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Arrows, Lines, and Improving Your Photoshop Workflow

Jun 25th in Designing by Kyle Pero

The focus of this tutorial will be on adding efficiency and flexibility in your workflow. When working as a designer or artist in a commercial setting you not only have to be creative, but you have to be able to build files that allow you to go back and easily make changes. Learn Photoshop workflow improvements, while reconstructing a magazine cover made up of arrows and lines.

Author: Kyle Pero

Kyle Pero has worked in the creative fields for many years now. With a background in photography and graphic design he naturally became a Photoshop whiz. Now he works in advertising doing photographic retouching, but also does freelance design and illustration work.

Final Image Preview

Before we get started, let's take a look at the image we'll be creating. As always, the layered Photoshop file is available via our PSDTUTS Plus membership.

Introduction

Most likely you will be taking direction from somebody when working professionally, and you never know what that client, or art director are going to request. When they throw a curve ball at you, you don't want to have to go back and redo everything because you didn't build your file in an orderly manner. You need to do things in the most efficient manner possible. You will also need to think outside the box in order to solve problems quickly.

We are going to re-create an old magazine cover that at first glance looks like it wouldn't be too difficult to do, but if you make the mistake of getting started before doing some planning, you will quickly reach a dead end, and have to start over.

Step 1

Lets take a look at the artwork that we are going to re-create. You see it here. It's from the cover of the Magazine Juana Gaita, which is currently celebrating its 50th year of publication.

So what steps do you envision having to take to re-create this? I can tell you now that you won't be able to think of everything. There are always little details that you have to deal with as they come up, but let's do the best we can. Here are some details that I can foresee having to deal with:

  1. There are two patterns of 45 degree angles lines that are perpendicular to each other.
  2. There are only a few colors, so I will use solid color adjustment layers and masks to make the artwork.
  3. It looks like the colors on the background pattern are just inverted with various shapes like rectangles and arrows.
  4. There is one main arrow of the same shape and size that breaks the pattern.
  5. There is a pattern of arrows nestled into each other facing both left and right.
  6. The arrows and rectangles all line up precisely with the 45 degree lines at all vertices.

Step 2

Now with the above observations we can come up with a quick and rational way of creating this pattern. Let's begin with the lines. Create a new document that is about 2000px by 1300px. In the Preferences go to the Guides, Grid, Slices, and Count section. Then set your Grid to every 80px with 8 Subdivisions.

Now turn on your Grid by going to View > Show > Grid (Command+'). Then select the Rectangle Tool (U), make sure that Create Paths is checked in the Property Bar. Draw a rectangle path that is the width of one of the subdivisions of the grid. Now hit Command+T and transform the path so it is the same width, but make the height stretch way past the height of the canvas.

Line your path up so it sits next to one of the main grid lines. Make sure that you have Snap to Grid enabled under the View menu so it's exact. Now with the Pen Tool (P) Command-drag around the whole path. Then hit Command+C to copy, Command+V to paste, then Command+T to transform. Then move the new one over to the next main grid line. Repeat until you have something that looks like the image below. When you get to the edge of the canvas, select all the paths and move them over to the left, making sure to keep them lined up to the grid, then continue.

Step 3

Now select all the paths with the Pen Tool and hit Command+T. In the Property Bar enter 45 in the Angle Box and hit Enter. Now make a new Solid Color Adjustment Layer with the paths and fill it with black. Duplicate that layer and then hit Command+T. Then right-click in the Transform Box and select Flip Horizontal. Now we have our two sets of perpendicular lines.

Note: The reason that we made the lines black and not the color that we actually want is because at the moment we are constructing a mask that we will use later to create the color. This is because of what I noticed in observation number three where the colors are inverted. It will make more sense later, but just be aware for now that we are constructing a mask.

Step 4

Zoom way in so you can see the pixels where the lines cross. Make a Guide by clicking and dragging on the Ruler at the top of your document. If you dont see a Ruler, hit Command+R and it will appear. Line the Guide up so it sits exactly where the lines cross. Now Zoom-out a little. Then make another Guide in the same place, only move it down four boxes. Make sure that each Guide is in relatively the exact same place. This will be important to keep things aligned later.

