You can use Photoshop filters to create flower and star shapes that add visual interest to your images. Highlight light sources in your photographs with Photoshop filters, turning every light into a star. Make star and flower shapes using Photoshop's polygon tools, then apply filters to give them texture and dimension. Create fantasy flowers and stars using the Wave distort filter. Use plug-ins to draw sophisticated flower and star shapes with textures such as glass or chrome.
Star Filters for Light Sources
- Photoshop CS offers a variety of filters you can use to change the appearance of light sources in your photographs. If you have an image with very distinct points of light, such as a night scene with street lights, you can turn each light into a star. Create a second layer containing only the lights, and apply the the starburst shape from the Shape Blur filter filter menu to each one.
Polygon Stars
- You can create star shapes with Photoshop's Polygon tool, then give them more dimension and make them glow, using filters. Using the Polygon tool's geometry options, choose how many sides you want and how deep you want the indentations in the sides of the shape to be. Turn your polygon star shapes into glowing stars using the Lighting Effects filter.
Polygon Flowers
- Create flower-shaped polygons using the Polygon tool. Place polygons of different colors and sizes on top of each other to make more complex flower shapes. You can also use existing shapes from Photoshop's Custom Shape library. Use the Lighting Effects filter to give your flowers more depth with highlights and shadows. Alternatively you can turn them into three-dimensional figures with Photoshop's 3D Transform filter. This filter is no longer included with the standard installation of Photoshop CS, but you can install it from your Adobe Photoshop CD.
Wave Filter Flowers
- Use Photoshop's Wave Distort filter to make psychedelic retro flower graphics. Fill a white rectangle with a colorful gradient, then apply Wave from the Distort filter list to turn it into a rippling horizontal wave. Applying the Rectangular to Polar filter from the Distort menu wraps the wave shape into a flower. You can enhance the look of your gradient flowers with a soft blur filter and some lighting effects.
Plug-In Filters
- Besides the filters that come with the standard Photoshop install, you can find plug-in filters -- additional tools that let you create an even wider range of shapes and effects. One example is Eye Candy from Alien Skin. You can use the Super Star filter from Eye Candy to make many different polygonal and beveled shapes, including stars and all kinds of flower shapes. Once you've made the basic shape, you can apply textures such as Glass or Chrome to make your stars and flowers stand out.
