I’ve seen a few poker chip design tutorials for Photoshop but none of them tried to achieve a realistic 3d look and feel. I’ve seen one good tutorial which was unfortunately going for the cartoon look so that’s not suitable for those who want to head towards photorealism. This is my first tutorial and I hope that after reading this you know a little more about faking the 3d effect in Photoshop and using layer styles and blending modes to make your design stand out! Now, let’s begin!
This is what you’ll hopefully be able to create after this tutorial
Step 1
We’ll start with a 500px*500px document with a resolution of 72 pixels/inch. First we need to draw a perfect circle. Let’s do it by selecting an ellipse tool from the toolbox. To draw a perfect circle you need to hold Shift while drawing.
Step 2
Change the color of the shape to green (or whatever color you like!). You can open the color dialog by double clicking the icon next to the circle layer (it’s the green icon on the next image). I used the color #4a8536.
Step 3
Duplicate the first shape (Ctrl + J) layer and make it a little smaller. Press Ctrl + T to enter the transform mode and while dragging the shape’s corner hold Shift + Alt to keep the shape intact and in the center of the outer ellipse. I also renamed the layers to be more descriptive (Chip Background and Inner Circle).
Step 4
Duplicate the Inner Circle Layer and after duplicating make the original Inner Circle layer’s color much darker. Now you can clearly see where the inner circle is. Select the duplicated layer and make it a little smaller like we did in the previous step. After transforming, you should see a nice little border.
Step 5
Hold Control and select the Inner Circle copy in the Layers window by clicking on the shape image. Now the inner circle’s middle area should be visibly selected. Select the Inner Circle layer and right click on the shape image. Select Rasterize Vector Mask item. Now the shape’s mask is rasterized and we can edit it by hiding parts (black color) or making parts visible (white color). The idea is to use Inner Circle as a small ring so its middle part should be see-through. We can achieve that by selecting the rasterized mask and filling the selected area with black color (the middle area should still be selected) by clicking Alt + Backspace.
Step 6
Duplicate the Inner Circle layer and change the color to white.
Step 7
Now we need to see a grid to make things easier. Make it visible by selecting View – Show - Grid. Now make a selection like you see on the image below.
Step 8
With the Inner Circle White‘s layer mask selected, fill the area with black. You should see the white color disappear and the dark green appear.
Step 9
With the selection still on, enter the Transform Selection mode by selecting Select - Transform Selection from the main menu. Rotate the selection like you see on the image below. I used 22 degrees. Remember to hit enter to exit the transform mode. Now fill the area with black (Inner Circle White‘s layer mask should be still selected).
Step 10
Repeat Step 9 until the whole circle is edited. In the end you might run into problem that the last piece is bigger than the others. If this happens, go back one or two steps and make the rotation amount a little bigger (usually no more than 1 or 2 pixels) so there won’t be a visible difference in the end.
Step 11
Now create a new layer and name it something like Outer Block. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool and draw a rectangle like the one in the image. Set the corner radius to 2 so it will be a little round.
Step 12
Duplicate the Outer Block layer and bring it all the way to the bottom of the chip. Use the help of grid and layer guides to position the block in the same place as the first one but on the bottom.
Step 13
Now select both Outer Block layers and merge them by hitting Control + E. Now the blocks are rasterized and in the same layer. Duplicate the layer and enter the Transform mode (Control + T) and rotate the new layer by 90 degrees. Hit Enter to exit the Transform mode. If the layers are not positioned correctly it’s because your chip circle is not positioned in the center of the document. Move the blocks to the right place and when they are positioned correctly, go to the next step.
Step 14
Select both block layers and merge them (Control + E). Duplicate the layer and rotate it by 45 degrees. Now you should have eight blocks nicely positioned all around the chip’s border. Select the two block layers and merge them into one layer. Rename the layer to Outer Blocks.
Step 15
Now we have everything else ready but the middle area needs something in it. Usually there’s a number which shows the value of the chip but we’ll make something else to make our own chip brand! Before I did anything I rotated the outer blocks 45 degrees so the top block was horizontally in the middle of the chip. When you start to edit the middle part you can disable the grid by selecting View - Show - Grid. Remember to create new layers for the middle part design so the other layers will stay intact. In the image below you can see what I came up with (I used World Series of Poker chip as a reference, that’s why it may look familiar to you). If you want to continue the tutorial you can download the PSD file which has the finished 2d design of the chip. Click here to download it!