Step 5

Now lets organize our Layer Palette a little by separating the two "Line" layers into their own groups. Select One of the "Line" layers. Then go to Layer > New > Group from Layers. Do the same for the other.

We dont want the negative space of each of these groups to be transparent, so make a new Solid Color Adjustment Layer and fill it with white. Duplicate this white layer, and put one of them in each group just under the "Line" layer. Now you should see only one set of lines at a time.

Step 6

Now we are all setup to create the zigzag pattern with the lines. Select the Rectangle Tool (U) and make a rectangle path that follows the guides that you created. Make sure that you have Snap enabled. Now with the path highlighted in the Paths Palette, and the top "Line" group highlighted in the layer palette, go to Layer > Vector Mask > Current Path. If your guides were lined up correctly, you should get a perfect zigzag shape.

Now we need another zigzag at the bottom half of the document. Click on the Vector Mask that you have on the upper group. With the Pen Tool (P) hold Command and drag around the path, hit Command+C to copy, Command+V to paste, then Command+T to transform. Bring the new path down until the second zigzag lines up perfectly.

You also need to make sure that the two paths in the vector mask are an equal distance apart. The Ruler Tool (I) is useful here, and it is hiding underneath the Eyedropper Tool (I). With the Ruler simply click and drag. The distance between the two points will be displayed in the Info Palette.

Step 7

Now we are ready to create the horizontal bars. At this point we have everything we need to create them already made. Click on the Vector Mask from the upper "Line" group. Then in the Path Palette drag the Path that says "Group 1 vector mask" down to the New Path button at the bottom of the palette.

With the new path selected in the Path Palette make a new Invert Adjustment Layer above both of the "Line" groups. It lines up perfectly with the zigzags because we used the same paths as we did to make the zigzags.

Step 8

Now lets make the arrow shape. Zoom way in to one of the points where the lines meet. With the Pen Tool (P) click right at the point where the lines meet to make a new path point. Now while holding Shift the whole time to constrain the path, click at the various points you need to in order to make the arrow shape.

All the lines should be perfectly straight, or at a 45 degree angles, if you are holding Shift down. You will no doubt have to go back and adjust some of the points. To do this simply Command+click on a point. Then use the Arrow Keys to move it around. Here are a few shots of how my arrow lines up. I made it red just so you can see it better.

Step 9

With your arrow path selected make a new Invert Adjustment Layer above the previous one. Line the arrow shape up at one of the places it should be. Now would be a good time to reference the original to see where things are going. It should be fairly easy to line them up if you have the Snap set up. Keep duplicating the "Arrow Invert" layer and placing the different arrows where they should be. There are total total, plus one that is a Solid Color Adjustment layer.

Step 10

There is one more small detail we need to fix before we can make a mask out of this artwork. Notice how the lines are interfering with the front of the arrows. If you look back at the original artwork you see that there are no lines where the front of the arrows are. This is an easy fix.

Open up one of the "Line" groups. Then click on the "Line" layer. Hit the Add Layer Mask button and a mask appears next to the vector mask. Now with the layer mask highlighted, we can simply paint the lines out with a black brush where we dont want them. Repeat this step for the other "Lines" layer.

This double mask technique is a real life saver because we dont have to actually remove the vector lines. That means that all the vector information is still intact just in case we need to go back and change something at a later date.

Step 11

Now we are finally ready to add some color! Like I said before, we are going to use what we have created as a mask to create a Solid Color Adjustment Layer. First make a Solid Color Adjustment Layer above all other layers except the solid color arrow. Make it whatever color you want. This will be the first color of your design.

Turn off the solid color arrow and the solid color layer that you just made so you can see the design beneath. Then in the Channels Palette drag the Red Channel down to the New Channel button to duplicate it. Now load the selection of the channel by holding Command+clicking on the channel thumbnail. Make another Solid Color Adjustment Layer just above the previous one. Then pick your second color, preferably a complementary color to your first color. Turn all the layers back on and there you have your design in color.

Conclusion

As a final touch, I added in a texture layer. You can see how to do in the 60's Psychedelic Poster Tutorial.

