! We'll
use Photoshop's guides and rulers to set up the initial spacing, then a couple of rarely used
selection tools to convert the guides into an actual grid. We'll learn how to easily select
random squares in the grid and colorize them with adjustment layers and blend modes, and
finally, how to color and adjust the appearance of the grid itself! I'll be using Photoshop CS5
throughout the tutorial, but any recent version will work.
Not what you're looking for? Check out our other Photo Effects tutorials!
Right-click (Win) / Control-click (Mac) inside the rulers and select Percent from the list.
Step 4: Drag Out Horizontal And Vertical Guides At 10 Percent
Increments
The reason we turned the rulers on was so that we could easily add equally-spaced guides
to our document, which will then become our grid lines. Let's add vertical guides first. Click
inside the ruler along the left of the document, and with your mouse button held down, drag
out the first guide. Use the top ruler to place the guide at the 10% mark (release your
mouse button to place the guide):
Click inside the left ruler and drag out a vertical guide to the 10% mark.
Do the same thing to add a guide at each 10% increment (20%, 30%, 40%, and so on), all
the way up to the 90% mark. Your document should now appear divided into 10 equally-
spaced vertical columns:
The guides divide the document into 10 vertical columns.
Next, use the same steps to add horizontal guides. Click inside the top ruler and with your
mouse button held down, drag out a horizontal guide. Use the left ruler to place the guide at
the 10% mark. Continue dragging out horizontal guides at 10% increments (20%, 30%,
40%, just like before) all the way down to the 90% mark. When you're finished, you should
have the same number of horizontal and vertical guides dividing the document up into a grid
of squares:
The guides divide the document into a grid of squares.
Normally, Photoshop would just go ahead and add a new blank layer, but by holding down
Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) when clicking the New Layer icon, we tell it to first pop open
the New Layer dialog box, which gives us the chance the name the new layer before it's
added. Name the layer "Grid", then click OK:
The new blank layer appears in the Layers panel above the Background layer:
Photoshop adds the new layer and names it "Grid".
Click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool near the top of the Tools panel and hold your
mouse button down for a second or two until a small fly-out menu appears showing you the
other tools nested in behind in, then choose the Single Row Marquee Tool from the list:
Click and hold on the Rectangular Marquee Tool's icon, then select the Single Row Marquee Tool.
As it's name implies, the Single Row Marquee Tool will select a single horizontal row of
pixels in the document. To use the tool, we just need to click anywhere in the document and
Photoshop will automatically select the pixel we clicked on, plus every other pixel in that row
from left to right. We're going to use the tool to convert the horizontal grid lines into a series
of selection outlines. First, move your cursor directly over the top horizontal grid line (the
one you placed at the 10% mark) and click. You'll see a 1-pixel thick selection outline
appear along the guide:
Click anywhere on the first horizontal guide to add a selection outline around it.
Hold down your Shift key and click on the next horizontal guide below it. This will add a
second selection outline to the document. Continue holding down your Shift key and clicking
on all the horizontal guides until a selection outline appears along each of them. You should
see 9 selection outline rows in total. Make sure you keep your Shift key held down as you
click on each new guide, otherwise you'll just replace the previous selection outline with the
new one:
Hold Shift and click on each horizontal guide to add a selection outline around each one.
We need to do the same thing now with the vertical guides, which means we need to switch
to the Single Column Marquee Tool. Click on the Single Row Marquee Tool in the Tools
panel (it will appear where the Rectangular Marquee Tool icon appeared earlier) and hold
your mouse button down until the fly-out menu appears, then choose the Single Column
Marquee Tool from the list:
Click and hold on the Single Row Marquee Tool's icon, then select the Single Column Marquee Tool.
We want our vertical selection outlines to be added to the horizontal selection outlines we
already have, so once again hold down your Shift key, then click on each of the vertical
guides in the document until they're all selected. When you're done, you should have
selection outlines along every guide, horizontally and vertically:
When the Fill dialog box appears, set the Use option at the top to Black, then click OK to
close out of the dialog box:
Change the Use option to Black, then click OK.
