Photoshop Tips: Coloring in Digital Stamps

Hi everyone! It’s Christa (aka CFile) and I am back with a new tutorial! Let’s have some fun as we color in Digital Stamps.

Coloring Digital Stamps (and making them a sticker )  in Photoshop/PSE

What are Digital Stamps? Generally a Digital Stamp is an outlined element that you can use digitally as an outlined image, make it in to a brush, or even print it out for a coloring book effect. (Printed ones you could have your children color them in with crayons, or you can color them with any art medium like: Copic Markers, Bic Markers, Color Pencils, Water Color Pencils, Water Color Paints, Pastels etc.)   You can also color it in using a graphics program. Once you have your digital stamp colored you can even make a sticker out of the element very easily.

So without further adieu- Let’s Begin!!

[I will be using a PC & Adobe CS3 for this tutorial, however it is easily adapted for PSE. (For PSE some of the effects may need to be achieved differently as effects are not as versatile with settings as they are in CS3.]

I am using Kate Hadfield’s new Digital Stamp set “Super Duper Stamps” and the actual stamp “KAPOW”.

1) Open up a new transparent workspace (600×600 for the example) and copy/paste [or place] your “KAPOW” digital stamp onto the workspace.

2) Using the Magic Wand and the shift key (at the same time), click inside each of the letters and the hyphen spelling KA-POW, so there are “marching ants”. [The yellow highlight below is just to show the selection.]

3) Once all your letters are selected, we need to make the selection slightly larger so that there will be no “white space” between the outline and the color when we are done. On the top tool bar choose the following: Select>Modify>Expand . A fly-out box will come up. Expand by 2 pixels. Click on OK to set it.

4) With “ants still marching” reflecting the selection, in the layer palette add a new layer underneath the Digital stamp layer.  (You can click on the icon at the bottom of the layer palette next to the trash can, or in the top tool bar go to Layer>add Layer.)  -Note: If the layer happens to be above the Digital stamp layer, just highlight the new layer and drag below the digital stamp layer.

5) With the paint can tool selected, foreground color chosen (I am using purple #9b6ede) and blank layer highlighted in the layer palette, flood fill the letters with your color chosen.

6) Now we are going to add an inner shadow effect to the purple filled letters to shade it a bit to give it the “wow” or dimensional effect. On the bottom of the layer palette is the “fx” icon. With the colored letters layer highlighted, click on the effects (“fx”) icon. And click on the inner shadows effect.

The Inner Shadow effects setting I am using for the example are: Blend Mode: Multiply color Black 00000; Opacity: 75%; Angle 120 degrees with Global Light checked; Distance: 5; Choke: 0; Size: 27; Contour: default triangle; Noise:0. – Once Inner shadow effect is applied, click OK to set it.

7) In the top tool bar go to Select>Deselect to get rid of marching ants.

8) In the layer palette, highlight/select the Digital Stamp layer again.

9) We are now going to repeat the steps we did for the lettering, but on the space which would look like it is under the letters. Using the ”Magic Wand” tool again, and holding down the shift key click inside all the space that surrounds the letters. Do not forget to include the little triangle in the A, and the spaces of the P & O.

10) With ants marching, we need to expand selection again by 2 pixels. Go to Select>Modify>Expand and again in the fly-out  menu, make it 2 pixels and click OK.

11) Add a new layer in your layer palette and again move the new layer below the colored letter layer.

12) Choose a different color for the foreground color. (I have chosen yellow e6cc50) Highlight/”click on” the new blank layer in the layer palette.  Flood fill using the paint can to fill the layer with yellow.

13) We will now do a different inner shadow effect for the yellow section.  Click on the “fx” icon on the bottom of the layer
palette while you are on the “yellow filled in” layer. Select the Inner Shadow effect and choose the following settings:

Blend Mode: Darker Color (Brown# 4c9314) opacity 75%;  Angle 120 degrees Global Light Unchecked; Distance: 3; Choke: 0; Size: 13; Contour: default/triangle; Noise: 0 – Click on OK to set effect.

*In the top tool bar go to Select>Deselect to get rid of marching ants.*

14) Now we are going to go back to the Digital Stamp layer in the layer palette. Using the magic wand again while holding the shift key, click in the outer shaped area of the Digital stamp to get the marching ants selection.

15) With marching ants selected, again, we need to expand by 2 pixels. Go to Select>Modify>Expand and in the fly-out menu make it 2 pixels and click OK.

16) Make a new layer in the layer palette and move that layer below the “yellow” layer.

17) Choose a different foreground color (I am using red #d01926) and flood fill using the paint can tool.

*In the top tool bar go to Select>Deselect to get rid of marching ants.*

18) Again we are going to add an Inner Shadow effect to the red filled shape layer.

19)  Click on the “fx” icon  at the bottom of the layer palette with the red filled shape layer selected. Choose “Inner Shadow” effect with the following settings:

Blend mode: Linear Burn; Color black #00000; Angle 120 degrees with Global Light checked; Distance: 1; choke: 0; size: 21; Contour: default/triangle; Noise: 0 – click OK to set.

20) Now we want to merge the layers together as 1. To do that we want to go to the top tool bar and select Layer>Merge Visable

21) Voila! We have digitally colored in our digital stamp.  (This is so versatile … before merging the layers you can add filters to the layers to add texture etc,, or to add a pattern if you wish. You can also flood fill (instead of flat colors), with a gradient or flood fill the layer with white and clip a background paper to it. – The sky’s the limit!)

22) After coloring in the stamp, if you wish to make a sticker out of your digitally colored stamp, click again on the “fx”
effects icon and choose stroke. Apply the following settings:

Stroke: Size: 9; Position: outside; Blend Mode: Normal; Color: White # fffff – choose OK to set effect.

23) Now we want to add a new blank layer in the layer palette and merge it with the stroke effect/element layer. (This is done so that the stroke will become part of the element and not an effect.) Go to Layer>Merge Visable to merge the blank layer and image layer together. Now you can add a shadow if you wish to make it appear as a sticker.

24) Before applying the shadow, save the image as a png for future use.

25) For the shadow I just applied the “fx” button, picking drop shadow and using the default setting of Blend mode: Multiply color black @ 75% with Distance & Size set to 5 and clicked on OK to  set. Here is the result:

Here is what it would look like once it is put onto a background. (I used Kate Hadfield’s Painted Pretties paper and also a graph pattern for the example.)

[Note: The effects I applied can be changed to suit your taste. Just play around with the sliders until you get the look YOU want. I gave you the settings I used in the example so that you would be able to follow along. You can even use styles too so explore and enjoy!]

I do hope you have enjoyed this Coloring Digital stamps tutorial. Kate has a lot of really wonderful Digital Stamps in the store so check it out! These same steps can be applied to an outlined alpha too or anything that is outlined. Have fun, experiment, and play!

Check back often on Kate’s blog for challenges, hybrid ideas and new products. I will be back next month with another Photo Shop Tips & Tricks tutorial. See you then!