Making a flowing ribbon

[Litespeed]

I want to make a flowing ribbon to attached to two bells I created, but when I go to the paint brush and use one of those, it turns out more looking like a rope with rough edges. Can anyone give me any suggestions?:eek:

[Wendy]

Hi Litespeed ....

Take a look in Wendy's Mini Tutorials (http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3641) and you will find one in "Tutorials on the Forum" its called Making a Ribbon.

I show you two ways of doing this in the tut and hopefully it will help you :)

Wendy

[ATR]

Litespeed,

This is still in the very early exploration stage, but...

Over at http://tutorialoutpost.com, there is a video on Making Text and Shape Ribbon Effects. I started working on the idea with regard to your bells.

I sort of took off on his idea.
File/New/Blank Layer to create new document
Next I went to Custom Shape Tool and selected the bow.
After a click and drag, I had my bow on a Shape Layer.
Here he merges his two layers (text and background) with Control E.
(I tried it by Simplifying the Shape Layer and continuing from there)

Next with simplified Shape Layer active,
Filter/Motion Blur. Set Angle at about -30 and distance about 149 (play with that for thickness of ribbon). Click OK.
Next, he went to Stylize/Glowing Edges but I substituted Find Edges instead.
Next, Filter/Brush Strokes/Accented Edges. Then Edge Width 9, Edge Brightness 9, Smoothness 4.

At the end it all looked like a ribbon bow, but there was a lot more work that needed to be done (color, compatibility when ribbon came in contact with bell image, etc). So, it could work or be a big no go.

ATR