This fills the selections with black, although it may be hard to see with the guides and
selection outlines in the way, so go up to theSelect menu at the top of the screen and
choose Deselect, which will remove the selection outlines:
Step 8: Open The Photo You Want To Use With The Effect
Open the photo you'll be using with the grid effect. Here's my image:
Open the photo.
If you're using Photoshop CS3 or earlier, the photo will automatically open in its own floating
document window. If you're using Photoshop CS4 or CS5, depending on how you have
things set up in Photoshop's Preferences, the photo may open in a tabbed document. If
that's the case, to make the next step easier, go up to the Window menu at the top of the
screen, choose Arrange, and then choose Float All in Windows (CS4 and CS5 only):
Go to Window > Arrange > Float All in Windows (Photoshop CS4 and CS5 only).
With the grid's document window selected, click on the Background layer in the Layers panel.
Now click anywhere inside the photo's document window to make it active and select
the Move Tool from the Tools panel:
Grab the Move Tool from the top of the Tools panel.
Hold down your Shift key, then click with the Move Tool inside the photo's document
window and drag the photo into the grid's document window:
With the Move Tool selected, hold Shift and drag the photo into the grid document.
Release your mouse button, then release your Shift key, and the photo will appear centered
inside the grid's document window. You can close out of the photo's document at this point
since we no longer need it:
Holding the Shift key is what centers the photo inside the document when you drag it.
Notice that the grid appears in front of the photo. That's because, if we look in the Layers
panel, we see that the photo has been placed on its own layer under the Grid layer, just as
we wanted:
Photoshop placed the photo on a new layer directly above the layer that was active, which is why we first
selected the Background layer.
This places the Free Transform bounding box and handles around the image. If you can't
see the handles because the edges of your photo extend beyond the viewable area in the
document window, go up to the View menu and choose Fit on Screen:
Go to View > Fit on Screen.
Photoshop will instantly zoom the image out far enough so that everything, including the
Free Transform handles, fits inside the document window. To resize the photo, hold down
your Shift key, then click on any of the four corner handles and drag them. Holding the Shift
key down as you drag will maintain the original aspect ratio of the image so you don't
accidentally distort the look of it. If you want to resize the photo from its center rather than
from a corner, hold Shift+Alt (Win) / Shift+Option (Mac ) as you drag any of the corner
handles. If you need to move the image around inside the document, simply click anywhere
inside the Free Transform bounding box and drag it into place. When you're done,
press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) to accept the change and exit out of the Free Transform
command:
Drag any of the corner handles to resize the image with Free Transform.
If you zoomed the image out a moment ago using the Fit on Screen command and want to
zoom back in now that you're done resizing the image, go back up to the View menu and
choose Actual Pixels (see our Zooming and Panning in Photoshop tutorial for more info on
zooming in and out of documents):
In Photoshop CS3 and higher, the Magic Wand is hiding behind the Quick Selection Tool.
Hold down your Shift key and continue clicking inside each of the squares around the outer
edges of the grid to add them all to the selection:
All of the outer edge squares now have selection outlines around them.
I'm going to add a few more squares to my selection as well by again holding down my Shift
key and clicking inside them to add them to the previously selected squares. To make it
easier to see which squares I've selected, I've colorized them in yellow (this isn't part of the
effect, it's just to make it easier to see the squares I've selected in the screenshot):
My initially selected squares.
Normally, Photoshop adds new layers directly above the currently selected layer, but by
holding the Ctrl (Win) / Command (Mac) key when clicking the New Layer icon, the layer is
added below the currently selected layer. We can see in the Layers panel that we now have
a new blank layer between the photo on Layer 1 and the Grid layer:
The new layer appears below, not above, the Grid layer.
Photoshop fills the selected squares with white. Deselect the squares by going up to
the Select menu and choosing Deselect, or simply
press Ctrl+D (Win) / Command+D (Mac) to deselect them with the keyboard shortcut:
A border of white squares appears around the image.
