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Concentric rings
I am trying to make a video button. I want to have a hexagon with two concentric hexagon shaped rings around it of different colors. I started out with shape and drew hexagon, rasteriized it, coppied it several times, and then put a layer mask on the original hex (for Encore). Then with one copy, CNTL click and select, modify, expand 10 pixels. Then alt backspace to fill the selected area with color, then selecting original layer CNTL Click which selected the original hex inside the larger copied image and backspace to delete that which leaves me with the first ring around the hex.
However, I can’t make the second ring around the outside of the first ring. It keeps going back or contracting as well as expanding.
I know this is wordy, but is there any way to make the second ring outside the first?Thanks in advance.
John RichhJOHNR
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5 Replies
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I forgot to mention I am using Photoshop CS2.
JohnJOHNR
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Illustrator is better for projects with strokes. Using the select >> modify >> expand will round the edges of your strokes.
In Illustrator draw a hexagon and set the stroke and fill to none (trust me on this). Go to your appearance palette and choose add stroke from the flyout menu (you can now add your stroke color and thickess). Drag the stroke beneath the fill(thsi is so the stroke only goes outwards, adn the other half goes underneath the fill). Then add another from the appearance palette flyout menu; and viola you are on your way to becoming an appearance palette master.
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Mike,
Thanks for responding. I don’t have illustrator (I may get it after what your said). It’s only a button though, so I figured it out in photoshop. Just CNTL select the hex shape and Modify – expand (on a separate layer)and fill the whole thing on the second layer with a color. Then go back to the original shape with the larger hex layer selected and CNTL click on the original shape. That selects a smaller hex inside the larger and backspace makes a hole in the second layer. Actually what you have to do is make several increasingly larger hexes before you cut out the middle for each of them if you want concentric hex shaped rings.
Thanks again,
JohnJOHNR
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Cool glad to hear you got your button done. You will get rounded corners rather than strokes using that method, btu your button may already not have any conrers.
You can also apply a stroke layer style, and keep duplicating layers and change the stroke weight and color of each layer. That ofcourse also gives you rounded corners, btu for weor video graphics you may not notice.
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Mike,
Thanks again. You are of course correct in that my hexagons had rounded edges which don’t look that great. These things are all “subpicture highlights”, which have a low resolution and only one color and won’t accept any styles, but I agree it would be nice to make them crisper ie sharp corners. Illustrator always seemed so expensive, but maybe I have to bite the bullet.
JohnJOHNR
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