In this tutorial, I will explain how to make a vinyl graphic. This tutorial will outline techniques to avoid choppy edges and create proper texturing and lighting.
Step 1.
Let's start out by creating a new file. I used a 300x300 pixel canvas set at 72dpi (regular settings), and I filled my background with a soft gradient. You can fill it with whatever you want.
Create a layer set and call it "vinyl." Create a new layer within the layer set, also called "vinyl," and fill it with a dark grey (almost black) color like #111111. Fill this layer with noise by going to Filter > Noise > Add noise and use the settings shown below in the screenshot.
Step 2
The noise we just added will be used to create the circular texture that is typical for a vinyl record. Go to Filter > Blur > Radial blur, and use the settings shown below. After this, duplicate the layer and set the "vinyl copy" layer to Overlay. To bring out the texture a little more, I went ahead and navigated to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast and applied the settings seen below to the "vinyl copy" layer.
Step 3
Time to cut out our circular shape. I will be using the Ellipse Tool (U) for this job. Now I've set my Ellipse Tool to Shape Layers instead of Paths because this way I can easily center my shape once I draw it out. Place your crosshairs (cursor) more or less in the middle and while holding down Shift+Alt, draw a circle. Holding down Shift+Alt ensures that you make a perfect circle and that it is created from the middle outwards.
Switch to the Move tool (V) and hit Ctrl+A so that you select the entire canvas. Using the alignment controls at the top, press Align Vertical Centers and Align Horizontal Centers. This moves the circular shape to the center of the canvas.
Step 4
Next we will cut out our actual shape. Ctrl-click on the Shape 1 layer and hide it by clicking on the eye icon next to it. Now select the "vinyl" layer set and hit the Mask button. This masks out the selection.
Duplicate the "Shape 1" layer and resize it to about 5% (hit Ctrl+T, and then enter 5% in the size boxes). Ctrl-click the new "Shape 1 copy" layer, and with a black brush, paint the selection black in the mask we made for our "vinyl" layer set. This will create a hole in the middle, which is typical for a vinyl. When I did this, I noticed that I had to nudge my "Shape 1 copy" layer a bit to the left and up so that it looked right.
Step 5
Now that we have our basic shape and texture done, it's time to bring this baby to life. First we need to add some shine. We're going to do this in two steps. In this step, we will apply subtle contrast lighting across the object and in Step 2, we are going to make it pop. Create a new layer above the (hidden) "Shape 1 copy" layer and name it "contrast." Reset your colors to black and white by hitting D on your keyboard, and go to Filter > Render > Clouds. Next go to Filter > Render > Difference Clouds and hit Ctrl+F a few times (this re-applies the filter). Go to Filter > Blur > Radial Blur and use the settings shown below in the screenshot.
Then set the layer to Soft Light and experiment with Brightness/Contrast. In my case I moved the Contrast down to around -20 and raised the Brightness to about +50. I also used a Mask and a 50% black brush to remove the black areas. I just want to keep the highlights. Eventually I decided to lower the Opacity of the layer to 75%, and then I was satisfied. Play around and see what looks right to you.
Step 6
Now it's time to make it really pop. Create a gradient as shown below:
Create a new layer and name it "highlights." Drag the gradient out in the middle as shown in 1 (below), then go to Edit > Transform > Perspective and select the top-left corner, hold Shift and drag down. Drag until the handles overlap as in 2 (below) and then hit Enter. Hit Ctrl+T and stretch the gradient out a bit vertically. Set this layer to Soft Light, duplicate it twice, and spin the top layer around a bit until you get something similar to 3 (below).
Highlights can come in a variety of shapes and sizes, it just depends on the light source and its direction. Personally, I like to vary the type of highlights I use depending on the project.
