Photoshop Heart Tutorial for Valentine's Day

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Design a Photoshop Heart for Valentine's Day

Make a beautiful swirling grunge Photoshop heart design that is the perfect Valentine's Day gift or Valentine's Day card for a loved one. This is an intermediate photoshop tutorial that teaches you step by step how to design a heart in Adobe Photoshop.

This heart design can make a nice unique Valentine's Day card, or you can use it for a website design or any other kind of pretty, romantic graphic.

This is a countdown to Valentine's Day (aka how much time you have to use this photoshop heart tutorial to design the perfect, original Valentine's Day card).

Countdown to Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day: February 14, 2012

Step 1- Draw a Heart

Use Photoshop's Custom Shape Tool to Make a Heart

Open Photoshop with a document sized 400 by 350 pixels with a white background.
On a new layer, drag a heart onto the canvas using the custom shape tool (hold down the line tool button then change it to custom shapes). It can be any color, but most likely in the red-pink-magenta area. Also, the heart should fill about half of the canvas.


Step 2- Add Style

Use Layer Styles to Add a Glow and Gradient to the Heart

Double click on the heart layer and apply the following layer styles:
Outer Glow- Opacity 40%, Color same as the heart, Spread 0%, Size 38px
Gradient Overlay- Blend Mode: Overlay, Opacity 70%, White to black gradient, Check 'Reverse'
Stroke- Size: 1px, Position: Outside, Color: White


Step 3- Add Swirls

Use Cursive Fonts to Make Swirls Over Heart Design

Make two new layers for text. On the first layer, type in the letter O in a very swirly cursive font such as Hurricane, Porcelain, or Poesie_Noire (you can download any of those at dafont.com), and move it in the upper corner of the heart. It should be size 160pt. Repeat for the second layer, but move the letter a little below the first.
Change the blending mode for each to Overlay and lower the opacity to 15% for the first and 30% for the second.


The Best Cursive Fonts

The best cursive fonts for this heart tutorial are Hurricane, Porcelain, Poesie_Noire, Billy Argel Font, Brock Script, One Fell Swoop, and Selfish.

Step 4- Highlight Heart

Use a Soft Brush to Add Highlights and Shadows to Heart

Make a new layer, then control click on the layer with the heart. This will select the heart, allowing you to stay in the lines. Change your color to white and choose a soft brush, then add a few highlights. Repeat but with black for the shadows. Change the layer style to Overlay and drop the opacity to 70%.


Step 5- Add Texture

Use Custom Brushes to Add Texture to Heart Design

If your heart is selected from the previous layer already, press control and then click on the heart layer. Only the heart will be selected, allowing you to not need to erase stuff outside the lines later. Using a black brush, paint some texture-like patterns on the heart. If you have texture brushes that's even better, but using a variety of standard Photoshop brushes works too. Set the layer to Overlay and around 30-40% opacity.


Step 6- Add Wings

Use a Cursive Font to Add Wings to the Back of the Heart

Now you want to add some wing-like apparatuses coming from the back of the heart, so click on the background layer and make a new layer from there. Type an O in your original color (pink?), size 160 pt in a cursive font such as the ones mentioned before, and drag it to one side of the heart toward the bottom. Lower the opacity to 60%. From here you might want to add a gradient on the layer styles (like before) or move it more on its side with the transform tool. When you're happy with it, go to Layer- Duplicate Layer and then go to Edit- Transform- Flip Horizontal. Line them up as well as possible.


Step 7- More Wings

Duplicate the Wing Layers and Lower their Opacity to Add Depth

To add a bit more depth to this vintage-looking heart, duplicate each of the layers you made and change each new layer's opacity to 20%. Drag each of them down about 30-40 pixels. Finally, we have the finished product:



Best Valentine's Day Photoshop Tutorials

Here is a list of the best photoshop tutorials for Valentine's Day.
Amorous Wallpaper
Design a glowing red Valentine's Day wallpaper
Valentine's Day Photoshop Style
Design 3D Valentine's Day text in Photoshop
How to Draw Declaration of Love
Design Valentine's Day red text with a heart
Happy Valentine's Day Ecard Design
Design a Valentine's Day Ecard
Simple Valentine's Day Ecard
Design a simple Valentine's Day ecard in Photoshop
Abstract Valentine's Day Background
Design an abstract Valentine's Day background/wallpaper
Valentine's Day Wallpaper
Design a glowing red and yellow Valentine's Day wallpaper

Valentine's Day Gifts

These Valentine's Day gifts go well with the unique Valentine you just designed.
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  • MarianaFargasch Feb 26, 2011 @ 11:00 am | delete
    loving your photoshop lens! I just recently got it, need to install it on this newest computer because I only did it on the other I have... But haven't really used it much! Find it too complicated and too many things and don't really know how to do anything but the simple stuff on it. so Thanks!!! :)

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