Tutorial: CREATING A BASIC TAG IN PHOTOSHOP 7

By Lauren Bavin

Open a new file - approximately 6 inches long and 4 inches wide , 200 or 300 dpi with transparent background.

Using the rectangular marquee tool drag out a rectangle starting from approximately 1/3 of the way down your canvas - to nearly the bottom - creating a long rectangle

Now click on the tiny arrow at the right bottom corner of the marquee tool and a pop out menu will appear with more selection shapes - pick the circular selection tool

Hold the shift key down and drag out an elliptical selection across the top of your rectangle - This will add the ellipse to your selection making a curved top

Choose the colour for your tag by clicking on the top colour swatch in the tool bar and choosing a colour from the colour picker menu and then use the fill (Paint can) tool to fill your selection with your chosen colour

Remove your marquee - ( Select - deselect) and choose the circular marquee tool once again and draw a small circle for the hole in your tag near the top of your curved tag, and hit the delete key to make a hole

Deselect
To make your tag more realistic and paper like - use a noise filter
Filter - noise- add noise-
Use the sliders to adjust the settings till you get an effect you like

Now we need to make a string for your tag
Use the paintbrush tool - with a thinnish hard edged brush- I used brush number 13 in the default brushes
Create a new layer (Layer new) and choose a contrasting colour for your string by clicking on the foreground swatch again and choosing from the colour picker menu Draw your string over the top of your tag - like this-

Now we need to make it look like it is over and under the tag - so we need to erase part of the string- use the eraser tool- erase the part of the tag which is supposed to be underneath the tag

Now we need to make that string look 3 d - we do this with layer styles -
Look at the layer pallette - right down the bottom there is a little circle with an f in it - click on that and it brings up your layer styles menu

Select bevel and emboss- and play with the sliders till you get a look that you like

Don't close that menu but click on the drop shadow section up the top and apply a small drop shadow
Click ok to apply your styles - now on your layers palette you can click on the tag layer and use the layer styles menu to apply a drop shadow to your tag.
There you are - very basic tag - completed !!