Easy Wire Insets Interface Technique Tutorial

Before we begin, I would like to thank you very much for viewing this tutorial. Your continued support will allow me to create more incredible and useful tutorials for you to benefit from. When you complete this tutorial, I would appreciate any feedback you wish to give me. Once again, thank you.

I assume that you have a basic understanding of Photoshop such as how to create and delete layers and channels etc. However, if you do get stuck on a step, or have questions about ANYTHING, please contact me at: , or post on the tutorial message boards I will be more than happy to answer your questions about how to do a technique or step. Also, the units used in this tutorial are pixels, and if you see something like this "File -> Save As" it just means go to the top menu bar and select "File", then select "Save As".
Thanks again, and have fun!

This tutorial follows up and builds upon the Wired Out tutorial. I strongly suggest you do that first before proceeding. You may download the zip version of that tutorial and follow along if you would like.

This tutorial is an interface technique tutorial and will help you understand how to add insets to wires in photoshop and really bring your wires and cables to life. Let's get started!

- Start by opening WiredOut.psd, or if you completed that tutorial already, open your version of it.

- Create a new layer above everything else called "dark insets".

- Grab your line tool (U), and with black as your foreground, and antialias checked for the line tool, start making lines that follow the shape of the wire:

No need to be PERFECT, but if an angle on one line is obviously wrong, back up, and try again. As you can see, some of mine may be a *little* off, but that's ok.

- Now, once you have something similar to the above shot, duplicate (right click and select duplicate layer) your dark insets layer, and rename it to "light insets".

- Hit "/" to lock the transparent pixels of this layer, and then with white as your foreground, hit ctrl + backspace to fill the black lines with white.

- With the move tool (V), nudge the white lines over to the right 1 pixel.

- Unlock the light insets layer by hitting "/" again.

- Select the "wire and 3d" (from the Wired Out tutorial) layer's selection by ctrl + clicking on its thumbnail in the layers palette.

- Hit shift + ctrl + i to invert the selection, and make dark insets your current working layer (just click on it in the layers palette).

- Hit the delete key, and all the excess will be deleted.

- Do the same for the light insets layer.

Ok, this looks pretty good as it is, but let's go one step farther for realism's sake.

- Drop the opacity of each inset layer to about 60%.

You should have something like this:

Not bad for a few minutes work and only two additional layers! The great thing about this technique is of coures its ease, but also you can apply it to many different wire and cable widths. Try it out, and also try changing the layer mode around for each of the insets layers to see how it looks in different layer modes and opacities. Good luck!

Thanks for completing the tutorial, and please go to the forums to give feedback and show off your creation! See you there. Also, please take a look at the other tutorials.

Sincerely,