Step 7
For this vinyl I created a sticker for the center. I made a circle with the Ellipse Tool, then added some text and a random graphic I brushed on. You can do whatever you like with the sticker design. I also added another layer of extra bright highlights and a Color Balance layer on top to fine tune my coloring. All of this is optional depending on the project or aesthetic you're looking for. Finally, I added a layer that looked like clear plastic over the sticker, as real vinyls have. I did this by creating a circle below the sticker and highlights layers and filling it with a dark grey color.
Conclusion
So there you go, a nice little graphic that can be used in a variety of ways. What I like most about this technique is that even though not all of the layers are vector layers, you can still resize the image without loss of quality. Apart from the layers which are used for the sticker (which could be vector too), the rest is either text (which is stretchable) or masked layers, and masks are also stretchable. In fact, we have a safety here. If you stretch out the mask and it becomes blurry, then just unhide your shape layer, stretch that out and mask again. Even though you can scale this, keep in mind that if you try to scale it up dramatically you will lose the fine texture lines on the vinyl.
Thank you for viewing this tutorial, and make sure you have fun while making yours!
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Johnson November 30th
Nice work Arik, a nice sold little tutorial!
( )Colin November 30th
ooo first comment! i better say something meaningful….
….well i don’t have anything meaningful to say….but i do like it! simple and i’m sure i can get it better than that fire ball (which i still haven’t got the hang of yet)
( )Roger Moore November 24th
Doh! Not the first comment.
( )Collis November 30th
Well done Arik, a great addition to the PSDTUTS library. This site is starting to get some depth which is pretty cool!
( )Jon November 30th
Fantastic work! I think this would look great combined with Fabio’s vanishing point treatment. Thanks for the tut!
( )Parrappa November 30th
Great tutorial!
( )Collis November 30th
Have you guys seen this image from photoshop zen master Lance Thackeray – Lumi Deck … This tutorial made me think of it!
Actually Lance is going to be writing some tutorials for PSDTUTS soon which is pretty damn cool!
( )Eli November 30th
Beautiful outcome for this tutorial
( )SasaVtec November 30th
Nice tutorial, thanks for writing.
( )Brian November 30th
Wow! Great tutorial.
( )Jonathan Solichin November 30th
Nice! Never thought of this before. Although it was hard to see the “recording lines” in the beginning, it came out pretty clear at the end. pretty amazing transformation there. Solid!
( )Jonathan Solichin November 30th
Sorry for the double post, maybe an admin can combine it for me? I forgot to say, I’ve never knew that there was a vertical and a horizontal align tool! Thanks.
( )GeminiArt November 30th
nice tuts
simple but cool
( )Credit Immobilier November 30th
Very nice !
( )Thank you for the tutorial !
James November 30th
Wow, that’s pretty clever. I never thought of using the perspective transform like that…
( )helen November 30th
nice & simple….thanks a lot
( )Johan November 30th
Great tut!
Thx
( )giackop November 30th
YES!!! really nice tut!!
( )Chuck November 30th
Nice tutorial and great result!
As I don’t currently have Photoshop installed, how would it look if skewed to give perspective? IE. To make it look like it was laid on a table top.
( )Ronan Murphy November 30th
Very very cool, (borat voice) I LIKE!
( )Markus November 30th
Aweasome, great tutorial! I cant wait to try it
!
( )Dustin Brewer November 30th
Great tutorial, not sure that I can use it in practice but it does give me some ideas for using other methods for some different design stuff.
( )Joefrey Mahusay December 1st
Nice Tutorial…Great job arik! two thumbs up!
( )Ignacio December 1st
I just like the techniques from this tutorial.
( )Fabio "zee" December 1st
I really like it… thanks for sharing
( )Mark Abucayon December 1st
This is awesome- You really did a Good Job Dude, In fact I follow it how to do it. wow this is cool thats why I keep coming back in this website it really shares plenty ideas. nice
( )salman December 1st
awesome…u won’t beleive i racked my brains few weeks back 2 try myself for a vinyl record….and had to chop it from the screenshot of virtual dj! but now i can say that everything is ‘HAND MADE’! Cheers…keep the tuts cumin’!