Now we have a PSD file that is relatively simple considering the complexity of the design. The most important part of the construction this file is that we can revert back to any of the above steps very easily. I hope this tutorial has shed some light on how a professional workflow is achieved in Photoshop.


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User Comments

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  1. Brent Nelson June 25th

    Cool I guess :)


  2. Paulo Sales June 25th

    great stuff


  3. Monya June 25th

    Great! Very useful !!! Thank you very much.


  4. Marco June 25th

    The arrows / lines are not so very impressive; The way you get to create them is awesome. All though the techniques are familiar to me, combining them in the correct way is absolutely genius.

    Keep it up!


  5. Ross June 25th

    Surely when you talk about improving your workflow you would a lot better to define a new pattern for the 45° lines, then you wouldn’t have to copy and paste them and you could also keep the pattern for use in the future. I don’t know if you had thought of this or there is a reason you didn’t do it but its definitely a lot more efficient.


  6. Ben Griffiths June 25th

    Interesting tutorial, thanks :D


  7. Cmoore June 25th

    Looks cool in my opinion. I would prolly have done a less colorful style and maybe angled the arrows or something to make it sleeker, but that’s a personal style more than anything. Nice job.


  8. Joe June 25th

    Watch out! If it’s not a “cool explosion” effect then it’s not a good tutorial! Sorry, I left my sarcasm button on.

    God forbid a tutorial is made that will be useful in more than 10% of the work a real designer will actually do in his/her career. This is honestly one of the nicer tutorials on this site. It shows actual technique rather than a vague explanation of how to toss a brush/smudge tool/eraser etc., around.

    In other words, this is good stuff! If there were less “cool effect” tutorials that follow today’s trends on this site and more stuff like this, PSDTuts would be much more useful.


  9. Snorri3D June 25th

    realy useful tutorial thanks


  10. Constantin Potorac June 25th

    I find this tutorial very useful actually. Great work


  11. Brent Nelson June 25th

    I agree, it is useful. I have been thinking about cutting back on the ‘explosions’ and other dramatic effects because it I do it all too often. It is good to see something that can be used with multiple applications.


  12. Josh June 25th

    hmm seemed to struggle at the first hurdle - I counted and recounted after following the instructions to the word but there were more grid boxes in my document (at 1300W X 2000H 80px 8 divisions).

    I wasn’t bothered until it affected the spacing with the vector masks on the groups.

    Anybody else notice this? hope it’s not just me?!


  13. Nate June 25th

    Good effect but it wasn’t written properly IMO, it didn’t make sense for about the first 5 stages,


  14. Nate June 25th

    Could be used quite a bit with a little bit of creativity.


  15. Shane June 25th

    @Joe - I agree with you - some of the techniques (though I agree with Ross) don’t have the wow-factor, but there are a lot more things to photoshop than explosions and effects. It’s often simpler stuff like this that captures the eye more readily IMHO.


  16. Bogus June 25th

    Josh you are right, man these tutorials are nice, but if you aren’t specific enough or it doesn’t work, this tutorial is pronounced dead like a lot of them at PSDtuts.
    Great result, bad way of explaining how to do it.


  17. Ariful Alam Khan June 25th

    Nice work.


  18. Hamburg June 25th

    Right. Tutorial looks really nice. But there are still problems understanding it. I work with PS for three years now but still cant do step 2. You should rewrite this a little more specific


  19. Kloche June 25th

    Nice tut Kyle. I was just thinking that I wanted to do something with lines


  20. godonholiday June 25th

    For anyone who wants to turn their designs from a completed tutorial into a career then the tips in this are priceless! Whats better is that some people are actually talking about how it could be refined further, having a slick work flow and planning a design from the start will stand designers i good stead.

    I think this is a great tutorial, the final image shows how a simple design can be used to create something that is cery effective.

    More depth like this please!


  21. pica June 25th

    wow… quite impressive
    the tip to look at all the details, is probably the most important
    especially step 10
    i would have not seen that at first glance and then probably wondered for hours before i got the mistake… :-)

    anyway, i love those “old” graphics
    all made without ps…


  22. BogDinamita June 25th

    i love this approach


  23. ghost June 25th

    I agree Joe, I really love and appreciate tutorials like this one, thanks for another great tut.


