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Spiral Shapes for Photoshop and Elements

 

Spiral Photoshop custom shapes work with: Windows 7 + Vista + XP + MAC OS X (All versions)(Intel/PPC) G4 G5 Adobe Photoshop CS5 CS4 CS3 CS2 CS 7 6 (All Creative Suites) + Photoshop Elements 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. CSH format, Commercial use license, royalty-free - all by graphicxtras

 

Spiral vector custom shapes for Photoshop, Photoshop Elements - CSH format

Spiral custom shape tutorial - loading them into Photoshop

1

file > open

 

The file open command can open the spiral CSH file shapes sets in Photoshop and also Photoshop Elements. You can also open the shapes via the shapes palette

 

2

Press 'U' character on keyboard to display shapes tool

 

The shapes tool is 'beneath' the rectangle tool (well, beneath rounded, ellipse etc as well)

 

3

Go to the options bar and select the dropdown for the spiral shapes palette

 

The shape dropdown is to the left of the middle of the options bar in CS5 (though this might vary with different versions)

 

4

Select a spiral shape loaded via the file > open command

 

You will notice all the spiral shapes along with the previously loaded shapes - you can load 1000s of shapes, though this varies from version to version

 

5

Select the apply option 'shape layer' 'path' 'fill pixels'

 

This option is found on the far left of the options bar (top bar). Each type of layer has a particular use - you shouldn't dismiss any of the options though the 'path' option is much the same as the 'shape layer' and the 'fill pixels' can be used with styles if you apply the new fill to a new layer.

 

6

Click the foreground color in the toolbox

 

Set the color of the shape - you can alter this at a later point but it is probably best to set before you create the shape (the shapes can be red, green, blue etc and not just black)

 

7

Apply shape using shape tool

 

Click document / image and drag from the start point to the end point (size of the shape) and release. The shape will be created either as a shape layer etc depending on the option selected in 5. The color, if shape layer or fill pixels, will be as set in the foreground color

 

Photoshop spiral shape / tutorial image example

Spiral shapes and puppet warp in Photoshop

If the spiral (or any other shape) is a layer or path it can be modified without any impact to the quality of the design by using the various transformation tools that come with Photoshop such as applying scaling, rotation, slant, perspective as well as using the warp features to arc or bulge the vector artwork. To use the puppet warp (edit menu) you will have to use the rasterize layer first or create the design using the fill option - the puppet warp does offer a lot more ways to distort and transform the designs though.

 

spiral shapes

Examples from the shapes pack 153 - applied to a blue background, shapes are all separate design using black as the foreground color

 

abstract spiral

example from pack 153 spiral shape - abstract design applied over a blue back ground. The dots are part of the spiral shape. More dots could be added to the spiral design.

 

tri spiral design

example from the pack 78 set, the spiral shape is applied over a blue background and is black - the shape is made up of three spiral designs. The design has been added to with three dots using the ellipse custom shape tool and white foreground color.

 

spiral tile

example from the shapes pack 78. The spiral is applied initially with white and then re-applied with black with a slight offset to add depth to the design.

 

metallic spiral shape

example from shapes pack 71 - the design is applied as a layer and a style effect of gun metal is applied to the design in Photoshop CS5 (though could be CS4 CS3 etc and Elements)

 

spiral abstract

example from shapes pack 16 - an abstract spiral design (black) is applied over a blue background. Additional white shapes are applied over the black and blue background. Many weird and wonderful abstract designs / echoes etc can be created using these designs. They are vectors for any size of work so they don't need to be just 620 x 620 as above

 

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