Digital Candy

Making candy has never been easier. Even if you are a beginner at Adobe Photoshop you should be able to create candy just like the image shown below. If you are an intermediate level photoshop user you might find this tutorial a little long winded, so read through it first, that way you'll know the areas that you can fly through. You can use your candy to decorate photos, scrapbooking or make great Christmas cards. Hopefully you will learn a few new tricks with photoshop too!

Note that the keyboard short-cuts shown are for PC (because that's what I use). This tutorial was created using Photoshop 7 (but should work with most versions).

Let's get started...

1. Defining a Pattern

Create a new square canvas with a size of 50 x 50 pixels. Ctrl + N creates a new canvas. Ensure your settings are the same as shown in the image below and click OK.

Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool from your tool box. Shown below.

Click and drag the marquee tool over your canvas to create a selection like the one shown in the image below. (For those obsessed with EXACTS, mine is 23 pixels wide and is definitely off center).

Click on your foreground colour in your tool box.

The Colour Picker box will appear. Select a bright red colour and click OK.

Now click on your Paint Bucket Tool in your tool box.

With your paint bucket click on your canvas and fill the selection red. See Below.

Get rid of the selection (deselect). Select >> Deselect (Ctrl + d)

Edit >> Define Pattern... Click on your Edit menu. 3/4 of the way down the Edit menu you will find Define Pattern... Click on it. The Pattern Name box will appear. Rename it and click OK.

You have now defined a pattern.

2. Make a Star Burst

Create a new canvas this time with the size 500 x 500 pixels. Ctrl + N

Go to your "Layers" palette and create a new layer ( ).

Now click on your Paint Bucket Tool in your tool box. At the top of your photoshop window, make the following changes to your paint bucket tool... 1. Change Fill from foreground to Pattern. 2. Click on the pattern arrow to reveal the pattern options. 3. Select your new candy stripe pattern. See image below

Now click on your canvas to fill it with stripes.

Apply the Polar coordinates... filter Filter >> Distort >> Polar Coordinates

Click Ok You've now created a star burst. Now is a good time to Save (Ctrl + S) your work.

3. Making the Swirl

Apply the Twirl filter with settings similar to mine shown in the image below Filter >> Distort >> Twirl...

Grab your Elliptical Marquee Tool from your tool box. See below

Hold down shift and click drag to create a perfect circle selection on your canvas. This will be the shape of your candy. After the circle selection is created drag it to the right position (center it).

Invert the selection Ctrl + Shift + I

Hit Delete Deselect (Ctrl + D) Your canvas should now look like the one shown below.

4. Faking 3D Depth with a few Layer Styles

Click on the Add Layer Style ( ) button at the bottom of the layers palette. Select Inner Shadow.

Apply the settings shown in the image below and click OK. (You can always experiment later on).

Click on the Add Layer Style ( ) button again and select Bevel and Emboss. Apply the settings shown below and click OK.

Finally click on the Add Layer Style ( ) button one more time and select Colour Overlay. Change the colour to a grey and make the opacity around 5%, then click OK. See image below. This is just to get rid of the absolute white on the candy so that we can add white highlights.

Your candy should be looking a little 3D now. Almost there.

Now is probably a good time to remind you to Save.

5. Painting Depth and Highlights

Create a new layer( ).

Right-click on this new layer in your layers palette and select Layer Properties. Rename this layer "highlights" and click OK.

Your Layers Palette should now look like the image shown below.

Change the foreground colour to white.

Select your Paint Brush Tool ( ) from your tool box. Use the Hard Round 19 pixel brush.

Paint some rough highlight regions on to your canvas. You can see on the image below that I created 4 highlight marks.

Next blur your highlights. Filter >> Blur >> Gaussian Blur... Move the slider to something similar to mine (shown below) and click OK.

Your digital candy art should look something like the image below.

Now we are going to place a slight ident in the center of our candy. Create another new layer( ). Rename the layer "indent". Your layer palette should now look like the one shown below.

Change the foreground colour to black. With your Paint Brush Tool paint a small black dot in the center of your candy. See image below.

Now apply a slight Gaussian Blur of around 7 pixels. Filter >> Blur >> Gaussian Blur...

Finally lower the opacity of the "indent" layer to around 40%. See image below.

6. The Final Swirls

What you want to achieve is an extreme center swirl. As shown below.

Click on your candy layer, "Layer 1", to make it active. We want to apply the twirl effect to this layer. We are going to use Twirl again. (However using Twirl in Liquify also achieves great results).

Get your Elliptical Marquee Tool. Holding down shift and click drag to form a circle selection. As shown below

Now when we apply Twirl it will only affect the small center region! Filter >> Distort >> Twirl... Adjust the angle (I used the angle -196) and click OK.

Link your candy layer with the highlight and indent layers in your layers palette ("Layer 1" + ""highlights" + "indent"). See image below. Merge Linked (Ctrl + E)

Finally Save your new digital art.

That's it!