  24. seb June 25th

    really difficult and i’m not a beginner… specially gettin that arrow drawn up straight. I think this would have been better suited to an illustrator tutorial


  25. Andrei Constantin June 25th

    priceless


  26. greven June 25th

    Nice techniques. :) Thanks.


  27. John Williams June 25th

    I’m going to agree with Joe from above:

    “God forbid a tutorial is made that will be useful in more than 10% of the work a real designer will actually do in his/her career.”


  28. Markus June 25th

    Awesome image! :D


  29. Tama June 25th

    @ Joe: I totally agree with you. I reallly prefer this kind of tutorial rather than explosions…. This one shows some techniques I didn’t know and it’ll surely be very useful!
    Thank you Kyle!!


  30. Kyle Pero June 25th

    I was worried that a tutorial like this might not be appreciated but it looks like my worries were unfounded. I know that some of the steps might be hard to understand but keep in mind that this is just to show how I would do it. I would encourage you to take my steps with a grain of salt and come up with your own solutions that might work better for you.


  31. Tim June 25th

    Nice. Good Technique, However, seems like this particular illustration could be best done in Illustrator to keep the razor sharp edges when it goes to press as Postscript.


  32. Shan June 25th

    I love how you showed the entire layers palette at the end. Many tutorials don’t show that and while I guess it isn’t 100% necessary if you know what you are doing, it always helps to see at a glance the entire palette and how everything collectively creates the end result. It is also a good guide to seeing if anything has gone wrong perhaps through a step that was missed or misinterpreted. Thanks for that!


  33. Good-Walls June 25th

    Great job


  34. Jared June 25th

    Simple, yet complicated. Awesome, yet even more awesome. Good work


  35. *Jul!e June 25th

    So vintage ! I love it !


  36. Maksimilijan June 25th

    AMAZING!
    THANKS A LOT!!!!


  37. Will June 25th

    I think this is cool but i can’t get the tutorial finished. I am stuck at Step 6! I can’t seem to get the layer > vector mask > current path bit to work what am i doing wrong? I will have to finish this in illustrator i just cant get my head around the masks! Thanks anyway if you could clarify step 6 tat would be most helpful.


  38. Joefrey Mahusay June 25th

    Wow really cool tut. ;)


  39. Jaemie June 25th

    Thanks - great tutorial. I’m just curious as to what font is used for the title. Is it a unicase typeface, or did you set it to look like that?


  40. solwyvern June 25th

    Great tutorial^^

    hmm,… I’m still bothered by the method you used for making lines, seemed like a very manual approach.
    Isn’t it possible/easier to define a pattern instead of drawing them individually?


  41. Danny June 25th

    Awesome tut mang! Nice one


  42. Kathi June 25th

    I love workflow tuts…
    You never stop learning about this…

    Would love to see more of this kind of tutorials!


  43. Jbcarey June 25th

    Great Design, Good tutorial and another magnificent addition to psdtuts!


  44. george June 25th

    I know its probably his logo, but I would have definitely used a sharp edged typeface to go in the middle, the roundness is clashing with the sharp geometry. Then again that wasnt really part of the tutorial,
    nice tut though!


  45. D. Carreira June 25th

    Great! Thanks!

    David Carreira


  46. Fahad June 25th

    Great stuff


  47. Ruben June 25th

    Oh wow I love this, love the outcome. Like Julie said; very vintage-looking!


  48. Brian June 26th

    We need more minimalistic design tutorials.


  49. Gen June 26th

    very nice tut….everybody does things differently in PS because of all the possibilities so it’s nice to see and learn some new techniques. And the outcome is a great one in this one!


  50. Kevin June 26th

    That is really cool. Was wondering what font is being used on the arrow? I really like it.


  51. g June 26th

    one of the best tuts on this site. it explains steps and is not just “download this brush and put it here…” I love that about this tut! great job!


  52. Brad June 26th

    I’m to the point now where doing something isn’t the problem - it’s doing it efficiently and in the best way. Great tut, been waiting for it.

    view my portfolio:coroflot.com/heatsink


  53. Tyler Bramer June 26th

    Simplicity and elegance with never die! A few steps could have been explained better or made simpler, but I love the overall design and feel.


