Crystalline Photoshop Flowers

Written by: WIS

This tutorial is made for: Photoshop CS2

Difficulty: Intermediate (Some Pen-tool experience recommended)

Hello! Today, we are going to learn to make beautiful, vector-style, crystalline flowers. These flowers can be used anywhere! Whether individually as an icon, avatar, etc., or put together with many more to make gorgeous wallpapers and signatures!

Step 01:

Start a blank, new 300x300 canvas. Now, how big you want the flower depends on what you want to use it for, as during the process of making the flower, some of the petals will not retain quality as they undergo a few “Free Transformations”, so I always resize them smaller afterwards. Now, select the pen tool from your toolbar (or you can press Shift+P). After selecting that tool, make sure that "Paths" is selected (the square with a pen in it) on the top bar.

Step 02:

Create a new layer before drawing with the pen tool. It might take a while to get the hang of the Pen Tool if you have not used it before, but try to draw a rough petal shape. It doesn't have to be perfect.

Step 03:

Complete your petal "path" by clicking on the first node (little square). Now you should have a shape that looks roughly like this.

Step 04:

Right click in your petal shape, and select the option "Fill Path". Then a window will pop up (as shown in the screenshot). Click the drop-down menu and select "color". A color-spectrum will appear and you may choose any color you want for your flower. I picked a nice blue.

Step 05:

Now you have a rough shape of your petal. Create a new layer before continuing.

Step 06:

Use the pen tool to draw a similar petal shape within your original petal. Mine is indicated by the dotted lines above. When you are done, right click your shape and select "Make Selection". Now there should be a dotted line where your path used to be.

Step 07:

Make sure the foreground color of your color palette is the color of your petal, and the background color is white. Now, select the Paint Bucket/Gradient tool. (Shift+G) If the icon selected is a paint bucket, click and hold on that button until a menu pops up. Select gradient from there. At the top, you should see an example of what your gradient will look like. (Color of the petal to white). If it does not show that, click the drop-down menu and select that from the list of preset gradients. Now, click at the top of your selection and drag down to the bottom.

If you don't like your gradient, press Undo to undo it, do not just go over it again with another gradient as it will leave an unpleasant line.

Step 08:

Now there should be three layers on the layer palette. Right click on the topmost one (the gradient) and select "Merge Down". Now, right click on the result gradient and select "Duplicate". You will now have two petals, one on top of the other. Now, select Edit, then Free Transform. (Or Ctrl+T) Now we have to figure out how many degrees we want to turn our second petal. To do that, figure out how many petals you want, then use it to divide 360. For example, I want 6 petals on my flower, so I will turn each petal 60 degrees. Enter the degree number on the top in the area next to an image of an angle. (See screenshot.)

Step 09:

After you are done that, click on the Move Tool (Shift+V). A pop-up will appear asking you if you wish to apply the transformation. Click apply. Now move the newly rotated petal so that it lines up as shown in the screenshot.

Step 10:

Now, you will need to repeat this step many times. Duplicate the top-most petal, and rotate it the same number of degrees until you make a full "circle". You will now have something that looks like the screenshot above. Now, go to your layer palette, and lower the opacity of all the layers to 80%. You now have a basic Crystalline flower. You may stop here if you wish, as the next part gets a lot more confusing...

Step 11:

We are going to "fold" the last petal under the first one. Now, select the layer with the first petal on it. Go to Select (at the top), then "Load Selection. A window as shown in the screenshot will appear. Click OK...

Step 12:

A selection like this should appear on your first petal. Now, go to your layer palette, and select the last petal. Press Ctrl+C to copy, and then Ctrl+V to paste to a new layer.

Step 13:

Now you should have a new layer with this on it. I've singled it out so it's easier to see, but it should be on top the rest of your flower. Move that to the side for now, we don't need it just yet. However, repeat Step 11 and load the selection around the first petal again. This time, select your last petal's layer (and any other petals the selection overlaps on the left side) and press "Del" to delete that part of the selection. You should have somewhat of a gap there now. Lastly, move that piece of petal you created in Step 12 to fill the gap. Then, in your layers palette, drag that layer all the way down below the first petal.

Finished Product:

Tadaa! I would recommend merging all the petal layers together if you are going to use the flower for anything else, like a signature. As you can see, some of the petals are a little blurry around the edges. This is why in the first step, I advised you to make the canvas a lot bigger than what you want, this way, you can resize it to a smaller size and hide the quality of the petals.

These are a few examples of what you can do with this flower technique:

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

WIS spends his days in a crystalline meadow that may or may not have been created with Photoshop.

Pudding fears Photoshop.

WIS writes, makes graphics, and appears in this footer twice!

If you have any comments or suggestions about this article you are more then welcome to PM or email the author.