Fast and Easy Swirls and Twirls
Published in Specific Effects, Basic, Photoshop.
On a blank canvas, make this selection. Make sure you are on a new layer and not on the background layer.

Fill the selection with black, and position it so that the tip of the triangle is in the center of the canvas.

Go to Filter > Distort > Twirl and set the slider to maximum left or right (your choice). This is what your canvas should look like:

If you have wierd shapes coming off like this, move your triangle farther away from the center of the canvas toward the edge.
Now that you have your swirl, copy paste it wherever you want it. You can use these to create web layouts or headers:

I created two swirls and copy/pasted them into the design next to each other.
You can also border photos with swirls like the one below:

To create this, I made many swirls (some are duplicated) and pasted them into the picture. To rotate and resize them, press Control-T (This allows you to use Free Transform)
When I was done with positioning all my swirls, I hid all the layers except the swirls. Then I pressed Control-Shift-E (Merge Visible) . This made all the swirls on the same layer. I duplicated this layer. On the new duplicate, apply a Gaussian Blur (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur) then right click on this new layer, and go to Blending Options. Go to the Color Overlay panel. Apply these (or similar) settings.

Enjoy!
Keywords: Adobe photoshop tutorial, circles, swirls, swooshes, border a picture, e-card ideas, photo shop tutorial, curly shapes, tentacles, wavy things in photoshop, how to make swirls

Subscribe to the RSS

#1 rabbithole - 05 August, 3:45 PM
this is soooooooooooooo cute