  54. Shark June 26th

    Hot stuff !


  55. jonski June 26th

    nice design…love to follow the tut..but its hard…im lost in those “rectangle path”…and moving with a “pen tool”…


  56. Esteban June 26th

    Would have been much easier in Illustrator. Way easier.


  57. Kamo Panosian June 27th

    lots of haters here…

    keep up the good work dude, great stuff very retro :D


  58. Bacon June 27th

    I’m stuck on step 3. I have no idea how to do that. All I can get is a black fill layer with a vector mask. Help?


  59. MD June 27th

    Cool stuff! :)


  60. Chris Henn June 27th

    This is the best tutorial on PSDtuts, because it actually teaches you stuff, like Tut9.


  61. Ludovic June 28th

    Awesome! More like this please?


  62. neoREgen June 29th

    Like Bacon, I’m also stuck on Step 3.

    I put the Solid Color Adjustment Layer on my diagonal line paths. (This is where I think I messed up and need some more info.)

    Then I duplicated the layer and flipped horizontal.
    My problem now is that when one of the layers isn’t selected, I can’t see the lines of the other.

    I’m under the impression that I didn’t do the “Now make a new Solid Color Adjustment Layer with the paths and fill it with black.” part of the step correctly.
    When I created the Solid Color Adjustment Layer, I just hit Adjustment Layer in the bottom of the Layers window, chose Solid Color…, then chose black. Does “fill it with black” imply an additional step? I tried to use the paint bucket, but it won’t let me.


  63. Yassine June 29th

    The tutorial is very nice but explaining it is really not helpful,please can you give more pictures with the tools explained like when you said :

    Line your path up so it sits next to one of the main grid lines. Make sure that you have Snap to Grid enabled under the View menu so it’s exact. Now with the Pen Tool (P) Command-drag around the whole path. Then hit Command+C to copy, Command+V to paste, then Command+T to transform. Then move the new one over to the next main grid line. Repeat until you have something that looks like the image below. When you get to the edge of the canvas, select all the paths and move them over to the left, making sure to keep them lined up to the grid, then continue.

    i really didn’t have a clue what you wanted to say because your work is interesting and make many people want to get the same result or near it,like beginner like me hhh,other than that what you made is really nice,great work i like it so much,


  64. Pravin Potdar July 1st

    Great!!!


  65. Braden Keith July 1st

    Very nice, simple effect


  66. Mike July 3rd

    Cool effect … the tutorial is impossible to follow and I have to be honest … it’s a little annoying. Gave up on it after reading the first two paragraphs 4-5 times.


  67. Mantis25 July 8th

    I think the underlying principle that you alluded to in the description, but ultimately did not quite hammer out enough imo, is the factor of being organized and trying to work non-destructively. This could have ultimately been the most useful aspect of this tutorial. As a creative director, I can say that people new to graphic design desiring to work professionally in a creative department and/or firm - must be able to organize their files logically and in a way where going back and changing the design is as simple as it can be - and other people can open your file and figure out what’s going on in a brief amount of time.

    I’d like to see a tutorial that really focused on that nugget of value, rather than the general idea tacked on to a (pretty cool looking) illustration tutorial.


  68. Stefon July 9th

    Why not just use the line tool instead of the rectangle tool?


  69. Citizenzaqx July 11th

    awful writing. this looked really cool at a glance so i thought i’d give it a try. I managed to stumble all the way to step 4 since i’ve used photoshop for quite sometime but you completely failed to explain what the fuck you were doing there.

    thumbs down.


  70. liko August 11th

    cool effect !! but what a pity..i don’t understand how to do the same as mentioned in ‘Step 6′. (need to add a new mask for this layer?)
    in last Step ,the layer ‘color fill 2 copy’ has masked the group ‘line2′ ,then why we can see the line2 ?
    so i am confused with these .anyboby can help me to explain it .thanks in advance!>.


  71. matt August 22nd

    Why on earth on your using the path tool and not just a regular shape? Trying to select the path and duplicating is painful.


  72. Bryan November 28th

    This tutorial wasn’t writing that good. I had a very hard time trying to follow this and i eventually gave up.


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