It’s that time of year again! Get into the holiday spirit by learning how to make a Santa hat in Photoshop.
This tutorial will show you how to use the Pen Tool to create a custom shape, how to apply a gradient, and how to add a realistic-looking pom-pom to the top of the hat. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll be able to create your own Santa hats to use in holiday-themed designs.
The first step is to create a new document in Photoshop. For this tutorial, we’ll be working with a canvas size of 600×600 pixels.
Once you have your document set up, grab the Pen Tool from the Toolbar. You’ll want to set your stroke color to red and your fill color to white.
Now that you have your colors set up, it’s time to start drawing the shape of the hat. Start by clicking somewhere near the top center of your canvas. Then, click and drag down towards the bottom left corner. Make sure to keep your mouse button held down as you do this so that you create a curved line.
When you get near the bottom left corner, release your mouse button and then click and drag up towards the top right corner. Again, make sure to keep your mouse button held down so that you create a curved line. When you get near the top right corner, release your mouse button and then click back near the top center of your canvas. This will complete the shape of the hat.
Now that you have your hat shape created, it’s time to add a gradient. Go up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen and choose New > Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map.
This will bring up the Gradient Map dialog box. Click on the gradient preview area and choose a nice red-to-white gradient from the preset options. Then click OK to close out of the dialog box.
Your Santa hat is looking good so far! The last thing we need to do is add a pom-pom to the top of it. To do this, we’ll first need to create a new layer.
Go up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen and choose New > Layer. This will bring up the New Layer dialog box. In this dialog box, name your layer “Pom-Pom” and then click OK to close out of it.
Now that you have your Pom-Pom layer created, grab the Elliptical Marquee Tool from the Toolbar (it’s nested under the Rectangular Marquee Tool). Hold down your Shift key and click and drag out a small circle near the top center of your canvas.
Once you have your circle selected, press Command + J (PC: Ctrl + J) on your keyboard to cut it out into its own layer (this is called creating a “clipping mask”). You should now have two layers in your Layers palette – one called “Background” and one called “Pom-Pom.”
With your Pom-Pom layer selected in the Layers palette, go up to the Edit menu at the menu bar and choose Fill.. This will bring up the Fill dialog box where you can specify what color you want to fill your selection with. Choose a light red color for your pom-pom and then click OK to close the dialog box. Your pom-pom might not look very realistic right now, but we’ll fix that in just a moment.
Now that we’ve got our pompom filled with color, let’s add some highlight sand shadows so it looks more realistic.
First, we’ll need to create new layers for our highlight sand shadows. Go up to the menu bar and choose Layer >New >Layer. Thi swill bring up the New Layer dialog box.
In this dialog box, name your layer “Highlights” and then click OK to close out of it.
Then repeat this process and create new layer called “Shadows.” Your Layers palette should now look like this:
With your Highlights layer selected in the Layers palette, grab the Soft Round Brush Tool from the Tool bar and set your brush size to 5px in the rulers at the top and left of your canvas.
Set your foreground color to transparent (you can do this by pressing the D key on your keyboard) and then paint your brush over the are as to where you want to add highlights.
Don’t worry about being too perfect with this–we just want to give the impression of a light source coming from the top of the hat.
Once you’re done with your highlights, desaturate the layer by going to the menu bar a top of screen and choosing Image > Adjustments > Desaturate or by pressing Shift+Command+U (PC:Shift+Ctrl+U) on keyboard.
This will convert the colors on the layer to shades of gray which will make blending them in to our main image easier later on.
Now set the blend mode of the layer to “Screen” in Drop down menu at the top of the Layers palette and lower the opacity to around50%.
With your Shadows layer selected in Layers palette, grab the Soft Round Brush Tool from Tool baragain and set it size to 5px in the rulers at the top and left of canvas.
Set foreground color to black (you turn black by pressing X key on keyboard)and your background color to white.
Paint brush over areas to where you want to add shadows making sure to use as oft edge brush so edges aren’t too harsh.
Once you’re done with shadows,.
Again, set blend mode of the layer to “Multiply” in Drop down menu at the top of the Layers palette and rease the opacity back to 100%.