Step 16
Before we can start working on the layer styles and other tweaking stuff we have to make one little thing. Disable the background layer from the Layers dialog and you’ll see that Outer Blocks layer’s content is overlapping the chip’s border. Hold down Control and click on the Chip Background layer’s shape icon on the Layers dialog to select its content. The selected area should be the whole chip area.
Step 17
With the selection still on make sure that Outer Blocks layer is selected and hit the Layer Mask button (marked with red color on the image below) to create a mask. Now you should see that everything is inside the chip area and nothing is overlapping. It’s time to start the real tweaking!
Step 18
First we’ll modify the layer styles of Outer Blocks layer. Right click on the layer (in the Layers Window) and select Blending Options. Add stroke effect and values can be seen below. The stroke effect will overlap the border of the chip but we don’t have to worry about it just yet.
Step 19
Merge Inner Circle and Inner Circle White layers together (Ctrl + E) and open up the Blending Options. We’ll add Inner Shadow and Inner Glow effects and you can see the values on the images below.
Step 20
Let’s modify the layer styles of the middle area’s layers. Below I’ll show you the layer styles that should be applied to every layer (except the Of layer because it’s so small). You should first apply all those styles to one layer and then copy and paste the styles to other layers by right clicking on the layer and selecting Copy Layer Style and then on another layer Paste Layer Style.
Step 21
Now we are satisfied with the chip and it’s time to translate it to a 3D one. Once more we need to get rid of the chip’s border overlapping content so hold Ctrl and click on the Chip Background layer’s shape icon to select the chip area. Now with the selection on, select all the layers (except the background layer) and hit Ctrl + E to merge layers. Inverse selection (Shift + Ctrl + I) so that all the content outside the chip is selected and hit delete to clean the outside up.
Step 22
Create a new document (dimensions 1000px*700px), copy the chip from the original document and paste it into the new one (hide the chip layer). First we’ll create the background. Fill the background layer using a dark green color (#0c2e00). Create a new layer and change the color to a little bit lighter green (#185d00) and draw a radial gradient starting from the center of the image. With the gradient layer selected, go to Filter - Noise - Add Noise and use the values shown in the image below.
Step 23
The background is now good to use (it looks like a poker table’s surface) but I tweaked the background a bit more and if you want to use that version, download it here.
Step 24
Make the chip layer visible so we can start to modify it (you may want to duplicate the layer to make an invisible backup in case something goes wrong). Enter the Transform mode (Ctrl + T). Right click on the drawing area (inside the transform selection box) and select Perspective. Grab the upper right corner and movie it left. Move the cursor left until you’ll see that H value on the transform toolbar is near 13 degrees.
Step 25
Enter the Transform mode again and now set the vertical scale from the top toolbar to 50%. Now the chip starts to look like it’s in the 3d space!
Step 26
Hold down Ctrl and Alt while the chip layer is selected. Then click the up arrow multiple times and you’ll see how the chip starts to get some height. When you’re finished, select all the duplicated layers, except the first one on the top and merge them (Ctrl + E).
Step 27
Rename layers to be more descriptive. The bottom layer will be 3d Bottom and another layer will be Chip Top. Now select the 3d Bottom layer and go to Image - Adjustments - Brightness/Contrast.
Step 28
As you can see from the image above, the white areas of the 3d Bottom are dirty so select them (with 3d Bottom layer selected) and use Dodge Tool to lighten them up. Remember to disable Protect Tones checkbox in the toolbar while using Dodge Tool.
Step 29
Go to the blending options of the 3d Bottom layer and add inner shadow effect using the values from the first image below. After that, merge both layers (Chip Top and 3d Bottom) together and go to the blending options. Add the drop shadow effect using the values from the second image below. In the third image you see what the result is.
Step 30
With the chip layer selected, go to Filter - Noise - Add Noise and add noise using the amount of three percent. Other settings should be fine because we’ve used the noise effect before.
Step 31
The chip is now finished but you might want to make some more changes to get it perfect. First I added a little shine effect. I did it by adding a new layer with Overlay Blend mode. Then I modified the drop shadow effect to be a little closer to the chip so it looks like it’s standing on the table and not floating in the air. I also reduced a brightness a little and added more contrast to the chip.
At the end
Now we are finally finished. Creating this tutorial took hours but I hope that you managed to recreate the whole thing using much less time! Below you can see a stack of chips I made using the same exact technique described in the tutorial above. If you enjoyed this tutorial, consider supporting my work by visiting my After Effects Templates portfolio on Videohive.net! Thanks!