If you're using Photoshop CS4 or CS5, the controls and options for the Hue/Saturation
adjustment layer will appear inside theAdjustments Panel. In CS3 and earlier, a separate
Hue/Saturation dialog box will open. First, select the Colorize option by clicking inside its
checkbox. Then, choose the color you want to colorize the selected squares with by
dragging the Hue slider. For these squares, I'm going to leave the Hue slider set all the way
to the left (its default position) which selects red. Of course, you can choose whichever
color you like. To increase the color's saturation, drag the Saturation slider towards the
right. I'm going to set my Saturation value to 55. Keep an eye on your document as you
drag the sliders to preview the results. For Photoshop CS3 and earlier users, click OK when
you're done to close out of the dialog box:
Click the Colorize option, then choose a color with the Hue and Saturation sliders.
Step 20: Change The Blend Mode For The Adjustment Layer To Color
If we look in the Layers panel, we see the adjustment layer sitting directly above the photo
layer. Make sure it's selected (highlighted in blue), then go up to the Blend Mode option at
the top of the Layers panel and change its blend mode from Normal (the default mode)
to Color. This makes sure we're changing only the colors in the image, not the brightness
values:
Here's my effect so far after colorizing more squares with additional Hue/Saturation
adjustment layers. In case you want to use the same colors I did, for blue I set Hue to 200,
Saturation to 30. For Green, Hue was set to 120, Saturation 25. For Purple, Hue was 289,
Saturation 35. And as I just mentioned, for the black and white squares, Saturation was set
to -100 by dragging the slider all the way to the left:
To add more interest to the image, try changing the blend mode for some of the adjustment
layers to something other than Color. To do that, just click on the adjustment layer in the
Layers panel to select it, then change the blend mode at the top of the Layers panel. For
example, I think the red color in my image is looking a little dull, so I'll click on the top
Hue/Saturation adjustment layer in the Layers panel to select it (since it's the one I used to
add red), then I'll change its blend mode from Color to Screen:
Selecting the red Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, then changing its blend mode to Screen.
The Screen blend mode makes things brighter but also tends to reduce color saturation, so
to compensate, with the red Hue/Saturation adjustment layer selected, I'll go back to the
Adjustments Panel and increase the Saturation value for red to 70 (for Photoshop CS3 and
earlier users, click on the adjustment layer's thumbnail in the Layers panel to re-open the
Hue/Saturation dialog box to make any changes, then click OK to close out of the dialog
box):
Changing a blend mode may require adjustments to the color's saturation level.
Here's my image after changing the blend mode for red to Screen and increasing its color
saturation. Notice the red squares now look brighter:
Screen is a popular blend mode commonly used to quickly brighten images.
I'll do the same thing with the purple Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, first clicking on it to
select it in the Layers panel, then changing its blend mode to Screen and increasing its
color saturation to 55 in the Adjustments Panel (or dialog box in CS3 and earlier). Other
blend modes that can give you good results include Multiply (for a darker color), as well as
Overlay which will give you a higher contrast effect but may also change the appearance of
the color itself. Here's my effect now with the red and purple squares set to the Screen
blend mode:
Different blend modes will give you different effects. Screen, Multiply and Overlay are good ones to try.
Go up to the Edit menu and once again choose Fill. When the Fill dialog box appears,
the Use option should already be set toWhite since that's what we set it to last time, so just
click OK to close out of the dialog box. Photoshop will fill the grid lines with white:
Photoshop fills the layer with white but only the grid lines are affected.
This opens Photoshop's Layer Style dialog box set to the Stroke options in the middle
column. Click on the color swatch beside the word Color, which opens the Color Picker.
Choose white from the Color Picker, then click OK to close out of it. With white now as the
stroke color, leave the Position set to Outside and adjust the width of the stroke by
dragging the Size slider while keeping an eye on the document to judge the result. I'm going
to set my stroke's size to 2 px (pixels):
Change the color of the stroke to white, then adjust its width with the Size slider.
Click OK to close out of the Layer Style dialog box, and we're done! Here is my final color
grid effect:
The final result.