Graphical tablet icon tutorial by E-maniacs.com
Today I will show you how to create a graphical tablet using Photoshop. You can have a look in the picture above to make an idea about what we are going to create today.
Tutorial Details
- Program: Adobe Photoshop
- Version:
- Difficulty: medium
- Estimated Completion Time: 40-60 minutes
Step 1
Start by creating a 500×400 document, with a background as you wish, I will use white.
Now we can start to work on our graphical tablet. Grab the “Round Rectangle tool” U, with an Radius of 4 pixels (you can decide what radius to use) , choose black as foreground color (choose no style) and start drawing the rectangle. We will have now a black rounded rectangle as in the next picture:
If you need to adjust the base color for the tablet you can choose blending options, Color overlay, and play with colors (I will leave it black). Name your layer “base”.
Step 2
Now Ctrl-click on your base layer, this will select the rectangle we have created. Now from the menu select “Select > Modify > Contract” and this will produce this:
Step 3
Create a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N), and name it “screen”. With the selection still present, select the Gradient tool (Shift+U), and create a radial gradient like in the next picture.
Step 4
Select the layer “screen” by pressing Ctrl-click on this layer and increase the selection by 1 pixel. Create a new layer, name it “screen-border” and fill it with white color.
Step 5
We will select again the layer “screen” (Ctrl-click), then click on the layer “screen-border” and we press Delete button. This will produce a white border around the “screen layer”, as in the following picture.
Step 6
Select the “screen-border” layer by pressing Ctrl-click, and create a new layer (Ctrl_Shift+N) – you can name it “screen-border-style”. While the current layer is “screen-border-style”, and the selection is still active, grab an soft round brush (Master Diameter 100px, Hardness 0px) add some black color to the corners “screen-border-style” layer. Some white to the parts what are going to shine. Let me show you my result:
Step 7
We will add some more style to the “base” layer, select it (Ctrl-click on it), and contract the selection by 2 pixels (Select > Modify > Contract). Create a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N) (name it “base-style”) and start painting with a soft small (100px) brush, white color, on the new layer.
The result is not a very good looking one, but you will see that at the end it will look better.
Let’s see what we have until now; i got this, you have…?
Step 8
Now select the layer “screen”, and add some styles to the layer (Right+click on the layer Blending Options). The following window will open.
Add a Gradient overlay with the details you see in the picture above, and for the gradient use the following values:
Step 9
Add an Outer glow with the next values:
Until now we have a pretty nice result:
Step 10
Further we will add some more shiny elements to make it more realistic. Select the layer “screen” (Ctrl-click); with the selection still active select the “Elliptical Marquee Tool” (Shift+M), make sure the type of selection is “Intersect with selection” draw an ellipse selection like this:
Now invert the selection (Ctrl+Shif+I) or (Select > Inverse). Create a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N) and name it reflection, and draw a gradient white to transparent like this:
Select the “screen” layer (Ctrl-click), inverse selection (Ctrl+Shif+I) and hit “Delete”. Reduce the opacity of the “reflection” layer to 35%. And start again with the same steps to create a new reflection layer with a smaller.
My result will look like this:
Step 11
Looks quite ok, I will add some small text and here is my final result:
Using the same steps you can create get to multiple results depending on your own touch to the design. You can easily create different screen colors just by replacing the “Gradient overlay” to different values. You can create nice blue, orange, red graphical tablet icons in some easy steps.
You can download the psd files for free.
You can also download direct the psd files.