( )Don December 1st
Nice and Simple.
( )Arik December 1st
Thanks for the comments guys. I really hope that Lance makes a tutorial on how he does those flames as seen in ‘passionflame’.
( )Timothy Diokno December 2nd
It looks so realistic that it can be an iStock material. You can trick people in to thinking that it’s an actual photograph of a vinyl record.
( )Stom365 December 2nd
It’s amazing !!!
( )thanks a lot
Matt Mills December 2nd
Nice mate, good job, loving the tuts, again, this site is getting a broad range of tuts going, which is great. well well done again.
( )Deniece December 2nd
Cool tutorial, dude! Thanks to you, I learnt things I didn’t know existed!
( )Matty December 3rd
Wow it’s a cool thing but you lost me after step 4. It was WAY too confusing but it’s a cool effect.
( )Elizabeth K. Barone April 7th
You have to be really careful with the last few steps and pay extra attention to what it is that he’s explaining. Give it another shot. I’m sure you can do it!
( )Lancifer May 28th
after several attempts…i crashed and burned also…i can’t understand how to do the mask part…
( )b00m December 3rd
good. No more say…
( )Constantin Potorac December 4th
I am really looking forward to see some tuts from Lumi Deck. I took a look at his work and I have to admit hes work is amazing.
( )jessica December 4th
how do you do step 4- with all the mask layers. i cant get the layer set to have the correct mask on it
( )thanks
Elizabeth K. Barone April 7th
Make sure that the layer group/set “vinyl” is selected, not the “vinyl” layer.
( )Gabe December 5th
great tutorial, but i have one question.
are you supposed to rasterize the shape 1 copy-layer[step4]? because i cant paint in it if i dont
( )Elizabeth K. Barone April 7th
Don’t rasterize. If you rasterize, it will resize badly anyway.
Create another layer above the layer that you want to paint on.
( )chris December 9th
Yeah, same problem here. I don’t really understand your comment above Elizabeth. I’m stuck trying to paint out the hole.
escanive December 5th
Thanks for this great tutorial. It’s very good.
( )Sheryl December 6th
I’m having the same problem, Jessica. The tutorial says: Next we will cut out our actual shape. CTRL+CLICK on the ‘Shape 1′ layer and hide it by clicking on the eye icon next to it. Now select the ‘vinyl’ layer set and hit the mask button. This masks out the selection.
I assume I should first hit Ctrl-D to deselect all. (This was selected when we aligned the circle.) Or is that what CTRL+CLICK does? CTRL+CLICK appears just to deselect the Shape 1 layer. Then I hide that layer. Then I go up to the layer above it – the “group” layer, the one with the folder icon, and click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the the Layers palette, yes? The result does not cut out the circle. The mask thumbnail on the “group” layer does not show a white circle with a black background as is shown in the tutorial. It shows an all white square, as if I’ve masked the entire thing.
I did get the album look by following up through Step 3. Then I merged the vinyl and vinyl dupe layers, put an eliptical marquee over the resulting layer, clicked on Select>Inverse, then clicked on Delete and was able to cut out the “record.” I then just created a similar but very small circle in the center, again with the eliptical marquee tool, and hit delete. But I’m sure there was some advantage to masking. Can anyone set me straight on this? TIA
( )Sheryl December 6th
Oops, that’s not quite what I did. I did not create the vinyl group layer at all. I just created a regular layer above the background layer and did the noise and distort things described in the tut. Then I duplicated that layer and clicked on Overlay and did the contrast thing. Then I merged the two layers. I stayed in that merged layer and cut out the “record.” After that I continued to Step 5 in the tut. Again, I’m sure there’s an advantage to creating the group layer and doing the masking, but I was unable to get the “record” cut out, as far as I could tell. Like Jessica, I’d sure like to know what I did wrong! Thanks!
