Make a Card for your Valentine : Photoshop Tutorial

I've been working with photoshop tutorials for quite some time. Now its time for me to some share some of my knowledge. I've combined several tutorials along with some of my ideas and designed a type of e-card or a wallpaper, however you may call it. Follow the tutorial and blend in some of your experience too to get a wonderful card for your valentine ;).

Step 1:
Open Photoshop.
File>New or Ctrl+N.
Create a 1024px X 768px and have the default settings for the rest.


Step 2:

Click on Gradient tool and choose foreground and background colors to this #fc5181 and #ff0049 respectively. Choose linear gradient and hold shift and fill the layer as shown. You can also try different colors but just make sure they don't vary much to get a neat gradient.



Step 3:

Make a New Layer.Use your pen tool and draw neat curve. Then right click and select Make Selection. Take a soft brush of size 400 or 500 with white color and then gently apply it near the selected part. Make sure you don't make it too white. Then convert the layer into Soft Light. You should be getting something like this. Don't loose the selection you'll be needing it later.



Step 4:
Invert the selection by pressing Ctrl+Shift+I and then use the same brush and apply a very light white shade. This time don't change the layer blending option. You'll get something similar to this.



Step 5:

Create a New layer and use you pen tool and draw a neat curve on it. Then fill it with #f73f74 color.



Step 6:
Select the entire layer that we created in step 5 and use 'move' tool. By holding Ctrl move the layer a little bit. This will select only the places where your image is present. Restore the image back in its previous position. Then create a new layer and invert your selection. Use a black soft brush of 500px that we used before. Create a light, black, shadow kind of background. Then in a new layer invert the selection and use the same black brush. Make a light shadow over the curve. Then change the layer's blending mode to overlay.


( After applying black shadow)
(After Overlay) Step 7:

In a new layer use custom shape tool and select heart shape. There is one more shape called heart card don't use that. I feel its sort of bulky so go with the former one. Draw hearts of different sizes and rotate some of them as you wish. Make sure you maintain good distance between them. Then select all the hearts and right click and then select stroke path. Make sure Stimulate pressure is enabled and stroke it. Keep the brush size between 3-5px. Decrease the opacity of the layer between 15-20.



Step 8:

Select the entire layer that we created in step 5 and use move tool. By holding Ctrl move the layer a little bit. Make sure the image is restored in it original position. This will select only the places where your image is there. Then come to the previously created layer. Cut the hearts that come under the selection. Put them in a new layer and make a black Color Overlay. Make sure the opacity of the layer is the same as the previous one.



Step 9:
Create a new layer and draw a bigger heart with Custom shape tools as shown. Then go to blending options. Enable drop shadow. Just change the shadow color to #9f0121. Let the rest be the same. Keep 4px or 6px shadow if it looks better.



Then give outer glow with #fd7dac color and keep the spread to 0 and size to 30. Change the blend mode to Screen for the glow.



Then enable Bevel and do as shown in the image.



Your finished image will look like this. (Ignore the broken part for the time being)


Step 10:

Add some more features to your image like flowers or animals. I just drew two ants along with some extra accessories. You can apply your own creative brain to come up with a better ideas. Here I have used showcard Gothic font at the bottom and Orange LET on the top.