[Jeff Hinkle]

Try this: Open your original (not the save-for-web result) and check View>Pixel Aspect Ratio and make sure it’s set to Square. If you’re working in a non-square environment with Pixel Aspect Ratio Correction enabled, your images will LOOK correct in Photoshop, but not when you save them out.

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It is easier to destroy than to create.
More fun, too.

[Jeff Hinkle]

You could just adjust the opacity of your Layer 4 (with the gray shape) and then render the project with an alpha. Won’t give identical results to Multiply, but close enough.

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It is easier to destroy than to create.
More fun, too.

[Jeff Hinkle]

Multiply isn’t an alpha effect. It’s a blending mode, meaning it combines the values of the pixels of its layer with the layer below it. No layer below it? No blending. So outputting it and dropping it over a source in another program won’t work like it will internally in After Effects.

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It is easier to destroy than to create.
More fun, too.

[Jeff Hinkle]

If I’m understanding correctly what you want to do:

Draw your path.

Select your Brush tool.

Set the brush the way you want it (size/shape/color).

In the Path palette, select the path and click the Stroke Path with Brush button at the bottom (the hollow circle).

That should stroke your path with the selected brush.

If you have Illustrator, you can do basically the same thing but with a lot more flexibility, especially if you want to go back and edit the path or brush later.

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It is easier to destroy than to create.
More fun, too.

[Jeff Hinkle]

You can simply drag the masked layer into the second document (which I like for added flexibility of keeping the mask for possible refinement), or, if you really want to copy/paste, make a selection of the mask (on Windows, I think that’s ctl-click on the mask thumbnail in the Layers palette), then copy, switch to second document, paste.

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It is easier to destroy than to create.
More fun, too.

[Jeff Hinkle]

Questions of legitimacy aside, in answer to your second question, it’s almost always better to learn how to do something the “hard” way before looking for an automated solution. That way you know WHY things happen and can control them instead of trusting to an external source and hoping for the best. The whole “teach a man to fish” theory.

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It is easier to destroy than to create.
More fun, too.

[Jeff Hinkle]

Couple things:

1. Who is doing the resize on the image, you or YouTube? Are you providing the image at the exact size YouTube requires? You’ll have a lot more control if you provide the final size rather than letting their system do it.

2. Your thin diagonal line pattern, when reduced, is going to smear together and essentially “gray out” all your colors. That’s why everything looks washed out. Try turning off the lines and see what happens to your colors.

—
It is easier to destroy than to create.
More fun, too.

[Jeff Hinkle]

I guess the first question would be: why not just add color and shading right in Illustrator? Especially for a logo design, where you’re going to want maximum flexibility in scaling, and consistency in colors. Gradients, gradient meshes, blends– you can do a lot of shading right there, all vector-based.

If you really want to do it in Photoshop, don’t use the Paint Bucket. Clunky tool. Make a new color layer below your black outline layer and fill selections with your colors of choice. That way there’s no gaps between color and outline and you can do any amount of shading to the colors without worrying about bleeding into your outlines.

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It is easier to destroy than to create.
More fun, too.

[Jeff Hinkle]

That one’s hit us too. It’s a known bug and Adobe says they’re working on a fix. The problem seems to be if you first transform the text, then try to adjust the values numerically. It does something weird to Photoshop’s internal math. Duplicating and editing a text layer that you’ve transformed also brings the behavior to the duplicated layer. If you adjust size only with the text palette–no object>transform operations, no dragging corner handles–it seems to bypass the issue.

—
It is easier to destroy than to create.
More fun, too.

[Jeff Hinkle]

You can try trashing your preferences file. Go to
/Users/[Username]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop CS6 Settings and delete the file Adobe Photoshop CS6 Prefs.psp

You might also want to trash /Users/[Username]/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.Photoshop.plist

You can also try holding down Command-Option-Shift when starting Photoshop to do the same thing, but since I didn’t know how far in the startup you were getting before it died, I figured the manual route was better.

Hope this helps!

—
It is easier to destroy than to create.
More fun, too.