( )Elizabeth K. Barone April 7th
You need the group to create the mask. Go back and try it again. (:
( )Arik December 7th
I think this might be an issue regarding different version of photoshop. I am using CS3. Before you actually create the mask that is applied to the layer set, you need to have a circular selection. Otherwise it will just create a white mask and it won’t mask out anything.
The advantage is that you do not have to merge, which is better for your workflow (imo)
( )Fab December 11th
Hey, how do I actually cut out the Vinyl cuz I have marked the ellipse and continued with the tutorial but in the end i ended with a square
and how do i create the gradient as shown here?
thx
( )ty for the tutorial
fab
Elizabeth K. Barone April 7th
Make sure all of your layers are in a group/set. The mask won’t work, otherwise.
( )Lancifer May 28th
i think i had the same problem you are having…when he says
“Ctrl-click on the Shape 1 layer and hide it by clicking on the eye icon next to it. Now select the “vinyl” layer set and hit the Mask button. This masks out the selection.”
what you have to do is hold Ctrl and click on the box with the white circle in the shape 1 layer, then (while still holding Ctrl) click on the “vinyl” goup…let go of Ctrl and go down and click the mask icon…this masks out the circle!!
hope this helped…i found out the REALLLLLLLLY hard way! X(
( )ElTioFabi December 20th
Woooww. This tutorial is going to be very helpful for a website that I’m developing. Thanks a lot for the tut.
( )filip December 26th
Really great tutorial. Easy to understand even for me. Great work. Thanks.
( )andy stewart January 14th
http://www.andystewart-design.com
( )Tom April 16th
Great tutorial!
Works very nicely, thanks a lot for taking the time to publish it!
Cheers,
Tom : )
( )rinc May 8th
good job
( )Max June 27th
Is it playable? ^^
Thanks for the tut
( )zalupar June 30th
WOW! Great vinyl! real vinyl! since 1955!!!
( )Oktay Oe. aka kty August 3rd
WoW !!!
I would never believe that I can make something in Photoshop !!
Here is what I got :
http://img26.picoodle.com/img/img26/3/8/2/f_MyVinlym_e83f657.jpg
( )Lancifer May 28th
nice dude!!
( )blackjak August 5th
Great tutorial, but im having an issue…. On step 3, when i duplicate the layer and set it as overlay, everything turn black, and it hides the vinyl layer that is under, even after applying contrast…etc. Is it normal?
( )Jaysone March 16th
I had the same issue.
( )Lancifer May 28th
same!
( )blackjak August 5th
sorry, i meant step 2!
( )Odranoel August 6th
The tutorial is not very well explained, create new layers in or out of the group, work on wich layer, etc…. pay more attention to details if you want to write a tutorial
( )marlon July 27th
It’s look’s like im doing something wrong because i cant mask the 3 layer’s in step 4
( )De Jones August 22nd
Great Tutorial, especially how you did the highlights. Thanks a ton!
( )pink77punk October 5th
Thanks. liked this tutorial. easy to follow.
here’s what i did…
http://s173.photobucket.com/albums/w77/pink77punk/?action=view¤t=BaconFlavoredHits.gif
( )jeff james December 17th
great tut!
( )Owain December 17th
Great tutorial, but for some reason I can’t get passed step2.. When I try to apply the radial blur to the noise layer it is faded out in the drop down only a few blurs are available (Average, Blur, Blur more, Motion blur are available the rest are faded out)
I have followed the tutorial to the letter and the layer stack is exactly the same as the tutorial up to this point.
Im using Photoshop CS on a mac..
Any ideas why this might not be working?
( )Don January 3rd
I think we need to clarify what a ‘layer set’ really is.
Here is the clue you need:
Create a layer set and call it “vinyl.”
This is actually called a ‘group’ in Photoshop and not a layer set. If you look @ the image, in step one, you’ll see its mark as a folder icon in photoshop. So when he later says the ‘vinyl set’ in step 4, he really means the vinyl group.
( )Elizabeth K. Barone April 7th
In older versions of Photoshop (ie, 7), groups were called sets. (:
( )adrian February 10th
hey whats the name of the font you used in your tutorial????
( )mpho March 3rd
Great little piece of work , that is nice man
( )Jaysone March 16th
Great Tutorial!
I’m a bit confused about step 5 “I also used a M ask and a 50% black brush to
( )remove the black areas. I just want to keep the highlights.”
I don’t know what type of brush and is the 50 % referred to the hardness of the brush / opacity. I tried both but it didn’t turn out nicely as i could see circles where i removed the black areas to reveal the highlights. Do i change the diameter of the brush head?
Elizabeth K. Barone April 7th
I’m working on a website that I plan to give a very retro and fun feel, and I really wanted to add some nice records to the “wall” I’m building. None of the clipart graphics I found were fun enough, so I Googled “photoshop record tutorial.” Your tutorial rocked! I cannot wait to show my client the awesome vinyls on his site.
( )da5id May 31st
Awesome tutorial, thanks!
I added some concentric circles on mine to make ‘tracks’ by using the shape tool sets to ‘paths’ (middle tool up the top in photoshop) and stroking them with a hard edged brush set to 2 or 3 pixels and black (if you go to the paths pallet, you can see the path there and the button at the bottom to stroke). I haven’t done a proper label, just made it orange so far.
http://i39.tinypic.com/3gf37.jpg
( )Otis June 4th
I can’t get this thing to work… I’m stuck on step 6, it won’t let me transform. I really need this for a project I am working on.
( )Otis June 9th
I KEEP GETTING STUCK ON STEP 4 NOW – I CAN’T FIND SHAPE LAYERS IN CS4…. >:(
( )Otis June 9th
I’m about to break this computer, I found shape layers, but now I can’t figure out where the shape 1 layer came from in step 4
( )bengue June 28th
nice, nice and nice…
( )Carrie July 2nd
I cannot get the mask to work. Any suggestions?
( )ismail August 10th
thanks !
( )cristi@n August 23rd
Nice tut, thanks!
( )northmc October 3rd
Could you be a little more specific at the 7th step? thank you, the result is really great!
( )jon October 4th
I’ve been going over step 4 over and over and over, and when I ctrl click the masks, then I hide it. Then I click the Vinyl and add a mask, but the only thing that cuts out, is the big circle, not my little one. and yes I select them both. I’ve done this over and over…..?!
( )Mike October 6th
Awesome tutorial, i’m just not getting the same effect when I do it.
I used the elliptical marquee tool instead of the ellipse tool for the shape to mask, and that’s been fine. When it comes to step 6 though i’m having trouble with the gradient. Are you supposed to make the gradient in a new layer, or the original.. having difficulty understanding the instructions.
Could it be the difference’s in the version of photoshop? I’m using cs4.
Thanks again for a great idea.
( )Mogu November 16th
It’s a great tut!
( )Thank you very much!
Roger Wood January 2nd
Wow.. thiis a really nice record! I tryed to follow the instructions but I’m a beginner w/photoshop.. never have learned to use the tools right.. I just bang around until i get what i desired. So like can someone just send me the PSD file of the record already done. I can’t figure it out for the life of me. I dont understand mask layers and how that acually did the cutting of the circle.. grrrrrr. So I had to use the magic wand tool and selected the circle, inverted the selection then used the earser to ease outside the circle.. my lines were jagged,, grrr. I even had to rasterise the layers to even do that. Ok Im done. For a beginner I can say there was alot of explanation left out.. and alot of assumtions made. But it looked cool! Help!
( )Richard R January 7th
Great art, bad tutorial!
( )Terry w. January 19th
Hi tutorial explained great and looks effective, but when i get to stage 2 and use the radial blur, instead of the noise bluring, the whole black circle becomes a blurred rainbow shape.
( )Could there be an easy solution to this? Thanks in advance.